Within
the week (“on or before 30
September, 2012”),
Justice Bruce Cohen will finally close the door on Canada’s $25 million judicial
inquiry into the decline of wild salmon after almost three years of public meetings,
evidential hearings and heated discussion.
Photo:
Justice Bruce
Cohen
at the public hearing in Lillooet in August 2010 smiling in front of the jail
(with the Cohen Commission’s Director of Communications Carla Shore and Senior
Commission Counsel Brian Wallace)
For more photos read “Cohen In Camera
– Photo Review of the Salmon Inquiry”
The
stakes are high. If Justice Cohen takes
a hard-line approach, the Cohen
Commission’s
final report could see British Columbia’s salmon farming industry in the dock
for spreading infectious
diseases
(and the Canadian Government for aiding and abetting in the cover-up).
However,
the likeable Justice Cohen could well give the Canadian Government and the Norwegian-controlled salmon farming
industry a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card despite calls to ‘lock ‘em up and throw
away the key’.
“Someone should
be going to jail over this,” said John Werring of the David Suzuki
Foundation in reaction to a secret Government report last year which detailed
over 100 positive cases of ISA in farmed Atlantic salmon and wild Pacific
salmon. “Never in my over 20 years of
doing my work have I seen such duplicity by our government. The closest thing I can relate to is when
whistle blowers in the U.S. released documents showing that tobacco companies
knew their product harmed people. This document (2004 draft) shows our
government has known for years that ISAV has been in the Pacific and they have
done nothing except cover it up. Appalling!”
Read
more via “Salmonopoly: Go
to Jail, Go Directly to Jail, Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200”
“Call
it Salmongate,” reported the LA Times last
December. “The deepening controversy
over who knew what and when about a deadly virus that may or may not have been
detected in West Coast salmon would be obscure fodder for biologists if there
weren't so much at stake — the health of the West's dwindling stocks of wild
salmon, for one. And Canada's
$2.1-billion fish farming industry.”
Read
more via “Did Canada cover
up deadly salmon virus? Report suggests yes”
Will
the Cohen Commission provide justice for wild salmon or will the
Canadian Government and Norwegian-owned salmon farming giants (who control over
90% of BC’s salmon
farms) wriggle off the hook?
Even
if Justice Cohen does get tough there is no guarantee that the Harper
Government will abide by his recommendations.
“Whether Justice Cohen’s recommendations will
have any sway on the Harper government’s current agenda is unlikely, but we can
only hope that his report will not cater to the very things that put wild
salmon at risk,” writes Elena Edwards in Wild Salmon
First (24 September).
“If
nothing else, the Cohen Commission succeeded in one thing; it has clearly shown
that government has been compromising wild salmon to death and that the DFO is
in place not to protect wild fish but to protect the economic proceeds derived
from the fish and oceans. If wild salmon
are to have a chance of surviving into the future they must be prioritized
before open-net salmon farming, oil pipelines, and mass industrial practices
that destroy salmon habitat. In short,
wild salmon must come first.”
The
wait is nearly over. Following repeated delays and extensions since it’s
opening in November 2009, the Cohen Commission’s Terms of
Reference now call for the final report to be submitted “on or before
September 30, 2012”.
“In completing his final report, Commissioner Bruce Cohen
will consider all the evidence entered at evidentiary hearings and
approximately 900 submissions from the public,” wrote the
Cohen Commission in
March 2012. “More than 160 witnesses
testified at the hearings, resulting in 14,000 pages of transcripts and 2,100
exhibits”.
Justice Cohen received final
submissions from a wide range of stakeholders including the
BC
Salmon Farmers Association, the First
Nations Coalition, the Conservation
Coalition and the Aquaculture
Coalition. Read more details online here
Meanwhile,
the salmon farming industry, First Nations, fishermen and the people of British
Columbia wait for Justice Cohen’s final report and the Canadian Government’s
reaction with baited breath.
The
Norwegian-controlled salmon farming
industry, in particular, has a great deal of money riding on the Cohen
Commission. If Justice Cohen adopts the
recommendations of First Nations, the Aquaculture Coalition and the
Conservation Coalition then salmon farms located on the Fraser River sockeye
migration route could be removed.
The
submission from the First
Nations Coalition, for example, recommended “removal and relocation”:
Moreover,
if Justice Cohen blames disease-ridden salmon farms for the collapse of the
multi-million dollar Fraser River sockeye fishery then the floodgates to legal
action will surely be opened.
“Are
your ministry and the Norwegian fish farmers adequately insured to cover
damages if we find out BC is an ISAV suspect area, no one told us and it
spreads because you did nothing?” asked Alexandra Morton in an open letter to the Canadian
Fisheries Minister back in March 2011.
“Until
DFO recognizes that salmon farms amplify pathogens to dangerous levels, I will
maintain my opinion that DFO has no intention of protecting wild salmon from
salmon farms,” wrote Alexandra Morton in another open letter to DFO last
week (20 September). “I suspect you have
been pressured to make it easier for the salmon farmers to collect insurance
and apply for compensation.”
Certainly,
Superheroes 4
Salmon
thinks it is very rich of the Norwegian salmon farming industry to be claiming
compensation for recent outbreaks of Infectious Hematopoietic
Necrosis (IHN). West Coast
Environmental Law, for example, reported
last month (14 August):
Read
more via “Will your tax
dollars subsidize BC’s unsustainable fish farms?”
If
BC salmon farmers are successful in claiming compensation against wild salmon
for spreading infectious diseases, then it beggars belief how much compensation
those stakeholders dependent upon wild salmon would be eligible for if Justice
Cohen rules against disease-ridden farmed salmon?
First
Nations have already filed a class action lawsuit focused on the
devastation caused by salmon farming on the wild salmon in
Kwicksutaineuk/Ah-Kwa-Mish First Nation (KAFN)'s Territory around the Broughton
Archipelago.
“When
juvenile pink and chum salmon in our Territories attempt to migrate out to the
ocean, they face a gauntlet of open net-pen salmon farms densely stocked with
non-native Atlantic salmon,” said Bob Chamberlin,
KAFN Chief and the Representative Plaintiff in the lawsuit in May 2012. “These salmon feedlots cause the incubation,
amplification and transmission of diseases and parasites to the wild juvenile
salmon. The Cohen Commission of Inquiry into the Decline of the Fraser River
Sockeye shone a pretty bright light on the evidence that was hidden by industry
and our governments about the impacts of open net-pens, including introduced
diseases. What more are they hiding?”
At
last, the wait for Justice Cohen’s final report is nearly over. Keep an eye on the Cohen Commission’s web-site this week as
the Canadian Government and Norwegian-owned salmon farming industry wriggle for
all their worth!
Read blog in full online here