Submitter: Priscilla Judd

Community: Lumby

Date Submitted: December 19, 2023

Summary:

DFO are pawns of the global engineers who “get it done” with the help of corporate media, spin and professed benefits to the Canadian taxpayer.

Submission:

What we are currently witnessing is a wild salmon extinction policy. Why should we be surprised? DFO serves globalization and world trade – Canada’s economic driver.



DFO are pawns of the global engineers who “get it done” with the help of corporate media, spin and professed benefits to the Canadian taxpayer. That’s how we lost our Canadian manufacturing, our mills and fisheries, water is next and that’s how we are losing our wild salmon.



The WTO, Word Bank, IMF, the real designers of the wild salmon extinction policy do not recognize the natural benefits of wild salmon compared to farmed salmon. In matters of trade salmon are merely a commodity. Profits are maximized with the goal of efficiency in globalized markets. The methodology is development through worldwide allocation of limited resources. The security of Canadians, local food, health care, wild salmon or caribou are not a benefit in these models. In fact they are a liability, discounted in the calculation for ever expanding markets for a smaller number of commodities.



wealthy ecosystems are not monetary drivers because large numbers of people will protest the carnage of iconic natural resources (as witnessed by Alexandra Morton’s March to the BC Legislature). Worldwide natural food systems (especially fish) are exploited to supply the purportedly civilized consumers (and their debt ridden societies).



Whether it’s small fish to feed farmed salmon or wild salmon to supply the British Army it’s all done at the expense of First Nation food security – a Human Right as decreed by the United Nations.



As the Federal Government continues to remove the First Nation’s first right to wild salmon, extinguishing wild salmon seems to improve the global economic outlook. Weakened by a lack of food (and salmon is the First Nation’s mainstay) they could be forced to negotiate for sustenance – forced off their land or relocated – opening up great opportunities for resource extraction industry. First Nations worldwide face that problem – why would it not happen here?



So let’s look at other economic benefits to the global economy after fulfilling a wild salmon extinction policy:



When an East Coast Cod extinction policy went onboard, oil rigs and tankers occupied the east coast water. Is that where we’re going in BC? Without salmon, there would be one less reason to protest pipelines and tankers for crude from the tar sands – one less hurdle for offshore drilling permits.



As Ron Wilton outlined in his Cohen Submission 0857- hydro dams in the Fraser would allow unlimited export of power. I think that BC Fish Hatcheries could produce all the inland salmon for sport and food (in landlocked water as is done in the Kootenays). Fish Farms would have the entire BC salmon export market.



Genetically Engineered (GE) Salmon were developed with the intent to supply the Fish Farms, however, Fish Farmers said they are NOT interested. Not interested? A fish that grows twice the size in half the time is not of interest to the Fish Farm industry? Not as long as we have wild salmon because the greatest threat by the production of GE Salmon is the threat of extinction to wild salmon.



So, why then does our government permit GE salmon development in PEI and West Vancouver when GE salmon pose an extinction threat? Well it seems to fit into the wild salmon extinction policy doesn’t it? Fish Farms are not interested in GE salmon – yet.



Petroleum, minerals, patented fish, patented grain, marginalized people for cheap labor… Look out – water is also under threat. Water is now being diverted from the Fraser watershed into the Okanagan.



Governments diverted Duteau Creek – Fraser water that belongs to an endangered Pacific Coho population into the Okanagan. Now, what chance does that threatened salmon population have with less water in their river? Not much but in the global scheme of markets – there’s not much value in an endangered salmon population anyway. Without the environmental pressure of an endangered salmon population comes the promise of jobs jobs jobs and money and economic development.



As salmon populations decline, there will be more and more pressure to privatize water. The externality problem of wild salmon must be settled for unfettered economic development to move forward in BC. As we can see DFO’s wild salmon extinction policy benefits more than just coastal Fish Farms.