Policy & Advocacy
Wild First: holding the line on the 2029 open-net pen ban
Challenge
In June 2024 Canada committed to removing open net-pen Atlantic salmon farms from British Columbia's coastal waters by 2029. A commitment is not a regulation. The final transition plan slipped, foreign-owned industry and its backers in Norway and Japan lobbied hard to overturn the decision, and by 2026 Ottawa had declined to publicly recommit, leaving the ban exposed to being diluted, delayed, or quietly abandoned through incremental concessions. Meanwhile the conservation side was fragmented across dozens of organizations, each with its own mandate, membership, and voice.
Role & action
Program Director, Wild First. Built and ran the coordination layer across the wild-salmon NGO and ENGO community, convening conservation groups, First Nations organizations, commercial and recreational fishing interests, and scientific voices around a single, disciplined position on the transition. Ran the research and monitoring function behind it: tracking regulatory filings, licence decisions, ministerial signals, court rulings, and industry lobbying, and turning that into briefing material partners could act on. Aligned messaging across the coalition and drove it into the channels federal decision-makers actually read, so that one argument reached Ottawa rather than a dozen competing ones.
Outcome
A coalition that moves together, on one evidence base, with the capacity to answer a federal development in days rather than weeks, and a case now being made at the national level. In July 2026, Wild First chair Tony Allard took the argument directly to Ottawa's political readership in National Newswatch: British Columbia is the last jurisdiction on the Pacific coast of North America still permitting open net-pens of Atlantic salmon; 130 BC First Nations continue to call for their removal; the Federal Court of Appeal has upheld the science; and land-based closed containment is where the global industry is already heading. Read the op-ed. The 2029 commitment still stands. The campaign to see it honoured, not extended and not half-measured, is active. We are not calling it won.