The fourth set of questions the Tribune asked the candidates running in the provincial election is about their stance on health care, environment, fisheries and jobs:
The Fraser River and its tributaries run by our doorsteps.
What measures are needed to protect and enhance dwindling wild salmon stocks in B.C.?
What is your position on fish farms being located in wild salmon migration routes?
Answers are as follows:
The Fraser River and its tributaries run by our doorsteps. What measures are needed to protect and enhance dwindling wild salmon stocks in B.C.?
What is your position on fish farms being located in wild salmon migration routes?
Bob Simpson, Independent, Cariboo North
The recommendations of the Cohen Inquiry must be fully implemented, immediately.
We also need to restore federal and provincial funding to wild salmon habitat and species rehabilitation projects in all of BC’s watersheds, especially the Fraser. Applications for additional industry and municipal effluent flow into the Fraser must be subject to a cumulative impact assessment and the overall effluent discharge into the Fraser reduced over the next decade.
The government must assist fish farms to invest in closed-containment systems, preferably on land.
The rest of the world is moving in this direction and the market is beginning to demand closed-containment certification, so B.C. must move in this direction as quickly as possible.
Duncan Barnett, New Democratic Party, Cariboo North
My experience as a Fraser Basin Council regional co-ordinator and director taught me a lot about watersheds, fisheries and the importance of habitat protection.
The Horsefly and Quesnel Rivers are some of the most important salmon spawning habitats and runs in British Columbia.
We need to ensure that we protect habitat and apply the precautionary principle.
The Cohen Commission on the Decline of Fraser River Sockeye put forward several recommendations, and the NDP has committed to implementing those that fall under provincial jurisdiction, including siting of open-net fish farms.
We support sustainable aquaculture, and there are major innovations being made in closed containment systems which would be a positive step.
We can take several practical steps now to improve the outcome for salmon, like modernizing the Water Act and banning cosmetic pesticides, which the NDP has committed to do if we form government.
We also need to address hydrological changes in watersheds due to the impact of beetles and climate change on our forests.
Coralee Oakes, Liberal Party, Cariboo North
Our government is committed to maintaining healthy populations of wild salmon for the environmental, cultural and economic contributions they make to British Columbia.
The Cohen Commission report on Fraser River sockeye released last fall contained eight recommendations directed at the provincial government, covering issues like pesticide management, oil spill response, water sustainability, environmental monitoring and riparian zone management.
Our government accepted all eight of those recommendations.
We have also accepted the recommendation to freeze new salmon farm tenures in the Discovery Islands - which are near wild salmon migration routes - and we will work with the aquaculture industry, the federal government, and First Nations to further study and analyze the siting and impacts of aquaculture.
In our platform we have also announced that we will be directing all revenues from fishing licenses to be provided to the Freshwater Fisheries Society for conservation activities by 2015/16.