Thank you.
I absolutely agree. I know where the rot is because I have ordered thousands of pages of conversations between DFO employees, but a lot of the worst players have left. It's very interesting. After the Discovery Islands decision, for example, Allison Webb left. The lead veterinarian left. The director of science left.
The ones holding the ball now are riding the coattails of a long history of deception of the B.C. public. I feel that they should be reassigned to perhaps move the industry onto land. Perhaps if the aquaculture management division.... They may be afraid for their own survival at this point. It makes me so angry that this extraordinary science, which we are paying for as taxpayers and which is being developed in DFO, has been locked in a room, with tape put over the mouths of these scientists. It is a huge disservice. I would imagine, for example, that if our current director of aquaculture would say, “Hey, stop dealing with the net-pen feedlots and get this industry into tanks”, she might be very effective at doing that.
The lack of honesty within the department has become so pervasive that I'm not sure they really even understand that the lights are on and we can see what is going on. For them to downgrade the conditions of licence when Mowi currently has an average of eight sea lice per fish in Quatsino and the limit that is considered safe for wild salmon is three, and when the aquaculture management division wants to allow this to continue.... We can see where this is going, and if we don't control it right now, we will lose our wild salmon.