B.C.’s NDP government extended its push for First Nation control over foreshore development this week, while challenging Ottawa to meet its legal obligation to regulate aquaculture and also protect the province’s wild salmon stocks.
Wednesday’s two-prong announcement by Agriculture Minister Lana Popham gave salmon farm operators four years to supposedly get their acts together. By June 2022, according to the government, land tenures will be granted “only to fish farm operators who have satisfied Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) that their operations will not adversely impact wild salmon stocks, and who have negotiated agreements with the First Nation(s) in whose territory they propose to operate.”
The new policy, however, “does not pre-determine the outcome” of discussions between the province and First Nations in the Broughton Archipelago over concerns related to salmon farms in that region, where First Nation opposition to the industry is strong.
Critics from both sides of the political spectrum swarmed the new policy, with the B.C. Liberals calling it another serious blow to the province’s resource economy and the Greens condemning it as a failure of leadership.
“The government has just sold out wild salmon and are using First Nations as cover,” said Green MLA Adam Olsen, the party’s spokesperson on the file. Olsen said the Greens would have given the industry 18 months to grow and harvest their smolts and another 60 days to decommission their sites. “Then we would have cancelled their provincial tenures,” he said.
To back up his claim that Ottawa can’t be trusted with the fate of wild salmon, Olsen quoted a recent audit by the Office of the Auditor General of Canada, which concluded that DFO “did not adequately manage the risks associated with salmon aquaculture consistent with its mandate to protect wild fish.”
Meanwhile, with the faith of a true believer in federal Liberal rectitude, Sunshine Coast MP Pamela Goldsmith-Jones has written a letter calling optimistically for both levels of government to steer a new course that would see the aquaculture industry transition from open-pen farms to land-based systems. As it stands, however, officials all agree that such a transition is desirable. The issue is whether it’s feasible, and there is no consensus that it is. So we don’t expect Ottawa to slam the lid down on open-net farms anytime soon – especially with so many First Nations invested in the industry.
And that’s why the NDP’s move this week was so cagey. The B.C. Salmon Farmers Association says 75 per cent of all B.C. farmed salmon is produced in partnership with local First Nations and 20 per cent of the industry’s workforce is First Nation. In some Indigenous communities, salmon farming is a major employer and wealth generator.
Recognizing this political reality, as well as the historical reality, the NDP has put the future of salmon in First Nation hands. There is some heavy logic in that decision.
