Also for the record, because I was able to post my question about it in circumstances where it couldn't be ignored, I finally got an answer from Morton about why she pushed so hard to get farms responsibility shifted to the DFO even though she complains bitterly about their management. She did this in spite of the fact that it weakened considerably the leverage she was able to bring to bear in her campaign to eliminate the farms and consequently, her possible effectiveness:
Alexandra Morton: "The reason I went to court started with a deal between Marine Harvest and a coalition of enviros I was part of. To allow Marine Harvest to fallow one route of Broughton every spring Marine Harvest said their farms and to be 2-3 times bigger. The enviros were good with that, but I wasn't because as part of my sea lice research I examined thousands of juvenile salmon (live) as they approached and passed the fish farms in Broughton. Sea lice is a numbers game. They are allowed only a few live per fish, but if they triple the number of fish of course the lice numbers increase. SO I left the coalition and found a lawyer to get an injunction and he said "you know what this whole thing is not legal" they are not farms and should not be managed by the province who have no responsibility to the wild fish. Actually the whole concept of fish farming in net pens runs counter to the Constitution of Canada because no one is allowed to privatize ocean spaces or own fish in the marine waters..... However, the feds are as bad as the province and with Harper hacking away at the Fisheries Act, there really is no progress except that the Broughton sites remain in their original size, most are expired because First Nations refuse to OK their renewal"
It turns out to have been a completely ad hoc, opportunistic decision suggested by a lawyer as a way to disrupt an agreement with Marine Harvest to fallow sites on the migration route because she disagreed with the terms.
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Topic: For The Record (Read 2318 times)