Pro-salmon coalition takes B.C. to court over fish farms
Stephen Hume
Vancouver Sun
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Debate over the future of fish farming on British Columbia's coast moved from skirmishing in scientific journals to a full-blown court battle Tuesday.
This time it's a challenge to the constitutional legality of the B.C. government regulating the same salmon farms whose rapid expansion it enthusiastically promoted.
For some time controversy has fulminated over threats to wild salmon posed by the industry, particularly in the Broughton archipelago at the north end of Vancouver Island where research links sea lice infestations in domestic pens to declines in wild stocks that must migrate through adjacent, parasite-laden waters.
Biologist Alexandra Morton, who first drew attention to the Broughton situation, the Wilderness Tourism Association, the Southern Gillnetters Association, the Fishing Vessel Owners' Association of B.C. and the Pacific Coast Wild Salmon Society are petitioning to have the province's right to regulate ruled constitutionally invalid.
Morton says 22 farms operating in the Broughton are operating on leases that have expired or are about to expire and thus require renewal by the province. But the court petition argues that Canada's Constitution, which lays out the areas of federal and provincial sovereignty, prevents delegation of this regulatory authority to the province.
Representing the petitioners is a highly skilled environmental lawyer. Gregory McDade, former head of the Sierra Legal Defence Fund, now works with Ratcliff and Co., a North Vancouver firm.
But this isn't simply a legal skirmish over arcane technicalities, it's a signal that the conflict is both escalating and polarizing competing economic interests in a way that seems certain to draw into the fray other heavyweights affected by aquaculture, say first nations and sports angling lobbies.
For example, government statistics indicate the salmon farming industry, largely owned by European multinational corporations that also operate in Scandinavia, the British Isles and South America, is a $370-million-a-year business in B.C. when production and processing are included.
The industry is able to mobilize sophisticated spin-doctoring to advance its case and to seek to neutralize the campaigns of opponents and critics, a strategy that brings to mind the so-called war in the woods that convulsed B.C. during the 1990s. Its supporters often portray salmon farms as essential both to the survival of wild salmon and coastal communities.
Salmon farming is said to lessen pressure on wild stocks severely affected by federal and provincial mismanagement that resulted in overfishing, loss of genetic diversity and habitat destruction, all amplified by climate change. Fish farms and processing facilities are said to be crucial to the economies of coastal communities that once relied on commercial fishing and a forest industry that has shed jobs for decades.
The provincial legislature's committee on sustainable aquaculture reported at end of 2007, however, that fish farming provided only about 1,500 full-time equivalent jobs, about the same number provided by commercial fishing. Sports angling for wild salmon provided 2,500 jobs.
By comparison, the Wilderness Tourism Association testified to the committee that it generates about $900 million in direct revenue and about $2 billion in indirect revenue, and provides 21,000 full-time jobs; about half this revenue and the jobs it supports rely on wild fish.Vancouver Island and the central coast where most fish farms are concentrated generate about half the wilderness revenue in B.C. as tourists come to kayak, boat and view bears, eagles, orcas and other sea mammals sustained by wild salmon.
Surveys indicate that about a million tourists a year participate in hiking and paddling at least once while on a trip in B.C. As a whole, B.C. tourism generates about $9.5 billion a year in revenues and the Council of Tourism Associations estimates it creates about 117,000 jobs, one in every eight in the province, with another 54,000 jobs to come by 2015.
The Wilderness Tourism Association has for some time expressed "deep concern" that the impact of fish farms on its business activities "puts the future of this significant sector at risk."
So the emergence of a coalition of tourism and traditional fishing interests, independent science and environmentalists in this court case marks a significant evolution in the conflict, one that raises thorny questions for politicians about how and why they set their economic priorities.
shume@islandnet.com© The Vancouver Sun 2008
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