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 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.

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.

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.