Fisheries ministers from across Canada spent two days in Victoria on August 19 and 20 talking about trade, competitiveness, aquaculture and climate. They finished by announcing money: $106.5 million over five years for a British Columbia Fisheries Fund, split 60/40 between Ottawa and the province, with B.C. contributing $42.58 million.
It is a renewal rather than a new idea. The British Columbia Salmon Restoration and Innovation Fund, running since 2019, funded more than 170 projects across seven years, and its work on wild Pacific salmon and habitat restoration carries into the new fund. Innovation, infrastructure and scientific partnerships all survive as eligibility pillars.
The addition is market development and diversification, and it exists because of American trade threats. Projects can now qualify by expanding market access at home or abroad, or by reducing the impact of trade barriers on the value of B.C. seafood.
Federal Fisheries Minister Joanne Thompson made that the headline of her own remarks.
"Finding new markets is a new priority in this Fish Fund renewal, and that reflects the reality of the industry in this present moment," Thompson said, adding that the fund leaves "room in it for harvesters and scientists to work together, which matters as conditions in the water keep changing."
"Salmon restoration is the foundation of a strong and sustainable seafood sector," Neill said. "Without healthy salmon populations and resilient watersheds, there is no long-term future for the markets, jobs and communities that depend on them."
Lana Popham, B.C.'s Minister of Agriculture and Food, kept to the trade framing, describing a sector that produces "high-value, in demand sustainable products" and saying the fund "will help B.C.'s fisheries increase opportunities and competitiveness while providing good jobs for British Columbians."
Canada's fish and seafood industry as a whole contributes over $8 billion to the economy and exports $8.5 billion in product. B.C. alone produces more than 100 seafood species and exports over 190 products.
Absent from the announcement was any movement on the 2029 federal deadline to end open-net pen salmon farming on the West Coast. Neill said she had raised aquaculture certainty and the transition of open-net operations among the province's priorities during the meeting, alongside salmon recovery, watershed protection, recreational fishing data and invasive-mussel prevention.
The transition plan itself remains unpublished. Thompson described it as being in its "final stages" close to a year ago.
For the farmed sector the stakes are concrete. B.C. produced about 54,000 tonnes of farmed salmon in 2024, worth more than $500 million at the farm gate, within a wider industry that SeaWestNews puts at roughly $1.17 billion in annual economic activity and about 4,560 full-time jobs. Every farm in the province operates under a partnership with a First Nation. Operators and their Nation partners say a settled policy framework would let them roughly double that footprint.
Restoration work has funding through 2031. The businesses waiting on the transition plan still do not know what they are planning for.