Report damns DFO approach

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Discussions held at kitchen tables in thousands of commercial fishermen's homes around B.C. this week must have been tinged with a small sense of victory, after an official report commissioned by the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) was obtained by the David Suzuki Foundation and leaked to the press. The report, titled A Review of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Aquaculture Referrals Evaluation Process, and authored by industry-known and respected Campbell River aquaculture consultant Don Tillapaugh, was actually delivered to the department on Oct. 31, 2001. Tillapaugh is a widely consulted aquaculture expert who wrote the provincial government's original fish farm management policy.

The focus of the report was to provide a grade on how knowledgeable and adept DFO staff are at enforcement of its fish farming policies in B.C. coastal waters. The findings reported that the department does not take even fundamental steps to prepare its employees to deal with the industry. In the report, Mr. Tillapaugh stated in clear terms that DFO doesn't know what it is doing in the face of the burgeoning fish farming industry.

Specifically, the report's author found that:

?Although the industry began moving into British Columbia in the early 1980s, the department still can't tell potential fish farmers if they've chosen an appropriate location for their operations.

? There is no formal orientation process for employees charged with regulating the industry.

? The department doesn't have a simple handbook for staff that would explain what fish farms are, or how they affect the environment.

? Staff assessing fish farm applications ask for information that even the global scientific community has, as yet, been unable to provide.

? There is no system in place to enable DFO staffers scattered around the province to communicate or exchange information, or make consistent decisions.

? A mishmash of existing regulations could cause as many as six different DFO staffers to contact a single farm applicant with the same requests for information.

? "on more than one occasion" he had better information on departmental staff changes than the DFO personnel he interviewed.

Suzuki Foundation Executive Director Jim Fulton, a former New Democratic Party MP who served as his party's fisheries critic, said the report shows several federal environmental protection statutes, including the Fisheries Act, are not being obeyed by the industry because the department is unprepared to enforce them.

"A definition of a significant salmon stream-can you imagine that DFO doesn't even have that yet?" Fulton asked. He described this situation as "the basis for litigation" by small coastal communities that are unhappy about the effect that 121 fish farms have had on the local environment. Fulton said he thinks federal agencies such as the Fisheries department could end up in the courts alongside fish farms if members of the public launch private prosecutions.

"Once they [members of the public] find out there are eight specific areas of provincial and federal legal jurisdiction that aren't met, I think the courts will be full," Fulton said. "This is a blockbuster. The feds are in a real jam and I frankly don't see how they get out of it now. It's the first document that has come into my possession since I started working on salmon farming issues in 1987 that gives such a blunt evaluation of incomplete or illegal licencing."

The fish farming industry has been in the spotlight recently because of fish escapements that has put up to one million non-native Atlantic salmon into B.C. coastal waters in competition with native wild salmon species. Atlantics have invaded an estimated 77 B.C. streams as a result of those escapes.

In spite of that, following last week's escape of tens of thousands of Atlantic salmon from fish farms in Clayoquot Sound, B.C. Fisheries Minister John Van Dongen insisted the industry is ripe for expansion. Ottawa aparently has committed $70 million over five years to improve its management of the industry. As to training, a DFO spokesperson said in spite of an absence of written policy on salmon farming, the department's staff "continue to take a common sense approach to ensure that environmental concerns are taken into account when farms are proposed."

One old-time B.C. commercial fishing veteran, Edwin Newman-who has sat on many commissions, panels and boards dealing with the fishery, and is currently with the Native Fishing Association-isn't surprised that someone finally made it official.

"This is what Native people have been saying all along, that DFO doesn't know what it is doing," he told Raven's Eye. "DFO needs a major overhaul-to take care of the wild fish stocks and their habitat, and not to push the fish farm industry. That is what they have been doing, pushing the fish farm industry. Why? (Former DFO Minister) Herb Dalhiwal doesn't know a damn thing about fisheries-he's a businessman. The fish farm industry is a commercial business and that is the way Dalhiwal wants DFO to view it, a business."

Newman suggested that DFO has covered up a lot of damage done by fish farms. He cites the official DFO position that there's no danger of disease being spread to wild stock;"they don't know that," he asserts.

"Native communities were devastated by fish farming and nobody's doing anything about that. As (political) orders come down from on top, DFO has to cover up the disasters."