Recently the BC Court of Appeal fined an anti-fish farm activist named Don Staniford $75,000 plus court fees for defamation. Staniford’s work to advertise the dangers fish farms pose to wild salmon stocks did not constitute fair comment, said the judge, because he failed to adequately cite scientific information.

Staniford, a British citizen visiting BC, campaigned against Norwegian fish farming giant Mainstream Canada with mock cigarette packages reading “Salmon Farming Kills,” “Salmon Farming is Poison,” and “Salmon Farming Seriously Damages Health.” The Court of Appeal found these statements to be defamatory.

Although the BC Supreme Court ruled Staniford’s message legally fell within his right to ‘fair comment,’ the BC Court of Appeal overturned that decision, saying Staniford’s claims failed to fully meet the requirements needed to invoke fair comment protections. What he neglected to do was ‘sufficiently state’ the factual basis of his claims on what the court deemed to be the defamatory pages on his website and a press release.

Although Staniford provided access to scientific information elsewhere on his blog, the court was not willing to consider the website’s content as a whole.

The crucial element of the ruling lies in this one detail: the court agreed that Staniford would have qualified for the defence of ‘fair comment’ to win his case if he had been clearer about where his information came from.

For activists, advocates, citizen journalists and campaigners working on issues related to big industry in Canada, the BC Court of Appeal’s decision is likely to cause some concern.

Andrew Gage, staff lawyer at West Coast Environmental Law, says that “there is a real risk that the decision will chill legitimate public debate” in Canada, especially from within the activist community.

“In general deep-pocketed companies suing individuals is not a level playing field and has the effect of silencing industry critics. Moreover, defamation law, despite some important advances in recent years, in my view still favours private interests over public interest debate,” he told DeSmog Canada.

Although, he adds, “it’s not all a bad news story.” Individuals are still free to discern what science is reliable and what science may reflect the interests of industry.

“The BC Court of Appeal decision left untouched the ruling by the BC Supreme Court that judges should not choose between different versions of the science, allowing activists to speak about scientific information that may be at odds with industry-funded scientists,” he said.  

The issue of sufficient citation, however, stands.

“On the other hand” he said, “and this is where the court didn't think Staniford did enough, activists will apparently need to be very active in directing the public to the scientific or other factual information on which their statements are based. While that may be reasonable for articles and blog posts, it could be challenging for some forms of graphic activism – bumper stickers and posters, for example.”

Another notable aspect of the case is the divide it draws between corporate accountability and the duties of individuals.

Individuals like Staniford are responsible for actively citing scientific sources to defend their claims regarding industrial practices. On the other side of the public arena, especially in advertising, industrial corporations are not.

Just think back to Enbridge’s embarrassing removal of the 1000 square kilometres of islands dotting the proposed oil tanker route off the coast of British Columbia. Although Enbridge most certainly misinformed the public about the dangers of oil tanker traffic associated with the Northern Gateway Pipeline, the company was not held accountable to the public in doing so.

Advocates for an oil free coast, however, may find themselves in legal trouble if they aren’t careful to cite their sources when criticizing Enbridge.

The farmed fish industry is also legally allowed to advertise farmed salmon without citing scientific research on the negative health and environmental effects of farmed salmon production and consumption.

According to Gage, the overall problem with BC’s fair comment laws lies in the general imbalance within the legal system. Most essentially, critics of industry should be free to oppose industry without the fear of harsh reprisal.

“We can all press for laws that strike a better balance,” he says. “Quebec has banned lawsuits aimed at silencing public critics (known as SLAPP suits), while Australia has banned large companies from suing for defamation at all.”

“BC,” he adds, also “needs laws to protect free speech.”

Staniford, who has temporarily suspended activities on his blog, plans to take his case to the Supreme Court of Canada.

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A report, published on July 11th of this year, reveals that the Piscine Reovirus (PRV) is decimating British Columbia salmon populations. This report, published in Virology Journal, was co-authored by researchers from the Atlantic Veterinary College at the University of Prince Edward Island, Centro de Investigaciones Biologicas in Chile and, and the Raincoast Research Society in British Columbia. The research shows that B.C. fish tested positive in both farmed and wild salmon sources.

Yet, despite the report’s findings, officials for the Canadian government’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) claim that the virus is no cause for alarm. As with any of the three deadly European viruses found on the coasts of B.C., the DFO doesn’t consider the appearance of a virus as a threat. They will only take action in the event of a major disease outbreak.

Twyla Roscovich sought to find out why in her Documentary, Salmon Confidential. In it, she asked Dr. Gary Marty, B.C. Health Vet, what his conclusions were about PRV contamination, in relation to the drastic decline in fish populations in the Fraser River and Rivers Inlet Sockeye. Dr. Marty said that he doesn’t know what the problem is, so the virus shouldn’t be blamed.

“When it was first reported in 2010, I was very concerned. So, we went and tested 625 fish and found it in just about every fish. We found it in healthy fish… So, I decided that I couldn’t provide any interpretation for what this meant and I decided it was probably not a major concern. “ – Dr. Gary Marty.

Farmed fish is a multi-million dollar industry in B.C. and salmon is what the province is known for worldwide. Scientists are concerned that the DFO and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA)—the governing bodies in charge of protecting the fish—are also responsible for the state of the industry. That “is a major conflict of interest,” said Dr. Larry Dill, professor of Biological Sciences at Simon Fraser University.

It is likely that the virus was imported to B.C. out of Norway, by way of the fish farming industry. Samples taken from the European virus and the B.C. virus show enough similarities to assume that they are from the same strain. Ninety-eight percent of the Pacific salmon fish farms in B.C. are Norwegian-owned.

The farms are crowded along the coast of the Discovery passage—the narrowest salmon route in the world and the DFO approved location of eleven fish farms. The only wild fish populations that are experiencing a decline in numbers are those that travel through the Discovery passage to spawn. Wild salmon that take a more westerly route and do not pass through the farms are showing no signs of disease. 

Biologist Alexandra Morton, along with many other scientists in Canada, Chile and Norway are convinced that the PRV virus is a very serious problem. PRV was first identified in Atlantic salmon farms in Norway in 1999. It is considered lethal to fish as it has proven to lead to the disease HSMI – heart and skeletal muscle inflammation.

According to the most recent press release by the Department of Wild Salmon, “HSMI can cause lesions in the heart and muscles and can make the heart soft, impeding the fish’s ability to swim and uptake oxygen.”

The 2012 Annual General Report by the Norwegian company, Marine Harvest—the leading salmon aquaculture company in British Columbia—cites HSMI as the second largest cause of fish mortality.

The inflammation of the heart and muscles makes tissues blood-logged and weak, which means that the fish are unlikely to have the athletic ability to swim against the strong current to spawning grounds. This decreased ability to swim upstream may be linked to the thousands of mysterious pre-spawn fish mortalities in recent years.

There are many papers written by Norwegian experts on the relationship between PRV and HSMI. One such paper by Gustavo Palacios et al. recommends that “measures must be taken to control PRV not only because it threatens domestic salmon production but also due to the potential for transmission to wild salmon populations.”

It has been very difficult for scientists to do proper research on farmed fish in Canada. Fish farm records are considered confidential which means they are not available to scientists or the public. The farmed fish samples used in the Department of Wild Salmon’s research had to be taken, primarily, from supermarkets.

Morton claims that her research is being slowed by her “lack of ability to go to the farms and test.” Out of necessity, Morton has been forced to conduct her research on supermarket fish, which have proven to be a viable source of the virus.

What Morton's team has found in Canadian supermarkets is appalling. A healthy salmon ought to be fat with dark orange flesh. The supermarket fish were skinny, grey-gilled, with deformities and visible lesions.

“A skinny fish is a sick fish,” Morton said and Dr. Marty agrees. “Sick fish,” he said, “don’t eat, and fish that don’t eat won’t grow. It is expected that fish that make it to market are healthy. They are also inspected by CFIA.”

Morton and Dr. Kibenge from the lab for fish viruses at the Atlantic Veterinary College at the University of Prince Edward Island “have found PRV in nearly 97% of the farmed salmon tested in B.C. supermarkets.” Since these findings the Canadian Food Inspection Agency has attacked the credibility of Dr. Kibenge's research, suggesting his international certification be revoked.

The province projects that the presence of the virus won't be a threat according to the Department of Wild Salmon, “there is no evidence to support the province’s theory.” 

In Morton's opinion, the main concern is that “the viability of wild salmon has been put at risk in favour of the viability of farmed salmon.”

*images and video courtesy of the Department of Wild Salmon.

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British Columbia’s Fraser River was once the most productive sockeye salmon river in the world. In recent history, hundreds of millions of salmon would return to its tributaries, spawning along the thousands of kilometers of rivers and streams that serve as nesting grounds for this keystone species. 

During the early 1990’s scientists began to document a significant drop in the returning salmon to the Fraser River basin. With each passing year the number of returning salmon continued to fall. Over the years the cause of this enigmatic decline has been attributed to several different environmental happenings, but has largely remained elusive.

The new documentary film ‘Salmon Confidential,’ directed by filmmaker Twyla Roscovich and featuring biologist and wild-salmon advocate Alexandra Morton, tells the untold story of the biologists studying BC’s salmon while operating under gag orders imposed by the federal government. As the documentary uncovers, these researchers were prevented from informing the public of a new virus referred to as Salmon Leukemia Virus (SLV) and the proliferation of Infectious Salmon Anemia (ISA) in British Columbia’s wild salmon stocks.

In its current state, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans is mandated with the conflicting task of protecting wild fish stocks while at the same time fostering the development of an aquaculture (farmed-fish) industry. On a stage seemingly set by Kafka himself, numerous independent field researchers who discover the proliferation of (ISA) in British Columbian waters were forced to turn over their samples of ISA infected fish to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) who in turn astonishingly claimed that BC wild salmon tested ‘negative’ for ISA.  When three leading international laboratories released findings of ISA in British Columbian wild fish stocks the CFIA went on the attack and attempted to discredit scientists working at prominent research bodies such as the World Organization for Animal Health. 

Crucial to the story is the fact that international knowledge of contaminated salmon in BC would have a severe effect on the international trade of farmed salmon – a multi-million dollar industry (nearly $500 million in 2010 for salmon alone). Confirmed cases of ISA or SLV in BC fish would mean closed US and Asian borders for BC farmed salmon.

For this reason government and industry have worked overtime to obscure the existence of infectious diseases in British Columbian farmed salmon.

In the meantime, wild salmon stocks exposed to fish farms in the wild, are rapidly declining and suffering from dangerously high pre-spawn mortality rates. Fish migrating inland from the ocean were dying before the had the chance to release their eggs. Alexandra Morton traveled along BC riverbeds to document and study these mysterious deaths – much to the chagrin of government and industry. 

Not satisfied with their ability to solely control the testimony of scientists on the government payroll, in May 2012, British Columbia agricultural minister Don McRae introduced Bill C-37, the Animal Health Act, in an attempt to prohibit the disclosure of an outbreak of disease.  Specifically, section 16 of Bill C-37 states that “a person must refuse…to disclose…information that would reveal that a notifiable or reportable disease is or may be present in a specific place.”

This Act would impose a penalty of 2 years in prison and a $75,000 fine for naming the location where a person found a disease in an animal. Scientists like Morton suddenly found themselves at risk of imprisonment for their work on ISA and SLV.   After a substantial outcry the Bill was quietly withdrawn from consideration.  

In October 2012 the Honourable Bruce Cohen presented the final report of a Commission of Inquiry into the decline of Sockeye salmon in the Fraser River. 

Unable to find a ‘smoking gun,’ Cohen asserted that ‘Further research is crucial to understanding the long-term productivity and sustainability of the Fraser River sockeye salmon.’

The final Cohen Commission report noted several major issues were playing a role in salmon declines – including the conflict of interest at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, climate change and the weakening of species protection in the recent Omnibus Budget Bill C-38. Over 70 recommendations for the recovery of salmon were made throughout the report. These recommendations have yet to be implemented.

But the story doesn’t end with a bleak forecast predicting the end of BC’s wild Salmon stocks. In fact, the story doesn’t really end at all.

The documentary wraps up with Alexandra Morton in the field instructing local individuals on the techniques necessary to properly preserve samples to be sent to labs for inspections and testing for pathogens and viruses.

According to Morton, it is up to citizens to create what she calls the “Department of Wild Salmon.” Monitor of the species needs to be done on the ground and by the people who live in closest contact with the fish, she says.

And the story, for that reason, continues to develop up until this very moment.

There are still multitudes of fish farms populating the coast of British Columbia, packing millions of fish into tiny pens that serve as ideal breeding grounds for the types of pathogens and superbugs that threaten wild fish stocks.

And there are still the champions of ecological sustainability – eco-heroes if you will – volunteers and concerned citizens acting against the government’s wishes by gathering samples and submitting them for testing.

These individuals, who together make up the newly-formed Department of Wild Salmon, are using science to resist a profit-propelled interaction with nature that, if not regulated by organizations that prioritize preservation over short term economic profits, will surely provide BC’s wild salmon a sordid chapter in the book of BC’s history.

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To watch the documentary, go to the Salmon Confidential website where you can also find a calendar of showings throughout BC.

On April 18th, David Suzuki and Alexandra Morton will attend a screening in Vancouver. Tickets are available online.

In the words of Suzuki: “For years, Alexandra Morton has soldiered on providing evidence of and calling for action on the catastrophic state of wild salmon. Government and industries have thwarted her over and over again. This film clearly documents that governments do not put protection of wild salmon at the top of their priorities and Canadians should be outraged. I am."

Image Credit: Screen shots from Salmon Confidential, available online for free.

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