Salmon farm transition driven by politics could cost billions

“Canadian families across B.C. and beyond will feel the negative impact of this activist-influenced salmon transition policy. It’s bad politics and worse policy.”

By SeaWestNews

Canadian taxpayers could face billions in compensation costs if the Federal Government forges ahead with its reckless and unrealistic plan to ban salmon farms in British Columbia’s waters post-2029, warns the Canadian Aquaculture Industry Alliance (CAIA).

The looming financial burden comes as the embattled Trudeau administration, scrambling to secure political support, pursues a still-undefined transition process for the sector – largely aimed to secure votes from anti-fish farm activists based in their urban strongholds, cautioned CAIA.

“To save Vancouver seats and despite respected, peer-reviewed science demonstrating that these salmon farms have  “no more than minimal” impact on wild salmon,  the Liberals have caved to well-funded activists to force farms producing over 500 million salmon meals per year into land or ocean-based “closed-containment” facilities within an impossible timeline of five years,” stated Timothy Kennedy, president and CEO of CAIA.

“Canadian families across B.C. and beyond will feel the negative impact of this activist-influenced salmon transition policy. It’s bad politics and worse policy…The time is now to correct (these) bad politics and bad policies to prevent further damage to the Canadian economy,” Kennedy wrote in a recently published op-ed.

The Federal Liberal government, disregarding its own scientific experts and yielding to activist pressures, is currently advancing a   transition plan for ocean-based salmon farms in B.C.,  following an announcement to ban the sector starting in 2029.

The sector is deeply embedded in several coastal communities, wildlife ecosystems, and local economies, employing over 5,000 people directly and indirectly, engaging with over 1,000 suppliers, and contributes approximately $2 billion to the economy.

Since 2020, the Trudeau Liberals, swayed by activist campaigns lacking scientific rigour, have already closed 40% of salmon farms in B.C., resulting in higher carbon emissions and devastating job losses that are vital to rural, coastal, and Indigenous communities.

These actions have shaken confidence in Canada as a reliable investment destination, leading global aquaculture companies such as MOWI, Grieg Seafood, and Cermaq to rethink their strategies, suspend projects, and shift funds toward more stable regions for aquaculture.

Here is an excerpt from Kennedy’s op-ed:

The global supply market is tight. And Canada has made a politically motivated policy decision that is directly contributing to a slumping B.C. economy, increasing consumer prices and reducing the ability of Canadians to access healthy food, grown in Canada.

It’s already driving away jobs and investment and causing hardship for people up and down the B.C. coast.

Moving 80,000 tonnes of salmon (current production) into closed containment in British Columbia will require hundreds of coastal acres to build tanks on land, billions of litres of fresh water to supply the tanks and billions of dollars in investments by the Government of B.C. to generate more electricity, already scarce or in limited supply in remote and rural B.C.

If any companies do decide to invest, they require a strong existing investment and skills ecosystem that is reliant on a profitable and dependable production from ocean pens.

This bad politics and worse policy also flies in the face of economic reconciliation.

Production in B.C. is 100 per cent under agreement with First Nations in whose coastal territories the farms operate, and many of these Nations have seen significant improvements in employment, economic diversification, and community health through partnerships with the farmers, all while stewarding both wild and farmed salmon.

These partnerships should be celebrated. Instead, over $5 billion in potential industry investment will skip over B.C. and Canada. This will have devastating social consequences for these First Nations. Just ask them.

Canadians won’t be eating Canadian farmed-raised salmon grown in B.C., increasingly salmon will be flown in from farms in Norway, Chile or elsewhere, creating a much larger carbon footprint and undermining domestic food security. In the tight global production market, less domestic farmed salmon will mean higher grocery prices for Canadian families as they buy foreign fish instead of fish grown at home.

B.C. will lose as many as 5000 jobs — salmon farmers, food processors, marine specialists, truckers and many in the supporting industries, including vaccine producers in Prince Edward Island and feed producers across Canada.

Critical jobs and supply chain businesses owned by and employing First Nations people in rural and remote parts of Vancouver Island and the B.C. Central Coast will also disappear.

And let’s discuss the un-budgeted billions in compensation. In no responsible fiscal playbook does shutting down a highly regulated and sustainable $1.5 billion sector make sense.

The head-scratching impact of the decision is more acute when the industry is a positive contributor to domestic food security and financial stability in communities and GDP.

Not to mention the billions in cost to taxpayers of the inevitable lawsuits from rights-holder First Nations, fish farmers and suppliers throughout the sector.

The outcome? A higher deficit with billions in compensation over decades for lost livelihoods.

File image shows B.C.’s salmon aquaculture workers and their families at a rally in Campbell River.