The federal Liberal government announced back in 2019 that it planned to phase out open-net fish farms.
A surprise to many, at that time it had the appearance of a politically-pandering, knee-jerk reaction.
Last week's announcement – five years later – finally confirming the ban will take place in 2029, still looks like a politically-pandering, knee-jerk reaction.
What's the federal government been doing in the intervening five years?
After threatening to do this following bold and challenging statements from all concerned about the salmon farming issue at protests and placard waving rallies, press conferences and demonstrations of community support, the federal Liberal government puts forward another declaration that, this time, they're going to do it but have no fleshed out plan of attack. You would think after five years, they would be using the time to develop a detailed and comprehensible plan backed by scientific documents and reams of community input.
But no. That's not what we got.
We got an announcement (leaked to the Toronto media a week previously to prepare everyone) that the ban's going to happen. In five years. And we're going to unveil how that's going to happen over the next period of ... time. Further announcements to come. They obviously don't have a plan in hand and are just going to flesh it out over the next while.
Is this how you threaten to kill an industry?
We can see the political motivations behind the decision and it may surprise some that this was the decision taken but was there no thought given to how you either transition workers out of the industry and into other jobs or demonstrate how, not to worry, all will be fine, we'll magically have the technology to raise salmon on land or in closed-containment pens by 2029. You bet. For sure.
Because let's face it, five years to develop land-based or closed-containment fish farming technology is not going to be enough time. The federal Fisheries and Oceans Department obviously didn't have enough time to develop a plan.
It would have been comforting to know that for the past five years in anticipation of a decision to ban open-pen farms, federal scientists had been working on effective closed-containment fish farming technology.
You knew you were going to do this (or did you?) so why is there so little supportive information and research to put in place an obviously-necessary transition plan?
The five years stated in last week's announcement are not in place for the industry (as well as First Nations communities, non-Indigenous communities and workers of all kinds) to transition, it's actually five years for the federal government to figure out how it's going to do this. Starting now.
It was said by Chief Richard George, Ahousat Nation, that "Five years to transition to land-based or closed-containment in my territory is the same as shutting our operations down." That thought could also be applied to the industry as a whole.
Do the feds really think this industry can develop the technology to raise fish on land or in closed-containment farms when it hasn't done so – viably – yet? Where's the federal support, where's the research initiatives, where's the transitional funding to assist First Nations communities who saw this industry as a strategy to develop self-supporting economies?
Or maybe the plan all along was to just shut it all down?
