Keep your promise. Salmon Farms OUT NOW

hoto Source: https://www.canada.ca/en/government/ministers/diane-lebouthillier.html / Government of Canada

Prime Minister Trudeau replaced his Fisheries Minister in the recent Cabinet shuffle. Minister Diane Lebouthillier enters the job with an ongoing consultation that is due to produce the long-awaited Transition Plan for B.C. salmon farms this fall. She has a big job on her hands; and right now, no mandate letter.

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. Tell him you expect to see that in the new Minister's mandate letter.

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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 the commitment repeated in the mandate letter of your new Minister, Diane Lebouthillier.

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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