Media Releases

For Immediate release:  June 22, 2016 SOINTULA, BC:  A highly virulent fish disease has infected three salmon farms in Nootka Sound on Vancouver Island, near Gold River, just before wild salmon begin their migration back into the area to spawn. Nootka Sound is home to a popular and lucrative sport fishery for five species of salmon, including Chinook or spring salmon—the primary food of Orca whales.

VANCOUVER—The National Energy Board’s recommendation today in favour of the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion comes as no surprise to Living Oceans, an intervenor in the process; but it leaves B.C. still without assurance that Premier Clark's five conditions for approval can be met.

VANCOUVER:  The Canadian Biotechnology Action Network (CBAN), Ecology Action Centre, Living Oceans Society and the Quebec network Vigilance OGM are expressing concerns over Health Canada’s approval of the world’s first genetically modified (GM) food animal, a GM Atlantic salmon, for human consumption. “Canadians could now be faced with the world’s first GM food animal, approved with no public consultation and no labelling,” said Lucy Sharratt of CBAN.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE VANCOUVER—Groups are commending the federal government’s commitment to protect the north coast of British Columbia from oil spills with a tanker ban, and calling on the government to make it a permanent, legislated oil tanker ban. On the 27th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill that devastated the community of Cordova, Alaska and left Prince William Sound with an oily legacy that persists to this day, Sierra Club BC and Living Oceans Society say that a legislated oil tanker ban is the only certain way to protect B.C.’s north coast from a similar fate.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – February 2, 2016

Burnaby – First Nations and environmental groups today welcomed the federal government’s announcement of a new “transition process” for projects under environmental review, including Kinder Morgan’s pipeline and oil tanker expansion proposal. However, more detail is needed to determine whether the new review will meet legal obligations to First Nations and succeed in restoring public trust.

Burnaby, BC-First Nations and environmental groups are calling on Prime Minister Trudeau to stop the Kinder Morgan process and honour his promise to restore credibility to the environmental assessment process. The groups believe the process is so catastrophically flawed, there is no way that a final recommendation from the NEB can be considered credible.

OTTAWA -- Wild salmon advocates from Canada’s east and west coasts are in Ottawa today, and welcome the tabling of the long-awaited Fisheries and Oceans Standing Committee Report on Closed Containment technology. The report has the potential to help foster change in Canada’s salmon aquaculture industry and offer much-needed protection for Canada’s wild salmon, coastal fisheries and the communities that depend on healthy oceans.

VANCOUVER, B.C. ─ Diluted bitumen won’t exactly sink most of the time but it won’t exactly float all of the time, either, according to new evidence filed with the Joint Review Panel hearing the Enbridge Northern Gateway application in Prince Rupert. In cross-examination by Ecojustice counsel Karen Campbell today, Enbridge consultants admitted that tank test evidence filed this week found dilbit did submerge beneath the surface of the water, although none was found to have sunk to the bottom of the tank.