Big change arrived in Victoria on Saturday, and I know many of you are still figuring out what happened and what lies ahead. Here is my best shot, two days out, on what the new B.C. Conservative government means for wild salmon and our work to defend them.
First, let’s not fool ourselves. Things are scary. Global warming is accelerating, we are staring down the barrel of a “Super El Niño” that will make conditions in our ocean and rivers tough for salmon for the next few years, and that will likely mean fewer salmon returning to spawn. Possibly a lot fewer. With our economy under threat from U.S. bullying, ecological considerations are losing ground with the public and decision makers. We are facing an onslaught of new megaprojects that will destroy salmon habitat, sped along by proposed federal deregulation on par with the 2012 gutting of the Fisheries Act and other environmental laws. And the incoming provincial government has promised a similarly aggressive resource-extraction and deregulation agenda that will have serious consequences for wild salmon and clean water.
But we have been here before and we know what to do. Many of us were around for the 16 years of BC Liberal government and the nine years of Conservative government in Ottawa, and the resource policies of both looked a lot like what the new provincial government has told us to expect. It was a tough slog, but we got some good things over the finish line in those years and stopped some bad things from happening. We will do that again. Most of it happened alongside First Nations who were at this long before we were, and they are not going anywhere, and neither are their constitutional rights.
I am not going to catalogue all the past losses and new threats, because I don’t think that’s the tonic we need right now. So here are a few nuggets to give us a bit of hope and focus.
We brought in the BC Water Sustainability Act under the BC Liberals, and the new government’s platform commits to accelerating groundwater licensing, which is the unfinished business of that Act and necessary to defend wild salmon from worsening drought. The platform also promises a made-in-BC species-at-risk law and an independent fish and wildlife commission with anglers and First Nations at the table. Both could go either way, so we have to work to shape them from the start.
The BC Liberals also protected large swaths of the Great Bear Rainforest and in 2008 banned fish farms from B.C.’s North Coast, the first step in the 30-year battle to remove these parasite and virus-spewing factory feedlots from our entire coast. Federally, Stephen Harper struck the Cohen Commission of Inquiry into the Decline of Sockeye Salmon in the Fraser River, whose recommendations set the stage for the removal of salmon farms from the Discovery Islands and the current federal phase-out of the remaining open-net farms in B.C.’s coastal waters. The BC Conservative platform promises to “follow the science on aquaculture” and “ask Ottawa to…permit responsible aquaculture where evidence demonstrates it does not harm wild salmon.” We need to make sure they do exactly that, because if they do, wild salmon win.
There will be brutal losses and bitter disappointments. For example, the platform’s promise to go back to letting industry’s own professionals sign off on their work—the old fox-guarding-the-henhouse model that was overhauled after the Mount Polley mine disaster and Shawnigan Lake pollution fiasco—is bad news and we need to fight it.
There will also be victories, just as there have been under every government we have worked with in our decades of salmon conservation advocacy.
We know what’s going to work and the polling backs it up. In a survey of 2,005 British Columbians by McAllister Opinion Research this September, 86 per cent of BC Conservative supporters agreed that protecting Canada’s fresh water is vital to our national sovereignty and security, and 92 per cent said the provincial government should be held accountable for protecting it, the same as everyone else. Eighty-three per cent supported raising water rates on the largest industrial users once they learned that B.C. charges a mine less than $2.25 for a million litres while Quebec charges up to $159, with support as high in rural B.C. and resource-industry households as anywhere in the province. Nine in ten want strict monitoring and enforcement against toxic spills.
This says to me that conservative voters want their government to defend their sovereignty and security, ensure industries pay fair prices for public resources, and provide accountability and rules that apply to everyone. The platform’s mining section says as much: “faster decisions do not mean weaker rules,” and “you build it, you clean it.” We will hold them to that.
That is where we will meet the new government and the people who elected it. We have to show up with the evidence, the polling, and the people behind the polling, including the ones who voted for this government and expect it to protect their wild fish and clean water. Then we have to keep showing up, in the meeting rooms, in the media, and on the water, and never let up.
So let’s get to work this week, and for the next four years, knowing that wild salmon and watersheds have conservative allies, and that whatever the next four years bring, the Nations we work with will have us at their side. We have worked hard to ensure that our approach to salmon and watershed conservation resonates with our friends and neighbours across the political spectrum, and it does. If we play the long game, stay focused and keep working hard, we will get more good things done for wild salmon and stop more bad things from happening.
For the fish,
Aaron Hill
Executive Director
Share This Story!
Big change arrived in Victoria on Saturday, and I know many of you are still figuring out what happened and what lies ahead. Here is my best shot, two days out, on what the new B.C. Conservative government means for wild salmon and our work to defend them.
First, let’s not fool ourselves. Things are scary. Global warming is accelerating, we are staring down the barrel of a “Super El Niño” that will make conditions in our ocean and rivers tough for salmon for the next few years, and that will likely mean fewer salmon returning to spawn. Possibly a lot fewer. With our economy under threat from U.S. bullying, ecological considerations are losing ground with the public and decision makers. We are facing an onslaught of new megaprojects that will destroy salmon habitat, sped along by proposed federal deregulation on par with the 2012 gutting of the Fisheries Act and other environmental laws. And the incoming provincial government has promised a similarly aggressive resource-extraction and deregulation agenda that will have serious consequences for wild salmon and clean water.
But we have been here before and we know what to do. Many of us were around for the 16 years of BC Liberal government and the nine years of Conservative government in Ottawa, and the resource policies of both looked a lot like what the new provincial government has told us to expect. It was a tough slog, but we got some good things over the finish line in those years and stopped some bad things from happening. We will do that again. Most of it happened alongside First Nations who were at this long before we were, and they are not going anywhere, and neither are their constitutional rights.
I am not going to catalogue all the past losses and new threats, because I don’t think that’s the tonic we need right now. So here are a few nuggets to give us a bit of hope and focus.
We brought in the BC Water Sustainability Act under the BC Liberals, and the new government’s platform commits to accelerating groundwater licensing, which is the unfinished business of that Act and necessary to defend wild salmon from worsening drought. The platform also promises a made-in-BC species-at-risk law and an independent fish and wildlife commission with anglers and First Nations at the table. Both could go either way, so we have to work to shape them from the start.
The BC Liberals also protected large swaths of the Great Bear Rainforest and in 2008 banned fish farms from B.C.’s North Coast, the first step in the 30-year battle to remove these parasite and virus-spewing factory feedlots from our entire coast. Federally, Stephen Harper struck the Cohen Commission of Inquiry into the Decline of Sockeye Salmon in the Fraser River, whose recommendations set the stage for the removal of salmon farms from the Discovery Islands and the current federal phase-out of the remaining open-net farms in B.C.’s coastal waters. The BC Conservative platform promises to “follow the science on aquaculture” and “ask Ottawa to…permit responsible aquaculture where evidence demonstrates it does not harm wild salmon.” We need to make sure they do exactly that, because if they do, wild salmon win.
There will be brutal losses and bitter disappointments. For example, the platform’s promise to go back to letting industry’s own professionals sign off on their work—the old fox-guarding-the-henhouse model that was overhauled after the Mount Polley mine disaster and Shawnigan Lake pollution fiasco—is bad news and we need to fight it.
There will also be victories, just as there have been under every government we have worked with in our decades of salmon conservation advocacy.
We know what’s going to work and the polling backs it up. In a survey of 2,005 British Columbians by McAllister Opinion Research this September, 86 per cent of BC Conservative supporters agreed that protecting Canada’s fresh water is vital to our national sovereignty and security, and 92 per cent said the provincial government should be held accountable for protecting it, the same as everyone else. Eighty-three per cent supported raising water rates on the largest industrial users once they learned that B.C. charges a mine less than $2.25 for a million litres while Quebec charges up to $159, with support as high in rural B.C. and resource-industry households as anywhere in the province. Nine in ten want strict monitoring and enforcement against toxic spills.
This says to me that conservative voters want their government to defend their sovereignty and security, ensure industries pay fair prices for public resources, and provide accountability and rules that apply to everyone. The platform’s mining section says as much: “faster decisions do not mean weaker rules,” and “you build it, you clean it.” We will hold them to that.
That is where we will meet the new government and the people who elected it. We have to show up with the evidence, the polling, and the people behind the polling, including the ones who voted for this government and expect it to protect their wild fish and clean water. Then we have to keep showing up, in the meeting rooms, in the media, and on the water, and never let up.
So let’s get to work this week, and for the next four years, knowing that wild salmon and watersheds have conservative allies, and that whatever the next four years bring, the Nations we work with will have us at their side. We have worked hard to ensure that our approach to salmon and watershed conservation resonates with our friends and neighbours across the political spectrum, and it does. If we play the long game, stay focused and keep working hard, we will get more good things done for wild salmon and stop more bad things from happening.
For the fish,
Aaron Hill
Executive Director
Share This Story!
Big change arrived in Victoria on Saturday, and I know many of you are still figuring out what happened and what lies ahead. Here is my best shot, two days out, on what the new B.C. Conservative government means for wild salmon and our work to defend them.
First, let’s not fool ourselves. Things are scary. Global warming is accelerating, we are staring down the barrel of a “Super El Niño” that will make conditions in our ocean and rivers tough for salmon for the next few years, and that will likely mean fewer salmon returning to spawn. Possibly a lot fewer. With our economy under threat from U.S. bullying, ecological considerations are losing ground with the public and decision makers. We are facing an onslaught of new megaprojects that will destroy salmon habitat, sped along by proposed federal deregulation on par with the 2012 gutting of the Fisheries Act and other environmental laws. And the incoming provincial government has promised a similarly aggressive resource-extraction and deregulation agenda that will have serious consequences for wild salmon and clean water.
But we have been here before and we know what to do. Many of us were around for the 16 years of BC Liberal government and the nine years of Conservative government in Ottawa, and the resource policies of both looked a lot like what the new provincial government has told us to expect. It was a tough slog, but we got some good things over the finish line in those years and stopped some bad things from happening. We will do that again. Most of it happened alongside First Nations who were at this long before we were, and they are not going anywhere, and neither are their constitutional rights.
I am not going to catalogue all the past losses and new threats, because I don’t think that’s the tonic we need right now. So here are a few nuggets to give us a bit of hope and focus.
We brought in the BC Water Sustainability Act under the BC Liberals, and the new government’s platform commits to accelerating groundwater licensing, which is the unfinished business of that Act and necessary to defend wild salmon from worsening drought. The platform also promises a made-in-BC species-at-risk law and an independent fish and wildlife commission with anglers and First Nations at the table. Both could go either way, so we have to work to shape them from the start.
The BC Liberals also protected large swaths of the Great Bear Rainforest and in 2008 banned fish farms from B.C.’s North Coast, the first step in the 30-year battle to remove these parasite and virus-spewing factory feedlots from our entire coast. Federally, Stephen Harper struck the Cohen Commission of Inquiry into the Decline of Sockeye Salmon in the Fraser River, whose recommendations set the stage for the removal of salmon farms from the Discovery Islands and the current federal phase-out of the remaining open-net farms in B.C.’s coastal waters. The BC Conservative platform promises to “follow the science on aquaculture” and “ask Ottawa to…permit responsible aquaculture where evidence demonstrates it does not harm wild salmon.” We need to make sure they do exactly that, because if they do, wild salmon win.
There will be brutal losses and bitter disappointments. For example, the platform’s promise to go back to letting industry’s own professionals sign off on their work—the old fox-guarding-the-henhouse model that was overhauled after the Mount Polley mine disaster and Shawnigan Lake pollution fiasco—is bad news and we need to fight it.
There will also be victories, just as there have been under every government we have worked with in our decades of salmon conservation advocacy.
We know what’s going to work and the polling backs it up. In a survey of 2,005 British Columbians by McAllister Opinion Research this September, 86 per cent of BC Conservative supporters agreed that protecting Canada’s fresh water is vital to our national sovereignty and security, and 92 per cent said the provincial government should be held accountable for protecting it, the same as everyone else. Eighty-three per cent supported raising water rates on the largest industrial users once they learned that B.C. charges a mine less than $2.25 for a million litres while Quebec charges up to $159, with support as high in rural B.C. and resource-industry households as anywhere in the province. Nine in ten want strict monitoring and enforcement against toxic spills.
This says to me that conservative voters want their government to defend their sovereignty and security, ensure industries pay fair prices for public resources, and provide accountability and rules that apply to everyone. The platform’s mining section says as much: “faster decisions do not mean weaker rules,” and “you build it, you clean it.” We will hold them to that.
That is where we will meet the new government and the people who elected it. We have to show up with the evidence, the polling, and the people behind the polling, including the ones who voted for this government and expect it to protect their wild fish and clean water. Then we have to keep showing up, in the meeting rooms, in the media, and on the water, and never let up.
So let’s get to work this week, and for the next four years, knowing that wild salmon and watersheds have conservative allies, and that whatever the next four years bring, the Nations we work with will have us at their side. We have worked hard to ensure that our approach to salmon and watershed conservation resonates with our friends and neighbours across the political spectrum, and it does. If we play the long game, stay focused and keep working hard, we will get more good things done for wild salmon and stop more bad things from happening.
For the fish,
Aaron Hill
Executive Director
Share This Story!
nice summary Aaron, thank you for leading the defense of wild salmon. They are basically the reason we live here