Thompson holds on to role as Canadian fisheries minister
Joanne Thompson, who was appointed Canada’s fisheries minister in March, has kept the job in a post-election cabinet reshuffle by Prime Minister Mark Carney.
The new cabinet has 28 ministers, and Thompson is one of just five who have retained the roles they had in Carney’s first cabinet, which was picked after he succeeded Justin Trudeau as Liberal Party leader and PM.
Salmon farmers in British Columbia experienced repeated assaults from Trudeau’s fisheries ministers, beginning with arbitrary farm closures and culminating in an announcement last June that open net pen salmon farming in the province would be banned from mid-2029.
The industry will now want to know whether Carney, who is regarded as more business-focused than Trudeau, will reverse that edict, and what role Thompson will play.
Thompson’s title has been changed in today’s reshuffle, from Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard, to simply Minister of Fisheries, which implies a smaller role for the ministry.
