Green Around the Gills

Judgment Day in Salmon Farming Kills Lawsuit

- Norwegian Government-Owned Cermaq Vs. Don Staniford of the Global Alliance Against Industrial Aquaculture

 

Read Judgment in full online here

Don Staniford Wins!!!!!!

“Salmon-farming activist wins in court” (The Canadian Press, 29 September)

 

“Court dismisses salmon farming defamation suit” (Times Colonist, 29 September)

 

“Activist wins defamation case launched by salmon-farming company” (The Canadian Press/Calgary Herald/Windsor Star/Ottawa Citizen/Montreal Gazette/Metro News/The Province, 29 September)

 

“B.C. Supreme Court upholds right of anti-salmon farm activist to make defamatory remarks/ “Court upholds salmon farm foe's right to make defamatory remarks” (The Vancouver Sun/Times Colonist, 29 September)

Here's the summary Judgment:

Read Judgment in full online here

 

On 15 October 2012, Cermaq's lawyers appealed the judgment:

 Read the 'Notice of Appeal' - online here

Madame Justice Elaine Adair’s judgment will be available from 10.30am (Pacific Standard Time) today (Friday 28 September) via the Supreme Court of British Columbia – online here

 

If Cermaq’s lawsuit and injunction are successful, over fifty statements will be deemed illegal and “any person”, “servants” or “agents” will be ordered to remove the ‘Defamatory Words’ from the internet:

 

Read more background via “Norway’s Injunction Kills Free Speech!” and “Gagging the Truth Becomes Mainstream”

Read Cermaq's 'Amended Notice of Civil Claim' -  online here

 

 “If successful, the injunction would outlaw bumper stickers like ‘Friends Don’t Let Friends Eat Farmed Salmon’ and 'Wild Salmon Don't Do Drugs' and truthful statements corroborated by peer-reviewed science such as ‘Salmon Farming Spreads Disease’ and ‘Salmon Farming Kills Wild Baby Salmon’,” said Don Staniford following the 20-day trial in February.  “It’s a sad but simple fact that Norwegian-owned salmon farming kills all over the globe: whether it is the killing of sea lions in British Columbia; the deaths of workers in Chile; the slaughter of seals in Scotland or the devastation of wild salmon at home in Norway.” 

“Norway now rivals China in its abuse of freedom of speech and the Draconian measures sought to suppress dissent,” continued Staniford.  “The Norwegian Government, via their state ownership of Cermaq, is abusing the Canadian courts to muzzle global criticism of Norwegian-owned salmon farming. Norway’s reputation as a champion of free speech now lies in the gutter along with the Nobel Peace Prize it awarded in 2010 to the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo.  Shame on Norway, shame on Cermaq!”

 

Watch Norway’s TV2 reporting on the lawsuit – online here and online here

 

Speaking after the end of the 20-day trial, David Sutherland (legal counsel for Don Staniford) said:

 

“We need to create a separate cause of action, which does not have the adverse presumptions of defamation that protect the reputations of individual people but forces the corporation to, in fact, prove the sorts of damages and other criteria that are involved in the court of injurious falsehood.”

 

Watch via The Straight's: 'Media lawyer for Don Staniford calls for changes in the way corporations can sue for loss of reputation'

 

 

On the first day of the trial (16 January 2012), a police officer and officer from the Canadian Border Services Agency visited the court to inform Mr. Staniford he would be deported.  Following the trial, Mr. Staniford was deported from Canada and moved immediately to Norway to “slay the dragon in its own lair”.  

 

“Staniford began his journey back to Europe in the same over-the-top theatrical style that inflamed his targets: He arrived at Vancouver International Airport clad in an orange Guantanamo Bay-like jump suit and fake, rubber chains,” reported Global TV (5 March).

 

“The Canadian government chose to intimidate me on day one of my court case by turning up at the courtroom in a very public and calculated display of police force, yet, when deporting me, they were embarrassed by the orange jumpsuit and chose to whisk me out of public sight,” said Staniford in an interview with The Times Colonist (1 March). 

Read more via “Don Staniford: Salmon Farming Critic Removed from Canada” and “Bad Boy Salmon Activists Teaming Up in Norway”

 

Read Cermaq's demand letter of 18 March 2011 launching the lawsuit - online here

Read Wild Salmon First's blog: "How Cermaq Abused the Canadian Courts" - online here 

Read more background via Wild Salmon First - online here

New Zealand's King-Sized Salmon Problem

The Global Alliance Against Industrial Aquaculture (GAAIA) will testify to New Zealand's salmon farming industry tomorrow (26 September) via a conference call from Europe - read a summary of Don Staniford's submission online here.  

"GAAIA believes that further expansion of salmon farming in the Marlborough Sounds will inevitably trigger waste pollution, benthic contamination, toxic algal blooms as well as the spread of infectious diseases and mass mortality events," wrote Don Staniford in GAAIA's formal objection filed in April 2012.   "If the history of salmon farming tells us anything at all it is the fact that overproduction causes problems wherever salmon farms operate.  New Zealand ignores the global warnings at its peril." 

"Permitting salmon farming expansion is an open invitation for disaster and would jeopardise New Zealand’s green and clean image abroad.   Sanctioning even one new farm (let alone nine farms) in the Marlborough Sounds would be 100% irresponsible."

 

"Does ‘100% Pure’ New Zealand seriously intend on promoting the pollution from salmon farming as a tourist attraction and natural wonder of the world?"

"King Salmon claims that: “Fish farming is a highly efficient use of marine space, taking pressure off wild fish, which are currently being exploited beyond sustainable limits.”   Yet it fails to mention the fact that the farming of salmon drains our oceans and leads to a net loss of marine resources (read more via ‘Raising Tigers of the Sea’)."

 

"In June 2012, I participated in a protest with the Green Warriors of Norway outside a conference in Norway attended by King Salmon’s chief executive Grant Rosewarne (and Kofi Annan)," added Staniford in his objection.  "In a letter published in The Marlborough Express (20 June), Mr. Rosewarne claimed: “Opponents continue to promote the myth that it takes many kilograms of wild fish to produce one kilogram of salmon when in fact salmon farms produce more marine protein and oil than their fish consume.” 

 

"However, it is a fact that it takes anywhere between three and ten tonnes of wild fish to produce one tonne of farmed salmon (read the letter to Kofi Annan online here).  “Promoting salmon aquaculture as a solution to the world food crisis is socially and environmentally irresponsible,” said Kurt Oddekalv.  “Farming salmon is stealing precious protein from the mouths of hungry people in Africa and South America. Salmon farmers are modern day pirates of the seven seas.”   

"In view of the all King Salmon’s bullshit it is not surprising to read in The Marlborough Express (25 April) that: “Sustain Our Sounds will complain to the Commerce Commission that New Zealand King Salmon is breaching the Fair Trading Act by misleading the public ahead of its application for more farming space in the Marlborough Sounds.”

"In conclusion, here’s what GAAIA thinks about claims by King Salmon regarding a “strong sense of environmental responsibility” and aim to “lead the world in sustainable, renewable, farmed King salmon resource management” (one for each of the eight new salmon farms proposed):

Read GAAIA's objection filed in April 2012 against King Salmon's plans to expand in the Marlborough Sounds in New Zealand - online here 

 

Read GAAIA's previous blog 'New Zealand's King-Sized Salmon Problem' (30 April 2012) - online here

 

Read GAAIA's press release (26 September): "Staniford Testifies to Salmon Inquiry in New Zealand"

 

Don Staniford visited King Salmon's operations in the Marlborough Sounds back in 2003 and was alarmed even then at the scale of their operations (read more online here and here).  The New Zealand Herald dubbed Mr. Staniford "the fish farm bogeyman".

Read more via "British Activist Rubbishes Wild Fish Farming" (New Zealand Herald, 29 September 2003)

 

Don Staniford is an award-winning campaigner and author.  He is author of ‘A Small Fish in a Big Pond’ (2002), ‘The Five Fundamental Flaws of Sea Cage Fish Farming’ (2002), ‘Closing the Net’ (2003), ‘Silent Spring of the Sea’ (2004), ‘Fish Farmageddon: The Infectious Salmon Aquacalypse’ (2011) and the forthcoming ‘Smoke on the Water, Cancer on the Coast’. 

Justice Cohen’s Get Out of Jail Free Card?

Within the week (“on or before 30 September, 2012”), Justice Bruce Cohen will finally close the door on Canada’s $25 million judicial inquiry into the decline of wild salmon after almost three years of public meetings, evidential hearings and heated discussion. 

Photo: Justice Bruce Cohen at the public hearing in Lillooet in August 2010 smiling in front of the jail (with the Cohen Commission’s Director of Communications Carla Shore and Senior Commission Counsel Brian Wallace)

 

For more photos read “Cohen In Camera – Photo Review of the Salmon Inquiry”

 

The stakes are high.  If Justice Cohen takes a hard-line approach, the Cohen Commission’s final report could see British Columbia’s salmon farming industry in the dock for spreading infectious diseases (and the Canadian Government for aiding and abetting in the cover-up).  

 

However, the likeable Justice Cohen could well give the Canadian Government and the Norwegian-controlled salmon farming industry a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card despite calls to ‘lock ‘em up and throw away the key’.   

“Someone should be going to jail over this,” said John Werring of the David Suzuki Foundation in reaction to a secret Government report last year which detailed over 100 positive cases of ISA in farmed Atlantic salmon and wild Pacific salmon.  “Never in my over 20 years of doing my work have I seen such duplicity by our government.  The closest thing I can relate to is when whistle blowers in the U.S. released documents showing that tobacco companies knew their product harmed people. This document (2004 draft) shows our government has known for years that ISAV has been in the Pacific and they have done nothing except cover it up.  Appalling!”

Read more via “Salmonopoly: Go to Jail, Go Directly to Jail, Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200”

 

“Call it Salmongate,” reported the LA Times last December.  “The deepening controversy over who knew what and when about a deadly virus that may or may not have been detected in West Coast salmon would be obscure fodder for biologists if there weren't so much at stake -- the health of the West's dwindling stocks of wild salmon, for one.  And Canada's $2.1-billion fish farming industry.”

 

Read more via “Did Canada cover up deadly salmon virus? Report suggests yes”

 

Will the Cohen Commission provide justice for wild salmon or will the Canadian Government and Norwegian-owned salmon farming giants (who control over 90% of BC’s salmon farms) wriggle off the hook? 

Even if Justice Cohen does get tough there is no guarantee that the Harper Government will abide by his recommendations.  “Whether Justice Cohen’s recommendations will have any sway on the Harper government’s current agenda is unlikely, but we can only hope that his report will not cater to the very things that put wild salmon at risk,” writes Elena Edwards in Wild Salmon First (24 September). 

“If nothing else, the Cohen Commission succeeded in one thing; it has clearly shown that government has been compromising wild salmon to death and that the DFO is in place not to protect wild fish but to protect the economic proceeds derived from the fish and oceans.  If wild salmon are to have a chance of surviving into the future they must be prioritized before open-net salmon farming, oil pipelines, and mass industrial practices that destroy salmon habitat.  In short, wild salmon must come first.” 

The wait is nearly over.  Following repeated delays and extensions since it’s opening in November 2009, the Cohen Commission’s Terms of Reference now call for the final report to be submitted “on or before September 30, 2012”. 

 

“In completing his final report, Commissioner Bruce Cohen will consider all the evidence entered at evidentiary hearings and approximately 900 submissions from the public,” wrote the Cohen Commission in March 2012.  “More than 160 witnesses testified at the hearings, resulting in 14,000 pages of transcripts and 2,100 exhibits”. 

 

Justice Cohen received final submissions from a wide range of stakeholders including the BC Salmon Farmers Association, the First Nations Coalition, the Conservation Coalition and the Aquaculture Coalition.   Read more details online here

 

Meanwhile, the salmon farming industry, First Nations, fishermen and the people of British Columbia wait for Justice Cohen’s final report and the Canadian Government’s reaction with baited breath. 

 

The Norwegian-controlled salmon farming industry, in particular, has a great deal of money riding on the Cohen Commission.  If Justice Cohen adopts the recommendations of First Nations, the Aquaculture Coalition and the Conservation Coalition then salmon farms located on the Fraser River sockeye migration route could be removed. 

 

The submission from the First Nations Coalition, for example, recommended “removal and relocation”:

 

Moreover, if Justice Cohen blames disease-ridden salmon farms for the collapse of the multi-million dollar Fraser River sockeye fishery then the floodgates to legal action will surely be opened.

 

“Are your ministry and the Norwegian fish farmers adequately insured to cover damages if we find out BC is an ISAV suspect area, no one told us and it spreads because you did nothing?” asked Alexandra Morton in an open letter to the Canadian Fisheries Minister back in March 2011.    

 

“Until DFO recognizes that salmon farms amplify pathogens to dangerous levels, I will maintain my opinion that DFO has no intention of protecting wild salmon from salmon farms,” wrote Alexandra Morton in another open letter to DFO last week (20 September).  “I suspect you have been pressured to make it easier for the salmon farmers to collect insurance and apply for compensation.”

 

Certainly, Superheroes 4 Salmon thinks it is very rich of the Norwegian salmon farming industry to be claiming compensation for recent outbreaks of Infectious Hematopoietic Necrosis (IHN).   West Coast Environmental Law, for example, reported last month (14 August):

Read more via “Will your tax dollars subsidize BC’s unsustainable fish farms?”

 

If BC salmon farmers are successful in claiming compensation against wild salmon for spreading infectious diseases, then it beggars belief how much compensation those stakeholders dependent upon wild salmon would be eligible for if Justice Cohen rules against disease-ridden farmed salmon?  

 

First Nations have already filed a class action lawsuit focused on the devastation caused by salmon farming on the wild salmon in Kwicksutaineuk/Ah-Kwa-Mish First Nation (KAFN)'s Territory around the Broughton Archipelago.

 

“When juvenile pink and chum salmon in our Territories attempt to migrate out to the ocean, they face a gauntlet of open net-pen salmon farms densely stocked with non-native Atlantic salmon,” said Bob Chamberlin, KAFN Chief and the Representative Plaintiff in the lawsuit in May 2012.  “These salmon feedlots cause the incubation, amplification and transmission of diseases and parasites to the wild juvenile salmon. The Cohen Commission of Inquiry into the Decline of the Fraser River Sockeye shone a pretty bright light on the evidence that was hidden by industry and our governments about the impacts of open net-pens, including introduced diseases.  What more are they hiding?”

 

At last, the wait for Justice Cohen’s final report is nearly over.  Keep an eye on the Cohen Commission’s web-site this week as the Canadian Government and Norwegian-owned salmon farming industry wriggle for all their worth! 

 

Read blog in full online here