I'm speaking to you from 'Namgis territory, here on the Fraser sockeye migration route, and I want to start by saying that I'm grateful for the Government of Canada's response to COVID-19. There is no other country I would rather be in right now.
For the moment, policy is keeping pace with emerging science on an emerging virus. However, this not the case when it comes to salmon runs of national importance. If fishing were the dominant extinction driver for salmon runs, the fact that most salmon fisheries have been increasingly closed over the last few years would have caused the salmon runs to increase. As well, in one of the most heavily farmed regions of the coast, the Broughton Archipelago, wild salmon are declining in the unlogged and logged watersheds.
For some reason, the Canadian government is ignoring critical warnings that salmon farms are harming wild salmon runs. These are coming from the Auditor General's office; Dr. Mona Nemer, the chief science adviser of Canada; and Stephen Harper's Cohen commission, which recommended that salmon farms be prohibited from the Discovery Islands unless Minister Bernadette Jordan can demonstrate, by September 30 of this year, that the risk from the farms is minimal. However, this is not going to be possible for her.
Last fall, then minister of fisheries, Jonathan Wilkinson, announced that the 2019 sockeye return was the lowest in the history of this country; yet on March 1 of this year, DFO granted salmon farms permission to have an unlimited number of sea lice. Predictably, 99% of the young Fraser sockeye on the migration route were infected with sea lice levels that we know will reduce their survival. Wild salmon are simply not making it to sea past the salmon farms.
On July 30, we found out the sockeye trying to go by Port Hardy were infected with an average of 42 lice per fish. These fish are 10 centimetres long, with 42 lice. If this continues, there will be nothing you can do to boost their survival. You have to deal with the salmon farming issue. The sockeye infected with sea lice this year are the dominant cycle. This is the fish the Fraser River nations and commercial fisheries depend on, and we will know the outcome of this infection in 2022.
Then there's the situation with the piscine orthoreovirus, or PRV. One DFO lab says this virus is natural to British Columbia, it's low risk and not to worry about it, but another DFO lab is saying it's a significant risk to Pacific salmon. Academic research is saying that it is not natural to the B.C. coast, as it's from the Atlantic. My research is saying this virus is spreading.
In 2018, Washington state prohibited PRV-infected farmed salmon because they are too big a risk to wild salmon. As a result, the farms in Washington state are standing empty because there are no clean fish for companies to access to put into the pens. Here in B.C., the industry told the Federal Court of Canada that it would be significantly impacted if it was not allowed to farm with PRV-infected salmon, so DFO policy has decided that the virus is natural and low risk. If you don't see a scandal here, it's because you're not looking.
Salmon farms are the greatest single impact on wild salmon since the glaciers, and this impact is entirely removable. The one place on this coast where sea lice are going down is the Broughton Archipelago, where first nations have removed several million farmed Atlantic salmon.
Here are my recommendations to you. You should create a Pacific region director of wild salmon. We need somebody at a senior management level in DFO whose whole life is focusing on restoring wild salmon, and this must be done in partnership with first nations. You should mandate the removal of salmon farms from the ocean, beginning with the biggest migration routes. This would attract significant land-based investment because the infrastructure for this industry is already there.
Also, please harness the remarkable science in DFO that can read the immune system of fish, allowing the fish to talk to us, to tell us where and how we are hurting them, and whether we are making that better or worse. Then the fish themselves will guide their own restoration.
If Canada follows this path, truly meaningful reconciliation begins. We jump right into the fight against climate change by significantly increasing the annual growth in forests and every fishing country in the world will come to Canada to learn how we did this.
Thank you so much for allowing me to be here.