Keep your promise. Salmon Farms OUT NOW

Minister Diane Lebouthillier has yet to produce the long-awaited Transition Plan for B.C. salmon farms. The Minister has indicated that she will delay the Plan yet again, now due merely 'in 2024'.

Meanwhile, her Department has commenced consultations on the terms that should apply to new licences that will be issued when all existing salmon farm licences expire in June, 2024. They are explicitly consulting on terms of 2-6 years.

After the Cohen Commission, the Discovery Island farms were placed on 1-year licences while investigation of their impacts proceeded. Why not even consider the same treatment for farms that are supposed to be 'transitioned from BC waters by 2025'?

Send a letter to remind Prime Minister Trudeau that his government needs to fulfill its promise and transition all open-net pen salmon farms out by 2025. Time is running out for this government...and for wild salmon, too.

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Dear Prime Minister Trudeau,

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I am writing today to let you know that I strongly support your platform promise to remove open-net pens from B.C. waters by 2025. I am deeply concerned that the repeated delays in the process of planning for their removal signal a waning commitment on your part to keeping the promise you made to voters back in 2019.  I expect to see Minister Diane Lebouthillier produce a plan to protect wild salmon.

In the meantime, Fisheries staff have opened consultations on the terms to apply to new licences to be granted upon the expiration of current licences, in June, 2024. It is incomprehensible to me why the Department would be consulting on licence terms of 2-6 years, when you have made it clear since 2019 that the farms are to be transitioned out of BC waters by 2025. I would have expected at the least that the consultation on licences would aim to bring licence terms into alignment with your government's planning process for the Transition.

Decades of research show that open-net pens spread parasites, pollution, and disease pathogens. Our neighbours seem to have already understood the catastrophe-in-progress – Alaska, Oregon, California and Washington have already banned open-net pen fish farms. It’s time that B.C. caught up.

Pacific salmon are a keystone species and play an important role in creating a healthy ecosystem and providing economic opportunities for First Nations, tourism, communities and businesses. It must be obvious, with 75 per cent of British Columbians and more than 120 B.C. First Nations on side, that there is unprecedented support for the removal of open-net pens from B.C. waters.

Your government has the opportunity to support economic opportunities that do not place wild Pacific salmon in jeopardy, such as regenerative aquaculture (seaweeds and shellfish) and habitat restoration, that can employ workers in coastal communities year-round.  Choose to build on your Blue Economy strategy right now, by ensuring that open-net pens are removed and the wild salmon economy given the opportunity to thrive again.

Any strategy to support protection of wild salmon will fail without the removal of open-net pens. There is no technological fix for net pens: their sewage cannot be contained in ocean-based technology and it’s the sewage, with its stew of pathogens and parasites, that is deadly to wild salmon.

We are at the brink: we can no longer wait to protect wild salmon.

I am counting on you to fulfill your promise to “work with the province of B.C. and Indigenous communities on a responsible plan to transition from open-net pen salmon farming in coastal B.C. waters by 2025.”

Sincerely,
[your name will go here]
[your email address will go here] [your location will go here]

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Send a letter to remind Prime Minister Trudeau that his government needs to fulfill its promise and transition all open-net pen salmon farms out by 2025.