Aquaculture: BC’s Look West Plan Carries a Multi-Billion-Dollar Blind Spot

British Columbia’s ‘Look West Plan’ calls for export growth, food security and Indigenous opportunity, but its silence on salmon aquaculture exposes a government pulling its own goals in opposite directions.

Commentary
By Fabian Dawson
SeaWestNews

British Columbia’s Look West economic strategy arrives with the language of ambition, promising jobs, export growth, diversification and a stronger role for the province in Canada’s economic future.

On paper, it reads like a 10-year blueprint for prosperity and resilience.

But once you move past the headlines and political packaging, something far more revealing takes shape. The plan exposes a widening gap between how the David Eby government talks about food production and how it treats one of its most important coastal industries: salmon farming.

The agriculture chapter of the economic strategy document sets out clear targets. A 25 percent increase in agriculture and food exports. Another 25 percent expansion into non-U.S. markets. Billions in annual sector revenues. Tens of thousands of jobs. And major new spending on climate resilience and food security.

It rightly celebrates BC’s ability to produce high-quality vegetables, fruit, beverages, specialty foods and other value-added products. It highlights more than $300 million invested to strengthen food systems and another $496 million committed to a new plant and animal health centre in the Fraser Valley.

What it does not do is acknowledge salmon farming, even though the sector generates more than $1.17 billion annually for the provincial economy and remains BC’s top agri-food export.

It supports 4,560 jobs across the supply chain, including more than 1,000 held by Indigenous workers. It anchors several other aquaculture industries and operates in partnership with First Nations Rights Holders across the coast.

The omission is glaring because nearly every goal in the Look West plan aligns directly with what salmon farming already delivers. Coastal First Nations, processors, transporters and local businesses have built a world-leading food-production network for decades.

The Look West strategy notes that BC’s agriculture and food exports are nearing $6 billion a year. It points to  rising global demand for sustainable, high-quality protein. It calls for inclusive economic growth, stronger supply chains, regional job creation and deeper access to fast-growing Asia-Pacific markets.

All of that is already the daily reality of BC’s salmon-farming sector, built within Indigenous stewardship and enterprise frameworks that mirror exactly what the province claims it wants to strengthen.

Yet in more than 100 pages, salmon farming receives only a passing mention tied to a fish-by-product processor. This core industry is invisible, and the province writes as if this sector is peripheral to its economic vision.

That absence reflects a deeper contradiction now spanning both levels of government.

Ottawa continues to push an activist-driven plan to remove salmon farms from BC’s oceans, despite volumes of peer-reviewed science showing that these operations pose less than minimal risk to migrating wild salmon.

Victoria, meanwhile, releases an economic plan that outlines the future of food while ignoring one of its most productive, low-carbon, export-ready food systems.

The logic becomes even harder to follow when held up against the government’s own goals.

If the province wants to grow food exports by 25 percent, BC-grown salmon is one of the few products that can actually achieve that.

If it wants to expand into non-U.S. markets, farmed salmon is already there.

If it wants climate-resilient, low-carbon, high-value protein systems, our ocean-grown salmon sits at the top of that list.

If it wants reconciliation-based economic development, more than a dozen First Nations have already built that model through long-standing partnerships with salmon farmers.

BC’s salmon farmers and their First Nation partners are already delivering on the goals the government has set in its Look West Plan. They say, if both Ottawa and Victoria listen to the science and not the ideologically driven activism around salmon farming, the sector could expand production to generate $2.5 billion in annual economic activity, contribute $930 million to GDP and support 9,000 jobs.

The Look West Plan talks a big game about building a stronger British Columbia, yet it still avoids the political courage needed to centre salmon aquaculture in its own vision.

The BC government can either face that truth or keep clinging to this economic strategy that falls apart under its own contradictions.

Ravi Kahlon, BC’s Minister of Jobs and Economic Growth, said at the launch of Look West, “In BC, we know what it takes to succeed.”

For the thousands of families who rely on the salmon farming sector and the hundreds of small businesses that keep aquaculture moving, now is the time to prove that sound bite.

(Main image shows Ravi Kahlon, BC’s Minister of Jobs and Economic Growth, at the launch of Look West)