During the Cohen Commission on collapse of the Fraser River sockeye run, the Harper, Conservative Government muzzled government scientists, including Kristi Miller at the biological station in Nanaimo, BC.
She was told her paper on her viral signature work - phenotype work, rather than genotype, meaning what the fish looked like, its symptoms and which disease that that represented - could not be spoken about. Many scientists quit, and she considered it.
On the stand, if you read the third section, on disease, she is quoted as saying she found HSMI and ISA in Clayoquot Sound chinook farms. And the Sound, a Unesco Biosphere no less, wild salmon are pretty much extinct since 22 fish farms are in operation in a non-flushing sound. There are only 501 chinook in six streams. The Kennedy Lake sockeye run, once the second largest on Vancouver Island, was fished down and has never recovered during the period that fish farms have been in Clayoquot.
Little wonder.
The Trudeau government has opened the door and Miller, along with other scientists are now allowed to speak independently of the government. Here is an article that notes her response to the new freedom that she and others find themselves in: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/krist-miller-scientist-dfo-muzzled-1.3308549.
That means her new genomic work on wild and farmed salmon that Miller is the lead scientist in will allow her to speak, in a process that is stacked against wild Pacific salmon by having fish farm representatives on the committee to parse news releases, and DFO, which continues in a conflict of interest with fish farms. They won't have the last word. Thank you Justin Trudeau.
Thank you for putting an aboriginal in as the new Minister of Fisheries and Oceans Canada.Now, let's follow the Cohen recommendation that DFO be stripped of its role of supporting fish farms and simply get on with protecting wild Pacific salmon.
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