With less than three years left before Ottawa’s June 30, 2029, deadline to ban open-net pen salmon farming in coastal British Columbia, the federal government has still not said plainly how it intends to deliver on that commitment.
When Fisheries Minister Joanne Thompson visited Victoria on August 20, she called the ban “certainly still in place,” then said the file had been transferred to another department and declined to say more. That is not the certainty coastal communities, First Nations, conservation groups or the aquaculture industry need. It is ambiguity.
The concern is not whether Ottawa will keep its pledge, although industry is pressing for a different outcome. The concern is whether the federal government has a credible plan for the transition—and will clearly explain it well before the deadline arrives. Earlier this year, the Federal Court of Appeal upheld the minister’s 2023 refusal to reissue licences for open-net pen salmon farms in the Discovery Islands, affirming that the minister may take a precautionary, conservation-based approach where wild salmon are at risk.
Open-net pen salmon farms place large numbers of Atlantic salmon in coastal waters used by wild Pacific salmon. Unlike a contained land-based facility, an open-net pen does not fully separate farmed fish, their waste, parasites and pathogens from the surrounding marine environment. Not every farm behaves identically. But the evidence shows that open-net pens create biological risks for wild salmon passing through the same waters.
Peer-reviewed research has found that proximity to salmon farms and migration routes can increase juvenile wild salmon’s exposure to farm-associated sea lice in some corridors and has documented plausible and, in some cases, observed routes of parasite and pathogen exchange between farmed and wild fish. Wild salmon already face warming waters, habitat loss, harvest pressure and shifting ocean conditions. We should not add avoidable industrial risk to their migration routes.
Ottawa’s 2024 decision to phase out open-net pens was prudent. Existing licences, which expired in mid-2024, were renewed for five years under stricter sea-lice and reporting conditions. After that, new licences would be available only to closed-containment operations, on nine-year terms. Closed containment is not a rejection of finfish aquaculture. It requires aquaculture to take responsibility for its own waste and biological risks rather than shifting them into public waters.
The existing model relies on a public ecological subsidy that never appears on a balance sheet: coastal waters’ finite ability to absorb, dilute and disperse waste and biological material. When parasites, pathogens or effluent leave a farm, the costs fall on wild salmon, other marine users and communities beyond the farm’s immediate area. Truly closed-containment systems correct that imbalance.
This is where the debate gets harder, and more important. More than 120 B.C. First Nations have publicly called for removal of open-net pens, while some coastal Nations support continued operations and emphasize their own governance and economic interests.
But open-net pen aquaculture creates risks that do not respect maps, boundaries or jurisdiction. Biologically, these risks are not confined by tenures or political boundaries. Wild salmon are migratory: fish born in one watershed pass through the territories of many Nations before reaching the open ocean, then return years later along those same migration routes.
None of this diminishes First Nations’ rights to make decisions within their own territories. It recognizes that stewardship of a migratory resource requires decisions that account for effects beyond any single territory—a shared resource demands shared responsibility.
Ottawa has the legal authority and, after years of study and consultation, the evidence it needs. What is missing is a clear plan—and the certainty that comes from explaining how the 2029 policy will be implemented. A minister who says a policy is “certainly still in place” but will not explain how it will be delivered is not reassuring anyone.
Every month of ambiguity makes implementation harder. The real choice is not between coastal jobs and wild salmon. It is between an outdated model that externalizes risk and a government prepared to see an important policy through.
Tony Allard - Chair, Wild Salmon Forever/Wild First