When Government Decides the Answer First

Canada has changed the way it thinks about environmental risk. British Columbia's salmon farmers might reasonably ask why that thinking doesn't apply to them.

On October 1, the Government of Canada designated Pacific Link, a proposed one-million-barrel-per-day oil pipeline from Alberta to the British Columbia coast, as a project of national interest. Ottawa argues that the pipeline could diversify Canada's export markets, strengthen economic sovereignty, generate more than $20 billion in annual GDP and create 140,000 jobs. Those estimates, and the merits of the project itself, will be debated.

But something more fundamental is happening.

Canada has adopted a new way of deciding whether major projects carrying both substantial benefits and environmental risks should proceed.

Under the Building Canada Act, once a project is designated as being in the national interest, Ottawa says the federal review shifts from whether the project should proceed to how it should proceed.

Environmental review continues. Indigenous consultation continues. Mitigation measures and binding conditions still have to be developed. But the national-interest decision comes first. Federal approvals normally considered separately under legislation including the Fisheries Act, Species at Risk Act and Impact Assessment Act are instead incorporated into a consolidated conditions process.

There is a perfectly defensible philosophy behind this. Productive activities have benefits and risks. Government weighs both and, where the broader public interest justifies proceeding, establishes conditions intended to reduce the risks to acceptable levels.

What is harder to explain is why Canada applied almost the opposite philosophy to salmon farming in British Columbia. The federal process did not begin by asking what environmental performance open-net pen salmon farms would have to achieve in order to continue operating.

It began with an instruction to transition away from them.

By 2022, Fisheries and Oceans Canada was explicit that the minister had been mandated to develop a plan to transition from open-net pen salmon farming. In June 2024, Ottawa committed to a complete ban by June 30, 2029.

The subsequent transition plan therefore considers support for affected First Nations, workers and communities, alternative technologies, the phase-down of open-net pen production and management of farms until the ban takes effect.

It does not ask what conditions might allow open-net pen farming to continue.

The answer to whether had already been given.

There are legitimate environmental concerns associated with salmon farming. But it is important to understand that the decision to eliminate open-net pen farming was not an obvious conclusion of the government's own science. In response to the Cohen Commission, DFO completed nine peer-reviewed assessments of the risk of pathogen transfer from Atlantic salmon farms in the Discovery Islands to migrating Fraser River sockeye. All nine concluded that the pathogens assessed posed no more than a minimal risk under existing farming practices. Those assessments did not resolve every environmental question surrounding salmon farming, but neither did they provide a scientific finding that the production system had to be eliminated.

There are legitimate environmental concerns associated with oil pipelines too. The risks are different and the economic scale of the industries is obviously different. Fair government does not require every industry to receive the same decision. But Canadians should reasonably expect to understand the principles by which those decisions are made.

Why, when considering a pipeline across British Columbia, is environmental risk something to be measured, mitigated and controlled through conditions?

Why, when considering salmon farms off the same coast, was environmental risk treated as a reason to eliminate the production method?

The distinction becomes clearer if the processes are reversed.

Imagine Ottawa had announced several years ago that Canada would transition away from oil pipelines crossing British Columbia. It could then have consulted Indigenous communities, workers, industry and governments about how the transition should occur. Existing pipelines might have been allowed to operate for another five years while support programs were developed and alternative technologies encouraged.

There would almost certainly be no Pacific Link.

Its proponents would never reach the stage of arguing that route selection could reduce environmental effects, that technology could mitigate risks, that enforceable conditions could protect sensitive areas, or that the project's economic and strategic benefits justified accepting and managing whatever risks remained.

The decision would already have been made.

That is essentially the position in which British Columbia's salmon farming industry finds itself.

And this is where the issue becomes larger than salmon farming.

Governments constantly make decisions involving competing risks and benefits. Environmental protection is one consideration. So are employment, food production, Indigenous economic interests, investment, exports, regional development and national resilience. There is no formula that makes those decisions easy.

But there should be a coherent process.

The philosophy behind the Building Canada Act explicitly recognizes that saying “no” also has consequences. In determining whether a project is in the national interest, government may consider economic benefits, resilience and security, Indigenous interests and other national objectives. If the project qualifies, the subsequent process focuses on determining the conditions under which it can proceed.

That is difficult to reconcile with the process used for open-net pen salmon farming.

Ottawa's own transition plan recognizes significant social and economic interests affected by the decision. Yet those considerations are being incorporated primarily into a process for managing the consequences of the transition rather than determining whether eliminating the industry is necessary.

That distinction deserves scrutiny.

The alternative is not to allow salmon farms to operate regardless of environmental performance. Set environmental standards. Measure outcomes. Require mitigation. Change farming practices where evidence demonstrates that change is necessary. Close farms that cannot meet the standards. And if the evidence ultimately demonstrates that acceptable environmental performance cannot be achieved, government can act accordingly.

But that is fundamentally different from deciding first that a production method will disappear and subsequently consulting about how to manage the consequences.

Canada has now embraced that distinction for one of the largest and potentially most environmentally consequential infrastructure projects in the country.

Pacific Link will be asked how it can be built.

British Columbia's salmon farmers were told whether they could continue farming.

The issue isn't whether a pipeline and a salmon farm should receive the same answer.

It is why Canadians should accept fundamentally different rules for arriving at it.