A Buy Canadian campaign fuelled by Donald Trump’s trade war has many Canadians these days scrutinizing labels in grocery stores.
But when it comes to salmon, British Columbians may have a hard time figuring out if the salmon they buy in grocery stores is American, Canadian, Norwegian or Chilean.
Many grocery stores don’t label where the fish comes from, so British Columbians can be forgiven for thinking that, when they buy previously frozen wild-caught sockeye or pink salmon, that it was caught in B.C., when, in fact, it is probably from Alaska.
B.C.’s commercial salmon fishery has pretty much collapsed, along with Fraser River sockeye stocks, and now B.C.’s salmon farming is tottering on the brink of a similar collapse – the victim of one-two punch of Trudeau government policies and Donald Trump’s 25 per cent tariffs on all Canadian imports.
“I don’t know if I could underestimate how devastating it would be if the tariffs were implemented for more than a week or two,” said Nick Dicarlo, sales director for Cermaq Canada, one of three large salmon farming companies operating in B.C. “I don’t know if anybody would survive that.”
“We’re already seeing layoffs,” said Brian Kingzett, executive director for the BC Salmon Farmers Association.
B.C.’s salmon farming sector is highly exposed to the U.S., and has been weakened by Trudeau Liberal government policies aimed at phasing out open-net salmon farming altogether in B.C.
“The industry is already basically on its knees,” Kingzett said. “The companies are very close to leaving Canada right now because of the federal transition. So this is just one more nail in the coffin. And it’s happening very much at a time when we can’t afford to lose any more jobs.”
As a result of the federally mandated phase-out of open-net salmon farms in the Discovery Islands, Cermaq lost 30 per cent of its production in B.C.; Mowi lost 40 per cent.
To keep its customers, Cermaq has resorted to importing farmed salmon from the company’s operations in Norway and Chile to make up for the production loss.
Overall, production of farmed salmon in B.C. has shrunk 45 per cent, as a result of the Discovery Islands phase-out, with production capacity falling from 90,000 to 50,000 tonnes annually between 2020 and 2023, Kingzett said.
That has left the industry weakened and highly vulnerable to tariffs.
“The Liberal government has put an existential threat onto the B.C. salmon farming industry, and that is now being exacerbated by what Trump is doing to the south,” Kingzett said.
Farmed salmon accounted for 33 per cent of the value of all seafood exports from B.C. in 2023 -- $436 million out of total seafood exports of $1.3 billion – according to Statistics Canada’s International Merchandize Trade database.
That’s down from 42 per cent in 2019, prior to the Trudeau government’s fiat to eliminate open-net salmon farms in the Discovery Islands.
Cermaq Canada sells about 60 per cent of its fish into the U.S., with 30 to 35 per cent sold in Canada – Ontario and Quebec being the biggest buyers.
Even though tariffs weren’t officially in place yet (as their implementation had been temporarily paused), Cermaq ended up eating the added cost of the anticipated tariffs on a sale to the U.S. last week.
“We did harvest last week, and we paid the tariffs on that,” Dicarlo said. “We lost a lot of money. One truckload, we had to pay an additional $33,000 U.S. to get a truck across the border.”
Dicarlo said there has been a recent uptick in orders in Canada, thanks to Canadian grocery stores getting on the Buy Canadian bandwagon.
“That’s a direct byproduct of consumer demand for Canadian products,” Dicarlo said.
But Canada is such a small market compared to the U.S. that, even if Canadians were to start substituting wild Alaskan sockeye and pink salmon with Canadian farmed salmon, it would not be enough to save some B.C. salmon farmers from shutting down their B.C. operations.
Nor does it seem likely that they will invest in land-based full containment systems, as per the Trudeau government policies. The economics for large land-based salmon farming simply don't work.
"The systems work technically, but they are not yet cost-effective," Ken Coates notes in a recent report on salmon farming for the Macdonald Laurier Institute. "Furthermore, land-based systems are unlikely to be effective replacements for current fish farms."
The U.S. consumes about 400,000 tonnes of farmed salmon a year, Dicarlo said. Canada produces about 140,000 tonnes, but only consumes about 30,000 tonnes.
“So you still have 100,000 tonnes that needs to go somewhere,” he said.
“I don’t think Canadians will suck up all that was destined for the U.S., but eating more salmon right now would sure help the salmon farmers,” Kingzett said.
Shrinking production has limited the salmon farming sector’s ability to pivot to other markets, like Asia.
“There’s not enough wide-body service of air freight into Japan or China, and we haven’t really been developing those markets because we’ve been retreating from the market for the last few years,” Dicarlo said.
“When you have your production reduced by 45 per cent, you lose your options,” Kingzett said. “You’ve consolidated not only your production, but you’ve consolidated your market as well.
“And we’re not going to build up new markets when we’re not sure if this transition is going to put the whole sector out of business, because that’s very much what companies are looking at – basically being forced out of B.C.”
