Joseph Planta's Commentary - thecommentary.ca

Wednesday, 24 November 2004

Wild salmon and Sheila Copps

By Joseph Planta

VANCOUVER - Last week, on The Commentary's interview segment, I talked to two authors. The subject of their books are as disparate as the individuals themselves.

A week ago, I spoke with Otto Langer, a former federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans biologist, and a contributor to a new book, A Stain Upon the Sea (Harbour, 2004). I am neither a biologist, nor a fish consumer. Never do I opt for anything on the seafood side of the menu. However, I realise as many have the perils of fish farming, and the debate is doubtless a prescient and necessary one in this country, not to mention this province.

Langer, long a critic of the DFO he once worked for, is now the Director of the Marine Conservation program with the David Suzuki Foundation. He and his fellow authors (the Sun's Stephen Hume, Alexandra Morton, Betty C. Keller, Rosella M. Leslie, and Don Staniford) make a forceful case against fish farming. It seems that farms on this coast, in the practice of aquaculture, are using methods that are less than healthy for the fish, as well as the surrounding habitat. The use of open net pens allow for greater incidences of escapes, as well as sordid waste that's dispersed into the water.

The book, an important one, castigates not only the multinational corporations who farm on the coast, but also the federal and provincial governments who have been complicit. The business-friendly BC Liberal government has supported the aquaculture industry, and in my chat with Mr. Langer, he says though regrettable it's almost expected. The BC Liberal party, at their recent convention in Whistler, approved a resolution to streamline the process by which a prospective fish farmer could obtain a licence. Langer's blame is placed on large part on the federal government, whose mandate to protect the habitat has been largely abdicated.

As I said in the interview, I was approaching the important issue for its political aspect, as well as the consumer angle of it. Time and again, stories about the safety of consuming large amounts of farmed fish crop up in the mainstream media. Langer suggests that sending a message as a consumer, whether you order fish or not, is to ask your server if the restaurant you dine in serves wild or farmed salmon. Doing so points out to the restaurant that there is interest in product that is wild.

The damage with which farmed salmon has calculated on our coast is well documented in the essay by biologist Alexandra Morton. She discusses the decline of the wild salmon run through the Broughton Archipelago, which was known to see runs as much as 3.7 million decline to a mere 147,000 in a single generation. The pacific salmon is very much a part of the British Columbian identity as much as language is part of the Quebecois. And as Rafe Mair warned, when I spoke with him a month ago, it is the protection of our environment that is paramount over anything else. Once you screw up the environment, it's over. It ain't like razing a house and rebuilding it. Would that it were.

***

The other book that was fodder for discussion in my interviews of last week was Sheila Copps's memoir, Worth Fighting For (McClelland and Stewart, 2004). Ms. Copps, the former Liberal cabinet minister in the Chrétien regime, was en route to deliver a speech at Sir Wilfred Laurier University in Waterloo, when she called in to discuss her book one that's created quite a stir these past number of weeks. The book was widely anticipated just after she lost the Liberal nomination in Hamilton East-Stoney Creek, and signed a contract with M&S. She promised to dish, and did she. Critics have considered the book noting more than sour grapes on her part having been run over by the Martin juggernaut. Her misgivings over the Martin regime are well chronicled in the book, and she was willing to share them with me further.

The allegations with which have been of issue arise from the 1995 budget where then finance minister Paul Martin's budget speech contained a passage whereby the Canada Health Act would be done away with. She claims she went to Martin, who feigned that nothing could be done as the budget had already gone to the printers. Copps then lobbies Chrétien who intervenes, and soon enough Copps receives a call from Martin's deputy, now head of the Bank of Canada, David Dodge, asking for Copps's home fax number so that he could fax a new version of the speech where the offending parts regarding the CHA are excised. Official Ottawa, rocked by Copps allegation, which she vehemently stands by, has seen the Martin camp rise in anger roundly denying Copps's clamour. Even Dodge's has denied Copps's charge. Copps told me, that it's telling of the Martin and his "henchmen" that they discredit her book, especially since the regime, she charges, has been successful in propagating "half truths and misinformation."

One thing that Copps discusses in her book is Paul Martin's association with Earnscliffe, a communications group that is loaded with Martinites (or Martini's as is en vogue if you've seen the latest Roy Peterson cartoon). As well, what's intriguing is Copps's mention of Lansdowne Technologies, a firm partly owned by Martin, just around the time it was getting untendered government contracts from his finance ministry. These important aspects are worth further discussion.

I told Copps it was a good book. I would recommend it for her take on the years she was in office, much like a good dishy book awash with gossip and the behind-the-scenes peak that she provides. For many years, she was at the fore of our political discourse, and one of her era's more colourful personalities. Like any political book, it's a welcome addition to the literature of our politics, but whether it stands the test of time is for historians to decide. Some popular critics doubt its credibility and reliability, but it's Copps's case. It's a good rough draft of these past 10-20 years of Ottawa politics, but if you're to believe Paul Martin, it's rougher than anything else.

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A Stain Upon the Sea: West Coast Salmon Farming by Stephen Hume, et al. published by Harbour, $26.95 CDN (ISBN: 1550173170); and Worth Fighting For by Sheila Copps, published by McClelland and Stewart, $32.99 CDN (ISBN: 0771022824).

A Stain Upon the Sea, by Stephen Hume, Alexandra Morton, Betty C. Keller, Rosella M. Leslie, Otto Langer, and Don Staniford; with a Preface by David T. Suzuki, and an Introduction by Terry Glavin. (Harbour, 2004)

Otto Langer talked with The Commentary's Joseph Planta in an interview that can be found here: http://www.thecommentary.ca/ontheline/20041117a.html

Click to buy this book from Amazon.ca: A Stain Upon the Sea: West Coast Salmon...

Worth Fighting For, by Sheila Copps. (McClelland and Stewart, 2004)

The Hon. Sheila Copps talked with The Commentary's Joseph Planta in an interview that can be found here: http://www.thecommentary.ca/ontheline/20041118a.html

Click to buy this book from Amazon.ca: Worth Fighting For

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