Over the last decade, Federal Ministers of Fisheries & Oceans Canada have consistently had to overrule Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) in order to ensure DFO executes on its primary responsibility to safeguard Canada’s fisheries and oceans resources.

In 2023, former Fisheries Minister Joyce Murray embraced the Precautionary Approach in her decision to remove open-net pen salmon farms from the Discovery Islands in BC stating: “We can’t afford any manageable stresses because the failure to protect wild salmon is simply not an option.”

In the House Fisheries Committee, we’ve also heard from many experts about the ways in which DFO officials have attempted to censor and squash the science that proved the threat of open-net pen salmon farms to wild Pacific salmon. This included DFO scientist, Dr. Kristi Miller-Saunders, who documented the dangerous viruses that reached wild Pacific salmon from open-net pen operations. As The Globe and Mail reported, her work was buried by higher-ups in her department, and it took 10 years for her research to be published.

It’s time to #endthepens. The future of wild Pacific salmon depends on it.

Read Green Party Leader Elizabeth May’s full letter in The Hill Times here.

Take action now. Send a letter to the Prime Minister.