Mair: Salmon a Huge Election Issue

I’m often accused of beating the fish farm issue to death, but consider the evidence. In 2001, on air and in print, I warned the Campbell government that the fish farm story would come back to bite them in the ass if they didn’t do something. Well, we did have a catastrophe when, as scientist Alexandra Morton predicted, a Pink salmon run in the Broughton Archipelago collapsed due, she said, to sea lice.

The following year’s run, however, was pretty much as expected. Why? Because the fish farmers were forced to remove their lousy, literally, fish until the migrating smolts made it safely to sea. This past March fish farms cages were left full and Ms. Morton predicts another Pink salmon crash this fall. So do I.

You might well ask, how can the governments let this happen?

The answer is sickeningly simple – the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans, given the statutory mandate to protect our salmon, has abandoned that obligation to the tender mercies of the provincial Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Fish, John Van Dongen, prop., and taken up promoting fish farms. The MAFF similarly has a primary mandate to promote aquaculture. Who then protects the salmon?

No one. Period.

Blaming everything but fish farms

Some readers may be new to the issue so here, in a nutshell, is what happens. Because they need good flushing, fish farms locate at the mouths of inlets. At the head of inlets are rivers. Because fish farms contain hundreds of thousands of salmon that are ready hosts for sea lice, the cages become huge sea lice colonies. When the tiny wild smolts migrate they must run the gauntlet of these nests of lice and they're slaughtered.

What ought to trouble all of us, left right and centre is how this issue has been handled. The fish farmers deny there’s a problem and blame everything from sun spots to el nino. The governments do the same. As the evidence mounts, the denials only become stronger. The Aquaculture Centre at UBC takes the side of the farmers.

Why? Could it be because the University of British Columbia doesn’t fund the center so has no power to force academic open mindedness?

Who, then, does fund it?

Here’s where you act surprised. It’s funded by DFO, MAFF and the Fish Farmers Association. The multi-national fish farmers, like green ooze, are into everything.

The recent study by the University of Alberta and the University of Victoria, published by the ultra-prestigious Royal Society in Britain, is devastating. Not only are the lice targeted as the problem, the scientists, all independent, actually trace the lice to specific farms thus killing the farmers absurd allegation that since the murderous sea lice can’t be directly traced to them, why, who could tell who dunnit? The sampling used by the study was huge and the findings so emphatic that the fish farmers and their government handmaidens are shorn of all defenses.

Candidates offer clear choice

What’s the position of the BC government bearing in mind that an election looms?

On March 1st I interviewed Premier Campbell him and put to him that, unless the Broughton Archipelago fish farms were fallowed, we would lose the 2005 Pink run about to migrate in March and scheduled to return in the Fall. (While I didn’t have the latest study I had spoken to Alexandra Morton and she told me that her findings, already published and peer reviewed, would shortly be confirmed by a huge study.) I told the Premier what the evidence was and asked, if only out of respect for the precautionary principle, would he order the fish farms fallowed?

He gave me an emphatic NO!

I then asked him if, when the Pink Salmon run fails in the Fall, he and his ministers would take responsibility and he again gave a firm NO!

Now, what the hell does a non-NDP voter do with that? Are we to be so afraid of Carole James that we will let this bunch back in?

I’m no NDPer. I ran against and beat them in two provincial elections and served in the so-called “right wing government” of Bill Bennett, in part as Environment Minister. (The Campbell government, upon taking office, tubed this ministry, founded by Bill Bennett in December 1975). Bennett would have fired my ass out the cabinet door if something like this Broughton series of catastrophes had happened on my watch. Environment ministries under Bennett were expected to act as policemen in the environment without any regard to who put money in our election coffers. (As a matter of interest it was the Bill Bennett government, when I was Environment minister, that bargained with Seattle Light and Power and saved the beautiful Skagit River from becoming a lake full of jet boats. But I digress.)

Vote the future

My question is simple – are we, the voters of this province, going to let the Campbell government off unscathed? Do we care so little about the out-of-doors, that we hold in trust for future generations, that we will reward with another term those who plunder it for campaign donations?

I fear the answer is that we will.

In which case we will give a mandate for more and more plunder of that out-of-doors and we’ll have no one to blame but ourselves.

Rafe Mair, a regular columnist for The Tyee, can be heard weekday mornings 8:30-10:30 on 600AM and writes a weekly article in Metro Valley community newspapers. His website is www.rafeonline.com