Tag Archives: DFO promoting fish farms

Rivers & Oceans

Report of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans

Originally published by the Parliament of Canada

On 1 February 2022, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans (the Committee) agreed to undertake a study to “examine how the Department of Fisheries and Oceans prioritizes, resources and develops scientific studies and advice for the department, how the results of scientific study are communicated to the Minister and Canadians, and how the minister applies data and advice provided by the department and other government departments to ministerial decisions.”The Committee heard from 57 witnesses over nine meetings held between 26 April 2022 and 7 October 2022.

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Indigenous Nations, Rivers & Oceans

Recommendations from the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans

Originally published on by the Parliament of Canada

As a result of their deliberations committees may make recommendations which they include in their reports for the consideration of the House of Commons or the Government. Recommendations related to this study are listed below.

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Rivers & Oceans

16 scientists condemn ‘scientific failings’ of ‘flawed’ DFO report

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Editor’s note: The following article is joint letter to the Honourable Joyce Murray, Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard

Academic scientists’ critique of DFO Science Response Report 2022/045

Dear Minister,

We are a group of 16 professors and research scientists who, collectively, have extensive research expertise in fisheries, epidemiology, and the environmental consequences of aquaculture. We write to express our professional dismay at serious scientific failings in a recently published DFO Science Response Report (#2022/045) about sea lice on salmon farms and wild salmon in BC. We are deeply concerned with the report’s flaws and its main, unsupported conclusion: that the presence of parasitic sea lice on wild juvenile salmon is not significantly associated with sea lice from nearby salmon farms.

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Rivers & Oceans

Before the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans: Was DFO’s ‘minimal risk’ assessment a cover-up?

(Click here to access other presentations taken from the Committee.)

At the May 12 session of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans, Stan Proboszcz, senior scientist at the Watershed Watch Salmon Society suggested that DFO covered-up some of its own research when it concluded fish farms pose ‘minimal risk’ to wild salmon. He said they appear to have reduced the number of science risk assessments from 10 to 9 because the evidence indicated sea lice harm wild sockeye.

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Rivers & Oceans

Pitfalls of DFO’s current approach and what could replace it

(Click here to access other presentations taken from the Committee.)

Some of Canada’s top scientists are being asked to testify before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans, While it is not clear exactly why this is happening, the common theme running through their presentations is the need for DFO to be more based in scientific evidences and less focused on the needs of industry.   

In the third of a series of broadcasts gleaned from these reports, Dr Andrew Bateman from the Pacific Salmon Foundation talks about pitfalls in DFO’s current approach and an existing model that could replace it.

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