Today is World Oceans Day

Today is World Ocean’s Day.

My riding is landlocked, but beautiful rivers run through it—the Okanagan, the Kettle, the Slocan, the Kootenay and the mighty Columbia.

And the ocean returns each year to my riding in the form of salmon: sockeye and chinook. N’titxw as they are known in the Okanagan language.

Salmon have nourished people in this region for millennia. Tragically, their numbers collapsed in the 20th Century when dams were built throughout the Columbia system, although a few managed to return each year to the Okanagan River.

But upper Columbia stocks were wiped out with the construction of the Grand Coulee dam.

Thanks to the recovery efforts of the Okanagan Nation Alliance, salmon numbers in the Okanagan have increased dramatically in recent years.

I say lim limt to them.

And as the Columbia River Treaty is being renegotiated, there is the possibility that salmon will return to the upper Columbia, so that once again the oceans can feed the people of the Kootenays.

Lim limt

Richard Cannings, MP