December 5, 2018
Dear Premier Horgan and the Government of British Columbia
As your silence stretches into its second week, past your third deadline regarding renewal of the expired salmon farm tenures in the Broughton Archipelago, we learned that half of BC’s Chinook populations are in decline and that the Canadian Pension Plan is one of Marine Harvest’s biggest shareholders.
How are the decline in Chinook salmon and the CPP investment portfolio related?
The federal Minister of Fisheries is ignoring the law and a 2015 Federal Court ruling by refusing to screen farm salmon for the virus PRV, in defence of their co-defendant, Marine Harvest, who tells the court that all but one of their hatcheries is PRV-positive and so they would be “severely” impacted if they couldn't use PRV-infected fish in their farms throughout southern BC.
This means that Minister Wilkinson is using our tax dollars to defend Marine Harvest’s right to stock farms with fish infected with a virus that kills Chinook salmon, and by allowing Marine Harvest to do this profits the CPP, a federal agency, profits... You are now part of this unwholesome dynamic as we wait to see if you will bend like the federal government and renew the salmon farm tenures in the Broughton. The city of Tromsø, Norway is also trying to get rid of salmon farms by allowing their tenures to expire, and the industry is suggesting this is "illegal" due to political expectations".
Claire Trevana, MLA North Island, repeated through the election that the salmon farmers were threatening to sue any government that crossed them. Glen Clark, Moe Sihota and Corky Evans put the farms in the Broughton, when the NDP were last in power. I warned them of the consequences and here we are. The profound collapse of wild salmon in the Broughton is linked to salmon farms and this is why indigenous people and their allies occupied the industry’s facilities for 280-days last winter, which brought you to the table with their leaders.
As this drags on, I fear you are going to punt this to the next government, which would make it look like you are holding reconciliation and wild salmon ransom to your re-election. Drug – resistant sea lice, escalating chemical use, PRV and bacterial infections, all point to cataclysmic damage already done. Are you going to gamble that wild salmon will survive this any longer? First Nations are putting everything at risk because runs that once numbered millions can no longer be fished.
We know that the degraded state of our oceans is threatening life on earth, we have 12 years to reverse climate collapse, salmon feed the trees that make the oxygen we breathe and forests are the best tool we have for drawing down the carbon that is about to make our children’s lives hell. Canada is a signatory to UNDRIP and that means you can’t allow destruction of First Nation's most important food resource.
Marine Harvest is suing a lot of us, and exhibiting aggressive behaviour. We are standing up to them and I am asking that you do the same.
There is a solid solution to this mess:
Leave the Broughton tenures expired, which will attract closed containment investment that is springing up elsewhere, and pick up the incredible scientific tools buried in DFO that allow salmon to talk to us, to guide us towards becoming leaders in restoring salmon simply by strategically getting out of their way.
Jobs, reconciliation, abundant wild salmon, technical advancement of Canada and our support are all achieved if you leave the 20 Broughton Archipelago tenures expired and look Marine Harvest in the eye and tell them, they had their chance to get it right, they failed and they need to leave now while a shred of hope exists that there is still time to clean up their mess.
You have to ask the salmon, because they can only live or due, they can't compromise forever. If there is one thing we have learned during the decades of farm salmon occupation, this industry can’t be trusted, they are in court fighting to use infected fish, because they would be “severely” impacted if they can’t. If there was any place in the world that wild salmon exposed to salmon farms were surviving we would know about it, but there isn’t. Please think hard about that before you renew any of the tenures in the Broughton Archipelago. People will be there to witness the extinction of the wild salmon.
Join the 35,000 people in viewing my message to you posted on facebook three days ago:
We know what the First Nations at the table want. We await your decision.
Respectfully,
Alexandra Morton
In other recent news:
The EU is concerned that farm salmon consumption is lowering human sperm production: EATING US STERILE
The city of Tromsø is trying not to renew salmon farm tenures, but the industry is threatening that this might be “illegal” due to “political expectations.”
Industry founders, the Mowinckel family, angry that Marine Harvest is adopting their name, do not want to be associated with this industry.