In a lawsuit, Cermaq Canada is accusing former Fisheries Minister Joyce Murray of abusing her authority, acting in bad faith, and prioritizing political motivations over science to shut down salmon farms in British Columbia.
By Fabian Dawson
SeaWestNews
A lawsuit alleges that former Fisheries Minister Joyce Murray secretly met with anti-fish farming activists and sought biased input to override her department’s science and justify her predetermined decision to shut down salmon farms in B.C.’s Discovery Islands.
The lawsuit filed by Cermaq Canada Ltd. lays out explosive allegations, revealing a damning timeline where Murray repeatedly stalled decisions, sidelined industry voices, and actively sought last minute biased input from anti-aquaculture activists—all in an effort to discredit peer-reviewed risk assessments that showed open-net farms posed no threat to wild stocks.
A telling email exchange from December 2022 suggests Murray’s personal frustrations with Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) conclusions, the court filing showed.
According to the lawsuit, the exchange began on December 8, 2022, when Murray received an email from her aunt—sent at the request of a friend—urging her to consider removing fish farms from British Columbia’s coastal waters.
A day later, Murray responded, reassuring her aunt that she was “not waffling” on the decision. However, she acknowledged the complications caused by a prior court ruling, which had overturned the previous minister’s move to close the farms in the Discovery Islands. This reversal, she allegedly admitted, had set her back significantly.
What stands out in Murray’s response, according to the lawsuit, is her candid frustration with DFO’s scientific findings.
She described her “difficult assignment” in handling both the Discovery Islands decision and the broader transition plan for the salmon farming sector in B.C.
The real challenge, she allegedly noted, was that DFO’s science division had conducted a rigorous peer-reviewed assessment and concluded that ocean salmon farming posed minimal risk to wild salmon.
Buried in personal correspondence, this e-mail exchange forms a key part of the lawsuit that claims political motivations—not scientific evidence—were driving policy decisions affecting British Columbia’s salmon aquaculture industry.
At its core, the lawsuit accuses Murray, a long-time ally of the anti-fish farming lobby, of abusing her authority, acting in bad faith, and prioritizing political motivations over science and due process.
Cermaq, one of B.C.’s largest salmon farmers, alleges that Murray’s actions not only disregarded scientific evidence but also caused significant economic harm by forcing the shutdown of Discovery Islands salmon farms.
In its civil claim filed in the Supreme Court of B.C. earlier this month, Cermaq is seeking general and other damages but has not specified a dollar amount. The lawsuit names the Attorney General of Canada, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, and Murray as defendants.
The allegations in the lawsuit have not been proven in court.
The original decision to shutter 19 open-net salmon farms in British Columbia’s Discovery Islands was made in 2020 by former Fisheries minister Bernadette Jordan.
The Federal Court ordered the government to set aside this decision due to procedural breaches by Jordan, and reaffirmed an earlier ruling that “salmon aquaculture in B.C. poses no more than a minimal risk to wild salmon.”
Murray, who took over Jordan’s portfolio in October of 2021, then ordered up consultations with the stakeholders to meet the procedural requirements before making the same decision as her predecessor in February 2023.
In January 2023, just before Murray’s decision, a DFO internal memorandum clearly stated that scientific evidence did not support treating Discovery Islands salmon farms differently from other aquaculture sites in B.C.
It recommended the reissuance of aquaculture licenses to align with an upcoming federal transition plan for the entire sector.
But instead of following the science, Murray delayed her decision and, behind closed doors, sought input from external activists known to oppose aquaculture, the lawsuit claims.
Her final decision, delivered in February 2023, relied heavily on cherry-picked abstracts from 59 scientific studies—without engaging DFO scientists to evaluate their validity, Cermaq claims.
Murray leaned on submissions from external environmental organizations, a move that the legal document alleges was designed to fabricate justification for her preordained policy.
The lawsuit comes in the wake of a newly released report from a prominent Canadian think tank, which states the federal government’s plan to ban ocean-based salmon farming in B.C. was shaped by political manipulation from activist groups financed by American donors.
The report from the Macdonald-Laurier Institute (MLI) states that among the most significant triumphs of anti-fish farming activists, funded by foreign donors, is winning the support of key Liberal cabinet ministers – most notably Joyce Murray and Jonathan Wilkinson.
Ottawa is now advancing the broader Transition Plan for the sector, which carries a staggering $9 billion price tag for taxpayers, along with extensive economic, social, and environmental consequences.
Described as a ‘reckless’ move aimed at placating the activists, the plan threatens to wipe out B.C.’s top agri-food export, eliminate 4,560 jobs, and significantly impact more than 1,000 Indigenous workers who depend on the industry.
Beyond the widespread fallout across Canada, over 1,400 B.C. businesses within the industry’s supply chain stand to lose $437 million – forcing some to shut down entirely.
The Transition Plan has a date to ban all ocean salmon farming in B.C. by 2029.
(Main File image shows former Fisheries Minister Joyce Murray)