Editorial: Feds must fish or cut bait on fisheries budget cuts
Calgary Herald November 19,
2012
Something is fishy indeed
about the federal government’s overtly two-faced approach to B.C.’s salmon
industry.
Three years ago, when the annual sockeye salmon run virtually
disappeared from the Fraser River, Prime Minister Stephen Harper launched an
inquiry and appointed B.C. Supreme Court Justice Bruce Cohen to look into the
matter.
The federal government, however, didn’t bother waiting for Cohen’s
report. For all they knew, Cohen might have found some horrific biological
cause behind the salmon’s disappearance, necessitating the full attention of
biologists with Fisheries and Oceans Canada. Instead, just weeks before Cohen
released his report, leaked government documents showed that Ottawa is planning
to make major cutbacks to biologists who oversee protection of the fish.
The optics are terrible. It looks as though the federal government
only cares about the salmon industry when Ottawa is flush with cash.
As it turned out, Cohen could not find a single cause for the huge
decrease in sockeye in 2009, but he did cite some worrisome observations,
including the proliferation of fish farming near sockeye migratory routes,
disease, substances contaminating the water, predators and changing climate.
Key to protecting the salmon is more research, something that will
require the expertise of those very same biologists who are about to lose their
jobs. The feds simply cannot have it both ways.
