LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Move salmon farms from ocean Re: MP targets ocean-based salmon farms, Oct. 12

B.C. MP Fin Donnelly advises that not only are open-net salmon farms harming our wild salmon, but there is an alternative — closed containment salmon farming. No need to reinvent the wheel here. Denmark and Norway are already building closed-containment farms. Could we not expect, for example, that Marine Harvest, the world’s biggest Atlantic salmon producer, based in Bergen, Norway, which operates near five towns in B.C., do the same?

Donnelly’s private member’s bill (an earlier attempt in 2010 failed) would see ocean-based farms move to land-based within five years. He discusses the opportunity for B.C. to become a world technological leader.

Kuterra, B.C.’s land-based Atlantic salmon farm is to be commended, and supported. According to CEO Garry Ullstrom, they are proving that closed containment can work.

I have written to Dominic Leblanc, Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, and to my MP Jody Wilson-Raybould, herself of aboriginal background, who should have a vested interest. I have received polite replies from the latter — “share your concern,” “funding more research,” etc.

There is ongoing foot-dragging here. But surely the discovery of sea lice, HSMI and other salmon diseases in our B.C. salmon is enough evidence to act now, and start by supporting Donnelly’s bill.

There are still many Canadians, especially inland, who do not realize that Atlantic salmon are B.C. farmed salmon, and are not from the Atlantic Ocean — a rather deliberately misleading name?

Sonja Townson, Vancouver

City’s ‘living wage’ smart choice Re: City’s ‘living wage’ means higher taxes for little benefit, Opinion, Oct. 13

Before the passage of a U.K. Factory Act in 1847, which limited child labour to 10 hours per day, opponents maintained that such legislation would harm the very young it was designed to help. If children were denied additional work hours to boost family income, they argued, all their siblings would risk deprivation and hunger.

The Fraser Institute continues this grand tradition of contrived arguments in explicating the “collateral damage” if businesses contracted by the city were required to pay a living wage. As the late Canadian economist John Kenneth Galbraith opined, “The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”

Larry Kazdan, Vancouver

A living wage policy nudges up wages and benefits for the many contract employees in cleaning, parking, hospitality and food services. What we traditionally see, especially with corporate operators in those sectors, is high incomes at the top and workers’ incomes as low as they can be squeezed. These are usually minimum wages far below what an individual or family can live on.

Low wages and poverty are aligned with poor health, and hungry schoolchildren. Kudos to large organizations like Vancity and the Canadian Cancer Society, which adopted living wage criteria for their contractors delivering cleaning and food services. As the City of Vancouver has done, contractors were given plenty of notice to start paying a living wage.

Mae Burrows, Burnaby

Pot marketers target youth Re: Celebrity spliffs: Marketers are working to escape the ‘stoner’ past of cannabis, Oct. 19

The marketing gurus of the tobacco industry retained Ronald Reagan as their Marlboro Man, utilizing his image to promote smoking and also addicting a new generation of customers.

Now the pot industry marketing gurus are doing the same. Marley Natural. The pot industry is using the new marketing tools — social media, reality TV, etc. — that young Americans utilize.

The American experience has shown us there has been no appreciable reduction of pot use among young Americans where pot sales are legal.

The science is clear. The developing brains of our youth are at serious risk of long-term damage through the use of pot. This is the key motivation of our government’s move to legalize pot use — protect young Canadians from the damage of pot use.

I commend The Vancouver Sun for this series of articles. I hope federal officials are reading and learning. Clearly, a Canadian plan needs to include the same marketing restrictions on pot sales that currently exist for tobacco, including plain paper packaging.

Art Van Pelt, Director, Susan’s Battle, Maple Ridge