Will Jonathan Wilkinson Bring His Bias Against Ocean Salmon Farming to Europe

As Canada promotes seafood exports in Europe, the aquaculture sector is asking whether the new EU ambassador will sell ocean-grown salmon or undermine it abroad.

By Fabian Dawson
SeaWestNews

Jonathan Wilkinson, one of the Trudeau-era politicians who helped lead the charge to kill ocean salmon farming in British Columbia, is heading to Brussels as Canada’s new ambassador to the European Union.

For Canada’s salmon farmers and their European counterparts, that appointment lands with a hard question.

Will Wilkinson promote Canadian ocean-grown salmon in the key EU market or carry with him the unscientific bias that helped put B.C.’s salmon farming sector on a deathwatch?

While his office did not answer this question directly, Global Affairs Canada told SeaWestNews that Ottawa “recognizes the importance of sustainable aquaculture for the BC and Canadian economies. We will continue to work to support Canada’s exceptional fish and seafood industry.”

“Canada is home to the best seafood in the world, exporting over 8 billion dollars’ worth in 2025 to 114 countries. The European Union was Canada’s third largest buyer of Canadian fish and seafood in 2025, with nearly 550 million dollars’ worth of exports,” said John Babcock, a spokesperson for Global Affairs Canada.

The response comes as Joanne Thompson, Canada’s current fisheries minister, was in Europe promoting Canadian seafood to buyers and EU officials, saying the market wants what Canada offers: high quality, sustainability and reliable supply.

During their tenures as Canada’s fisheries ministers, Wilkinson from 2018 to 2019 and Joyce Murray from 2021 to 2023 overrode their department’s own scientific research, which repeatedly found that ocean salmon farming in British Columbia posed minimal risk to wild fish stocks.

The two former Metro Vancouver MPs embraced the rhetoric of the anti-salmon farming lobby, burnishing the Liberals’ appeal among urban voters while helping drive the narrative that B.C.’s ocean salmon farms had to be moved into land-based containment systems.

A report by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute (MLI) said activist groups gained direct access to these ministers, feeding them selective data and emotional narratives while dismissing reports from Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), the Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat (CSAS), independent researchers, and salmon farmers.

The MLI report highlighted that organizations such as Wild First, the First Nations Wild Salmon Alliance, and Pacific Wild have received significant foreign funding from U.S. environmental groups and philanthropic foundations for their agenda in Canada.

“Given Mr. Wilkinson’s record on this file, the aquaculture sector will be watching closely to see whether he represents Canadian producers fairly in Europe, or whether the same political bias that damaged confidence in B.C. follows him to Brussels,” said an industry official.

At an Ottawa press conference last week, activists behind the push to ban ocean salmon farming in B.C. by 2029 openly lamented the loss of Wilkinson and other Liberal caucus champions who had carried their agenda inside government.

They include Steven Guilbeault, Canada’s former environment minister, who was a key advocate for the 2029 ban, a policy which, if not reversed by the present Carney administration, will kill thousands of coastal jobs, weaken First Nations economic partnerships and dismantle B.C.’s top agri-food export sector.

While Wilkinson and Guilbeault traded public statements praising each other’s work in the Trudeau caucus, First Nations leaders, food experts and aquaculture advocates have been warning about the damage their policy legacy will leave behind.

Dallas Smith, spokesperson for the Coalition of First Nations for Finfish Stewardship (FNFFS), and Deputy Chief Councillor Isaiah Robinson of the Kitasoo Xai’xais Nation, have posted a video clip about Wilkinson saying he has created challenges without facing the very people affected.

Canada’s leading food scientist, Dr. Sylvain Charlebois, who has labelled the Trudeau-era plan to ban ocean salmon farming in British Columbia as “an illogical move driven by activism rather than science”, described Guilbeault’s departure as “good riddance.”

“He may go down as one of the ministers who most aggressively weaponized science, funding questionable research groups… Anyone claiming Guilbeault truly believed in science is fooling themselves. He treated science like a buffet — picking only what supported his agenda,” Charlebois wrote on social media.

(Main Facebook image shows Jonathan Wilkinson, Canada’s former fisheries minister and the country’s new ambassador to the European Union.)