Wild Salmon Secretariat – Make Your Case for Bringing Back Wild Salmon, Updated Dec 11, 2018

The Wild Salmon Secretariat spearheaded by Green MLA Adam Olsen is now at the stage where it is collecting public comment on their work so far – their salmon document – in the process of bringing back wild salmon. Please go and make your thoughts known on their website and consider attending their meeting in Victoria, slated for January 2019.

Note that at the meetings, speakers may be limited to five minutes, so come with your thoughts on paper, drop them off, and, also, send the secretariat the same e-document attached to an email.

Here is their report: https://engage.gov.bc.ca/app/uploads/sites/426/2018/11/Wild-Salmon-Strategy-Options-Paper.pdf. At 53 pages it is not unduly long to read. Note that pages 3 and 4 summarize all strategies for change, and you can click on each to go directly to the text. 

This is their summary document: https://engage.gov.bc.ca/app/uploads/sites/426/2018/11/Wild-Salmon-Strategy-Summary-Document.pdf. At two pages, you should read it to get the options they have put together.

This is their website, noting several meetings before the end of December 2018: https://engage.gov.bc.ca/bcwildsalmonstrategy/community-meetings/. 

At the bottom of the page is a link to an online form to make your comments; that takes you to this page: https://feedback.engage.gov.bc.ca/253769?lang=en. So, you can make comments right now. 

This option ends on December 28, so please make a point to make some comments and record them on their site.

Their email address is: wildsalmonsecretariat@gov.bc.ca. Local members of the Secretariat that most will know are: Ward Bond, Mike Hicks, Martin Paish and Adam Olsen, Saanich MLA.

For a meeting I had with Adam Olsen and others on Friday, I put together a plan for dealing with the major problems facing wild salmon. From it I excise the following portion, along with some links you may want to follow up: 

Wild BC Salmon Plan – Adam Olsen Meeting, Dec 7, 2018 – DC Reid

The Four Big Problems

1.     Freshwater Habitat Restoration: The BC Government should put $150 Million over ten years, at $15M each year into the Pacific Salmon Foundation to fund freshwater salmon habitat restoration. The PSF leverages money 4 to 7 times, making the annual amount into $60M to $105M, and the total amount into $600M to $1050M, the biggest infusion ever for wild salmon.

2.     DFO (in Ottawa): Has been and is managing salmon into extinction. Work around them on all fronts. 1. Come up with a wide-ranging made in BC Wild Salmon Plan. See below. 2. BC has jurisdiction for both freshwater habitat and for ending fish farm licences. 3. Ask DFO to provide another $15M a year for ten years, to the PSF, for freshwater habitat restoration – another billion-dollar effect for wild salmon.

3.     Fish Farms: The BC NDP won’t take fish farms out of the water, without pressure. Fish farms need to be on land, or they are going to be put out of business by the vastly growing global on-land industry. In the USA, Atlantic Sapphire, Whole Oceans, Nordic Aquafarms and Aquabanc are moving toward 218,000mt salmon on land, almost 250% higher than BC, and taking BC’s main market, the USA. Pure Salmon is aiming at an additional 260,000mt around the globe, taking the rest of BC’s market. Globally there are even more: 255 on-land RAS systems.

4.     Climate Change: Is negative to salmon. I am working on a document that addresses the problems and solutions.

The Solution

BC Wild Salmon Plan

       The government of BC has the following plan for bringing back wild Pacific salmon: 

1.     We are moving forward to save BC’s iconic Wild Pacific Salmon, threatened now on several fronts. We will fund the Pacific Salmon Foundation $150 million over ten years to undertake freshwater habitat restoration. We are asking the federal government to add the same amount of funding for the same purpose, making this the biggest positive plan for wild salmon ever undertaken in BC! More than $2 Billion in total.

2.     We will set up 12 net-pen operations for the next ten years, with 2 million sterilized chinook fry each to feed southern resident killer whales.

3.     We will set up net-pen operations in coastal First Nations to raise their own, local, sterilized salmon.

4.     We will provide funding for our aboriginal brothers to remove Atlantic salmon and their fry from BC rivers.

5.     We propose that DFO curtail the herring roe fishery for the next decade.

6.     Yes, there is science on the problems with fish farms, but there are other issues: wild salmon are declining, climate change is getting worse, British Columbians by and large don’t like fish farms, our aboriginal brothers want their wild salmon back and farmed salmon out of the ocean. We are acting in accordance with British Columbian wishes and using the precautionary principle, as well as court decisions on Indigenous rights.

7.     In accordance with our plans, fish farms will be moved to land. Globally, the industry has been moving onto land for many years, including in Norway, where BC farms are from, and it is now time to do the same here. 

Norway stopped auctioning in-ocean licences in 2014 and then granted, for free, on-land licences; this was a $9- to $12-million subsidy to set up on land. We will offer the same subsidy in BC, a free licence. The most recent in-ocean licences went for $32- $40-million in Norway, making a free on-land licence an enormous subsidy to set up on land. BC will match that huge on-land subsidy. That is how much we value investment in BC’s economy.

Marine Harvest is investing $100 Million in closed containment, and the other companies also have their plans. It makes sense for Norwegian companies to invest some in BC, on our much cheaper land, with cheaper labour than Norway, with their monetary policy inflated Krone that will buy more in BC, rather than go back to Norway and set up on land there.

8.     We will retrain workers to work on fish farms on land. 

9.     We will set up a 30,000mt on-land fish farm, working with industry leaders Atlantic Sapphire, Aqua Maof, PE Fund and our aboriginal brothers at Kuterra. 

10. We will retire 33% of current leases each June for the next three years. We’re here to help in the transition to land. And with our lower costs, you’ll be contributing to the BC economy, without the damaging externalities of the old way of doing things.

Here is related information and some useful links if you wish to follow up on some of the topics:

Other Notes:

*Use the precautionary principle, and Indigenous rights to make your argument.

*Update the BC Stats Report: https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn%3Aaaid%3Ascds%3AUS%3A7d5d3605-f6fe-468f-8962-6a8a21bbf374. Fish Farm/DFO figures are false.

Current BC Stats Report:

*255 On-land Fish Farm List: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2016/05/152-different-on-land-fish-farm-systems.html. 

*Drug Resistance – Slice – pesticides resistance is not new. Rachel Carson wrote about the 1940s to 1960s use of pesticides, herbicides and fungicides, which lead to the banning of chlorine- and phosphorous-based chemicals such as DDT, PCBs and so on, after millions of birds and animals died. This is exactly what is happening now, 50 years after she called her book Silent Spring, for all the collateral killing that chemicals do in the world. SLICE etc. should be banned. Antibiotic use should be banned.

Useful links: 

1.     BC Wild Salmon Plan, Contact Your MLA: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2018/02/wild-bc-salmon-plan-contact-your-mla.html. 

2.     Increase In-Ocean Licence Fees to $32m to $40M, Make On-land Licence $0: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2018/08/increase-license-fees-to-32-to-40.html. Also: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2018/07/raise-bc-fish-farm-license-to-32.html. 

3.     Wild Salmon Secretariat summary document: https://engage.gov.bc.ca/app/uploads/sites/426/2018/11/Wild-Salmon-Strategy-Summary-Document.pdf. 

4.     Secretariat report, Options for a made-in-BC Salmon Strategy: https://engage.gov.bc.ca/app/uploads/sites/426/2018/11/Wild-Salmon-Strategy-Options-Paper.pdf. 

5.     John Horgan What Are you Thinking: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2018/07/john-horgan-what-are-you-thinking-four.html. Lots of references.

6.     Precautionary Principle: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2018/10/precautionary-principle-has-defined.html. 

7.     DFO is the 40 year problem with wild salmon: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2018/06/dfo-salmon-and-killer-whales-take-two.html. See the Nahmint photo.

8.     Minister of Agriculture’s Advisory Council on Finfish Aquaculture Final Report (MAACFA): https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/farming-natural-resources-and-industry/agriculture-and-seafood/fisheries-and-aquaculture/minister-or-agriculture-s-advisory-council-on-finfish-aquaculture/maacfa-2017-docs/minister_of_agricultures_advisory_council_on_finfish_aquaculture_final_report_and_appendices.pdf.

9.     Criticisms of MAACFA report: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-bc-government-wants-fish-farms-in.html. 

10.  Retiring Broughton Salmon Licences: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2018/06/retiring-broughton-archipelago-fish.html. 

11.  BC doesn’t want fish farms, a long list: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2018/05/john-horgan-remember-to-cancel-those.html.

12.  Sewage Cost $10.4B: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2018/03/calculation-for-sewage-from-salmon-farms.html. And, the calculation: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2017/02/fish-farm-sewage-huge-cost-to-bc.html. 

13.  DFO Fibs on Salmon Escapes: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2018/03/dfo-fibs-on-farmed-salmon-escapes-bc.html. This calculates the current escape/leakage figure of 153,000 Atlantic salmon per crop in BC.

14.  From the fibbing article: “8. And why did Norwegian companies, Marine Harvest, Cermaq and Grieg Seafood come to Canada in the first place? They came to Canada/Chile/Etc. because of weaker laws:  http://www.farmedanddangerous.org/salmon-farming-problems/environmental-impacts/escapes-alien-species/. "The report Fishy Business: The Economics of Salmon Farming In BC notes that in the late 1980s, Norwegian companies were faced with strict environmental regulations and farm size restrictions in their own country, so they decided to expand in countries where regulations were less strict (i.e. Canada, Chile)."”

15.  PFRCC: Salmon Stronghold Concept: https://www.wildsalmoncenter.org/content/uploads/2016/02/Applying-the-Salmon-Stronghold-Concept-in-Canada.pdf. Exec Summary: “This approach to salmon habitat conservation was initially conceived by Canadian researchers and fisheries specialists and explained in the 1990’s Living Blueprint for B.C. Salmon Habitat report. It was not adopted then, primarily because of Canada’s attention to the Wild Salmon Policy’s development and the preoccupation of governments with recovery for a series of crisis conditions that included fish population crashes and immediate threats to salmon diversity in several areas.” The Blueprint is discussed on page 6.

And, finally some recent news/videos about chinook and other salmon species being in decline:

 1. https://www.cbc.ca/listen/shows/the-early-edition/episode/15643462?utm_source=Watershed+Watch+Email+List&utm_campaign=8ad2b23f0f-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_12_05_09_46&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_405944b1b5-8ad2b23f0f-166907249&mc_cid=8ad2b23f0f&mc_eid=5777c92bcd.

2. https://www.cheknews.ca/scientists-call-for-chinook-salmon-to-be-federally-protected-514293/?utm_source=Watershed+Watch+Email+List&utm_campaign=8ad2b23f0f-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_12_05_09_46&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_405944b1b5-8ad2b23f0f-166907249&mc_cid=8ad2b23f0f&mc_eid=5777c92bcd.

3. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/05/canada-chinook-salmon-endangered?utm_source=Watershed+Watch+Email+List&utm_campaign=8ad2b23f0f-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_12_05_09_46&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_405944b1b5-8ad2b23f0f-166907249&mc_cid=8ad2b23f0f&mc_eid=5777c92bcd.

4. https://globalnews.ca/news/4729325/chinook-salmon-populations-decline-bc/?utm_source=Watershed+Watch+Email+List&utm_campaign=8ad2b23f0f-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_12_05_09_46&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_405944b1b5-8ad2b23f0f-166907249&mc_cid=8ad2b23f0f&mc_eid=5777c92bcd.

5. https://www.vancourier.com/13-british-columbia-chinook-salmon-populations-in-decline-scientists-1.23518267?utm_medium=email&mc_eid=5777c92bcd&utm_source=Watershed+Watch+Email+List&utm_campaign=8ad2b23f0f-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_12_05_09_46&utm_term=0_405944b1b5-8ad2b23f0f-166907249&mc_cid=8ad2b23f0f.

6. https://www.princegeorgecitizen.com/news/local-news/report-calls-for-nechako-chinook-hatchery-1.23518430?utm_source=Watershed+Watch+Email+List&utm_campaign=8ad2b23f0f-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_12_05_09_46&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_405944b1b5-8ad2b23f0f-166907249&mc_cid=8ad2b23f0f&mc_eid=5777c92bcd.