NDP government’s lack of support for business questioned
Opinion
With an election looming in British Columbia and the current opposition New Democratic Party (NDP) in the lead according to opinion polls, the rejection of an application for a fish farm by the NDP government in another province may indicate upcoming trouble for salmon farmers in B.C. And this fear was further increased when the current House Leader of the B.C. NDP made a statement suggesting that his party would indeed move to close the existing salmon farming industry in the province. In an interview with BC Local News, John Horgan denied that he is advocating the shutdown of existing fish farms. He said closed-containment technology using bags suspended in the ocean is developing, and existing leases for net-pen salmon farms will eventually expire. "Closed containment is the only way I can see the aquaculture industry surviving in the long term," he said.
The statement from Mr. Horgan is surprising in some ways, as he was the B.C. government’s key negotiator when most of the current regulatory regime for aquaculture in B.C. was developed. He should know better than anybody that the industry in its current form does not represent a serious harm to the environment. His statement rather reflects a populous position aimed at scoring points with the fickle B.C. public ahead of the up-coming election. The insistence of transferring the existing industry into some form of yet-to-be-developed or cost-prohibitive technology would surely lead to the closure of most- if not all- salmon farms in British Columbia.
As Business Editor for the Chronicle Herald Chris Lambie explains, a salmon farmer in Nova Scotia is also worried about the local NDP government;
Snow Island Salmon Inc. is questioning the provincial government’s support for fish farming. A pre-election throne speech from the Dexter government this week promised to roll out a new aquaculture strategy. But earlier this month, the province rejected Snow Island’s application to build a fish farm in Shoal Bay after a 22-month review, citing concerns about the risk to wild salmon. “Both the provincial and federal government have been talking the talk, but I guess what we need is some action to back that up,” Shane Borthwick, Snow Island’s vice-president, said Thursday. “What we’re pushing for is a process that is much more clear and transparent because obviously the fiasco that we’ve been through for the last two years is anything but.”
Snow Island’s Scottish parent company, Loch Duart, has invested more than $8 million trying to set up four fish farms on the Eastern Shore, he said. But it only has one site up and running at Cable Island. “Our farming model that we’re trying to implement requires four farms that we can put into rotation in order to achieve our fallowing process and rotate our crop each year,” Borthwick said. “Without those other farms, putting fish in the same area every year just simply doesn’t make sense.”
Snow Island still has an application in the system for a fish farm in Spry Harbour. “What we’re calling for is an opportunity that, if the province has concerns with any additional applications, that we can open the dialogue and try to address those concerns,” Borthwick said. If the company can’t get sites approved, it may have to quit the province, he said. “If we can’t have farms, then there is no future in Nova Scotia.”
Snow Island has fish in the hatchery and staff looking for answers about whether they’re going to still have jobs in the coming weeks, Borthwick said. “We’ve got a dozen people working on the Cable Island site, and we had plans for a job fair to hire 20 to 30 more this coming spring. So all that, of course, is up in the air until we know what direction we’re going to be going.”
