Activist Group Seeks $2 Billion For Land-Based Salmon Farming Gamble

After years of campaigning to shut down B.C.’s ocean salmon farms, activists are now asking Ottawa for $2 billion to bankroll a land-based alternative that has failed repeatedly and remains unproven at scale.

By Fabian Dawson
SeaWestNews

Activists who spent years campaigning to shut down B.C.’s ocean salmon farms are trying to rebrand themselves as builders of a new land-based aquaculture economy, asking Ottawa to pour billions into a plan built on big promises, thin proof and wishful math.

The plan, called ‘Salmon Canada’ and obtained by SeaWestNews is being pushed by Vancouver-based entrepreneur Ryan Peterson, a leader of Wild First, whose claims about permits, production and timelines appear to be moving faster than the facts.

According to a polished pitch deck prepared for the Liberal Party’s Pacific Caucus, the plan claims that it can turn the Trudeau-era policy to ban ocean salmon farming by 2029, which will kill thousands of existing jobs, into a multibillion-dollar land-based growth story.

But first Peterson and his backers want the Carney administration to hand over $2 billion in federal support, even as government and industry research says land-based salmon farming remains costly, slow to permit, power-hungry and unproven as a replacement for B.C.’s ocean farms.

The Salmon Canada plan lands as Atlantic Sapphire, once touted by activists as the poster child for land-based salmon farming, is scrambling for rescue financing while land-based aquaculture leaders meeting in Norway are telling investors that permits, construction and profitability remain major barriers to large-scale production.

The plan, scheduled to be announced in September, also runs against government and industry research warning that   land-based salmon farming is not ready to replace B.C.’s ocean farms at scale, despite billions already spent around the world.

Peterson, a tech entrepreneur, who was recently elected as chair of the Business Council of British Columbia, could not be reached for comment.   The Council itself and its Western Canada counterparts  oppose the plan to ban ocean salmon farms in B.C. saying, “Ottawa’s timeline for the transition to closed-containment systems by 2029 is unachievable.”

According to Peterson’s pitch deck, the Salmon Canada plan calls for $2 billion in federal support over two phases.

Phase I, from 2026 to 2031, seeks $800 million from Ottawa and $800 million from private and Indigenous sources to build two land-based salmon farming hubs producing 40,000 tonnes a year.

Phase II, from 2031 to 2036, seeks another $1.2 billion from Ottawa and $1.2 billion from private capital to build three more hubs and expand production to 120,000 tonnes a year.

Each roughly $1-billion hub would be financed through a mix of senior debt, Canada Infrastructure Bank subordinated debt, private equity, First Nations equity and government grants.

The deck names the Canada Infrastructure Bank, Canada Growth Fund, PacifiCan, Strategic Response Fund, Farm Credit Canada, Export Development Canada, commercial banks and the Indigenous Loan Guarantee Program as part of the financing architecture.

The first test of that architecture is supposed to be Gold River Aquafarms, which received DFO approval in 2022 for its proposed land-based recirculating aquaculture system fish farm to produce 3,000 tonnes per year of steelhead salmon on the site of a repurposed pulp and paper mill.

The company itself has launched a petition seeking federal support, saying it cannot move its Vancouver Island project ahead without a government signal to investors. It is trying to raise $110 million and says it needs about $2 million just to complete final engineering and reach shovel-ready status.

The project was originally promoted as a partnership with the Mowachaht/Muchalaht First Nation, but Azar Kamran, CEO of the Mowachaht/Muchalaht Economic Development company, told SeaWestNews that is no longer the case.

Kamran said that while the First Nation had once signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Gold River Aquafarms, that agreement was only for a two-year period and has since expired

“It’s not there anymore,” he said.

Kamran said the Nation moved away from the project because the claims being made about it did not appear to line up with what was actually happening.

“We just don’t see that what they claim is actually happening matches up,” he said. “Even when I talk to the owners, it’s just not clear to me what the status is.”

Kamran also said the Nation has also asked Gold River Aquafarms to remove the image of Mowachaht/Muchalaht First Nation Chief Jerry Jack  from its website. Gold River Aquafarms officials did not respond to inquiries from SeaWestNews.

Salmon Canada states it has an MOU with Gold River Aquafarms Ltd. and describes the project as having “permits in hand” and being “investable, not theoretical.”

The pitch deck presents Gold River as the reference site that would prove the construction costs, financing model and supply chain needed for the next four hubs, which together are supposed to produce 120,000 tonnes of land-based salmon a year, more than double B.C.’s current farmed salmon output.

The 120,000-tonne ambition exists only in Peterson’s pitch deck. No land-based salmon farm anywhere in the world is producing anything close to that volume.

The British Columbia Salmon Aquaculture Land-Based Siting and Alternative Technology Assessment, details that globally, only a handful of land-based salmon farms have reached production levels exceeding 2,500 tonnes annually, and most have not demonstrated long-term profitability.

Prepared for the B.C. Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), the report finds that despite years of advocacy by the Trudeau-era Liberals and their activist allies, “there are still significant challenges for the expansion of the land-based salmon farming sector.”

While Peterson’s plan is to eventually replace ocean-based salmon farming with land-based tanks, even land-based proponents warn that killing marine aquaculture first would damage the replacement sector before it has a chance to grow.

“The collapse of the net cage sector will be harmful towards the nascent land-based sector because the supporting industry infrastructure will not be there,” Robert Walker, president of Gold River Aquafarms, has warned.

Kuterra, another land-based fish farming operation on the territory of the ‘Namgis First Nation, has also been cited by Wild First as a closed-containment success story, despite its own struggles to scale beyond pilot-level production.

After absorbing millions in taxpayer dollars since it was established in 2012, Kuterra never reached commercial scale, ran at costs far above ocean farming and stopped producing Atlantic salmon in 2023. It now produces steelhead trout.

Cody Smith, Kuterra’s general manager, has warned that a full-stop removal of net-pen salmon farms in B.C. would be disastrous for the wider aquaculture sector because land-based farms rely on the same supply chain that supports ocean farms.

Global fisheries, aquaculture and climate scientists have labelled the activism around moving all BC salmon farms to land based operations by 2029 as unrealistic, reckless, and destructive because growing the global supply of salmon on land would require the same amount of energy per year needed to power a city of 1.2 million people and contribute to higher CO2 emissions.

Raising land based Atlantic salmon also costs 12 times more than ocean farming, they said.

Moving the current production of Atlantic salmon to land based tanks on Vancouver Island will result in an increase of 22,881,000 kgs of Greenhouse Gas (GhG) emissions, a recent study said. That is equivalent to the energy needed per year to power a population of 52,200 or a city the size of North Vancouver.

Another report estimated that replacing existing marine salmon farms with   land-based Recirculating Aquaculture Systems (RAS) in B.C. would require between $1.8 billion and $2.2 billion in direct investment. Even with that level of funding, the report projected it would take at least 10 years before a stable, large-scale land-based sector could be operational in the province.

Currently, ocean-raised salmon generate over $1.17 billion for the B.C. economy, supports 4,560 well-paid full-time jobs, and remains the province’s top agri-food export. Several major studies have repeatedly found that ocean salmon farming in British Columbia poses minimal risk to wild fish stocks.

An industry economic analysis warns that a full open-net ban would unleash widespread economic devastation, leaving taxpayers potentially liable for $9 billion in compensation to fish farmers, suppliers, and Indigenous communities with signed benefit agreements.

B.C. salmon farmers say that if Ottawa repeals the proposed 2029 phase-out and replaces it with a science-backed, Indigenous-led framework that provides regulatory certainty, the sector could generate $2.5 billion in economic output and support 9,000 jobs by 2030.

Main image from the B.C. Business Council shows Ryan Peterson, the organisation’s new board chair and architect of the Salmon Canada plan.