For Immediate Release
VICTORIA – The escape of 40,000 Atlantic salmon from a fish farm in the Broughton Archipelago highlights the B.C. Liberals’ failure to protect wild salmon stocks, say the New Democrats.
Despite the escape, the Liberals will still not commit to implementing closed-containment technology, a system that would have prevented the escape from the open-net Marine Harvest fish farm Friday.
“The legislature’s all-party finance committee has recommended the implementation of closed containment as a benefit to the economy and to the environment, but the B.C. Liberals continue to sit on their hands,” says opposition agriculture and lands critic Lana Popham.
“The 40,000 fish escape is embarrassing to both this Liberal government and to an industry that declare they have the best management practices in the world,” says North Coast MLA Gary Coons.” This is just another example of why closed containment is needed in B.C.’s waters. The last thing we need is thousands of mature, alien fish have escaping into the wild, competing with native wild stocks for food, looking to spawn and increasing the potential of passing on disease. If ever there was a time to protect our wild stocks and go to closed containment, this is it! It can’t be ‘business as usual’!”
Just last month ago a 60,000 fish escape (below) happened in Scotland with outcrys of ineffective management practices and fish farms operating at the ‘lowest common denominator’. The Lochaber District Salmon Fishery Board, said: “After 20 years of serial escapes, the industry has proven that it is incapable of containing its fish.” The same holds true for BC. We need to become leaders in the technology of closed containment and support BC companies (like Agrimarine), not just allow them to be outsourced to foreign interests.
Opposition environment critic Rob Fleming says there are fears the B.C. Liberals are fast-tracking seven new fish farm licenses before they transfer oversight of aquaculture to the federal government in February.
“We’ve just passed a summer in which the Fraser River sockeye returns were dramatically lower than expected,” said Fleming. “A significant stock is in crisis, but the B.C. Liberals are still blithely carrying on as if there is no problem.”
In Question Period Monday, the opposition asked Agriculture Minister Steve Thomson to commit to not fast-track those seven new licenses. Thomson indicated that despite the stocks in crisis and regardless of the escape from the Marine Harvest site, it was business as usual for his ministry.
The opposition has called for the province to commit to three immediate steps:
- No expansion of open-net fish farming activities or approval of new sites on B.C.’s coast.
- Implement the bi-partisan recommendation of the B.C.’s Select Standing Committee on Finance to move finfish aquaculture to closed containment and world-leading sustainable practice.
- Immediately begin open, transparent and complete stakeholder consultation on the February 2010 transfer of fisheries aquaculture management responsibility so that B.C.’s long-term interests in a sustainable fishery are represented in any transfer agreements.
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