Another sleepless night': Thousands of BC salmon farming jobs hang in the balance?
I don't think so, so I wrote a letter to Minister Jordan on how to solve the move to land in BC fish farms
Hi Minister Jordan et al
The quote in the subject line above is false. There are not thousands of jobs in the Discovery Islands. Fish farms vastly over estimate their employment figures so politicians think they are big, when they are not. My estimate is 212 jobs, and that is peanuts.
The industry says 1500 jobs in the Discovery Islands, while the BC govt’s own figure is only 1800 for the entire province. Mowi’s Discovery is 10,000 metric tonnes of salmon, while the entire province is only 85,000MT. Based on employment per MT, calculating from the BC figure makes the Discovery jobs only 212, or 11.8% of the industry estimate.
Here is how to do the jobs calculation: 10,000MT/85,000MT = 11.8%, then multiply 1800jobs X .118 = 212 jobs. That’s all there are. DFO has believed the false numbers for decades, but the BC Stats Report are the best stats. Your staff are using a figure of 7000 for the entire province, when it is false. And the figure will never rise to 10,000 as industry claims because the on-land industry in the USA, BC’s main market, is in the process of climbing to 6 times the size of the BC industry and US consumers want sustainable product. This will wipe out the BC industry, unless it comes to land and offers a price point.
Here is what else you should do:
1. Train the 212 employees to work in on-land fish farms. Then, when you move to the entire industry, you have a system already in place, so that jobs are not lost, and people need not worry.
2. As is done in Norway where the BC companies are from, you should reduce the on-land license to zero, while raising the in-ocean license as a way to influence the industry to land. Their in-ocean Norway licenses are auctioned for $32- to $40-million. In BC, raise the in-ocean license to $1 million and tell the industry you are giving them a break, with following licenses to be $5m and then up to the Norway levels. They will complain and then buy the licenses because fish farms are a license to print money. (I have the price margins, if you would like to see them).
3. Give each in-ocean farm in BC $1 million toward buying land for a farm.
4. Alternatively, grant some public land for fish farms to set up on land, or lease it to them.
Other Notes:
a. The BC government’s own stats, in the BC Stats Report, show there are not thousands of jobs. The entire industry jobs number is 1800 for 85 licenses. See:
http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2019/03/mar-21-2019-bc-stats-report-2016.html.
b. Here on Intrafish is where the subject line comes from:
https://www.intrafish.com/aquacultu...the-balance/2-1-941716?utm_term=intrafish_com.
c. I worked in Treasury Board Staff for the Ministry of Finance, BC in the past. This is how I understand how to do analysis and calculations.
DC (Dennis) Reid
financialpost.com
