On January 24, 2022 fish farm company Mowi sent a letter to the DFO Aquaculture Management Division explaining that the company could not meet new regulations.
A few weeks later DFO was circulating draft regulations internally that had weakened the regulations by removing the requirement to keep sea lice on farm salmon below three motile (adult stage) sea lice per fish.
The limit on the number of sea lice per farm salmon had been set by DFO to protect wild salmon. Some First Nations have more stringent regulations because the sea lice infection of young wild salmon exposed to salmon farms was still too high. For example, the Ahousaht First Nation set a limit of 1.5 adult lice per farm salmon in Clayoquot Sound, which they don't enforce and First Nations in the Broughton Archipelago set a limit of 2 sea lice per farm salmon which they rigorously enforce.
Sea lice levels in salmon farms have exceeded the DFO threshold every week this spring during the juvenile wild salmon outmigration. For example, Cermaq has had farms over the limit every week in Clayoquot Sound resulting in high lice numbers on juvenile wild salmon and Mowi's lice have been over the threshold in Quatsino and Klemtu. The industry posts lice counts on their respective websites in compliance with their Aquaculture Sustainability Certification.
The industry is spending enormous resources to kill sea lice, which are now too resistant to the drug Slice which was used successfully for years, and they imported ships from Norway that specialize in lice removal at the cost of $30-40M each. The industry has no other tools in their sea lice removal toolbox and so removing the sea lice threshold from their Conditions of Licence is very beneficial. It is also going to kill large portions of wild salmon populations trying to migrate from natal rivers to open ocean feeding grounds.