Leaked Documents Show Can. Liberals Censoring, Hiding Fish Farm Problems

"Leaked internal provincial government documents show that when it comes to fish farms, the Liberals are more interested in politics than science, a Green party critic says. Earlier this week, Times Colonist reporter Judith Lavoie published details of internal government documents dealing with aquaculture. The documents, copies of which were subsequently obtained by The Tyee, show the government has been eager to expand fish farming while being highly sensitive to the political optics of the controversial issue.

The official Liberal platform boasts that the government has improved "fisheries and aquaculture management with independent, science-based solutions." However, critics say the leaked documents show that the government has allowed politics to trump science.

For example, a draft of a letter from Fisheries Minister John van Dongen to a fish farm opponent states that "Atlantic salmon are capable of producing offspring in the wild, something that has been known since the early 1900s." That sentence has been deleted in the draft copy and a handwritten marginal note from van Dongen's ministerial assistant states: "Technically correct, but politically problematic."

EDIT

In December, 2002, van Dongen wrote to then-federal fisheries minister Robert Thibault, complaining that the federal government wasn't moving fast enough to approve new salmon farms.

"We are in a very serious situation," van Dongen wrote. "It is not overstating the case to say that the lack of approvals for relocations and new sites is a crisis situation . . . "The salmon farming industry, the service industry and the processing sector have laid off staff and destroyed fish due to the total lack of expansion and relocation opportunities." Van Dongen wrote that "both my staff and credible industry spokespersons" saw two reasons for the "impasse":

"1. 'Extreme' application of the precautionary principle.

"2. Habitat staff in the Pacific region who are opposed to aquaculture - they look for any reason to say no."

Van Dongen added: "We need to get moving."

EDIT

http://www.thetyee.ca/News/2005/05/12/FishFarmDocumentsShowPoliticsTrumpScience/