FEATURE ~

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PRR

use of the steroids was granted by the
province and the federal Department of
Fisheries and Oceans, even though the
DFO lacks the staff to adequately
monitor the experiment. He warned in
a statement that the chemicals may

| affect workers and be passed on to ©

. consumers.

“This blundering approach to
economic growth has become the
hallmark of Social Credit,” Wilson,
also leader of the B.C. Liberal Party,
charged.

Danger also comes in an organic
form, fish farm critics warn. The
likelihood of disease spreading
increases with the concentration of fish
in a farm pen. Wild salmon may pass
through or near the pens, contracting
and spreading diseases through wild
fish. ;

The danger increases with the
introduction of Atlantic salmon in B.C.
pens, since Atlantic species have
diseases unknown to their Pacific coast
counterparts. Richardson reports that
Norway recently suffered massive fish
kills and the closure of 27 farms after
disease spread among fish hatched
from eggs imported from Scotland.

Norway capital established the
country’s elaborate system of fish farms
in the last decade in the face of the
rapid decline of wild stocks. The move
was encouraged as a means of
providing employment for the
Scandinavian nation’s jobless
fishermen.

The early move to aquaculture has
given Norway’s industries the lead in
developing salmon farms, and they
have been quick to move into the B.C.
industry. The former “mom and pop”
operations are either becoming
bankrupted or have been bought up by
big ocean agribusinesses. Norwegian
capital, according to B.C. Business
magazine, controlled some 60 per cent
of the industry last year.

This development means that not
only has the industry, now listed on the
| stock exchange, essentially privatized
| miles of B.C. coastline. It also means

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of the investment branch of the
Ministry of Industry, Trade and
Investment, as assuring potential
investors in Norway that there were no
laws in Canada regarding the return of
profits made there to the home country
of the corporation involved. “Clearly,
we hope that you would re-invest a
significant amount your profits in your
British Columbia operation, to expand
it and otherwise improve it, but it is
your decision to make,” Eggleston said.

The Social Credit government’s
encouragement of fish farms, including
tax breaks and grants — the most
recent were announced Jan. 15 — has
created what observers call a “gold
rush” among those anxious to make a
dollar.

“The reality is something else,” says
Brett McGillivray, a director on the
Sunshine Coast regional district board.

McGillivray says the spread of fish
farms over the past three years along
the coast has virtually taken most
natural harbours and fishing spots out
of the public domain, with the result
that sports fishermen, commercial
fishermen and pleasure boaters no
longer have a safe anchor or favourite
fishing hole.

The board has taken the position
that it is not against fish farms per se,
but wants ultimate control over where
they are located, says McGillivray.

He notes that the Foreshore
Committee, an advisory group whose
members represent the board, federal
and provincial governments, local
residents and the fish and forest
industries, meets regularly to review
fish farm applications and make
recommendations on whether a licence
should be approved.

He says the government was forced
to create the unique body after being
pressed to do so at a large conference
of the Association of Vancouver Island
Municipalities, of which the Sunshine
Coast region is a member.

But McGillivray also uses the horse
and barn door metaphor in reference
to the current consultative process.

Richardson says he has found that
jobs on fish farms are in the $4-$5 per
hour range, and that at any rate, the
industry is capital- rather than labour-
intensive. He points out that the Wood

Bay operation uses a computer to start

the flow of food through the feeding
lines leading to the pens.

UFAWU secretary Bill Procopation
reports that union tendermen have
found some work in the icing plants
that accompany the fish farms, and
says the union does not oppose fish
farming. But it does call for strict
health, safety and environmental
regulations, and opposes foreign

Richardson thinks that the provincial
government is eyeing the elimination of
the wild salmon fishery in B.C. “In
doing so, they get rid of a potential
political opposition and they’re free to
completely privatize a public resource,
including introducing ocean ranching.”

“They can drill for oil all they want
in the Georgia Strait, the logging
companies can cut trees right up to the
stream bed, they can build dams on
rivers. They could do all things they’ve
wanted to do without an effective
opposition.”

‘ Procopation says the union is totally
opposed to ocean ranching, which, in

‘Norwegian capital controlled some 60 per cent of
the industry last year. This development means that
not only has the industry, now listed on the stock
exchange, essentially privatized miles of B.C. coastline.
It also means that much of this industry, and possibly
the entire fishery in the future, is in foreign hands.’

‘A dangerously unregulated industry that poses an

/ environmental hazard through the use of chemicals
and the danger of waste accumulation, upsets
Canada’s tradition of public access to the:seashore,
introduces uncontrolled foreign ownership of a

resource, and threatens the commercial-fishery in B.C.’

that much of this industry, and possibly
the entire fishery in the future, is in
foreign hands. }

Norwegian firms have attained this
control largely because Canadian banks
were loath to advance the capital to’
finance what was seen as a risky

_ venture. Local entrepreneurs can
obtain loans from the Norwegian
companies on the condition that only
that company’s equipment is
purchased.

Norwegian capital didn’t simply
arrive in this country — it was sought
out, by B.C. government
representatives back in June, 1985.

An article in Monday Magazine that
year quotes David Eggleston, director

“There’s hardly a bay or inlet
around here now that doesn’t have at
least one fish farm in it,” confirms
Richardson as he glumly surveys the
Wood Bay operation, owned by
Scantech corporation, adjacent to his
waterfront property.

Gibsons resident Gary Russell, a
fisherman and member of UFAWU
Local 21 who has long been active on
the fish farms issue, says much of the
funding the federal government has put
into aquaculture ‘should be used for
salmonid enhancement.

“T know the fish farm people hold
out the carrot of jobs. But it isn’t in
that industry that there are jobs to be.
found,” he contends.

domination of the industry.

. Procopation says the union, through
its environmental organization, the T.
Buck Suzucki Foundation, plans to
visit Norway this spring to see first
hand the effects of the Scandinavian
country’s extensive fish farming
industry.

Despite the much more stringent
precautions taken by Norway’s
authorities, the industry has faced
setbacks through some widespread fish
kills and the problems of “escaped”
farm fish. The pen-reared individuals,
lacking a spawning ground, randomly
choose a stream or river in which to
spawn, threatening the wild stock with

" new diseases and an unknown gene

code.

(In B.C, algae blooms have been
blamed for massive farm fish kills,
including one last year that saw several
tonnes of fish buried in the Sechelt
dumpsite. The Wood Bay operation
was among those affected.)

Norway’s response is interesting. In a
letter to a Vancouver resident, Linn
Ryne of the Norwegian Information
Service stated that the government is
now considering “fish-farm free zones”
and is studying the life cycle of wild
salmon for salmonid enhancement.

That the dangers of disease or
genetic contamination are respected is
apparent from a Nov. 13, 1986 internal
memo from the fisheries branch of the
B.C. Ministry of Environment. In it,
branch director Dr. David Warver
warns Bill Roland of the marine
resources branch, Ministry of
Agriculture (to which responsibility for
fish farms was transferred) about ‘a
side issue that is in danger of being lost
in the haste to develop a viable salmon
farming industry in British Columbia:
the high risk of introducing exotic and
dangerous diseases.

“We are playing Russian roulette
with an extremely valuable and
irreplaceable wild resource. Who is
going to accept responsibility when the
first exotic disease outbreak occurs,
because for certain it will, at the present
rate of proposed introduction,” the
memo warns. |

essence, involves the hatching and
rearing of fish in privately owned
facilities, and the harvesting of those
fish by the same private concerns.

The B.C. situation is worrying
Alaska fishermen, who in briefs to their

‘state government have warned about

the dangers of unregulated fish farming
as practiced in the province. And the
state of Washington has had a
moratorium on new fish farm licences
since 1985.

Richardson’s 230-member local
group, the Ocean Resource
Conservation Alliance, has demanded a
moratorium on fish farming, at least
until a full study of its consequences is
carried out. (However, the government
lifted a temporary moratorium
imposed early last year, when a
commission headed by lawyer David
Gillespie was hearing submissions on
fish farming, last April. So far none of
Gillespie’s recommendations have been
implemented. On Jan. 15 the federal
and provincial governments jointly
announced $2,600,000 in funding for 37
B.C. aquaculture operations.)

ORCA and the UFAWU have also
demanded the labelling of all salmon
sold in markets and restaurants
indicating point of origin.

Richardson agrees with the call for
legislation requiring the labelling of
salmon sold in markets, to distinguish
ocean-caught from farm-raised fish:
“I’m definitely not going to buy a fish
that has been raised just above, or
possibly in, its own wastes.”

Richardson reports that the
opposition is growing, citing letters he’s
received from Vancouver Island where
residents are also organizing against the
fish farm encroachment.

The B.C. Federation of Labour at its
convention last December demanded a
moratorium on fish farming pending
guarantees that the industry not by
dominated by foreign firms, that no
“undue pressure” be put on stocks of
wild salmon eggs and that aquaculture
not be developed at the expense of
salmon habitats or lack of salmonid
enhancement programs. The resolution
further opposed ocean ranching in B.C.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, JANUARY 27, 1988 e 7