Canada's Office of the Information Commissioner has ordered Fisheries and Oceans Canada to fully disclose the records in its 2022 report into sea lice.

The information commissioner's final report, released Tuesday (Jan. 28), followed a complaint from Watershed Watch Salmon Society, alleging Fisheries and Oceans Canada has improperly withheld information in response to an access request for data that was analyzed in a 2023 sea-lice report. 

The commissioner Caroline Maynard issued to order to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans Diane Lebouthillier on Jan. 20. The DFO's acting director of Access to Information and Privacy Division gave Maynard notice on Jan. 22 that the department would be implementing the order and fully disclose the information to the complainant. 

The from Fisheries and Oceans Canada concluded that there was no significant link between parasitic lice infestations at B.C. salmon farms and infestations in wild salmon exposed to those farms in four regions. It added that the lack of statistical significance implies that the occurrence of lice infestation on wild migrating juvenile Pacific salmon "cannot be explained solely by infestation pressure from farm-sourced copepodids."

In a news release from the Watershed Watch Salmon Society Thursday, it says that since the release of the 2023 Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat Science Response, it has "pursued multiple avenues to access the data used in the report." That includes an access to information request and an environmental petition to Canada's auditor general.

In 2023, a group of 16 professors and research scientists sent an open letter to then-minister of Fisheries and Oceans Canada Joyce Murray. The group said they had serious concerns about the processes in the report, and that it "falls far short of the standards of credible independent peer review and publishable science." 

Watershed Watch Salmon Society senior science and policy analyst Stan Proboszcz said that Canadians deserve transparency. 

"It should not be this difficult to access information about an industry operating in public waters," Proboszcz said. 鈥淭his two-year struggle for the truth begs the question, 鈥榳hat are they trying to hide about the harmful impacts fish farms have on B.C. wild salmon?鈥欌��

First Nations Wild Salmon Alliance chair Bob Chamberlin said Nations he worked with in the B.C. Aquaculture Transition Planning process made formal requests for this data two years ago and never received it or other similar information.

"Key DFO staff defend this industry at the expense of the honour of the Crown."

The release added the data has not yet been released. 

The records are five Excel spreadsheets, with four of those containing only temperature and salinity data.

, Fisheries and Oceans conceded that the temperature and salinity data provided by its Pacific Region office could be disclosed. The department also determined it could release most of the columns in the fifth spreadsheet containing sea-lice data, other than four columns that would allow for calculation of the number of fish per farm pen at a given point in time. 

There were three third parties identified by Fisheries and Oceans that the information in the spreadsheets relate to: Cermaq Canada, Mowi Canada West and Grieg Seafood British Columbia. The commissioner's office tried to get representation from all three, but only received a response from Mowi. 

The data related to Mowi was exclusively about temperature and salinity, which Fisheries and Oceans said could be disclosed. 

The population and sea-lice data related to Cermaq, but the company didn't response to the commissioner. 

According to the commissioner's investigation, when an institution withholds information related to third partes, they bear the burden of showing that refusing to grant access is justified.

However, the commissioner determined that the complaint was well founded, with the information not shown to be objectively confidential or supplied by a third party, as well as it wasn't show that the government intended to publish the information within 90 days of the access request being made.