Ottawa Funds Aquaculture Tech Abroad While Shutting Down Salmon Farms at Home

Federal funding is successfully advancing Canadian aquaculture technology overseas, exposing a growing disconnect with domestic policy that is sidelining locally farmed salmon in favour of imports.

By Fabian Dawson
SeaWestNews.

As salmon farming expands worldwide to meet rising demand for food and protein, the federal government is backing Canadian aquaculture technology for overseas markets, while its policies are dismantling the sector in British Columbia.

That disconnect was on full display this week as   Ottawa committed $20 million through Export Development Canada to support the global expansion of Poseidon Ocean Systems, a Campbell River–based innovator supplying critical fish life-support systems to ocean farms across Chile, Norway, Scotland and Australia.

“As global demand for sustainable protein continues to rise, Poseidon’s solutions not only relieve pressure on wild fisheries but also position Canada as a hub for clean-tech aquaculture exports, said Guillermo Freire, Senior Vice-President, Mid-Market Group at EDC.

EDC said the funding will accelerate international growth for Poseidon’s aeration and oxygenation technologies, which are designed to improve fish welfare, increase productivity and reduce emissions as global aquaculture output continues to rise.

Poseidon said the EDC-supported facility will allow it to respond to the growing demand for answers that consolidate its end-to-end “Life Support System” for aquaculture.

Founded in Campbell River in 2015, Poseidon has grown into a global supplier of advanced fish life-support systems built to help salmon farms operate in increasingly volatile ocean conditions.

The company’s Flowpressor and Oxypressor systems generate oxygen efficiently at depth, while its Depth Charge technology improves oxygen dissolution in the water column, reducing waste and improving biological performance. More than 100 systems are now deployed across five countries.

Demand has surged in Chile, the world’s second-largest producer of farmed salmon, where operators are aggressively investing in technology to manage warming waters.

Those same environmental pressures exist in British Columbia. But investment conditions do not.

In BC, long-term planning for the salmon aquaculture sector has largely stalled as farmers and suppliers grapple with the Trudeau-era policies, frozen site approvals and an absence of regulatory certainty.

Since 2020, these activist-induced federal policy decisions have shut down about 45 percent of B.C.’s salmon farms. The planned removal of ocean salmon farms by 2029 continues to cloud investment decisions, trigger layoffs, undermine long-standing economic agreements with First Nations, and push production elsewhere.

B.C.’s salmon farmers and their First Nations partners say clear, evidence-based federal and provincial policies would unlock investment and allow the West Coast sector to expand, generating up to $2.5 billion a year in economic activity, $930 million in GDP and 9,000 Canadian jobs.

Instead, the uncertainty surrounding the federal framework and the proposed 2029 ban on marine salmon farms on the West Coast has resulted in more than $437 million in annual lost aquaculture vendor spending.

While farm-raised salmon remains the most popular seafood choice of Canadians, it is increasingly being replaced by salmon flown in from other countries at higher prices and a larger carbon footprint, said the Canadian Aquaculture Industry Alliance (CAIA).

Poseidon sits inside a much broader aquaculture supply chain that includes fabricators, net makers, marine service firms, logistics companies, electricians, shipyards and transport operators, many of them small, family-run businesses based in coastal communities.

Earlier this fall, Poseidon was among more than 70 aquaculture suppliers that signed a joint letter to North Island MLA  Anna Kindy, urging the province to push back against Ottawa’s approach and defend salmon farming jobs.

The letter warned that the federal transition plan is not modernizing the sector but dismantling it, pointing to falling production, cancelled contracts and mounting layoffs across Vancouver Island.

Signatories said salmon farming supports thousands of direct and indirect jobs, including hundreds of Indigenous positions in regions with few alternative industries, and argued that innovation depends on stable rules, not political timelines.

The EDC financing is not Poseidon’s first federal backing. The Crown corporation also participated in the company’s earlier Series B financing alongside provincial investment partners, helping scale manufacturing capacity and expand exports.

For Poseidon, the latest funding secures continued international growth, which reflects the company’s track record and rising global demand for its technology.

For British Columbia’s salmon farming communities, it signals that Ottawa supports aquaculture everywhere except at home.

(Main image shows members of Poseidon’s teams at a Chilean site where the company’s equipment has been installed. Photo: Poseidon/LinkedIn)