OTTAWA — April 16, 2014 — The Harper government is laying the regulatory groundwork for a resurgence of the controversial B.C. fish farm industry.
Bureaucratic hurdles and legal uncertainty are being swept away as part of an attempt to help the Canadian industry, which has stagnated for years, to take advantage of rising global demand for seafood, according to testimony by top officials before a Senate committee.
The regulatory changes include a planned exemption from a Fisheries Act prohibition against dumping harmful substances in the ocean, though government and industry officials say the change won’t alter current practices or pose environmental threats.
The push for a major expansion comes despite the cautionary words about the risk of fish farms to wild salmon in Justice Bruce Cohen’s 2012 report into the decline of the Fraser River sockeye fishery. Cohen, while finding no “smoking gun” linking fish farms or any other specific factor to the fishery’s troubles, concluded that industry’s “potential harm” to Fraser sockeye is “serious or irreversible.”
Read the full story at The Vancouver Sun