Public Service Alliance of Canada BC

VANCOUVER, B.C. – B.C. fishermen are demanding the federal government take responsibility for the salmon farming industry, and start applying the same rules to the controversial operations as they apply to the commercial fishing sector.

A petition signed by hundreds of fishermen has been sent to Fisheries Minister Gail Shea and Paul Sprout, the Pacific director general of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

• Read the full text of the petition, and add your name to it here.

The petition notes last month’s B.C. Supreme Court ruling that salmon farms should be regulated by the federal department, not the province as they are now.

“Now that the regulatory agency is supposed to be the federal government, we’re saying that the regulations that apply to the commercial sector should also apply to the farm fish sector,” said Joy Thorkelson, with the United Fishermen and Allied Workers’ Union.

“It’s a question of fairness, but more than that, it’s also a question of what is necessary to protect wild salmon stocks.”

Fish farm critics say sea lice from the open net-cage farms have been killing wild salmon who migrate past them.

The fishermen say they have complied with increasing regulation and restrictions but are still seeing stocks decline.

“We believe that there are huge negative impacts that fish farms have on wild stocks and we want those negative impacts to end,” Thorkelson said in an interview.

The fishermen want the federal department to enforce the Fisheries Act and require observers and cameras during off-loading of aquaculture salmon to watch for by-catch.

The group is also calling for examinations of farm fish as they are cleaned for the presence of wild fish in their digestive tract, and wants vessels transporting aquaculture salmon to be licenced like commercial fishing ships.
In addition, Thorkelson said the fishermen are demanding that submerged and above water lights be removed from aquaculture facilities to prevent wild prey and predator species from being drawn to the open-ocean pens.

She said the fisheries department strictly regulates commercial fishermen but while fish farms are known to impact wild stocks, they have never been regulated to the same degree.

But fisheries spokesman Andrew Thomson said the salmon farming industry is regulated in a very comprehensive manner both federally and provincially.

Thomson said measures implemented include assessments for impacts to fish and fish habitats, environmental studies, and regulation of fish before they’re put into farm sites.

Supreme Court Justice Christopher Hinkson ruled in February that Ottawa has 12 months to bring in new legislation so fish farms can be licensed by the federal Fisheries Department.

Ottawa delegated responsibility for licensing fish farms to the provinces in the late 1980s.

Ian Robertson, spokesman for Norway-based Marine Harvest Canada, which operates fish farms in the Broughton Archipelago in B.C. as well as elsewhere in the world, said at the time of the ruling that the company looked forward to working with government regulators to further the sustainability of the business.

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To add your name to the petiton, email your first and last name toAlexandra Morton

Dear Paul Sprout and the Honourable Gail Shea:

We, the fishermen of British Columbia, work under increasing regulations, restrictions and closures set by Fisheries and Oceans Canada to protect our industry and Canada’s ocean resources. We are required to carry observers and DFO cameras at our expense to monitor and reduce our by-catch.

We are prohibited from fishing with lights at night.. All fishing and packing vessels are required to be licensed by your Department. We have been required to alter our gear, install tanks to revive Coho and limited fishing time and area following DFO instructions. All these restrictions are an attempt to quantify and reduce our impact on both target and non-target species. We are disheartened that as we fish fewer days a year, wild fish stocks continue to decline.

On February 9, 2009 the BC Supreme Court ruled that British Columbia salmon farms are not “farms,” and that current Provincial regulation of this industry is unconstitutional. The responsibility for salmon aquaculture will pass from the Province to the federal government in 12 months. As it stands today, the salmon aquaculture industry is a public fishery. Fisheries and Oceans Canada has always had the power to regulate the aquaculture industry to comply with the Fisheries Act, but has chosen not to.

You can understand why we do not accept this as fair conduct by your department. In addition, many of us have experience with the salmon aquaculture industry and we have witnessed practices that serve to undo the sacrifices by our industry. While the court has given the federal government 12 months to assume regulation of salmon aquaculture, the dire state of many fish stocks in BC moves us to demand that DFO take steps immediately to meet it’s current constitutional obligations to conserve and protect the fisheries resources of Canada.

We request:

• That observers and cameras be required during the harvesting and off-loading of aquaculture salmon to assess by-catch of non-target species by this fishery.
• That the vessels transporting aquaculture salmon be licensed like all other commercial fishing vessels;
• That the Pacific Fishery Regulations (1993) Section 8 Prohibited Fishing Methods be enforced. All brilliant submerged and above water lights should be removed from the aquaculture facilities to prevent all wild prey and predator species from being drawn to and into the pens and to reduce anthropogenic activities that may disrupt these natural interactions.

As Justice Hinkson wrote in his landmark decision, “The inclusion of fisheries in s. 91(12) of the Constitution Act, 1867 was a recognition that fisheries, as a national resource, require uniformity of the legislation”. We feel certain that the aquaculture industry will be the first to agree that they can comply with the laws of Canada.

Standing by,