Norwegian salmon farm (Karin Beate Nøsterud/norden.org) The BC Salmon Farmers’ Association continues to make assertions about open-net fish farms that don’t agree with the science, as a recent ad in the Globe and Mail demonstrates. It is surprising the industry, lead companies including the Norwegian Marine Harvest, Cermaq and Grieg Seafood,
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The Common Sense Canadian: Harper’s new fish farm laws would open floodgates to waste dumping
The following is a letter by salmon farming critic and Common Sense Canadian contributor DC Reid to Prime Minister Stephen Harper on his government’s proposed gutting of aquaculture regulations, which would enable virtually unrestricted dumping of fish farm waste into our oceans. The public can comment on the proposed changes until October 22
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian: First Nations show Nancy Greene, Harper govt positive alternative to open net fish farms
Namgis First Nation-grown closed-containment salmon ready for market (Photo: Kuterra.com) Part 2 of DC Reid’s appeal to Canadian Senator and Olympic hero Nancy Greene Raine, who recently came out in support of a massive increase to open net pen salmon farms on BC’s coast. Read part 1 here. While Nancy
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian: Nancy Greene Raine: Fish Farms? What About Wild BC Salmon?
Senator Nancy Greene at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics (Photo: Wikipedia) I almost fell off my chair when I read that former Olypmic ski champion and Canadian Senator Nancy Greene Raine wants to triple the size of fish farming in BC. Taking such a position is badly out of step with
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian: Fisheries Minister’s weak response to Cohen Commission petition
Fisheries Minister Gail Shea thinks everything is A-ok with DFO (Chris Wattie/Reuters) I registered the first Environmental Petition (a protocol, not list of names) on the Cohen Report with the federal Auditor General late last fall, and have received the first reply from Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO). My request
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian: Fish farm sewage: DFO expansions cost you money
Yardstick standing upright in waste layer below a Nova Scotia fish farm – up to 32 inch mark. (Photo:Kathy and Dave Brush – Friends of Port Mouton Bay) The response to the Cohen Report in DFO’s Ottawa is zero, but in BC it is huge. The petition against allowing
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian: Missing fish farms offer clue to anticipated 70 million sockeye return
Expect big salmon numbers this summer. The Fraser sockeye run may be as high as 70 million. Yes, 70. And the most important sport angling species, chinook and coho, seem to be on the same meteoric route in 2014. Fraser sockeye numbers peaked in the early 1970s and then declined,
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian: Salmon farms get tax dollars for dead fish, provide few jobs
I now have reliable figures on slaughtered fish payments of your taxpayer dollars to billion dollar Norwegian derivative fish farms in BC, and others across Canada. Cermaq Mainstream, Marine Harvest and Grieg Seafood may be happy to hear I will eat some crow, as the BC figures are much lower
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian: Fisheries minister responds to salmon farm concerns…sort of
A month ago, I suggested my Times-Colonist readers send notes to Minster Gail Shea regarding DFO’s lack of response to the $26 M, 1,200 page, 75 recommendation Cohen Commission Report. Many of us received stock letters. Let me walk you through it. Shea: Thank you for your correspondence of October 30,
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian: Canadian taxpayers bail out Norwegian fish farms for diseased fish
The only thing keeping profits afloat for a number of Norwegian salmon farms in Canada is the hundreds of millions of dollars they net from taxpayers when their fish die of disease. You might think the multi-billion dollar fish farm industry was a licence to print money. You’d be almost
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian: Cohen Commission on salmon: a year later and nothing from DFO
Alexandra Morton with yellow salmon on Mountain Bar, Fraser River (Morton facebook page – Oct. 5) You may have thought the Cohen report on collapsing Fraser River sockeye was a stone dropped through the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), leaving not a ripple. You’d be right. Google DFO Cohen
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