Mr. Speaker, citizens concerned about destructive salmon farming practices have declared November 9 to 14 as a Global Week of Action.
Where salmon are farmed in open pens alongside wild salmon and sea trout, wild fish suffer. Globally, wild salmon and trout populations have been reduced by 50% where open net salmon farms exist.
In 2007, juvenile Fraser River sockeye were infested with high levels of sea lice as they passed by the open net salmon farms in the northern Georgia Strait.
In 2009, most of that same generation of salmon failed to return to the Fraser River, closing aboriginal, recreational and commercial fisheries, and putting the future sustainability of that salmon run in jeopardy.
Citizens are demanding answers from the government. How will it protect wild salmon, the very lifeblood of our Pacific ecosystem, from the adverse effects of open net pen salmon farms?