The Trudeau government, now helping B.C.’s controversial aquaculture sector expand, would welcome an outside auditor to assess its efforts to ensure fish farms don’t harm wild salmon, Fisheries Minister Hunter Tootoo said Monday.
But the minister wants to gauge public and stakeholder reaction to his department’s first official accounting in B.C. later this month of its response to the 2012 Cohen Commission of Inquiry into the Fraser River sockeye fishery.
The impact of fish farms became a key issue before Cohen, who heard numerous witnesses alleging that pathogens and sea lice in the pens along the B.C. coast posed a danger to migrating wild salmon.
He concluded in 2012 that there was no “smoking gun” to blame for a shocking 2009 collapse of the Fraser River sockeye run.
But Cohen’s 75 recommendations included a call on Ottawa to boost scientific research into fish farms, and to freeze further industry development in the Discovery Islands.
Larrylintz – Vancouver Sun – May 9, 2016.
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