B.C. First Nations challenge fish farm licences

Two B.C. First Nations are taking nan national authorities and food workplace companies to tribunal trying to overturn a determination that allows nan farms to proceed to run disconnected B.C.’s seashore for different 5 years.

The ‘Namgis and nan Kwikwasut’inuxw Haxwa’mis First Nations opportunity successful abstracted Federal Court applications nan determination infringes connected their Aboriginal rights.

The fisheries section had been phasing retired nan food farms, but past period Canada’s fisheries curate extended licences for different 5 years for Grieg Seafood and Mowi Canada to proceed to tally 14 farms.

The ‘Namgis exertion claims food stocks of pink, coho, Chinook and sockeye salmon person go “severely depleted,” prompting nan First Nation to extremity sportfishing for those stocks successful Nimpkish River, build a hatchery and commencement a aviator task for a land-based food workplace facility.

The exertion says nan food farms licensed by nan curate are “along important choke points of nan migratory routes of chaotic Pacific salmon” that nan federation person been sportfishing for since “time immemorial.”

The ‘Namgis opportunity nan curate is mandated to protect and conserve fish, but nan fisheries section has allegedly ignored that instruction since it began regulating food aquaculture, and nan department’s “history of mismanagement, regulatory capture, and bias is notorious.”

The Kwikwasut’inuxw Haxwa’mis First Nation’s exertion says nan national authorities made nan determination to licence nan food farms without due consultation, contempt “the accrued threat to already declining migrating chaotic salmon posed by nan ongoing cognition of nan food farms.”

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“For consultation to beryllium meaningful, a decision-maker must prosecute successful consultation efforts successful bully religion and pinch an unfastened mind,” nan exertion says. “A consultation process that provides nary opportunity to pass aliases alteration nan people of nan determination is simply an opportunity to ‘blow disconnected steam.'”

The ‘Namgis exertion says nan determination to springiness licences to Grieg and Mowi’s food farms for different 5 years “creates a nonstop consequence to nan endurance of chaotic Pacific salmon” and nan nation’s expertise to proceed exercising its Aboriginal correct to fish.

This study by The Canadian Press was first published July 30, 2024