The Minister of Fisheries Joyce Murray is currently travelling across Vancouver Island meeting with First Nations and others about the transition of salmon farms. I have a lot of respect for her doing this, something I have never seen any other minster do.
However, the person running these meetings with the Minister is Brenda McCorquodale Director of Aquaculture Management.
On April 19 and then again on May 30, 2022, McCorquodale was admonished by senior DFO staff for omitting the DFO science reporting impact of salmon farms on Pacific salmon from the Strategic Salmon Health Initiative (SSHI). For those of you following this, that is the work of Dr. Kristi Miller, who has been muzzled about her findings since at least 2009.
For example, the Miller lab found that the virus PRV being released by most salmon farms appears to be causes Chinook salmon red blood cells to rupture causing organ failure. Her lab also found most Fraser River sockeye salmon swimming through the Discovery Islands (before the salmon farms were removed) were becoming infected with a bacteria call Tenacibaculum that causes mouth rot in farm salmon, and that these infected sockeye appeared to be dying.
They are also finding new viruses, at least one from the Atlantic.
Of course this DFO science is highly problematic for the salmon farming industry desperately trying to portray itself as concerned about protecting BC wild salmon by repeating to any who are still listening that their operations are low risk to wild salmon.
Below are the two emails released to me under Canada's Access to Information Act. They reveal McCorquodale chose to omit information from high level government documents repeatedly. This is scandalous because doing this provides a favourable outcome for Mowi, Cermaq and Grieg, the three Norwegian-based companies making enormous profits using the BC coast to raise Atlantic salmon.
Seeing these emails concerns me because it means that everything said at the Minister's meetings on the transition is being run through the same filter that scrubbed research describing harm to Pacific salmon from salmon farms. As I said, I have respect for the efforts of Minister Murray, but I cannot fathom why she has put McCorquodale in charge.