Fifteen open-pen Atlantic salmon farms near the discovery islands, close to Vancouver Island, won’t be reopened and industry representatives say even more people who were barely holding onto their jobs will now lose them.The highly anticipated decision is supported by the First Nation Wild Salmon Alliance.
“We’ve been speaking very clearly to the minister about the concerns of the discovery islands and the key out-migration route for 90 per cent of the Fraser River salmon go through there so it’s a great decision,” said Bob Chamberlin, the Alliance’s Chair.“We’re very angry about the decision. The minister ignored her own scientists.
“It results in about 120 million portions of farmed salmon being taken off Canadian plates that will now have to be replaced by Chilean or Norwegian salmon at a very high carbon cost. This is extremely depressing for the industry and it is really a bell weather for what the minister intends to do with the larger finfish transition process,” said Kingzett.Sign up for our newsletter to get breaking news and daily digests sent to your email.
“The communities that I work with have found an opportunity around self-determination around partnerships in this industry.”“The vast majority of first nations in British Columbia do not support open net cage fish farms,” said Chamberlin. “When you consider the discovery islands there are 7 first nations that have identified that as their traditional territories and four remain opposed to open cage fish farms.”
The lot of you wishing the farms away dont have a clue how sustainable they truly are. You've been learned to hate em from the likes of chek & other media, environmentalists. Urban encroachment,forestry, globalwarming,overfishing. To be so sure on a subject & have no idea.sosad
Trudeau has proved once again he doesn’t care about western Canada.
😸👍Yay!!
The industry has destroyed our salmon stocks and exported millions of $ out of Canada. I'm sure we will miss them when they are gone. A positive move from Government for a change!
The industry had plenty of time to evolve, to migrate to closed pen land based methods with treated effluent. They chose not to even try to change so good riddance to them. The people losing their jobs should be angry at the companies they work for, over the refusal to innovate.
1shelleysiemens The tourism industry will feel it, in a good way. Uneducated, unskilled workers will have to retrain and find jobs that don’t impact the ecological integrity for children and grandchildren. Adios to ecocide
Don’t screw with nature
when this story aired on tv Chamberlin's name was misspelled and the reporter misidentifies his group in the piece. why does CHEK always do this? do you guys have editors, or google?
Good. Glad to seem them all gone.
Killing yet another industry while other counties expand theirs.
I hope the soon-to-be laid off employees are easily transferred to a more environmentally sustainable career.
This islander feels relieved.
They are disgusting. Get rid of them!!
So necessary for the environment and future generations..should neve have been permitted in the first place!
Great decision. Sad for the jobs but Atlantic salmon should never have been on the west coast. Natural or not at all... endsalmonfarming
We need to do better for the environment so this decision is very smart!Fake fish has no place in the oceans.