Skip to content

Along the Fraser: Stitch in time saves nine

Cuts to Salmon Enhancement Program rescinded.
web1_JE.stream1
Contributed Salmon habitat along 128th Avenue and 216th Street, saved with cut reversal.

Less than a week after Fisheries Minister Dominic LeBlanc cancelled B.C.’s multi-focused Salmon Enhancement Program – an action that evoked wide-spread outcries from the public, stream keepers, teachers, the B.C. Cattlemen’s Association, and western MPs – all the cuts have been rescinded.

I got a personal phone call to tell me this from MP Terry Beech, parliamentary secretary to Leblanc. Other local stakeholders who defended the program did, as well.

Beech told me the Resource Restoration Unit has continued life for the duration of the Liberal government’s reign. The restoration unit provides technical support for streamkeepers working to enhance fish habitat.

Coho depend on this program.

On May 23, DFO West Coast director Rebecca Reid had already issued job notices to 16 retoration employees. They’re back on the job today, no doubt wondering how secure they are.

Also saved from the chopping block is steelhead and cutthroat trout production in hatcheries, along with education and community support programs, including Salmonids in the Classroom (Stream to Sea).

DFO provides chum eggs to 900 school aquariums. Contracted DFO consultants assigned to school districts supply knowledge, technical assistance, and equipment to teachers working with kids who release fry in local streams during emotional rituals often termed “Good-bye, Chums.”

According to Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows MP Dan Ruimy, the thinking in Ottawa was that “teachers could download the information they needed” to run the program without support.

“That’s totally insane,” I said, wondering how they could download eggs, or adjust aquarium oxygen levels while writing lesson plans.

Many wouldn’t bother.

I last quoted retired DFO superintendent John Davis, who told the Cohen Commission in 2011 it was time for the public to take part in DFO decision making that affects us all.

Government should have heard his words as a warning of impending disaster. The people who care for salmon daily must be consulted, their knowledge respected. Teachers know salmon studies in classrooms instill a love of nature that lives into adulthood. How better to guarantee the existence of a resource?

The unit allows restoration of fresh water streams. Streamkeepers know salmon can’t exist without them, yet LeBlanc has ignored them.

Had he accepted repeated invitations to meet with the local streamkeeper committee Ruimy formed for knowledge and guidance, he would have known this.

The ignorant cancellation of proven enhancement programs was made in what the ministry ironically terms the Program Integrity Exercise. While it directed $1.4 billion to coastal programs like the Coast Guard, critics from all corners of the province pointed out LeBlanc was throwing the baby out with inland bathwater, and should reverse cuts immediately.

Give the Minister credit for correcting his error. Give critics credit for proving that democracy – by the people, for the people – works. Credit the Pacific caucus – 17 MPs who gave Leblanc facts about the program that should have come from senior DFO.

“To a tee, every member said hold on a second,” Ruimy told me.

He argued for reversing the cuts, and wanted to tell me why.

“If it hadn’t been for meetings I had with you and local streamkeepers [ARMS, KEEPS, Watershed Watch, Pacific Stream Keepers Federation], I wouldn’t have known what to say to the minister. That group gave me the knowledge I needed.”

And here lies the crucial point in going forward. Just as we can save a good garment with a single stitch made early, we can save our wild salmon by repairing flaws in the decision-making process that threatens to ruin a priceless resource.

The main threat today, as Davis suggests, is how the minister gets information he needs to make intelligent decisions.

It’s time to consult the folks who know and love salmon before he makes more destructive cuts.

Jack Emberly is a retired teacher, local author and environmentalist.

web1_JE.stream2
Recent enhancement of stream T2 in Maple Ridge under the SEP program. Previous cuts threatened project.