Two recent polls have shown that the vast majority of British Columbians support wild salmon.
DFO, however, doesn't want to know these answers and so it commissioned a $100,000 poll to give it different answers. Because DFO supports fish farms, it wants poll results that support the story it wants to tell and push forward.
It has some strange numbers, strange methods, strange pairings of people, and gets results that say as long as DFO communicates its new, safe regulations (read FARM, and that post:
https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2019/07/dfos-public-consultation-on-framework.html, which is littered with problems. The main problem is that DFO will not listen to BC residents and
Atlantic Canadians who want fish farms put on land, just like the rest of the world.) everything will be hunky dory.
So what are those odd things in the report? Well, here are some of them:
Here is some intro text (page 6 in the PDF, ES): "Alongside other federal regulators, DFO is participating in the Treasury Board Secretariat’s Regulatory Review, and is exploring options to improve aquaculture’s regulatory framework, as well as other program enhancements. In 2018, the Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard announced that the Government of Canada asked Canada’s Chief Science Advisor to lead an Independent Expert Panel on Aquaculture Science to evaluate the department’s use of science in decision making, as well as federal communications concerning aquaculture."
In other words, DFO doesn't care what people think, it only wants to back up its story, and it is going to use science and evidence to back it up. In even other words, this tells you the result was in before the poll was done.
Anyway, now to the Exec Summary of this report:
"Awareness of and Support for Aquaculture:
*Just over half of the general public (52%) say they’ve heard, seen or read something about aquaculture in the past year.
•Those living in coastal communities (60%) were far more likely to recall seeing, hearing, or reading something about aquaculture in the past year, while indigenous respondents were less likely to say they heard, read or saw something (48%)"
On the 52%, it is not hard to see that those in provinces without oceans will not have heard of fish farms. These are Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, and virtually all of Quebec - well over 50% of our land mass. But their opinions are irrelevant - because they don't have fish farms. They need not be asked the questions.
On the 60% in coastal regions, I doubt this. If 75% of BC residents want fish farms out of the water, that means this poll's 60% is wrong. (And, jump to the bottom for discussion of the 'General Public' and the 'Coastal' component, and the problems with them).
As for Indigenous, if you ask them in, again, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, and virtually all of Quebec, they don't have oceans and will not have heard of fish farms. Their opinions are thus irrelevant.
If the coastal Indigenous were asked, I would say that virtually 100% of Indigenous in BC would have heard of fish farms, and 90% are against in-ocean fish farms. Go look at this site, and consider, the Broughton Archipelago, Clayoquot Sound and other places where there is great animosity to fish farms.
It was only in late September 2019 that five more fish farms were shut down in the Broughton because of over-whelming hatred by the Indigenous, and the rest of 17 others will be shut down by 2023. And that is because of the 200 day occupation of sites by Ernest Alfred and others of his First Nation.
I say 100% of Indigenous on this side of the continental divide know about fish farms and don't like them. Given the choice between wild and farmed, almost 100% will choose wild.
Their ENGOs are all against fish farms: Raven, Coast Protectors, UBCIC (Indian Chiefs), Salmon R Sacred, Ernest Alfred et al and so on. In addition there are at least a dozen ENGOs that are against fish farms. A few are: Watershed Watch, David Suzuki Foundation, Living Oceans, Georgia Strait Alliance, Clayoquot Action, Raincoast Conservation Foundation, among others.
Oh, and one final thing, when fish farms say Indigenous work for them, they are talking about 172 jobs, that's all. It is peanuts.
Moving on, the entire report suffers the same problem: polling people who have no knowledge of fish farms because they are from landlocked provinces, then dumping them in with provinces with fish farms. So, all the results are skewed.
The report goes on: "When asked if what they recall hearing, reading or seeing about aquaculture recall was positive or negative, two in three general public respondents (66%) say what they recall was negative.
•Coastal Canadians are just as likely as the general public to say what they heard was negative (63%), while Indigenous Peoples are less likely to say what they heard was negative (53%).
These results suffer the same problems as I have discussed above, they don't agree with other polls and they dump people who have no fish farms in their jurisdiction in with those who have fish farms.
The Executive Summary goes on: "Despite the fact that most respondents exposed to information about aquaculture recall negative information, support for aquaculture outpaces opposition to it by a significant margin among all three audiences.
•The general public (45%) and coastal Canadians (46%) are most likely to express support, followed by Indigenous Peoples (39%)."
I don't agree that support has a significant margin (39% is counter-factual, for example). Go back to the first two polls at the beginning of this article for polls that show significant margin.
And again the results suffer the problems I mentioned in the first example above.
Now, moving on to the reasons Canadians don't like fish farms, the report says this: " Those opposing aquaculture most often point to two main reasons: because of perceived irresponsible practices by the industry or because of perceived negative effects that aquaculture has on wild fish populations."
This seems innocuous enough, but in fact it is the killer in the poll. The next section deals with what the govt can do to quell the negative reaction. This is what I mean when saying the result is in before the poll is done.
The solution is to take fish farms out of the water. But DFO ignores this as it supports fish farms, and totally disregards what Canadians want, er, BC residents.
So, here it is:
"Importance of Government Communications
Nine in ten Canadians (89%) say it is important for the federal government to inform Canadian consumers about the fish farming and how it is regulated."
This leads directly into the FARM process, when the reality is that BC wild salmon are now in crisis - caused by DFO - and we don't need anymore rejigging of fish farming. We and our salmon need them out of the water.
In BC the majority of people are telling DFO to take fish farms out of the water. This, of course, is in direct contradiction to the 89% quoted above. There is a mistake here. And if well over 50% of Canadians have no connection with the ocean, they probably want this; however, their views are irrelevant.
But this quote leads directly to later in the report, examination of new regulations and so on.
So what should DFO do? This poll says that people:
"When asked what would best demonstrate that the government is managing aquaculture or fish farming in a responsible way, general public respondents were split between publicly sharing health data on farmed fish (51%) and government investment in minimizing the environmental impacts of aquaculture/fish farming (50%)."
You will note that this also leads into a process like FARM, which also says this. But, instead of investing in minimizing impacts, but leaving fish farms in the water, it is absolutely straight forward that the solution is: put fish farms on land.
Here is a telling point, though:
"Both coastal (65%) and indigenous respondents (67%) are more likely than the general public to say they prefer wild-caught fish over farmed fish"
You have to remember that you add coastal and Indigenous together and divide it by the total number of people asked the questions. But I just noticed that the General Public category includes city dwellers in a province, say BC, even in Vancouver, where you look out on the sea, while having more than 50% of people in the same category, but living where there are no oceans all across Canada.
When in fact, the BC general public should not be part of the General Public but be added to the coastal people category.
This is further skewed as coastal people are:
"The sample of Canadians living in ex-urban, rural or remote areas within an hour of a coast (n=961) are described as “coastal Canadians”." and,
The indigenous people again includes all across Canada where well over 50% of our land mass has no oceans. They are dumped in with coastal Indigenous, who I have already explained, are vastly against fish farms.
So this skewing of the categories leads to skewing of results. And, as pointed out, the results do not agree with the two polls quoted at the top of this article.
So, later in the report, the stats on who has fish farms shows (P36, PDF):
"Residents of the Prairies (89%), Ontario (86%), and Quebec (84%) are least likely to be aware of a fish or shellfish farming operation in their area."
This implies that you could leave out roughly 85% of the respondents because their views are irrelevant - they don't have fish farms.
One final thing: Appendix A which is about sample sizes and response rate of people, shows a staggering number of non-responses. In telephone interviews, for example, only 9.5% of people called,
answered the survey.
The final take away is: only 9.5% of people took the poll and 85% of them don't have fish farms. DFO, get a grip. Your poll has only 1.4% of people who have fish farms. Hmm.
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1. And the stats on 2019 are devastating. See how much help salmon need. There is no time left to wait on making changes: https://watershedwatch.ca/greg-taylor-an-overview-of-2019s-salmon-returns/?utm_source=Watershed+Watch+Email+List&utm_campaign=b9ff6f89d7-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_10_04_04_38_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_405944b1b5-b9ff6f89d7-166907249&mc_cid=b9ff6f89d7&mc_eid=5777c92bcd.
