spark*activation Please keep Canada’s promise to protect wild Pacific salmon

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<p>Dear Prime Minister,</p><p><span style="color:#000000;">I am writing to respectfully urge you to keep Canada’s commitment to end open-net-pen salmon farming in British Columbia’s coastal waters by </span><span style="color:#222222;">June 30, 2029</span><span style="color:#000000;">.</span></p><p><span style="color:#000000;">Wild Pacific salmon are integral to British Columbia’s ecological, cultural, and economic well-being. They support commercial and recreational fishing, tourism, and processing. They nourish rivers, forests, and wildlife. For First Nations, they remain an enduring source of food and a foundation of culture and community.</span></p><p><span style="color:#000000;">Protecting wild salmon requires careful attention to avoidable risks. Open-net pens hold large numbers of farmed Atlantic salmon in the same coastal waters through which juvenile wild salmon migrate. The nets do not isolate the farmed fish, their waste, sea lice, or pathogens from the surrounding ocean.</span></p><p><span style="color:#000000;">Independent peer-reviewed research on farm-associated sea lice exposure in juvenile wild salmon and the movement of parasites and pathogens between farmed and wild fish deserves careful attention. I urge your government to give that evidence full weight and to take a precautionary approach to protecting wild salmon.</span></p><p><span style="color:#000000;">The economic costs of a transition are real, but they can be planned for, funded, and managed. The loss of wild salmon runs may be irreversible. Maintaining the 2029 deadline is an opportunity to manage that risk responsibly while giving workers and communities a clear path forward.</span></p><p><span style="color:#000000;">Protecting wild salmon must go hand in hand with supporting those affected by the transition. Workers and coastal communities deserve funding, retraining, and practical economic opportunities—not simply a deadline.</span></p><p><span style="color:#000000;"><strong>I ask your government to:</strong></span></p><p><span style="color:#000000;">- Publicly reaffirm the </span><span style="color:#222222;">June 30, 2029</span><span style="color:#000000;"> deadline for ending open-net-pen salmon farming in British Columbia’s coastal waters.</span></p><p><span style="color:#000000;">- Support a transition to genuinely closed, land-based aquaculture—not continued ocean-based production under a different label.</span></p><p><span style="color:#000000;">- Reject “semi-closed” containment as an acceptable alternative to open-net salmon farming. I am concerned that public funding has supported systems such as the “Marine Donut” without resolving the risk of exposing wild salmon to pathogens and parasites through discharged effluent.</span></p><p><span style="color:#000000;">- Publish a funded transition plan that supports affected workers and communities and establishes clear milestones and accountability.</span></p><p><span style="color:#000000;">Canada made this commitment in 2019. I urge you to see it through with lasting protection for wild salmon and a fair transition for the people whose livelihoods will be affected.</span></p><p><span style="color:#000000;">Respectfully,</span></p>