Fish-farm plans stay afloat
Georgia Straight
by Georgia Straight
Thursday February 23, 2006 at 02:30 PM
Victoria Secrets
By russ francis
The expected announcement soon of the government’s decision on new fish farms is raising questions about the credibility of a legislature committee that is studying the topic.
Announced in the September 13, 2005, throne speech, the special committee on sustainable aquaculture is charged with considering, among other issues, “sustainable options” that “balance economic goals with environmental imperatives”.
The committee is unique in that the opposition New Democrats hold a majority. At its first substantive meeting, on February 1, NDP MLA Shane Simpson (Vancouver-Hastings) had a few questions about the committee itself. For although it is meeting to discuss such matters as whether or not there ought to be any more fish farms in B.C.—or even any at all—the government is considering applications for new farms.
“Quite honestly, I think it begins to affect the credibility of the committee and its ability to do its job if we have farms being approved while we’re doing what we’re doing,” Simpson told the committee, according to Hansard. At Simpson’s urging, the committee agreed to ask the government for the status of any pending applications.
Simpson told the Georgia Straight on February 20 that he had yet to receive the information he requested. “You want to make sure that we know about these things,” he said. “The government needs to be very clear about that.” If a new farm were to be approved while the committee was still deliberating, it would be “very frustrating”, Simpson added. “The question really would be, is the committee being taken seriously?”
Since the Liberals lifted the NDP’s 1995 moratorium on fish farms in 2002, there have been 11 new licences issued, bringing the total to 132, the committee was told February 1. However, at any one time a number of them are left to lie fallow.
Robin Austin, the Skeena New Democrat who chairs the committee, said he’s been promised nothing about freezing applications while the committee sits. “We certainly haven’t been given any moratorium,” Austin told the Straight on February 20. He said he would be particularly concerned if a fish-farm licence were to be approved in a new area while the committee was deliberating.
“I think that it is a risk if there’s an expansion geographically,” Austin said. “That’s a very real risk that things will implode. We’re looking basically at problems that have come about as a result of the experience of the Broughton Archipelago. So it doesn’t make much sense to open up into another whole region, i.e., the North Coast, when we haven’t even come to some resolution as to what are we going to do about the problems that have been caused down south.”
Austin added that he would “absolutely” like to see any pending applications put on hold until the committee’s work is finished.
Liz Bicknell, communications director for the Ministry of Agriculture and Land, told the Straight on February 21 that an application from Grieg Seafood B.C. Ltd. is in the final stages of the approval process, which began in November 2004. Bicknell added that the decision is now in the hands of the “statutory decision maker”, Jaclynn Hunter, who is the director of the ministry’s fisheries and aquaculture licensing and compliance division.
Bicknell said a decision on the Grieg application will likely be announced by the end of March. She added that there are 12 other applications in the system. However, approval is far from guaranteed: since the Liberals lifted the moratorium in 2002, a total of 11 have been rejected, Bicknell said.
According to a notice in the May 14, 2005, Canada Gazette, Grieg Seafood has applied for permission under the Navigable Waters Protection Act for a finfish farm. The 55-hectare site is in Clio Channel, near Bennett Point in the Broughton Archipelago, the notice said. (The archipelago lies between the mid-coast and Vancouver Island.)
Eric Blueschke, director of the Georgia Strait Alliance’s salmon-aquaculture program, told the Straight that news of an imminent announcement concerning the Grieg Seafood application is disappointing. Blueschke added that the B.C. government is being “a bit cagey” about pending applications, and he questioned why any decisions are being made until the legislature committee’s report is completed.
“The whole point of the committee is to look into the sustainability and to look at alternatives to this type of practice,” Blueschke said. “It would make sense, from our point of view, to address these questions before more sites are approved.”
In a March 2005 newsletter, the Broughton Archipelago Stewardship Society, based in Sointula, claimed that the Clio Channel site is “an important area for prawns and shrimp, two species vulnerable to the toxic effects of emamectin benzoate, the chemical used to kill sea lice.” Sea-lice infestations are common in fish farms.
According to a February 4, 2005, article in the Vancouver Sun, in mid-May 2004, 33,000 fish escaped from a Grieg Seafood fish farm near Gold River, on Vancouver Island.
