Nova Scotia Public Rejects In-ocean Fish Farms, Updated Dec 24, 2015

As I have said before, people who have to live with fish farms come to overwhelmingly reject them. In BC, 110,000 people have signed a petition for the BC Government not to issue licences and to get fish farms out of the water: https://www.change.org/p/restore-wild-salmon-ban-salmon-feedlots-in-bc.

Now it's the public of Nova Scotia that rejects fish farms. They are particularly unhappy with the new weaker laws governing fish farms. See: http://thechronicleherald.ca/novascotia/1322086-open-process-sought-in-aquaculture-rules.

My list of on-land fish farms systems now stand at 122, comprising more than 10,000 actual farms, so fish farms claiming it won't work are disingenuous. We need our governments, like what is done in Denmark and Finland, to put fish farms on land, so they don't use our pristine ocean as free, open sewers. See: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2012/01/key-document-34-mostly-on-land-closed.html. 

In Nova Scotia, it wasn't long ago that fish farms were crowing about transparency in the new laws that in essence put all the decision-making in their hands.See the Chronicle Herald newspaper: http://thechronicleherald.ca/novascotia/1322086-open-process-sought-in-aquaculture-rules. 

But non-transparency is precisely the issue: East Coast Environmmental Law in Halifax says that 'openness and transparency are staples missing from the Nova Scotia government's new aquaculture regulations.' These come after the federal government severely relaxed its own regulations of Aquaculture.

And the law charity points out: "One of the main conclusions the panel made [an independent panel] that reported on the over all issue, was you either implement it all or you're not going to get social licence from the people of Nova Scotia."

Aaron Ward went on to say that: "many groups have agreed to put aside their continued calls for such a moratorium if the panel recommendations are implemented in full." As this is not happening, the NS public wants them out of the water.

Ward said a problem is that "industry members are only required to provide basic information through what the province refers to as proactive disclosure. He said the province also fails to provide an instrument to request the revocation of a licence from repeat offenders. 

When a fish farm company like Marine Harvest, Cermaq and Grieg Seafood, trumpets their transparency, say no, and refer them to this story, and my posts on the Cohen Commission. See the index for this site in October of 2014: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2014/10/key-document-index-to.html.