HALIFAX, MONDAY, APRIL 13, 2014

 

COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE ON SUPPLY

 

5:20 P.M.

 

CHAIRMAN

Ms. Margaret Miller

 

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: The Committee of the Whole on Supply will come to order.

 

The honourable member for Truro-Bible Hill-Millbrook-Salmon River, with three minutes remaining for questioning the Department of Agriculture.

 

            MS. LENORE ZANN: Thank you to the minister for being here today to answer our questions. I do have three minutes left so I would like to ask a couple of things and one of them is about the fire blight disease in the Valley with all the apple orchards.

 

I know that I had toured the orchards last summer and saw firsthand from the farmers how climate change is affecting Nova Scotia and how the farmers are now starting to feel it with these early storms, these huge storms like Hurricane Arthur that hit our orchards last year and destroyed some of the branches, which is where the fire blight disease gets into these cuts and nicks and breaks of the branches. It had never happened quite so early before and the farmers were expressing great concern about what was going to happen with that.

 

            I know they had asked for some money to help them with that effort, so could the minister please update me on that?

 

            HON. KEITH COLWELL: Thank you, it's a very important question. The apple industry in Nova Scotia is very important to our overall economy. As we try to grow the economy through agriculture and our resource industries, it will become even more important.

 

            What has happened is the apple orchard association asked us to meet with them and see - we have to go through a process of applying for assistance through the federal government program, which we cost share on. I called them back and said no need to, we will proceed anyway just on your verbal request; they did send us in a letter. That is underway and we have gone through a whole series of things I described on Friday, unfortunately you didn't hear those answers.

 

            Basically Perennia has done some programs already around the fire blight, how to look for it, what to look for, how to treat it and work on it. The process for the application has started with the federal government and we had a questionnaire we have to send out. There is a whole big long list of things we have to do and I can give you that whole list. We are well on the road to that list happening. The federal government seems very willing to move forward on a compensation package that should hopefully help the industry.

 

            It's a disease that did come in, we typically haven't had it before in Nova Scotia but the hurricane did bring it in. It's something that can be dealt with. I was at their annual meeting this year and there was a gentleman there who came from the U.S. who made a presentation on fire blight and he said it's not easy to contain but it's easily containable, if that makes any sense. There are processes to follow and you follow those processes and you religiously do those things and it should eliminate the problem.

 

            Now that it's Spring we have to assess where we are at and continue with the negotiations and discussions with the federal government. It looks very possible that can happen for them; we're very hopeful it will, and as we move forward we'll push the federal government to make sure that does happen.

 

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: Order, please. We will now go to the Progressive Conservative Caucus.

 

The honourable member for Kings North.

 

            MR. JOHN LOHR: I appreciate the fact that this is day two and I compliment the minister on such a long stretch of talking and answering questions the other day. I would just like to take a little bit of time to go into a couple of issues that we didn't get to the other day.

 

            I would like to ask the minister about 4-H. Maybe what I could do is just ask the minister if he would like to make a comment about the importance of 4-H. It certainly is something that is important to our caucus and I think for the Liberal caucus and the department. Would you like to do that first?

 

            MR. COLWELL: I appreciate that question, 4-H is critical to our province and I think if we had every child in the province enrolled in 4-H we would have a whole lot less difficulties with youth in trouble and doing things that they shouldn't be doing.

 

            We've been working very closely with 4-H ever since I've become minister and the previous governments always have. We've signed a five-year agreement, a long-term funding agreement with 4-H, which we are very happy about and they're very happy about and we're looking forward to the many things that they are going to do under that program.

 

            More importantly, 4-H is fantastic for the young people to get involved in. It gives them a chance to really look at looking after animals, the cost of producing an animal, the proper ways to feed them and look after them from the standpoint of health, and all the things that someone would need to know if they were going to run a farm or operate on a farm or do anything else like that.

 

I think it's a wonderful program. It's one we are very committed to and we will continue to commit to. We have full-time staff in our department that work with 4-H, which I think is very unusual, that usually doesn't happen with any other organization. But it shows the importance of 4-H, not just to the farming community but to the Province of Nova Scotia. A lot of people don't understand that 4-H teaches leadership and all the business traits you need if you're going to run a business.

 

As you go around and you talk to people in the farming community and see the ones who had participated as youths in the 4-H program, they are usually now the leaders in the community. It shows you how effective that program is. In a short sentence, that's basically where we are, what we think of 4-H, and we look forward to a long, solid working relationship with them.

 

            MR. LOHR: Thank you, minister. I was just wondering if you could show me in the estimates what the funding is for 4-H this year as compared to what it was last year.

 

            MR. COLWELL: Under the program we are talking about, it's on Page 3.3 in your Estimate Book and this year, in year 2014-15 it's going to be $118,000; it's a total of $394,000 over the four-year period this program is in place. That's just with that program.

 

            MR. LOHR: So, just the four-year program, $118,000 this year and I believe you said $389,000 total over four years. Is that correct?

 

            MR. COLWELL: No, it's actually the first year, this past year was $155,000 and this year is $118,000 and next year is $80,000 and the following year is $41,000. It's a declining balance. It's a negotiated balance that was put in place between the government and the 4-H.

 

            MR. LOHR: Just to clarify - and I know we both believe this is a very valuable program - but in effect you are telling me we're in a four-year, very significant decline in government funding for 4-H. Could you tell me how that lines up with your comments about the value of 4-H in our province?

 

            MR. COLWELL: As I indicated, this was a negotiated agreement between 4-H and the Province of Nova Scotia. The idea of it is that over that time, they would have sources of revenue they could generate. They feel very confident they can do that and so far they have been meeting the goals that they have had and we are looking forward to them continuing to meet those goals and hopefully exceeding them so when this program comes to an end, they will be well above where they need to be from other sources of funding.

 

            MR. LOHR: Would I be correct in assuming that part of one of the ways they would meet the goal would be through staffing cuts for 4-H staff? Would that be correct Mr. Minister?

 

            MR. COLWELL: No, that is not the idea of the MOU. The idea of the MOU is to keep the present staff but to find other sources of income. As I say, this was agreed with 4-H and with the province and we went to great lengths to make sure that they were very happy with the arrangements, which they are. Plus we have dedicated staff - our own staff - that will be place all the time to work directly with 4-H to help this process. Not only that, when this agreement is finished, our staff will still work with 4-H to ensure that they have the resources in place, from a staffing standpoint from our staff, helping them do things in the field that perhaps couldn't afford to do themselves.

 

            MR. LOHR: So what I understand, and correct me if I'm wrong, what you are saying is that there is this block of money which goes directly to 4-H but also there are people within the department who are assigned directly to work with 4-H. Can you tell me how many people there are who work directly with 4-H?

 

            MR. COLWELL: We actually have seven staff members.

 

            MR. LOHR: If we were to look back three or four years ago, what would the number of staff have been? I'm wondering if you tell me that.

 

            MR. COLWELL: It was seven prior to that, before the four years and I neglected to mention we also have a full-time coordinator, which is actually eight staff instead of seven.

 

            MR. LOHR: If I understand, you are saying that the number of staff in the last number of years in the past has remained steady and your department is committing to maintaining those staff positions?

 

            MR. COLWELL: Yes, it is our full intention to do that. Again, it's a very important project and program for our province and we feel that it's well worth investing the money in the staff level to do that.

 

            MR. LOHR: Thank you Mr. Minister. I'd like to change the subject to the Women's Institutes of the province. I know that they also do great work in our province and I was wondering if you would want to make a comment on the Women's Institutes.

           

MR. COLWELL: Yes, the Women's Institute is a great organization as well. So many times we lose these very important organizations within our province, which is a tragedy when it does happen. I can remember the first meeting I had with the Women's Institute when I became minister. It was a wonderful group of ladies, very dedicated to their communities, dedicated to the province, dedicated to agriculture and beyond agriculture. We are right at the present time working on an MOU with them, we have been for some time, to see if we can get one that works for them, works for us, and that's an ongoing negotiation, which we hope to get finalized as soon as we can.

 

Again, it's a province-wide organization. We are trying to work with them to also do some other things in the community they would choose to do that maybe they hadn't thought of in the past. We're talking with them about that - maybe promoting some Nova Scotia farm products that we would supply everything we need for them to do that, which has not happened in the past. They have usually been all on their own. We're looking at new ideas, new ways to do things, and at the same time we want to preserve where they are now to make sure that the institute continues to grow and does the important functions that they have done for a long, long time.

 

MR. LOHR: I would like to thank the minister for that answer. In fact too, I don't know if he knows, but apparently it was a Minister of Agriculture more than 100 years ago who caused that organization to be here by inviting them to start up in the province. I know the Women's Institute are quite proud of their long history in our province, so I would just like to ask about funding to the Women's Institute.

 

I'm aware the Department of Agriculture has always funded the Women's Institutes and also provided, I believe, an office at the Agricultural College for them, free of charge. I was wondering if the minister could confirm that their plans are that the funding would continue for the Women's Institute.

 

            MR. COLWELL: We're under negotiations with them right now so I don't really want to talk about too many details around that because I don't want it to affect our negotiations but the short answer is yes. We were trying to come to an understanding with them for a longer term MOU to make sure that they can continue and grow their operation.

 

            We are trying to make a few changes that they agree with, we agree with, and we just have to get the final wording together so it all works. They are really ambassadors for buy local and do other projects with us and we are really excited about the possibility of having more buy local. Who better to sell this than the people who live it every day and what wonderful people they are to talk to somebody at a location to convince someone to buy something from the local community? There couldn't be any better. I can tell you they are a hard group to say no to.

 

            MR. LOHR: Can I ask specifically how much money was in last year's budget for the Women's Institute and how much is in this year's budget for the Women's Institute?

 

            MR. COLWELL: Last year it was $63,000; this year it will be the same, $63,000 unless we sign an MOU that would potentially give them even more than that for this year.

 

            MR. LOHR: I guess I need you to confirm that. I'm not sure if this is still correct, but are they still operating out of an office, rent free, out of the Agricultural College in Truro and will that continue?

 

            MR. COLWELL: Actually they are not in the same location anymore. They are in the Perennia Park. They do pay rent, but we add it to their budget because typically they are paying $26,000 a year and we add it and that increases it to $63,000 to pay for the rent. Basically they are still getting free rent; we're just funding it in a different way. It is just a way of shifting money around. It's basically the same thing, it's no net cost to them at all, the new facility that they're in, and probably a little bit better location than they were in before.

 

            MR. LOHR: I would like to thank the minister for those answers. I would like to ask about - I know one of the important Acts that you have been working on in the past year is prevention of cruelty to animals. I know you brought in new regulations, it might have been an Act actually, I just wonder if you could comment on how you see that working out and make a general comment about that.

 

            MR. COLWELL: You want the long answer or the short answer? Short one? It's not a short answer, unfortunately, but it's a really good story. It's a win-win story.

 

            One of the first things I was faced with is a whole series of social media negative activity towards the department, towards me when I first went there, before they even knew what I was all about or what the department was planning. I personally did meet with every single animal rights group, independently, in the province. At that time they were very hesitant to deal with each other, they wouldn't deal with the SPCA. We convinced them to come to one meeting, one person from each organization, to sit down with me, talk about what they wanted, talk about what we can do and we can't do.

 

            As a result of that initial meeting, we did have another meeting and laid out where we're going to go with it and the rest was put in an Act and in regulations. They didn't get everything they requested but the way the Act and regulations were written, especially the regulations - it really covers a lot of things.

 

            For instance, if you have a dog that is tethered out, it's only supposed to be tethered for no longer than 12 hours in a row. Because it's hard to police - it's almost impossible - what we did is if there's no water, no adequate shelter, no food and the list goes on - if the tether is not the correct length, at least a minimum, there is a whole series of things the person can be fined on the spot for those violations. A multitude of them if it's a serious situation.

 

            We now have it so the animals can be seized, taken for their welfare and removed. We have a process now where special constables can be utilized to look after this, with training from the Department of Justice. The SPCA, as you know before, was the only regulatory body for animal cruelty - I shouldn't say that, there was the SPCA and the police. We did take the SPCA off but they still can enforce this whole thing as a sole provider but now it can be the SPCA, police at any level, and also municipalities at whatever level they want to work at it. It's totally voluntary for them; we are encouraging them to work with the SPCA and the police as a coordinated effort.

 

The SPCA has had several new special constables appointed in the last few months and we are very excited about the process there. The animal rights groups are very happy with what's gone on. We did meet with them prior to officially putting the regulations in place, giving them a complete briefing on it so they understood where we were at. They were very happy with where we were.

 

            I sit on what we call the minister's panel on animal cruelty and I have committed to doing that process every year so that gives a chance to go back, look at the regulations and the law, see if there's something we missed, something we're not getting convictions on or whatever the case may be, and they are very happy about that. We have been very frank, very open about how we are operating.

 

The date for the next one, I think, is December 4^th but I'm just guessing at the actual date. We actually have the date set for the next meeting. With the new enforcement of the regulations that commitment will be followed through, whether or not I do or the Minister of the Environment does it; that will be followed through on. It's important to keep this very vital group of individuals out there looking after companion animals - I'm stressing companion animals here - on side with what we're doing and us on side with them to make sure that we have lots of eyes and ears out there to make sure that animals in this province are looked after the way they should be.

 

            I've done a lot of things in my political career, and this is one of the hardest ones to get consensus on but I'll tell you, we have the consensus now. We have a working group that works all the time, every day, looks after the animals in the province.

 

I've noticed a difference when I was around campaigning door to door and you will probably see the same trend if you decide to run for the next election. When I first went around, you would see a few dogs and once in a while you see a cat at a house; now every house has a dog or a cat and they're all in the house. They are treated like family members like my dog is. My dog is spoiled rotten - it's the way they should be treated. If you're going to have a companion animal, that's the way they should be treated.

 

            We've been very successful with that file and only because we've engaged the community that really is concerned about companion animals. We listened very carefully and we put in place the tools that we need and they need to make sure those animals are properly looked after.

 

I have been very pleased with the way the municipalities are viewing this now, the way the SPCA has actually changed some of their policies and things that they do to make them more outgoing to the public, which is really positive. They've always been a very accountable and a very good organization, but they have even improved on that now. It was interesting because the last meeting we had with them, they asked, can we keep using your boardroom here after the meeting and we said, by all means. They got all their groups together and said okay, how can we help each other. They can spay and neuter at the SPCA cheaper than anyone else and the other organizations are raising money to spay and neuter so they can take the money they raise, bring their animals and have some kind of deal the SPCA, possibly, or other fundraising mutual efforts.

 

At the end of the day it's for the betterment of the companion animals in the province. I think this has been a very successful operation, very successful how we're moving this forward and I give full credit to the people in the animal welfare and rights groups who have worked so hard for so many years and have never been listened to.

 

            We listened, we acted, and we will continue to fine tune the regulations that make good common sense but make sure that if someone is abusing a companion animal that it's not tolerated in this province.

 

            MR. LOHR: I would like to thank the minister for that answer and I certainly totally agree with the number of pets seen going door to door. In fact, in my family we feel the same way about our dog and our cat - they are part of our family. What I do want to ask the minister about in relation to this is, I know that in our area, the municipality would be seen as the dog catcher - the point person that you would call on something like this. Certainly as we see increasing regulation, which is a good thing, I think there's a sense that there's an increasing burden on the municipality for dealing with this. Is there any funding going to the municipalities for their increased responsibilities with these increased regulations?

 

            MR. COLWELL: Well, it is totally voluntary for the municipalities but it has some major benefits for the municipality because the by-law enforcement officer now goes out for a barking dog and in a lot of cases is not allowed on the property. If they apply for special constable status - which they can easily get and the training that goes with that - they can go on that property anytime and check the condition of that animal.

 

Say if a dog is barking - that's the easiest example - the dog is probably barking for some reason. Maybe it has been tied out steadily for weeks and weeks and weeks, maybe it doesn't have adequate shelter, there could be all kinds of reasons behind that so it gives the ability for the animal control person within the municipality, which they do not have the authority to do right now. This Act does give them the authority and they never had it before. It gives them the opportunity to go there, actually see what's happening, and will probably save them money in the long run.

 

They will also be able to write tickets on the spot, as the police can, any level of the police force; the SPCA can. Any of the special constables can write a ticket on the spot. That revenue goes back to the province at this point but that is something the municipalities should approach us on and see if we can work an arrangement out there, if it is appropriate.

 

            It's a very positive thing for the municipalities and once the municipalities understand how we have it structured and what we're trying to achieve with it, they're pretty anxious to get involved. Some of them have gotten involved to the point that they didn't have an arrangement in place and they simply contacted the SPCA and got them to do it for them or in conjunction with them, in a cooperative effort, or some of the animal rights groups that they have. Now the animal rights groups can't get a special constable status, but if they were working for the municipality they could. So an employee of the municipality who has the correct training of a by-law officer would then have to take training from the Department of Justice on how to enforce and write the tickets and make sure when they do this it's done right.

 

            Not only can they write the tickets on the spot, and there are several tickets and they are quite severe fines, but also they can still go to court, and go through the court process the same as they always have. That's not removed, it's just an opportunity, hopefully that if someone gets a ticket and they have to pay a fine, then they are going to think twice about leaving their dog out around the clock or whatever the case may be and before we have to take them to court over something that really could be resolved by somebody being just a little bit more responsible for the animal they have.

 

            MR. LOHR: I'd like to ask the minister if there is any funding in this budget for the SPCA?

 

            MR. COLWELL: Yes, there is funding in this budget. It's $250,000. It works out to about $20,000 a month.

 

            MR. LOHR: Is that funding plan to continue in the future?

 

            MR. COLWELL: We started it last year and it's a budget line this year.

 

            MR. LOHR: As we end this now on Agriculture, I'd like to thank you for your comments. I think you get to make a closing remark too. I would like thank Jennifer and Kim, your staff, for being here for this length of time too and invite you to make a couple of closing comments, Mr. Minister.

 

            MR. COLWELL: Well, thank you very much. I'm pleased to see the Opposition Parties seeing the wisdom of bringing the Department of Agriculture into the Chamber this time. It's great to see that the Opposition Parties realize how important these industries are to the Province of Nova Scotia.

 

For so many years I think that the farming industry and the fishing industry have been viewed as just the guy down the road, the farmer with the dirty clothes on because he's out there in the mud all day and the fisherman who smells of fish when he comes in at night because he has been doing his job very well. (Interruption) The smell of money, that's a good point. But when you look at what those industries have consistently done for the province, and hopefully we will be able to improve those numbers in the province as we move forward, it's a huge economic impact to the Province of Nova Scotia.

 

            For too many years, we have spent money in other ways and we've seen what the government has done now in eliminating the Department of Economic and Rural Development and Tourism that hasn't worked for the last 20-plus years. It's good to see that we're refocusing on agriculture and fisheries and all the things that are so important. The export sales of agriculture is fantastic and every dollar we can ship out of this province or every dollar we can prevent from coming into the province is a real bonus.

 

            I want to commend my staff in the Department of Agriculture for the fantastic work they have done to make these things possible. I know and I have to talk about it again, I already mentioned it here, the fact that our staff worked through Select Nova Scotia and struck a deal with Sobeys to really push agriculture products and now fisheries products in the Sobeys chain right across the country. It really shows how dedicated the local Nova Scotia company is to helping local Nova Scotia agriculture. Last year they bought $25 million from Nova Scotia farmers. The whole purchase from all Atlantic Canada was only $45 million.

 

            We are going in the right direction. They hope to double that over the next few years and we want to help them double that - just in Agriculture - and we are now starting to work with them on fisheries, which has never happened before. We're very excited.

 

            We're also very excited about the fact that we have an emerging wine industry. I know you didn't get a chance to ask questions on the wine industry but we have the best soil conditions, the best weather conditions in the world, when we talk about the wine industry. We're looking forward to working with the wine industry. I've struck a Minister's Board on Wine dominated by the industry, the growers and the producers of wine products in the province. That has been a very interesting discussion. We have the Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation on that and people from the Tourism Agency and Department of Business now will be on there instead of Economic and Rural Development and Tourism.

 

            We have made some very significant strides in that area. I believe that could be a multimillion dollar industry very shortly if we work it right and we do it right and we work with the industry to make sure that happens. The best part of that industry is it's one of those industries you can build and work with that doesn't have anybody that's mad at them. Typically, everything you try to do in economic development somebody's upset about it because maybe they think it's not environmentally friendly or some other thing is happening but the wine industry hits all positive things. It's great for tourism, for the environment, it's great for everything, a lot of really high-paid jobs in an industry that will be here for years and years to come.

 

            Typically, the grape vines last anywhere from 20-50 years and sometimes over 200 years. When you make that investment in the ground, you get it back for generations to come. Those are the things we are looking at. We're looking at doing some research around wine, the wine plants; we're going to set up a wine lab maybe in different places. We are looking very seriously at that.

 

            The Opposition did ask some questions on the strawberry virus. Right now we're in the midst of setting up a quality assurance system for the greenhouse producers in the province and we're working on that very diligently. It was a bit of a hard sell to start in the industry but they have come to realize they have to have quality. The complex virus we had before should be identified a lot sooner; none of it should be able to get out of the greenhouses under a quality assurance system. Not only that, it will also include the quality of the plants that are coming out. There will be several checklists that they have to go through.

 

            This will be an ongoing thing, driven by the industry but quality checked by Perennia. There are some quality checks you have to do of the system and of the product as it comes forward. These are very exciting times for the Department of Agriculture. We see some great things happening all over the place. I talked about kale here already - four times the production in the Carolinas. That is not because they grew it the same way, it's because of innovation in Nova Scotia by very intelligent, very hard-working farmers who had the ability to really see how to grow this stuff properly - never been grown in the province before.

 

            We have sweet potatoes that couldn't be grown in this province and now we have - I believe the number I heard the other day was $400,000 of sweet potatoes to Sobeys alone. When the gentleman told me that, I said there's only one problem, I want you to have $4 million a year, not $400,000. He just laughed and said it would just be a matter of time, and it won't just be for Sobeys.

 

            So it's a process that's coming. We are really looking at the science of things now. We're going to do some innovative design work around the winery business to try to get the cost of planting down because then the pay-back comes faster so it means people will invest in it sooner. We're looking at that. We're looking at the science around how to keep the plants alive through really cold weather, all the things we need to do to make sure that industry succeeds and grows our economy in Nova Scotia. We have to grow the economy.

 

            When I am talking to the industry now, I tell the industry - and I have from day one - we want you to make money. If you can make money, it means that your plans for succession are easy. It's easy to sell a profitable business. It's impossible to sell one that's breaking even or losing money, so we've got to be profitable.

 

            We talked about the cabbage issue and I totally agree - subsidies aren't the way. We've got to put some science into this, grow the cabbage better, sooner, whatever we need to do, and get the production costs down, so it doesn't matter what anyone else does, we'll still have the best quality at the best possible price. If we've got to compete on price, we'll be able to do it. At the end of the day, whoever is growing that product has to make money. Those are the things we are working towards.

 

            So we're tackling things a whole lot differently than in the past. We're not going to just throw money at things. We're going to look at the science and the way that we do things to improve the overall productivity of the province. As we do that and as we go through that process, we're going to discover a lot of very exciting things in the province. We've got some incredibly - not some, a lot of very, incredibly intelligent people in the farming industry who are business people plus they're farmers.

 

            I probably couldn't grow anything like they do. I understand the business side of it, and now we've got people in the industry who understand that and the business side. The more we can get them on the business side with their ability to grow products, the better Nova Scotia's economy is going to grow. We've got great hopes for that.

 

            We see so many things that are happening. I already talked about the hops business. The first time ever the hop growers of Nova Scotia met with the brewers. That's something I arranged in a meeting I committed to with the hop growers when we met with them the first time several months ago. That has been done. Now they're starting that dialogue, and that's important. It's no good growing something unless you've got a market. Then you've got to have the processing facility and the equipment to harvest that and to grow it and do all the things you need to do. So we need to do science all around these things.

 

            We've talked about blueberries in the province - 15 times the production than it was two years ago. That's because the science was applied. Harvesting machines were increased by 8 per cent yield - mechanical harvesters. That's a huge impact on the industry. Now they're trying to get at 3 per cent more. Another 3 per cent is worth millions of dollars. Those are the things we have to work on and that's a project that's between industry and the university. Those are the kinds of things we need to foster and work with and help move forward.

 

            As we move forward in the province, we've got a great hope for the agricultural industry in Nova Scotia. There are always some setbacks. The mink industry had a setback, but that's now starting to come around and we'll see that come around. They've contributed significantly to the economy of the province and invested a tremendous amount of money. I think the last I heard before the last investment they made in their processing facility was something like $350 million of their own money was invested in a process facility. This year they expanded again. It was several million for the expansion of the freezers and other things they did - again, all their own money.

 

            Those are the sorts of things that people aren't aware of, and as we grow the industries, it's important that we support them; we support them from the standpoint of science; we support them from the standpoint of available capital sometimes to do these things, through our loan boards, and through just simple support from our staff. It may just be a call to find out what's going on or how things are done.

 

            It's exciting to be in this department. It's exciting for Nova Scotia. We're here poised to start to grow the economy and I can't wait until we see some of the results in a few years' time.

 

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: Shall Resolution E1 stand?

 

The resolution stands.

 

            The honourable Government House Leader.

 

            HON. MICHEL SAMSON: Madam Chairman, would you please call the estimates for the Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture?

 

Resolution E10 - Resolved, that a sum not exceeding $9,883,000 be granted to the Lieutenant Governor to defray expenses in respect of the Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture, pursuant to the Estimate.

 

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: The honourable Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture.

 

            HON. KEITH COLWELL: Madam Chairman, these are my colleagues all around the table here today. With me today are Jennifer Thompson, our manager of finance, on my left; and for the Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture and also on my right is Kim MacNeil, deputy minister. I'm pleased to have both of these staff here with me today and other staff we will have in the gallery as the afternoon proceeds.

 

            Fisheries is another very exciting area of economic development in this province. I believe either the highest or second highest level of exports in the Province of Nova Scotia is through fisheries. Quite honestly, the department gets very little credit - not the department but the industry itself. We don't want the credit; we want the industry to have the credit for the fine job they do providing solid, permanent jobs for people in the Province of Nova Scotia and also growing our economy.

 

I've heard numbers now, anywhere from $1.1 billion to $1.3 billion in exports a year from the fishing industry. That has grown from $864 million just a few years ago. We're on the right track; we're on the right road and it's time that we recognize these hard working people and work with them to improve our rural life in Nova Scotia as we proceed.

 

            There are many issues in the department, as I'm sure my colleagues will bring forward as they talk today, but it's exciting being there. We have great plans for the Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture as we move forward. It's an interesting field to be in. There is a lot of tradition, a lot of great people with some pretty adamant views on how things should be done and I appreciate those views because I think that's important to make the industry grow and also make people appreciate how solid the fishing industry is in this province.

 

            We export, I believe it's around $350 million a year in lobsters and we're hoping to grow that number of export sales without actually catching many more lobsters. We have to move towards better quality and better handling and we will be introducing some new policies in the coming year to move towards better quality and better handling of lobsters, to make sure that more of them survive to get to the market place, and when they do they are of higher value.

 

The way to grow this industry is through higher value and if you look at Iceland, they actually have a sustainable cod fishery. They've actually reduced their catch by 30 per cent and over doubled their profits on the same catch. They did this simply by passing a law that says you can dump nothing, either at sea or on the land. You have to process everything you get and get added value from it. That's all they did. They didn't tell industry how to do it. We're not proposing we do that but it's a novel idea and it has worked there. It's turned an industry that was struggling, really, really struggling, into an industry that is one of the leading industries, if not the leading industry, in the whole country - that same product, lower catches, double the profit. That's good business.

 

I was in a fish plant there and I asked the manager of the fish plant, if a shipment of fish comes in that's not up to the high standards you set for the quality of fish, what do you do? He said it's simple, we fire the captain. We get a new captain who will listen to what we need. That's the approach they have. When you go into a fish plant there, everybody is dressed in white, looks like lab coats with nice white hats on; the place is spotless, absolutely spotless. The fish plants here - it is always stainless steel but this place was just like a very solid, looked more like a manufacturing place you would see if you were doing high end electronics, it was that well run. When you saw the results that they get and the products they get at the end, it's a fantastic product. They have even changed the Styrofoam containers they ship it in so they can put less ice on the fish and keep the quality for four or five days longer, fly their product all over the world and they still have a product that's the same flavour and same quality that just came out of the water.

 

            We have some of this going on right now with our own fish plants here, the ones that are really interested in making more profit, handling their products better, and I want to commend the industries that are doing that, and I want to commend the fishermen in Nova Scotia for the hard work they do in this very dangerous job. We're working closely with them to improve their safety. The last thing we every want to hear about from anyone in the province is where a fisherman is lost at sea for any reason, no matter what it is, or even hurt.

 

            With those few words I will turn it over to the Opposition and see if I can answer your questions.

 

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: The honourable member for Argyle-Barrington.

 

            HON. CHRISTOPHER D'ENTREMONT: It's my pleasure to stand and spend some time on the Fisheries. Fisheries, of course, for southwestern Nova Scotia, especially for the constituency of Argyle-Barrington, is extremely important. It is extremely important because it is probably, I would qualify, the only game in town. I wish we had a little agriculture going on. We do have a little bit of aquaculture but very little as well, so fisheries is it and quite honestly, when things are going right, things are going right, but when things are going wrong, get out of the way, because things are going wrong.

 

            I can say over the last number of years it has been sort of that up and down of things going right and things going wrong. So my first question, basically, to the minister is, we talked about quality, we talked about value, but what is the fishery worth to Nova Scotians? How much landed value do we have in the fishery in Nova Scotia?

 

            MR. COLWELL: The landed value in the province in the commercial fishery is about $850 million and we are just slightly under $1.3 billion in 2014 for export sales and that's up 20 per cent over 2013, so we're making significant progressing that area.

 

            MR. D'ENTREMONT: I would like you to maybe expand on that as well by some major species, so ground fish, lobster, scallops, try to split some of those off. I just want to set the stage of what this really means to the economy of Nova Scotia because if we look at real jobs in rural Nova Scotia, just to understand the value that sits behind each one of these power houses.

 

            MR. COLWELL: I'll give you the export numbers. I think they are easiest ones for comparison. The lobster exports were $583 million, crab was $171 million, and scallops were $166 million. Those are very significant numbers and we are hoping to improve on those values by improving quality.

 

            MR. D'ENTREMONT: Thank you for that because what I'm trying to let people who are watching know, if possible, is it's more than just a couple of guys in rubber boots out catching a few fish. The lobster industry is $583 million, crab is $171 million and crab is probably one of the more exciting ones. The crab industry in Nova Scotia is not something we had until probably 10 years ago or so, maybe 20 years they've been working on the crab industry. Truly, it never had that kind of value before.

 

            Scallops is another one that's tremendously important. As a son of a retired scallop fisherman, if I look at the amount of money those fisheries are making now, it's substantially better than it was for many years. There are a whole bunch of reasons for that: the quality, the marketing but also the fishery itself and who actually owns the fish and who actually catches the fish has made a tremendous difference about that. But if you look at scallops, scallops were almost on the edge of collapse back in the 1980s, back to a fisheries today of $160 million.

 

            My focus today mostly will be around lobster because lobster is still king in Nova Scotia and it's still king in southwestern Nova Scotia. My big question is, and I know this will probably garnish a very big answer, but I do want the minister to take time to explain it - where are we with the levy? There was a big report done on lobster. There were a number of recommendations that all provinces that participated, P.E.I. and New Brunswick, that they were going to accept. It looks like P.E.I. and New Brunswick are moving forward on a lobster marketing levy and Nova Scotia is still sitting around trying to figure out what's going on.

 

            Maybe the minister could spend some time to expand on where the lobster marketing levy is in Nova Scotia and where are we going with it?

 

            MR. COLWELL: Thank you for the very important question. Before I answer that question, I want to indicate that, as you said, it's not just three or four people working the industry. Counting the fishermen themselves and the fish plant employees, it's nearly 10,000 people in the province. That's a number we should repeat every day, 10,000. Probably the biggest employer outside of government in the province.

 

            If anyone thinks that the local fishermen who is going out, they see the boat going out, just a poor fishermen who really doesn't know what's going on in the world and that was the opinion of people years ago, indeed, these are very sophisticated business people and they treat their employees very well and they work very, very hard. It's a number we should be talking about more with close to 10,000 people working.

 

            I'm going to shock the member here with what I'm going to say here: There isn't going to be a lobster levy in Nova Scotia. There's not going to be a levy, but there is going to be a fee. The term "levy" will not be used by us anymore; it will be a fee. The fee will be equal to what the lobster panel report indicated it should be in that area. I think it's important to set the record straight on that.

 

            We did a series of consultations. I believe we did 19 meetings. I've had different numbers between 19 and 21 meetings we had but I know we did 19 for sure all over the province. We asked two very basic questions and I don't have the questions right here but I can get the questions, basically, are people interested in paying this. We got some mixed answers and there will be an official announcement on that very shortly. I'm still waiting to get the official report back from our staff.

 

            We will be introducing legislation this session around a fee for lobster to fund the programs that the lobster report indicated. We will be putting that in place. We are not really behind P.E.I. or New Brunswick. We're a bit behind in the way we're approaching this, a little bit different approach in some ways and in some ways we're a mixture of the two other provinces. They are having their issues as well around this fee that will be collected.

 

            We're very anxious to do that. We're very anxious to get it in place because it will help the industry. It will help us get better quality to the end customer, that's where it goes, and also that we can do some marketing that we badly need to do. The questions we did ask were: do you support collection of a fee to further the industry? That was one question we asked. And the second question: if yes, how do feel it should be collected, administered, and led? So those are the two questions we asked during our consultation process and again we're going to have a report out on that very shortly.

 

            MR. D'ENTREMONT: As Fisheries and Aquaculture Critic, I'm getting the mixed messages that I know the minster is getting as well because we basically have one part of the province, I would say the northern half of the province, that is for a lobster marketing fee, or a levy, whatever we want to call it in the end. We are still asking for two cents a pound, one way or another, is what we are doing.

 

            We basically have about 1,800 licence holders in northern Nova Scotia who have always been along with you and we have about 1,800 in southwestern Nova Scotia who have not accepted the whole idea. I'm just wondering if you have some thoughts around how this going to roll out, since we don't have that 100 per cent acceptance. We don't necessarily have the people speaking for fishermen, and in my estimation the fishermen are tough to organize in southwestern Nova Scotia.

 

            I'm just wondering, are you really looking at the pitfalls of this and how is it really going? I don't want to take too much away from your announcement but these are the questions that we are getting lately, just where are we going with this considering this disagreement that is happening amongst accredited associations and even fishermen themselves?

 

            MR. COLWELL: Like you said, it is a very complex issue. I think we have come up with a solution. I'm not sure at this point but I think we've come up with a compromise of how we can do this. A fee is one way rather than a levy. We have several people in the southern part of the province who have agreed to pay a fee, unofficially, but we've had discussions with them in that regard. They are not prepared to pay a levy but it basically works out to the same thing. At the end of the day whatever we do, it's going to be industry lead; the fund will be an industry administered, not by the province, it will be administered by the industry; so that is the key to making the whole thing work, and full accountability for those bodies that do the administrating of the funds.

 

            We have some history in the past of not a lot of transparent accountability. This will be in the regulations, regulations around transparency and necessary reporting to make sure that any individual, anyone who is helping to fund this thing, can see, yes, the money was spent here. We may not agree with the way the money was spent but we know exactly where every penny has gone because that has been one of the big issues we've had, no matter where in the province you talk to people about it.

 

            We have to have complete transparency. We have to make sure we have people there who realize this. We're going to put in a rate in regulation and total reporting, everything that you're going to need to make it totally transparent. That is the key to this whole thing. There is a lot of mistrust out there and the real bottom-line with this is mistrust because over the years there have been some people that had all kinds of information and the most of the people had no information. With no information people don't trust what's going on and rightfully so, rightfully so.

 

We're going to really change how we do all this kind of work. The Act will address a little bit of that but most of it is going to be in regulation and when we roll this out and we work with this, we're going to meet and talk with the industry quite extensively before we put anything into regulations that they have to follow. We need them to work with us because it's going to be their futures we're talking about, their system of collecting this, their system of administering it and deciding where the funds go.

 

They made decide to do some research and development on some product that will help the whole industry. They might decide to do some generic marketing. They might do all kinds of different things but at the end of the day it has got to be industry driven. We've got to support them, help them along the way, but at the end of the day the industry has to drive it.

 

            MR. D'ENTREMONT: I respect the issue of being industry-led. That brings us to a whole other discussion, and maybe we'll get to that in a minute. It's just who is going to represent the fishery because that is a part of the mistrust thing. One group has a little group and they don't trust the guy in the other group and it's just - good luck, because it's going to be a lot of work.

 

            My question is, okay, through some kind of formula there will be a marketing fee extracted from the fishery of about two cents per pound, so a marketing fee, a lobster marketing fee, or a levy, or whatever we want to call it, somewhere near two cents a pound, because that's what you have committed to.

 

            Most provinces, or the other two provinces, it looks like they are supporting the Lobster Council of Canada. What you are saying is we're going to set up another group. They are going to make a decision on where the money is going to go. Why are we not going with our brothers and sisters in the other provinces and doing something on our own?

 

            MR. COLWELL: Actually, we won't be on our own and it's not going to be a marketing fee, it's going to be a fee that the lobster industry uses. A marketing fee is a terminology of someone else. The same basic thing is going to happen on Prince Edward Island: the fishermen are going to get together, an organization, they're going to decide where the money goes and the buyer section, the processor section, will decide where their money goes and hopefully they are going to work together.

 

            Ours, hopefully, when we get this all structured - and again we've got to consult with the industry more, and you'll understand what I'm talking about once we release the findings of our consultation. It was quite an eye opener, let's put it that way, as we move forward, and we're going to respond to what the industry told us in the consultation. I think they'll be very pleased with the approach we're taking and we're going to do that approach in the same spirit as the other two provinces are doing and as well as Newfoundland and Labrador.

 

            We are very pleased with what the industry told us. We thought as much before we went to the consultation and now we know for sure. The support of the lobster council isn't as strong as people think, in some areas, not that they are not a great organization but it's a whole thing, again, of trust and making sure that the industry fully directs where we're going, not where we're going, where they have to go.

 

            For instance, when I was Fisheries Minister 15 years ago, we led the whole country in exports. New Brunswick, up until last year, beat us in exports. Do you know why? They're processing Nova Scotia lobster, simply put. We catch them, they process them. I think that's a great business model on their part. Maine is starting to do that same thing with our lobsters, so we've got to stop adding and improving on our processing capability in Nova Scotia, so we can add value in Nova Scotia, add better quality in Nova Scotia, and we can keep more jobs in Nova Scotia, more wealth in Nova Scotia.

 

            MR. D'ENTREMONT: I'm going to lead a little bit more on that. When it comes to the issue of the Lobster Council of Canada, they do seem to be the organization that's probably most ready for this, so I'm just wondering what else is out there to provide that kind of value or marketing. What else are we going to have to go and create in order to make up a lobster fee?

 

I know you are saying that we'll leave it to fishermen or fishermen groups to make that decision but I think the report is pretty clear on where we should be investing this time. Part of it is marketing and part of it is in development. There is a whole bunch of places that it could go. I'm just wondering how we're going to move forward from there, when we do have a group that is ready, that is accepted by a huge number of fishermen in the northern part, let's say, because I know the issues for southwestern Nova Scotia is a little different than the rest. I'm just wondering how you try to balance those things off.

 

            MR. COLWELL: It definitely is a balancing process as we move forward but I think it will become more obvious when we announce the findings of our consultation. It's important that we have a unified, generic marketing approach, that's important with the other provinces and within the province. We also have to look at an enhanced process and we also have to look at enhanced quality, all the things that will make the marketing easier.

 

Those things will be subscribed in the regulations that these will be areas that they have to concentrate on, that they are not just deciding to do something that is right out of the box that won't help the economy. This is all about growing the economy and making sure that as we grow the economy the industry that is helping to grow it gets benefit from it.

 

Those conversations have to be held and we have to trust them to be able to do the job properly. We have to set the rules up so it makes it easier for them to do that. I have a lot of confidence in the industry. They have not been united before, but when it comes down to making money, these guys know how to do it and if we can challenge them with that and work with them on that, to make sure that when the day comes that they take control of these funds, that they're directed, going in the right direction for the industry as a whole and at the end of the day I know they will. They are a very keen, hardworking group of people. It's just a matter of getting the right structure put in place, that they have faith in the structure, that they will move it forward beyond anything we could ever dream of. 

 

MR. D'ENTREMONT: Madam Chairman, that pretty much answers my questions when it comes to the fees. It's more of a sit there, wait, and let's hope before this session is done, the documents are done and ready to go and we can actually debate it here in the House of Assembly, which I'm looking forward to. I know a number of our MLA's are interested in this as well because let's not forget, as strong as our industry is in southwestern Nova Scotia, we go up through the Northumberland Strait and in those areas there is a very important fishery as well. Cape Breton is a very important fishery as well as the Eastern Shore. All of those areas have extremely important fisheries.

 

I think everybody is just sitting, waiting, and hoping it doesn't get messed up, when we do garnish support on these things that we don't squander it away. My suggestion to the minister is to work his best on making sure that this goes through as seamlessly as he possibly can make it without ruffling too many feathers, by maybe announcing a five cent levy somewhere and not knowing where it was supposed to go. I know he made a bit of a mistake there. I think that's what started the problem in southwestern Nova Scotia when they heard it could be a five cent levy at the time. I think that's when everybody went a little squirrelly and a little worried, so I hope that this legislation comes around that it is going to be straightforward and clear and we're able to see the benefit to the fishery in all of Nova Scotia.

 

My question, though, is, during the election in the Liberal platform there was a $500,000 promise on lobster marketing. I think $250,000 of it was flowed last year so I'm just wondering if more of it flowed this year from your department on marketing.

 

            MR. COLWELL: Yes, $250,000 was flowed last year because it was late in the year and we didn't have a plan in place for it but we did put a plan in place and part of that plan last year was to do a test market in China through the social media with the Chinese representative and that's the time we sold 80,000 lobsters worth $2.2 million in 24 hours. We probably could've sold twice that but we ran out of lobsters. Really good story but that was a small part of that $250,000 we had.

 

This year we have $500,000 again for marketing, which we will be working with the industry on to again, get the marketing up and we will continue that into the future. We're very excited about marketing lobsters and I know we did bring a gentleman over who has a lot of experience in marketing, was at Fisheries years ago - again I won't use anyone's name here for obvious reasons - who is very excited every day about the possibilities of marketing Nova Scotia seafood and Nova Scotia farm products and it's starting to show.

 

            We're really starting to see some very positive things. We had a great show in Boston this year. We had a lot of companies there, a lot of very positive companies. I personally called every company before they left, offered our assistance in any way we could. They've never gotten a call like that before from anybody. We followed up by visiting them at each one of booths, also arranging meetings for them and working with the industry at a level they have not seen before: at my level, also at the marketing level, and also at our staff level. So we're committed to growing the industry in the province.

 

            Again, we've got terrific staff working out there doing these things but we have to have a concerted effort to move this forward. We're very happy with the way it's going, we're very happy with the budget, the support we're getting there and the support of the Premier as he puts focus on the traditional fisheries, agriculture, aquaculture, forestry and the other products we have. Without that support from the Premier and my Cabinet colleagues, this wouldn't be possible.

 

            Anyway, I know you are chuckling over there and I don't blame you but this is not politics, this is reality. I think it's important that people realize that because before, these departments were ignored, absolutely ignored. It's time now that we need to be front and centre. I believe that now we are the biggest exporter in Nova Scotia. I know Michelin Tire was ahead of us for a while but if we're not ahead of them, we are neck-and-neck with them. We're very happy to see that Michelin does very well but it's also very good to see the fishing industry competing with them as a key export commodity and quality product in the province.

 

            MR. D'ENTREMONT: I do have to take a little bit of exception with a few things that the minister did say there. As a previous Minister of Fisheries, I can tell you there was lots of focus put on fishery during our time. I know that the member for Queens-Shelburne spent a lot of time promoting the fishery as well, so it's not the first time ever but it's probably the first time in a while.

 

            I do want to say that you really didn't answer, what are you going to spend - so you spent $250,000 last year towards the end of the year. What's the plan for spending this year or is that maybe not in the cards this year? You didn't answer what we are spending forward out of that $500,000 that your Party promised.

 

            MR. COLWELL: We're working on the plan right now for the $500,000 and we're going to do that in conjunction with NSBI; in the past that has been done in isolation. NSBI was off marketing products that we had and now it's going to be jointly marketed and we're going to work together on that and I think that's long overdue. That was one shortfall we had in the past.

 

            MR. D'ENTREMONT: I appreciate that answer, so it will be something for us to watch for as this year rolls around. It's good so see that there is still a commitment to keep up that.

 

            We're also told that there seems to be a few pilot lobster projects happening in the province. I was just wondering, maybe you could outline what a couple of these pilots are and where they are going, just to give us an idea of what they are - whether they are quality, whether they are production, what are they?

 

            MR. COLWELL: Actually I'm very excited about those projects. Unfortunately I can't tell you where they are at yet. The reason we can't tell you is because we're trying to access funding from the federal government, to be quite frank. I can tell you a little bit of what they are about and how they started. Actually it started in my office. A processor and a fisherman came in to see me one day and said we need to get our acts together on this whole lobster issue. Number one is marketing problems. They're not serious but the quality problem was. That's what they identified as the biggest problem, quality. Even though we have the best quality in the world, we need to get better, so they identified that.

 

            Then we brought one of the local organizations in from Nova Scotia and talked to them, sat down and talked with them and they couldn't believe we were actually going to pay any attention to them because this is the first time in history that did happen, this project like this. I can tell you that the fishermen in the areas that we have approached to work on this pilot project have voted unanimously to support the program, pretty close to the five cents a pound that we talked about but we're including quality in this. So that's what the five cents was for.

 

            The five cent discussion on that part of it, the pilot project, was really positive in other areas because it woke up everybody else and they said wow, we had better pay attention here. So they got on the phone and called us and we had some very productive meetings in southwestern Nova Scotia. That has been very positive all the way along so I think we've got a road forward.

 

            We're going to look at quality. That's going to be the key thing, and also at marketing. We already have a major grocery store chain on side. We have some of the processors on side. We also have some markets tied up outside of Canada; they're ready to go on to this project right away. So we have the whole chain in place, right from the fishermen. We call it the catch-to-plate program, and we've got buy-in right across the whole industry. I've never seen such a buy-in and such interest in running a project like this.

            Actually, this past Saturday we had a meeting about the process with the groups we're dealing with and I couldn't believe the response. I was sitting back and the fishermen were asking questions that we didn't think they'd ask for maybe another year. They wanted to move forward with this very quickly. They want to be the key top-quality lobster in the whole province. If we achieve that, then our issue with getting other people on side is going to be no issue at all, as you well know, and the former minister knows as well - both you ministers in the past. If you get 0.25 cents a pound more or $1 a pound more, everybody wants to know how you're doing it and they'll do it. It's just that simple.

 

            We've got to stop this problem of the guys buying these crate runt lobsters, throwing them all in a crate and jumping on the crate, killing all the lobsters in it. That's got to stop. Once that stops then all kinds of other handling things we've got to make sure are better. That doesn't happen often, but once is one time too many. Now we've got to talk about a quality culture. People get the quality because quality means more sales. If you lose that lobster for whatever reason and it doesn't make it to processing or live market sales, it means somebody pays for that. Guess who pays for it? The fishermen pay for it because the price will drop at the wharf, for whatever reason, it will go down.

 

            We're very excited about this program. We're about on target where we want it to be, but right now, and within the next two years, you'll see some pretty significant announcements around this and how it's really working. We're very excited. We're being approached by people now to be part of this, and that's exciting because when we first started everybody was skeptical. They didn't believe we would help them, work with them, and do all the other things, but now they see we mean business. We're there to do business, and let them lead it. Again, we want industry to lead it, not us, and they're doing just that. It's very exciting to sit back now and watch what's happening. We've done a lot of work on it already, but very soon this will be kicking off the first test.

 

            MR. D'ENTREMONT: As much as you can't really tell me where the test is going to be, I'm going to guess it's not in southwestern Nova Scotia. My problem, when we have quality discussions in southwestern Nova Scotia, is the problem of volume. It is a volume fishery, which has been a benefit, but mostly a bit of a problem with the fishery in southwestern Nova Scotia.

 

            When you're catching 5,000 to 6,000 pounds on those first few days of the fishery, all they have time for is to throw it in a crate and hope for something later because there's such a large volume. What it revolves around is having workers on the boat in order to do this because it's going to be a labour intensive kind of thing.

 

            If you can say normal boats have three guys on it, if you're lucky - three people; I do know a few women who are in the fishery today, which is more than a few years ago. I have seen it quite often, which is awesome, but you have three people on that boat. They can barely maintain the level of work on that boat right now because the mechanics or the business side of this boat is the fuel keeps going up, insurance keeps going up, and all the other costs that go with it. They can only afford to have one guy with a worker, but if you're going to ask them to go through 5,000 to 6,000 pounds of lobster in a day, to decide which ones are of quality and which ones are not of quality, I think you've got a bigger project before you than I think you understand.

 

            Have they thought about that a little bit because the volume in southwestern Nova Scotia is far different than it is in other parts of the province?

 

            MR. COLWELL: The honourable member is making a very good point. The point of the matter is quality brings price. Put the price up, you can afford to have someone else on the boat, but our goal is to try to make it not just the cost of doing that part of it, but look at the overall cost of operating the enterprise because there are two ways to make money: the higher price or the lower operating cost. The lower operating costs can be more efficient diesel engines, it could be all kinds of things, and it could be some equipment on the boat to help sort the lobsters, all kinds of things we are looking at. We're looking at all of those issues as we move forward.

 

That is why the pilot project is not in southwestern Nova Scotia. Because of the volume we have to get the processes down first; we have to make sure the processes work; we have to make sure it does yield a better price in the market, at the plate, as you want to say it, at the dinner plate, whatever the case might be and indeed, I know in southwestern Nova Scotia there are some losses too because of handling of that large number, like you said.

 

            I think there is a real interest by every fisherman out there, every buyer, every processor to make sure they handle the lobsters the best way they possibly can to get the best yield they can. That's in everybody's best interest. Those processes have to be in place. We're probably going to have to do some research on how we can semi-automate that process on board a boat. Maybe there are ways we can do that, maybe there aren't but the thing is if we do the research, we will find out.

 

This pilot project will give us a lot of that information, even though it's a smaller type of fishery, which is really the way we have to do it. Then I would love to see it come to the day when the fishermen say, okay, we want our season changed because if we change our season, we can make more money. That's where we need to go and get the whole industry in a particular area to make that decision themselves. That's something we can't control, that's DFO, but the industry can, they can do that.

 

            We've have to start looking at adding value. In my opening statements I used Iceland as an example. That's a prime example. They were bringing fish ashore, maybe not too good quality, a lot of them, and all the things that you can't have. They have the quality now. They are selling every single part of the fish and some of the parts are selling for huge prices because they did the science, they did the research, and they put things in place to get more value out of that one cod fish they catch. That means a whole lot more value to the country, to the fishermen, to the processor, everything all the way along.

 

We have to put those things in place. We have to stop thinking the way we did and start thinking outside the box. One thing I can tell you with working with the industry years ago, when I was in that area selling equipment and producing automated systems, you want the best innovator there ever was. We would work away in engineering on our products and the fisherman on the wharf would be the guy who would finally say, yeah, why don't you do it this way? Why don't you do it this way?

 

I can remember we were on the Gaspé Coast and we had a major problem with one of products. I was looking down at this boat and there were herring skeletons all around the hull and the boat wasn't very clean and we're hollering to just a young guy down on the boat, maybe 21 or 22 if that. He came up - and I can't speak French and unfortunately, that's a disadvantage for me. The engineer who worked for me couldn't speak French either. The young gentleman couldn't speak English. After 20 minutes, he told us how to fix a problem we had in the hull and he had only seen one for less than a minute. We had been working on the problem for two years.

 

Because someone else has a different idea, a different approach, somebody who had worked with that type of equipment every day had come up with the answer we had been looking for. That's where I give the industry a lot of credit. They don't really realize that they have that ability, but once they see it and they realize it, they're very innovative, hardworking, and they see the results of some time they have spent or an investment they might want to make that will change this. We are going to try to capitalize on that ability of the industry to really make it better.

 

The 5,000 pounds a day per boat, and sometimes I realize even higher per boat when the first of the season comes, is a pretty big problem to deal with but there are ways to deal with that and we have to work with the processors to make sure that can happen as well. That could be something that this fee could look after, to handle that glut of lobster in the first of the season - how do we do it? Maybe we leverage that money to do some technology around that. That's the kind of thing the industry has to decide on and that would be a program for the whole industry. There are all kinds of possibilities here but we really have to think outside the box. What we did before was good, but we have to get better at what we do.

 

MR. D'ENTREMONT: I want to go back a little bit to the workers on the boat for a second because what the minister is proposing is a labour intensive kind of thing and maybe as we do roll around, it can be something that can be mechanized or at least made easier for them, but the problem that I see right now is that because of the drain to the West, even though we have seen people starting to come back, if you're putting an extra guy on a boat, we need to have those people available to us.

 

            Most guys that I've talked to are having trouble putting the third guy on, let alone the second guy. If we're going to be putting on a fourth guy or a fifth guy, in order to go through those lobsters and make sure we have the best possible quality, well that's going to be a lot more work than just saying we need better quality. There is a manpower problem in our small rural communities right now to try to find the people to work it, so maybe that's something that the minister can think about.

 

            You also made the comment that on one side you try to save money and make a boat more efficient. We are almost too late on that one already for this next round of boats because every shipyard that I've talked to lately - who, by the way, are having problems hiring people to work in the boat shops - are building the same boat that they're building today. Maybe they are a little more efficient than the previous models have been, but we've got a three-year wait, in some cases, to build boats in southwestern Nova Scotia. I was talking to the guys at Ronnie Belliveau's; to the guys at Dixon's; to Jimmy and Comeau and Camille d'Eon. All of those have three-year waiting now before they can get a boat done, so if there is anything that we can do to help with efficiency we'd better get it out there now before some of those boats get done.

 

            There is also the comment you made about Iceland. It would be nice if they would have a day when we would be able to influence the federal government on this one as well, but the lobster fishery is a little different than what we see happening in Iceland. Iceland is company-owned, really, if you look at it. You basically have company boats or government-owned boats that go out and catch the fish.

 

            So when you made that comment originally in your opening statement - or soon after your opening statement - when you talked about when they were catching and the fish they weren't supposed to be catching, then you just get rid of the captain and get a new captain. That kind of accountability that's happening on the boat, that's tough to do in our owner-operator situation when it comes to the lobster fishery because for the most part, even though some of them are corporate entities, it is still the captain who is responsible for his own boat, so how do you push on them to make sure some of these things happen and how do we incent it? Money is a really good incentive, but in some cases a lot of people are pretty happy with the money they are making right now. I mean, some of these fishing enterprises made a ton of money over the last couple of years because prices did get so much better.

 

            I'm just wondering, where is this government working towards trying to find the man/woman-power available in our rural communities to help out with some of these things? Let's not only talk about the lobster fishery here, but also in our boat building industry that's really having a hard time trying to find the people to do the work that's available.

 

            MR. COLWELL: That's a real problem - people to work in any community now. A lot of it comes down to income. If we can succeed, and I believe we can, in getting added value to a lobster - for instance, when we were in Iceland we were told the value of one codfish is $1,500. Think about that - $1,500, that's the value to the country for one codfish. If they can get that from a codfish, which is a lot lower value product than a lobster is - if we could get anywhere remotely close to that area, think of the value. All of a sudden, instead of a young person going out West, he can stay on a boat and work on a boat and make a very good income, as good as you could make out West, and still be at home and still be here, and then that young person, hopefully, eventually, can buy his own licence and fish his own boat and get a crew the same way, like it's been done for generations in Nova Scotia.

 

            Where I think the disconnect is in Nova Scotia is we haven't had those high paying jobs for young people who don't have a lot of experience. This is a great way, if we can get this to work, and I know we can. It's going to take time. It's called buy-in from the industry. That's going to be the heart and you know that better than I do. We've got to get the industry to buy in, but I know one thing from dealing with the captains in southwestern Nova Scotia, if the guy beside him makes more money than he does, you're not going to have to worry about an incentive. It doesn't matter how much money they make. I know that it's very competitive and that's going to be very positive for our province and for our community as that competition continues.

 

            I know that for a lot of us it's very friendly competition, but at the end of the day, it's nice to say you are the high liner in the port. If you're the high liner in the port, that deserves a tremendous amount of respect from your fellow harvesters and not only from the harvesters, but from the whole community.

 

            Over the years I've dealt with many of the high liners in the different areas and if they do something, everybody else does the same thing because they want to be as good as they are. Sometimes some younger people come along and they become the high liners because they instituted new ideas and new approaches. So we need the combination of both young people and the people who have working in the industry for a long time, who really led this.

 

            Today we wouldn't be where we are if it wasn't for the fishermen really adapting, really getting new technology in place and new ideas. I know once we get it in place, that if we can get a bonus for a top quality lobster, whatever we describe that lobster to be, and it's consistent, it's not going to be a problem with buy-in; it's going to be how quickly we can handle what comes. That goes right back to the point of 5,000 pounds a day. If there is a process set up on the boat to handle that kind of stuff, and probably semi-automated or automated so that the system goes through - because there is some stuff coming on the market you're probably not aware of. There is one product that we're hoping to get our hands on soon that weighs the lobster, tells you if it's male or female, soft shell, hard shell, the whole nine yards, and that could be separated and put into different spots when they landed, there it is, and properly handled.

 

            We've got to eliminate the one-claw lobsters that are damaged from the process when the trap comes in, before it gets to the processing facility. Those cost everybody a pile of money, and the fishermen are now starting to realize that. They're starting to realize that these things cost them money at the wharf. Once we get that message out there and once we get the industry to the buyers' side of it and the processors' side and say, we will pay more money for this top quality lobster - whatever that is, if it's a processing there's a different kind of lobster and they're going to be to live market.

 

            So we have to get that in place. There is a lot of enthusiasm around that from what I've seen. Everywhere in the province when you talk to somebody, they want a better price for their lobster. The price has been great this year because people couldn't get out and fish, but if they had been able to get out and fish, the price probably would have dropped substantially. It's great to have that kind of price now and hopefully it lasts.

 

            MR. D'ENTREMONT: That moves me into another avenue, still on the lobster fishery. You talk about young people and young people have the problem now of purchasing outfits - to go and buy a new boat, buy the licence, buy the gear. I know I'm probably going to take a little heat on this one, too, because I am going to talk about owner-operator policies - and I try to stay away from that as best I can because it gets complicated - but what are we doing as a province to make funds available, so that young people can actually get into the fishery?

 

            It's tremendously expensive, so what's happening? Because either the Fisheries and Aquaculture Loan Board isn't helping or whether the charter banks aren't ready to help them; trust agreements continue to be signed and monies have been made available by different large outfits to help these young fishermen get into the fishery, but knowing full well that they hold rights to the product or whatever it is. I'm just wondering what kind of work is being done to allow the young fisher person to get into the fishery because the age continues to grow here and we need to have younger guys ready to take over the fishery.

 

            MR. COLWELL: That's a very good point; a very important point. The last time I talked to the loan board about this, actually most of our loan applications are from very young fishermen for buying boats and licenses and that process. I think the last government put that in place and I want to commend them for doing that. I know that was a bold move, but it's very positive.

 

            Again, the more money you can make with a particular licence - not saying that the new owner will be as successful because again it depends on experience - the more likely they are to sell it, the easier it is to finance. It's a whole avenue, if you are making money and you show a profit, it's easy to use that profit to buy the enterprise and give the person who is selling it a good price so they can retire because typically it is the retirement fund for most of the people who get out of it.

 

            We're working with that. We intend to work with that more and move that forward. It's good to see that the loan board is doing this and again, our loans are going mostly now to young fishermen.

 

            MR. D'ENTREMONT: Maybe I don't see it here and I probably just didn't do my research well enough. Can you give us an idea on the Fisheries and Aquaculture Loan Board: how much money is out there working right now? How much is available for it? I just don't see it in the documents that I have.

 

            MR. COLWELL: What we have in 2013-14, to give you an idea of how the young people are getting into the industry, we had just over $15 million in loans. In 2014-15 the estimate was $25 million and this year we're estimating $30 million, almost double what we were two years ago. It's an indication that the older fishermen are starting to release their licenses, sell them off, and the younger people are coming into the industry. It's one of the industries we feel that young people are coming back to and are working here. It's very, very positive and we look forward to it growing.

 

            MR. D'ENTREMONT: I don't want to use up the whole hour on lobster, let's move off to aquaculture for a few minutes. I know we'll probably pick up lobster again there in a minute but I did want to get started quickly on aquaculture, more specifically the Doelle-Lahey report, one that has been sitting around on a desk for a while. Hopefully there has been some work going on in getting the regulatory framework together.

 

            We do have an industry there that I think can really grow for the benefit of rural Nova Scotia. Maybe the minister can give a couple of comments on where the work is for the regulatory framework.

 

            MR. COLWELL: First of all, I want to thank all the participants in the Doelle-Lahey report. We received the report. It was an excellent, well-rounded report and we are in the process right now, with that report in mind, of moving forward with legislation which we hope to present in the Legislature this session, and also a set of regulations that we hope to have shortly after the legislation is approved, to move forward with aquaculture in the province.

 

            Along those lines we're very happy with the new structure of us not doing the enforcement any more in this. That will leave us free to be the regulators and promoters of that industry, as well as all the industries we're looking forward. So this change that has come through enforcement has been very timely for us and we are looking forward to that being very successful.

 

            The report did lay out a lot of very positive things. As a former minister you would know some of the difficulties you faced as minister before, not having adequate enforcement equipment and not adequate labs, all those things.

 

Immediately upon becoming minister I met first with a vet whom I had known from minister before. He suggested that we need to move forward with a new lab and indeed, we did allow, at that initial stage of that, $0.5 million. Our lab is just about ready, complete now. It's going to be in Truro and we have one, a little bit less-capable lab, in Shelburne. So that's very, very positive. When we're done this lab will be state-of-the-art, be able to do most all the testing we can. Some we still won't be able to because it's tests you don't do very often so it's easier to contract them out to other certified labs.

 

            Our lab will be certified and registered as a certified lab, as all the labs are in Agriculture and in Fisheries and Aquaculture, it will be the same. It's a real major step forward for us and we started that 18 months ago.

 

            MR. D'ENTREMONT: We know that the core recommendation within that report was to try to do a mapping of Nova Scotia. You have green zones and yellow zones and red zones so that as we continue to develop, some of these things are already done. It's less on the proponent of going through the process of identifying a piece of water than going through all the science that goes along with it and just continuing along that way, so trying to do some of that pre-work as a department. I am wondering how that mapping is going or has that been started and then maybe I'll ask a little bit more about finfish issues that seem to be plaguing the South Shore.

 

            MR. COLWELL: We per se won't be going with the red, yellow and green zones but we will be doing basically the same thing. There are some areas not suited for certain kinds of aquaculture, some navigation routes you just can't put aquaculture there, you wouldn't want to put it there.

 

            There's probably not a spot in the province you can't do some kind of aquaculture, but it depends on the type, on water temperature, conditions around there, accessibility to the waterfront, all kinds of different things. Instead of calling it red, yellow, green we're going to come out with a different process. It's going to be the same thing exactly. We will eliminate some areas for finfish; science won't allow it. Everything we do is going to be based on science.

 

If we don't have the science, we're going to get the science. It's no longer someone coming along and saying, this doesn't work because the science says this and there's nothing to back it up. We're going to do the science. We've already started on some programs to initiate some science around aquaculture sites because there are some myths out there and we want to know if the myths are right or wrong. If they're right then that's what will be done, if they're wrong we'll let people know they're wrong and why they're wrong. Then we will move forward from there.

 

            MR. D'ENTREMONT: Very quickly, since this has been sitting and getting some work done to it - there hasn't been a lot of activity on new leases being put out. Has the department been issuing leases while we're waiting or have they been actually doing a little bit of work and letting a few of them go? Has any work been done since this has been sitting, because it is an important industry that should at least be moving along a little bit. So have new leases been sent out?

 

            MR. COLWELL: We're working diligently on the new regulations. It's a priority for us to do that. In the meantime we're not accepting new applications because it's not fair to the proponent. As we come up with the new regulations that are going to be in place, it's impossible to get an application from somebody and then in six months' time or whenever we're ready, that's no good anymore, you have to do this too or this part's no good, but you have to do all this other work. We want to make sure when we go out to the industry, they know what the rules are. The rules will be stringent, but they're going to be fair and they will take everything into consideration of the Doelle-Lahey report and more to make sure we can move the industry in an environmentally sound way that the industry can be sure that's where it's going to happen.

 

            We have to build credibility in the communities. I know both of you have worked on that in the past and it's a very difficult task. Plus you have to build credibility with the industry so the industry understands what they have to do and what they continually have to do to operate a successful lease.

 

            MR. D'ENTREMONT: We've had a question around a lease that was let in Antigonish Harbour. It looks like it was one that was put in in a very prime fishing zone so fishermen in the local area had been using that bed for a while to go diving for oysters. Did one let go? Was one let go there recently or is it something that has been sitting around for a while? I'd really like to take it up with you or Bruce or one of those guys just to understand what happened there because fishermen seem to be upset in Antigonish Harbour that there was one let go in that specific area. I'm just wondering if you're aware of that.

 

            MR. COLWELL: We can talk about that later but we've already instituted a policy of use it or lose it. We have all kinds of people out there that have leases for 10 years and never done a thing with them and that's costing the province money. If you're not going to use these sites, you are going to lose them.

 

            A lot of people thought they had a gold mine on their hands, which may or may not be the case, but if they're not going to use them, they have to put a plan in place so within six months and that has already been issued. Then if you get the plan in place, you're going to have six months to start and get the process underway. Then if those aren't accepted, we're going to take them back, they are not going to be cancelled, and then make them available to someone else through an RFP or some other kind of program. We're still working on that process.

 

            It's really important that we utilize what we have and if there are issues around it, again it has to be because of science, not just because somebody says there's an issue. We will put the money, do the science, do the research and then come back with the answer and they could be absolutely right.

 

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: Time has elapsed for the Progressive Conservative caucus. We'll now move on to the NDP.

 

The honourable member for Queens-Shelburne.

 

            HON. STERLING BELLIVEAU: Thank you very much, Madam Chairman. I was noticing the sound effects of the jackhammer outdoors and it reminds me of my fishing career with a diesel engine in the background so it shouldn't have too much effect on my comments of the night.

 

            First of all I want to recognize the quality of questions. This is one of the first times that I have observed all three members have been sitting ministers at some time or other so I recognize the quality of the discussion here tonight.

 

            Mr. Minister, certainly it is a privilege to engage in this process and I just want to take the minister back. I know that I'll be repeating some of the questions the former PC Critic raised earlier. I just want to take you back to the last session, to one of the questions I asked, as the Fisheries and Aquaculture Critic at the time. There were two letters that came, one was from the Canadian Independent Fish Harvesters Association and the other one is from the independent fish harvesters of southwestern Nova Scotia; it's my understanding they are members of the LFA 34 Advisory Committee. There are a number of them who have signed this one document.

 

            The question I raised - and I'll read you portions of both letters and ask you to address them because when I asked this question last session, I believe, Minister, that you did not receive these letters. One of the letters has been copied to you.

 

            The letters are initially addressed to the federal Minister of Fisheries, Madam Shea, and I'll clearly identify the topic, Madam Chairman, through you. The letters are talking about the policy of preserving the independence of the inshore fleet in Canada's Atlantic Fisheries Policy, a very lengthy title. The first letter - basically the letters are both the same and they are asking the federal minister about preserving this independent policy. What they are talking about is the trust agreements that were out in the fishing industry in Nova Scotia and Atlantic Canada and if you can back up seven years, the federal government gave the Atlantic Provinces seven years to clear up these trust agreements.

 

This letter is asking for some clarification and I'll read you from one of the first letters. It says: The federation therefore recommends the department immediately begin requiring that all independent correlation holders file an annual declaration regarding control and agreements as keeping with the intent of the policy.

 

            The second letter, addressed to Madam Shea - the last paragraph reads: We would therefore recommend that you establish a departmental auditing process independent with the DFO in our region, to review all controlling agreements to ensure that they are truly then terminated, in keeping with both the letter and the spirit of the policies.

 

It's a very lengthy policy and I know the minister is familiar with that. It goes on to say that we believe this would be an important first step in tightening up the licensing enforcement system in giving some teeth to the fisheries' policy.

 

            I know the minister is very familiar with this policy. I asked the question last session and my understanding through your response, minister, is that you never had a chance to evaluate it. So my question is, since that session, since you had an opportunity to review both these letters, have you had discussions around this particular policy? Can you enlighten the members in this House what that correspondence or discussions with the federal minister has been in the past year? Thank you.

 

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: Could I ask the honourable member to please table those documents for the House as well? Thank you.

 

            MR. COLWELL: Thank you very much, it's a very good question. As the former minister knows, that's a federal issue. I have spoken to the federal minister about this on more than one occasion. It's a very important topic for the industry. Our department wants to make sure that the independence of the fishery is maintained and my discussions with the federal minister, she has the same view. We have actually no input on past discussions and correspondence we have with the federal minister in this regard and we're just waiting to see how she's making out with it, quite frankly. She has been staunch on her movement forward on this and I believe, if I remember correctly, last Fall she sent a letter out that indicated again to the industry that they are devoted to doing this, making sure that the independence of the industry and these trust agreements should be going away.

 

            I have also heard some rumors and gossip, not that we should talk about that, that there are some ways around this agreement that she has put in place. I'm not sure what those are but there have been some concerns raised around that. Again, this is a federal issue, one we support. We support the information that was in those letters and again, the federal department hasn't said that they would let us audit them, we haven't requested that and I don't know what other structures she's put in place, quite frankly.

 

I know she's dedicated to that; I know we're dedicated, too. We support what she is doing and we look forward to that hopefully working to keep the independent fishermen and the independent person on the water instead of it being a factory boat. The former minister that was talking about this and some of these agreements on financing aren't very delightful at the end of the agreement, where someone else ends up with a quota or with a license or control over where the product goes because they have a financial agreement in place.

 

That's why it's really important we have the resources in our department, which you structured, and we appreciate that, so that the young people can come to the loan board that have none of those attachments to it. The independent person can stay independent and make sure that they have an enterprise that they can pass on to their family or to whoever they want to pass it on to in 20 years' time or whenever they want to move it on and that individual or individuals can make some money off it on an independent basis.

 

            MR. BELLIVEAU: Thank you very much and I appreciate the response from the minister. I have a series of questions here but I know the time flies when you're asking these questions and it's hard to manage your allotment of time.

 

Earlier, the PC Critic raised a number of questions regarding the lobster levy and I can assure you, the industry is listening intently, minister. I listened to your comments and I've made several notes here and I'm asking for the minister's clarification. First of all, I know it was mentioned earlier that we need to put this on the floor here now because, minister, you talked about a mystery group right from the get go, several months ago, and I felt that the industry was - the confusion started at that point about understanding where this mystery group is. I think we need, before we move farther on this question, to establish where this initial mystery group is and what is the status of that?

 

            MR. COLWELL: Unfortunately, I can't identify them, as I said earlier, because I would love to identify them today. The industry has bought in, in the area. We have interest from other areas to become involved in this pilot project as well but we can't do an announcement because we're trying to get federal funding to help us with the cost of operating this. Until we get that resolved, we can't make the announcement because, as you realize being a minister before - we don't know if the federal government will or not at this point, but we don't want to shoot ourselves in the foot by announcing an area and they say well, you already announced that so we're not interested.

 

That's where we are with this. We're very excited with what's going on. As I said last Saturday, we had a meeting with everybody present who is going to be involved in this and there's a lot of excitement there about it, a lot of commitment, beyond where I thought we would be at this time because we have talked about this over a year ago when we first started it and the industry has really stepped forward. They are actually committing to putting their own money into it, over a three-year period, unanimously.

 

We have some of the marketplace in place, ready to take the product. We have processors in place willing to work with the whole value chain and from the trap-to-plate process we're working on, we have made a tremendous amount of progress in a year. We have a long way to go yet, a long way, but at least we have it started. We have buy-in from the industry that we've never seen before, to the point that there are other areas, again, I've already said, very interested in becoming involved in this as well and we're very excited about that.

 

            As we move that forward, I think eventually as we get this in place, get it working properly, I would love to tell you where it is, quite frankly, officially, but I can't because of the federal funding issue. First it was a problem with the industry not talking with their membership. That has all been looked after. They have all agreed, actually, as I already said, to put their money for a three-year period and that's unanimously - and you tell me when we've ever had a fisheries organization unanimously support giving us money. That doesn't happen very often, almost never, but that's the commitment we have.

 

At the meeting on Saturday we saw the actual harvesters come up with ideas that are ahead of where we are with the program. That's very exciting to see. They're committed. They really want to make it work, they see the value in it, and they're ready to go. That is a major step forward. As soon as we can, we will do a public announcement on it and afterwards I'll explain to you where we are but we can't make a public announcement.

 

MR. BELLIVEAU: Thank you to the minister. It's difficult, I'm struggling to accept that analogy of this mystery group and I'll try again. My understanding is that initially there was one mystery group and some members of the industry may have bailed from that group. What I'm hearing is a need for the clarification because without identifying where this group is, is there a second mystery group?

 

            MR. COLWELL: Well, to start with, the first group - and only a mystery to you, not to me, of course - nobody bailed. Actually, just the opposite, we have people who have joined us now that we never even anticipated at this level and where we are with the program right now, again, it's just in its infancy, have stepped forward and volunteered to come forward, which we are very, very, very excited and happy about. We've moved this ahead about four years in time frame that we would figure we would move in months at a time, so that's very positive.

 

There is a second group that's very interested. We are going to run a project with them as well. Again, it's the same issue, until we get to appoint where we've exhausted all the possibilities of any kind of federal funding, once we've exhausted that, or hopefully not exhausted but get them to buy in with us, that they're on board with us as well, which will help us. We're going to go ahead without them, whether they do or not because this is so important to the Nova Scotia economy.

 

            I've had discussions with the federal minister about this. She's very interested in it. It's there, it's coming, and once this comes and you see exactly what's transpiring, you will be, as a former Fisheries and Aquaculture Minister and as a fisherman yourself, you know how difficult it is to get groups to work together towards a common goal, you will be very, very surprised and pleased at what has happened so far.

 

            MR. BELLIVEAU: Certainly what I've heard, and again the minister can clarify, I hear from the minister that now there are two mystery groups that cannot be made public and I'm struggling to understand that. Where there is the possibility of taxpayers' money - there has to be some transparency behind that. I'm really thinking the industry is going to be having the same difficulty as I am.

 

What I'm hearing is that I don't think the minister is on the same frequency, pardon the pun here - I spent a number of years listening to the VHF. I'm hearing that in the first mystery group, people actually bailed from that. That needs to be on the record. There's a lot of confusion about these mystery groups and that is creating more confusion in the industry. I just need to put that on the record.

 

            The PC Critic raised questions about the regulations and the minister is going to proceed with a bill dealing with the levy, and again, I think the regulations are the most critical thing here. What I heard the minister say is that the regulations will follow - trust us, we'll put a bill in the House and it'll be all encompassing, we'll collect the money, don't be too concerned, the regulations will come later.

 

            Again, I'm struggling to deal with that concept because I know through the consultation, I know through the industry, and I know listening to all of Nova Scotians that this is the crucial step - dealing with this lobster question and the lobster levy. I know the minister wants a new terminology. I apologize for that. You can shape it, you can package, you can put your spin doctors out and come up with a different terminology and call it a fee, call it a tax, but at the end of the day, it's going to collect the same amount of revenue. I accept that.

 

            We can have a new name and we can call it a fee and I hope I'll stick to that, but the industry is clear. They want to know, through regulations, first of all - who is going to administer this fund? Who is going to be accountable to the industry? Is there going to be an auditing process? Is there going to be a way out if we get in and for some reason some government decides, well, we'll double that next year?

 

All these mechanisms have been raised through the consultation process and it needs to be transparent and put out there in a public forum with transparency all around it. That's the crucial point that's going to be made here tonight. If you're going to get any support from the industry, you can't stand back and say, well we got one - we got two mystery groups and we're doing this and we're going to create. It's a great sounding clip, but all these questions about transparency - who is going to manage this money? How is it going to be distributed?

 

            What I heard through some consultation, if you look at northern Nova Scotia, they voted. They voted for their money to go and be managed by the Lobster Council of Canada for marketing. What I heard earlier in the presentation was: trust me, we'll put a bill through and we'll have the regulations later and it can be whatever - it can actually be industry-led.

 

            I think now is the time to address these points and get a comfort zone with the industry, if this is going to have any chance of survival in the next few weeks or months. I'm looking forward to the minister's comments.

 

            MR. COLWELL: Well you have asked many questions in one question. I can assure you nobody bailed under the pilot project we're doing; it's just the opposite. We've got more people who have joined, voluntarily, into this program than I would have believed possible at this stage of the program. It's just phenomenal how it has moved forward. It's phenomenal of the buy-in we're getting from the industry and all elements of the industry. Nobody has bailed.

 

            If someone had asked me a year and a half ago, I wouldn't have thought it would be possible, but it is possible. The industry realizes that if they're going to survive in this business, if they're going to make more money in this business, they have to have better quality. They have to have better control of where their product goes. They have to have better control over what happens.

 

            I can guarantee the member opposite - it's important to him and it's just as important to me - the industry has to drive whatever we do. It has to be completely accountable, not to the Province of Nova Scotia so much because they will have the fund - they will be looking after the fund. They have to be accountable to their members and to the fishermen and the processors and the buyers in this province. If we can get that credibility amongst them, this thing will work like a charm. That's what we're going to set up in regulations and in the Act. We're going to go out for more input from the industry, before we finalize regulations around this to say this is what we're hoping to achieve, but does this make sense? It is much the same as I did with the Animal Protection Act, the companion animal one.

 

            We want to hear from the industry. We want to work with them, we want to talk to them and we want to make sure that at the end of the day they were very comfortable with this. They've never had that before, ever, and you know, as minister, how hard it is to get that sort of thing in place. I know you worked very hard on the FHOSA part of it, and that still is lacking accountability. We're going to tighten that loophole, too, to give things accountability. We need accountability.

 

The lobster industry is one of the most valuable resources we have in this province, as is the scallop and the crab and everything in the fishery, but they are the biggest dollar number. We have got to make sure that dollar number keeps improving and doesn't go the way of the codfish so we've got to be very careful about all this. It's better to catch fewer lobsters and make more money with fewer lobsters, to make sure we can catch them for the next 100 years, than it is to make a lot of money now, limited impact to the communities, compared to what it could be and to where it should be.

 

            We've really got to work with the industry; we've got to get buy-in from the industry and their ideas on how to do this. I think once we gain the credibility of the industry - and this report we're going to come out with I think is going to - we've taken very seriously what we were told in our consultation process. You're going to be very surprised when we come out with that. Again, I'm still waiting to get the final report from our staff but as soon as that becomes available, we're going to put it out there and with no flowers around it or anything, we're going to put it out the way it actually happened so people understand where it is.

 

            You know full well when talking to some of the fishermen in the area who might have attended this that there was no media allowed in the room. Nobody who wasn't a harvester or a processor or a buyer was in the room. It was strictly consultation from the industry so we can get someone who wasn't outside the industry having an input who shouldn't have an input. This is the industry and they've got to decide themselves where they are going to go. We're going to put the vehicle in place so they can do that, with all the accountability in place, audit performances, all full accountability, full reporting where every penny goes. At the end of the day they would be the ones who decide okay, now we need the new market someplace because with our initial market indication it might say this area is a place to go and that may not be the case, right? That may be the case or it may not be.

 

            If it is the case, then they made a decision that okay, let's do some targeted marketing in that area, in the proper way. They will do that.

 

            Prince Edward Island has basically the exact same thing as we do but they are doing it through their natural marketing board. New Brunswick is going to do it a little bit differently; they've got their problems, too. They have some serious problems around this whole thing. I've been talking to both ministers, prior to the election in PEI being called, and we're still going on internally with our staff to discuss this whole issue because we do need an organization like the Lobster Council of Canada at some level to do things that are good for all provinces, so any marketing we do is similar.

 

If we're going to a new market, we want to brand a Canadian lobster or a Canadian scallop or a Canadian crab or whatever the case may be, so that's the brand we see. There would be different ones out of each province but each province will be able to do their top quality and compete for that market, like they have for years, and hopefully end up at the end of the day, which I'm sure we will, at a lot better quality with a lot higher price, no matter who is selling it, in whatever province it is.

 

            That's what the aim is, that's where we're headed and we're going to achieve that. We are going to get there. I know it's a hard road, and you can tell me some stories of that road, too, I know. But we are going to need everybody's support to make this happen because Nova Scotia's economy is dependent on this and we have to make sure it works right.

 

            If we can get the industry going in the right direction, and I know they want to, I have not talked to anyone in this province who doesn't say we want to improve the return on our fish products in this province. I haven't talked to anybody who hasn't said that.

 

            We've got to put the atmosphere and tools in place to allow them to do it. That's where we're headed; that's what we're going to do, and it will work, but it's going to be a long, slow process until we get a success story in our hands. That's what the idea of this pilot project is, and so far it has been working beyond my wildest dreams.

 

            MR. BELLIVEAU: I'm going to try one more question regarding the lobster fee; I'm going to keep trying. I'm going to move on to some other questions, but just one further question.

 

            We have established that there are two mystery groups. We have established the initial mystery group - my understanding from the sources I'm hearing from is that there are individuals or groups who have bailed from the first one. That's for the record and we know that there are two mystery groups that may be announced later. That's my understanding.

 

            What the confusion is - and I'll try one more time - the fishers in northern Nova Scotia have voted and endorsed the concept of a lobster - I'm not going to say the word - fee. Their concept is that money goes to the Lobster Council of Canada. If you look at the remaining portion of Nova Scotia, southwestern Nova Scotia - I heard the minister earlier talk about the lobster fee will be industry-led. That's wide open to me for the money to be directed and possibly managed in a totally different way. I'm just raising that because I feel it's so crucial that the regulations come before the bill so people will have a very clear and transparent understanding of what is trying to be accomplished. It is critical that the industry understands those points that we're trying to make right here, to have any chance of an endorsement. I'm confident of the words that I just said here in the last few minutes.

 

            There were a number of questions that were raised during the consultation process and they're looking for that to be captured in possible regulations. Before I move on, for anything to grow or to get an endorsement, the regulations need to capture that before any bill is presented in this House. If you present a bill, there's going to be more disruption in the industry.

 

            We need to move on, I need to ask other questions, so I'll ask the minister one more time if he wants to reflect on that before I move on to some other points.

 

            MR. COLWELL: I'm going to restate what I've already said; several things. Number one: these mystery groups are only a mystery to the people who don't know who they are. Number two: if we're going to pursue federal funding around these projects, we can't announce them until the federal government can announce them with us. Therefore, I'm not going to jeopardize funding just for the sake of announcing a name here today, and I will not do that to jeopardize potential funding money that the province doesn't have to put in. Very simple - that's what it is and that's the way it's going to stay until such time as we've either reached an agreement with the federal government or they're not interested.

 

At the end of the day, if they're not interested, they're going to be very disappointed because this is going to be a successful program. We have all the players lined up, everything in line. As I said, we're way ahead of where we thought we would be, even six months ago.

 

            It's great to see that the industry has bought into this. They bought into it unanimously. We have other places that are interested in getting on the ship with us, as we want to say, very excited about it, no question about where they want to go. We have great people. We have Perennia working on this project now that has been very successful, as well as our staff working on it. They are working in co-operation with the industry and that's the way it's working. We discuss each issue. We move each issue independently forward.

 

            It is really important for us to have that ability to work with the industry. This has never happened before, as the minister knows, ever in history, it has never happened. We're very excited about that and we understand the need for transparency. We are again finalizing the report of our consultation process. I think it's going to be quite shocking for some of the people who don't realize what happened at those meetings. We're going to lay it out the way it actually happened, nothing held back, this is the way it's going to be. I think we owe that to the industry. I think that the people who came and made presentations to us will be pleased to see that we are listening to what they told us. We listened to what they said; we're going to take action on what they said and I think they will be very pleased with that. That's the way we operate from now on.

 

            We listen to the industry. We support the industry. We back the industry up. That's what we are here to do. We are just simply a tool to move the industry forward. We are there to come up with innovation and get it adapted by the industry, if it makes sense for the industry, if not, tell us why and we'll readapt it until something works.

 

            I think that's a fresh approach that hasn't been there before. It's exciting to work in that field, it's exciting. We have some of the finest, if not the finest, fishermen in the world, some of the finest processors in the world right here in Nova Scotia. As a colleague from the PC Party said earlier, those people in the industry don't get the credit they should get for the great work they are doing and the wonderful job they're doing to create wealth in Nova Scotia. Wealth creates jobs, wealth pays taxes and the taxes goes towards paying for health care, education, roads and all the things we need to do.

 

            It's time we started looking at these industries as wealth generators. As I said earlier about the young man who wants to buy an enterprise, if the enterprise doesn't make any money, he can't finance it, he cannot buy it - that's the problem. If the enterprise is making a good profit margin, a very substantial profit margin, that enterprise is worth quite a lot of money and you can take that profit margin and maybe fine tune it a little bit better and make it broader, a bigger profit margin, so he can afford to pay the expensive loans to buy these boats, which run at $1 million-plus. The former minister would know about those. We have to have that structure in place. Our loan board is reacting to that and doing it very well.

 

            It's refreshing to see young people being the majority of people coming in for loans from our loan board. That is really refreshing. While in every other industry we can think of, people are leaving the province for employment. Here the loan board is financing licenses and programs that will help young people stay here not only to stay and buy licenses but to work on the boats because if they make enough money, they can pay their crew members very well. If they are paying them very well, they will be here.

 

            I recall talking to one lobster fisherman from an area that's not as profitable as southwestern Nova Scotia and he was working out West. He was a licensed lobster fisherman so he went out West because he only lobster fished for two or three months a year. The first year he went to his boss and said, I have to leave work now and go home to Nova Scotia to fish lobsters. It takes me a month to get ready, the season is going to take me about a month to get finished and I'll be back when I'm done. The boss said to him, no, you're not going to do that, you're leaving, you're done, you're finished; you can't come back anymore.

 

            About two weeks after he left he got a call from the guy he worked for in Alberta and he said when are you coming back? He said, it'll be a month after the season after I get my gear cleaned up and put away so it's safe for the next year. He said whenever you're ready to come back, you call me and I'll have an airplane ticket for you to come back because we want you back to work. That's because Nova Scotians are such hard workers. Over time, that evolved into his boss coming to him and saying, how much time do you need off? When are you going to leave? Here's your airplane ticket to go home and here's your ticket back and if you need to come back in the meantime, we'll fly you back and forth and pay for it and we'll pay you from the day you leave home till the day you get back to our site.

 

            They realized that the hard working and solid people in the fishing industry who have worked with everything over their lives and there are so many things they can do; they are very valuable employees. We have to look at them as being very valuable employees and a very big asset to the Province of Nova Scotia. It has been overlooked in the past. I know you know this and you've worked on it as well to get recognition for the great work - you were a lobster fisherman in the past - and the great things you did to help the economy of Nova Scotia that go unnoticed. The fact that the boat yards are backed up three years is fantastic news. That means they're all busy and they are going to be busy for some time to come but if they don't make money, they can't do that.

 

            We're excited about the industry. We are very excited about releasing the results of our consultation process. It's going to be controversial when we bring it out but we're going to tell the people exactly what we heard, exactly what we heard and we're going to take action on exactly what we heard to show the industry that consultation does pay off and we will listen to what they said and we're going to take solid action on what was told.

 

            MR. BELLIVEAU: I would like to go on a new direction here now. I know the annual budget is always interesting time dealing with the fisheries, no matter what department you're in. There were always a number of budget lines that I was always interested in and I know that there is complication out there for this funding. One of these was mentioned in everybody's speech here tonight in the last hour, and that's the funding for the lobster council. I was wondering if the minister could update us on this year's budget and the funding for the Lobster Council of Canada and the Nova Scotia portion of that.

 

            MR. COLWELL: We're in the process of reviewing the Lobster Council of Canada and at the recent meeting there was some discussion held around the funding for them. In the budget this year we have allowed $35,000 for this year.

 

            MR. BELLIVEAU: Just for clarification, my understanding is that you allowed that. Has that actually been received by the Lobster Council of Canada? I'll expand on this farther regarding funding. There is also a group - I know I have participated in it, and many fishermen scientists, called the Fishermen Scientists Research Society, which is very well respected throughout Atlantic Canada and I know that the Provincial Government of Fisheries has always been very supportive of this so within two comments could you update us on the funding for theirs?

 

            MR. COLWELL: Yes, the Fishermen Scientists Research Society is very important to the province and the information they gather. We have been negotiating with them and talking with them ever since I first became minister. We believe there is a whole lot more value in what they do than they realized was there. I know they have been giving the information out to industry free of charge and this information is very valuable to industry, to the processors and buyers, and the other people in the industry who would directly use this information.

 

We are in the process of funding them again. We're working on an MOU to work out with them some accountability around what they do and some more information to make sure that we get information that we need to also help grow the industry. It's all part of our process of growing the industry and moving this to a higher value of benefit for the communities and the individual fisherman and the whole value chain.

 

            MR. BELLIVEAU: Thank you very much. I know the Fishermen Scientists Research Society do capture a number of juvenile lobsters and one of the programs that I have always tried to follow is the moulting science and research that they do with the fishing industry. Another interesting topic is that the Bay of Fundy is probably warming faster than any water column in the world. This has been documented by, I believe, some studies out of New York and around that area of the United States.

 

I'm just wondering, out of curiosity, if the Fishermen Scientists Research Society has the same interest in these questions that I do regarding moulting and particularly with the warming weather trends that we've seen here in Atlantic Canada over the last two years. I know it's probably a bad time to ask this question, just looking outdoors and seeing the snow banks just disappearing. Actually, our oceans are warming at a very fast rate so I hope the minister can enlighten us.

 

            MR. COLWELL: That's a very good question the former minister has asked. Actually there are some very disturbing numbers coming out of the Gulf of Maine. Maine is looking at some really low numbers around the baby lobsters coming out that will eventually affect the Bay of Fundy because they are at the beginning. Again, it is all to do with temperature, soft shell lobsters, so it is a concern for us.

 

The climate change has had some beneficial effects, I think, on other areas of our fishery and negative effects on the other areas. That's why I said earlier, it's really important that we don't go the way of the codfish. We've got to manage this very carefully. We've got to make sure we get every single dollar we can out of every lobster we catch. Until we're satisfied we're doing that, I think we can't let up on the development and the monitoring of what's happening.

 

            We have committed to the scientific research organization to do this. We are going to do more science around the industry and its total, but again, we're going to do it in conjunction with the industry. That's why I think this fee is going to be important because that's one area that could expend some funds if they decide to do so, to do more research.

 

            We will keep our commitment up to where we are now but maybe if they could come up with some other projects that would really accelerate that research, we would be very happy around that.

 

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: The honourable Minister of Health and Wellness.

 

            HON. LEO GLAVINE: Madam Chairman, it gives me great pleasure to point to the Speaker's Gallery tonight and to welcome here to the proceedings, the Eastern Shore Atom B provincial champions. I have a feeling they are in the Speaker's riding so he may have had something to do with getting them here tonight. As Minister of Sport, it's wonderful to see our youth engaged in sport. I can tell you that still, as an active hockey player, it's a lifetime sport. We welcome you here and please accept the warm applause of the House. (Applause)

 

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: Before we proceed any further, I'd like to offer the minister to opportunity to have a break. No? Okay, we're good to proceed.

 

The honourable member for Queens-Shelburne.

 

            MR. BELLIVEAU: I'm certainly pleased that our youth have joined us tonight because these questions are actually going to secure the future of Nova Scotia, in particular the youth of our province.

 

Madam Chairman, through you I want to redirect the questions regarding the fisheries and science research society, which does a lot of work. I want to point out, Madam Chairman, through you to the minister, that over the last several years the federal government has cut over $100 million in science. We have a saying in my neck of the woods: I thank the minister for taking the bait because now I'm going to set the hook.

 

I want to emphasize how important science is for the industry. It really is disturbing to know that our federal government has made these cuts in science. I set the hook by establishing that there is documentation that the Gulf of Maine is one of the fastest-warming water systems on our globe and it something that is brought to my attention. Again, I know that the Fishermen Scientists Research Society has done a lot of work. I know there are a lot of questions and I've heard large processors talk about it this year, they need to understand what is happening to our ecosystem with this water column warming.

 

            Again I want to echo - are there discussions going on, minister, with the federal minister regarding more science needed and our warming waters and how much is going to be directed towards the Fishermen Scientists Research Society this year?

 

            MR. COLWELL: This year, the Fishermen Scientists Research Society is going to receive approximately $80,000 from us for some very specific projects and some very specific things that they are going to be looking at, so we know we are going in the right direction with this. We're also participating in the Gulf of Maine climate change study as well. I think that is very important so we're going to fund that again this year as a full partner.

 

It's all part of the process we're using to move forward. Climate change is a serious issue for us around the industry, not only the lobster fishery but other parts of the fishery and I think we really have to invest the money into research where it's going to get the best bang for the buck. We're going to continue to do that and work really closely with Maine and also with New Brunswick, PEI, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Quebec as we proceed to get this information as accurately as we possibly can.

 

            MR. BELLIVEAU: Thank you very much. Now I want to take the minister in a somewhat new or different direction. The previous government moved Fisheries and Aquaculture to rural Nova Scotia and they are at home in Digby and Shelburne. Most recently constituents in my constituency have brought it to my attention that they have observed, through the Internet, in the Nova Scotia CareerBeacon, that jobs were advertised by the Nova Scotia Fisheries and Aquaculture Department and for those jobs to be located in Truro. I believe some other ones have been identified for Halifax. The question I'm raising is that those departments have been established in Digby and Shelburne; is it their intention to replace those jobs and move them back to other hubs like Truro or Halifax or can we be reassured that Digby and Shelburne will be maintained?

 

            MR. COLWELL: Yes, those are very good questions. We're committed to keeping the people who are in the area in the area as much as we can. The new positions, the one in Truro is going to be a fish vet and that's where the fish vets are typically located, where the main part of our labs are. Where it's operationally the best, we have to put people. We do need people in Shelburne. We do need people in Cornwallis, and we intend to keep them there. I can't guarantee where the enforcement people would go who are located in Cornwallis and Shelburne; there is one in Shelburne and the other ones are in Cornwallis. That would be up to the new section of the Department of Environment, how they are going to readjust their staff and everything, but it is our hope that these people stay in their present location or very close to that in the same community.

 

            MR. BELLIVEAU: Your commitment for those jobs in Fisheries and Aquaculture to stay in those rural communities - I wish the minister was also responsible for Community Services, Natural Resources, and Land Registration. Those jobs are important so I appreciate your commitment minister.

 

The earlier critic talked about - and I can tell you, this is one of the reasons why I had a desire for this job, to stand in this place. It was because, when I first got the idea of coming here, it was that young fisherman across Nova Scotia did not have access to capital. I knew that policy was fundamentally wrong and I am really pleased that, for whatever reason, whatever portion of that, that policy has changed so I'm really pleased with that.

 

I do have some questions around the Nova Scotia Loan Board. In some of his comments earlier the minister talked about a backlog in the shipyards of over three years. Shipbuilding is thriving in our rural communities because of the potential of seeing the value of the industry. It's good to have those shipyards, their order books booked up for three years in advance.

 

            Fishermen know that they have access to capital now, and it's really pleasing, but there are some questions around the whole Loan Board structure and I think, regardless, you can always improve upon it. One of my first questions is that I've noticed that the other banks have a very low rate, but the Loan Board - and I know before the minister says it, I'm going to take that out of your hands. You are going to say that you were there at one time, you could have dealt with that and I can assure you I wanted to do and I wish I had another mandate to do it because that is something that I feel still needs to be addressed. So I'm going to take that bullet away from you before you throw it back at me. Right now at the present there is 6.5 interest in the Loan Boards, one of the highest that we have in any lending institute. Fishermen are asking why that can't be lower. Minister?

 

            MR. COLWELL: Well, it's like everything in life, it would be better to have a lower cost for everything we have. Again, I want to commend the former minister for making it possible for young people to get loans through the Loan Board, I think that was a major step forward. Of anything else that the former minister has done, I think that was one of the most progressive things that we have seen in the industry in a while, when it comes to loans.

 

            The Loan Board, as you are well aware works a little bit differently than the commercial banks do. The Loan Board is a lot easier, a little bit more tolerant to deal with, and that costs money. If for some reason a young person borrows money and something happens with his boat and he loses half the fishing season, the financial institutions would be a little bit more difficult to deal with because they don't understand the industry as well as the Loan Board does. Being in that sort of situation, is does cost more to service these loans, in some cases.

 

That's the reason that the difference is there but it's still a very good place to borrow money from, same as the Farm Loan Board. They will work with the individual who has borrowed the money to make sure they don't renege on the loan because they can't afford to pay because they might have had a bad year or something else. If you're dealing with a financial institution, they have one goal in mind and that's to make sure that everybody makes every single payment.

 

We have the same at the Loan Board but again, when the time comes, it's a little easier to deal with. They understand the industry. They understand that things happen and from time to time they might not be able to make a payment on the date they have to make it on. It doesn't mean they're going to foreclose, where a bank will foreclose at that point, typically.

 

            It is a little bit different structure. We are not saying we don't foreclose because we do, as you are well aware, but we will work with the industry first as much as we possibly can, because we want to keep those people working. At the end of the day, they have to pay all the interest and they have to pay the full loan but maybe at just a little bit later date than a bank would try to make them do it. That's one reason. The interest rate is 4.13, that's the most recent information we have - 1.75 per cent above what the province borrows the money at. It is still pretty cheap money.

 

            MR. BELLIVEAU: Thank you very much and to continue on with that theme regarding the Loan Board, it is something to have around the community kitchen table when people talk about their loved one or their son or their fisher in the community is investing a major investment, I usually picture a youth who is going to put the commitment of the next 20 years in to purchasing an enterprise in that commitment. That's something that is really pleasing, but it also takes a very strong financial responsibility. I mean, some of these enterprises now - the major four can cost a considerable amount of money. I think the minister already knows where I'm going with this - with the loan board there is a requirement of - let's just use quick math here. You take a million dollar enterprise and to me, a million dollars is a lot of money and is a lot of money for a young individual who is going to be committed for the next 20 years, and I understand that.

 

            The question that I'm getting to is that one of the requirements is for a 10 per cent deposit, which is still a lot of money. It doesn't diminish the commitment that individual has for the next 20 years or 25 years to pay that off. The concern is to acquire that 10 per cent of that million dollars, and some of these enterprises can be much more. I'm just using this as an example. To me, we have to think again, and I heard the minister say, we need to think outside the box. This is something that I think, collectively, we all need to look at.

 

            My question is framed around - is some of this discussion going on with your federal counterpart and with other Maritime ministers around this issue about having a 10 per cent deposit, which is a large amount of money? Are there some creative ways? If I was to go out and say, here is an enterprise and I can put a rider or some kind of hold on a licence that that licence is a valuable commodity. It may reduce the initial cost of this 10 per cent to the individual that can make friendlier for that person to get into the industry. He or she is still committed for the next 20 years, but it's a friendlier environment to get into. That's the question of reducing that 10 per cent down-payment.

 

            MR. COLWELL: I know 10 per cent of $1 million is $100,000 - that's a pretty good sized down payment, but based on the amount of money that a lobster licence can make in southwestern Nova Scotia, that's still a pretty reasonable down payment. You really have to have some kind of commitment from the individual who is buying this. Maybe they can make a private arrangement with the person who is selling the licence. There are all kinds of ways to do this and in today's world, $100,000 for a $1million enterprise is a pretty small down payment.

 

            I would assume and I would guess that there are a lot of these enterprises worth a lot more than $1 million. Some of these enterprises, from what I understand, can make more than $1 million in one year. So I think it should be pretty easy for them to get the other 10 per cent in different ways, maybe get them to save some up some of it before they get into it. You can tell me better than I know about this, but they have to be a recognized fisherman before they can buy it - the whole process they've got to go through. It's always good to have some sort of stake in the enterprise before you go.

 

            As we move this forward, we're working all the time to create flexibility in the system. We want young people into this. This year in the budget between the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture, we have $554,000 to help reduce the interest rates for new entrants. So we are doing things towards this and it's very important that we keep doing these things to ensure that the young people stay in Nova Scotia. That can be as simple as making it a little bit easier for someone to get a loan, as long as it's a good investment.

 

            We've also got to make sure we have a good investment for Nova Scotians because when we make it too easy and we get loans that we have to write off over time, that's not good for Nova Scotia. It's better to get all that money back, put it back in loan boards, let them lend it out again to help somebody else in the industry. Once we have to start writing off loans it's not good, so it's good to have someone have some input into the amount. It's like buying a house. If you don't have 5 or 10 per cent down-payment, you can't buy the house - it's that simple.

 

I found that no matter what you do in life, unless you've got some of your own assets put in there, you have no value for it. You need to have that value and ownership of that loan, to make sure that you are committed to paying it off, committed to working hard that you are going to pay that off and make sure you get your $100,000 back that you have in it, and moving that forward.

 

            That's all part of the process. We want to make it as easy as possible but we can't make it a gift. People have to have their own assets in it. They have to have their own things in there so they make sure that at the end of the day we're going to get value for the money, they're going to get value for their money, and make sure that they're going to make a success out of that enterprise.

 

I can go buy a lobster boat tomorrow and probably not make a penny at it for two years, so I can't make the loans, but somebody who has the training and the experience and all the things we see with the young fishermen coming in there because they have been mentored by the captain they're probably buying the boat from, and probably that captain will continue to help them to make sure they can keep the boat and make sure they can keep the enterprise going and increase their profit margins as much as possible.

 

            I think that's very positive. Again, we are reviewing this on a regular basis to see what we can do with it but at the end of the day, if you can't afford to put in $100,000, you probably can't make the loan payments to the end of it anyway.

 

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: That ends the time for the NDP caucus. We'll now move back to the PC caucus.

 

The honourable member for Pictou East.

 

            MR. TIM HOUSTON: Madam Chairman, it's a pleasure to rise tonight and ask the minister some questions about the fisheries file. I just hope I get through this without being challenged to produce an affidavit.

 

            This is a very important topic, especially in my constituency; the fisheries are extremely important to our local economy. I did note a couple of comments the minister said: we have to start seeing the fisheries as wealth generators and that the fisheries are often overlooked. I can assure the minister that in Pictou East we do see the fishery as a wealth generator. It's a very respected industry and we should never underestimate the fishers or the industry itself.

 

            I have a few questions that I'd run through a couple of different themes. I would like to revisit the concept of the mystery groups because I can tell you from my perspective and from talking to fishers in northern Nova Scotia and Pictou East, right through to Antigonish, right up into Cape Breton, the mystery group might not be that much of a mystery to very many people any more but it is causing a lot of angst. There's a lot of discussion about this mystery group and what the mystery group is all about and why they are doing that and these types of things. People are concerned about it; it is elevating the stress levels.

 

            I would like to give the minister one more opportunity to go back on the mystery groups and maybe just refresh our memories. What is the benefit in maintaining it as a mystery and what that group is all about?

 

            MR. COLWELL: Again I'll make it very clear and maybe I've missed this so far - if we are to get any federal funding, I can't announce where it is until that is fully explored. That's the only reason we haven't said where it is at. I agree that probably everyone in the province knows where it's at, especially in the fishing industry, because it's not just our department doing this, it's the industry itself.

 

            What the goal of this is, and the goal is what's important here - the goal is to actually take and improve the quality of lobster. In other words, as the program says, it is from catch to plate. What is happening, and has happened in the past, is that there are a lot of lobsters going on the export market that probably shouldn't be there. We want to stop that because, for instance, a lot of our lobsters go to Maine. You can put tags on them that say Nova Scotia and a week later when they are in Maine they are all of a sudden re-labelled Maine lobsters. We're probably the biggest supplier that there is for the quality Maine lobsters, so they are really Nova Scotia lobsters in Maine. That's fine, but if we can establish our lobsters as a step above Maine, in the U.S., then we can probably hit the markets that they are selling our lobsters to. That's what the goal is.

 

            So we take out some of the middle men. We still need our buyer structure, our processor structure here in Nova Scotia, and that's a normal progression of where we need to be, but when we go through that whole process and then we sell a lobster, for instance, to Maine or to New Brunswick for processing, we're losing value for that lobster. If we can get that Canadian lobster quality standard in place, which is what this is about - quality, traceability, all the things you would do with a quality insurance program in place, that's going to establish these lobsters as the best lobsters on the market.

 

            If we can produce the best lobsters on the market, we're going to get the highest price and the biggest demand for lobsters there is. If you look at what a steak is worth - go to one of the grocery stores anywhere - and a prime steak is $22, $25, $26 a pound, and if you go in the same store and you look at a top quality lobster and it is $10 a pound. There's something wrong with that picture. Lobster is equally as good as or better than steak. It depends what your market is. So we need to get the lobsters up to that kind of value and beyond in export markets.

 

            We are the only suppliers of lobster. When it comes out of the east coast of Canada, we are the only true supplier of Atlantic lobster, so why are we giving our lobsters away? The reason we're giving them away is because the quality isn't there. It's not consistent. You need consistent quality. A year ago when I was in Boston at the Boston Seafood Show, we ran into some people from France who said, we don't know why people want Nova Scotian and Canadian lobsters. We've got lobsters off of France that we sell, but the Nova Scotian and Canadian lobsters get the higher price, people want them more than our lobsters. They said they can't understand it. The problem they were complaining about - they said that 50 to 60 per cent of the lobsters die on them before they can get them to the market. That means that they don't want to market them because then they've got a problem with their customer.

 

            So we've got to make sure that those lobsters get to the site with low losses, losses that may be in the 1 per cent range instead of 50 or 60 per cent, proper handling, right from the time it gets pulled on the boat until it's right on the individual's plate. That's what we're after and that's where we're headed. If we can achieve that, which we are going to achieve, then all of a sudden the value of Nova Scotia lobsters is going to go up higher than anywhere else or any other supplier in the world. That's where we have to be. Once we achieve that, we will create the wealth in Nova Scotia we need to create. We'll create the jobs in Nova Scotia that we need to create and we'll do the things that really move our industry above anyone else. That's where we have to be.

 

            I use the Icelandic experience that we've seen with codfish. There is no cod fishery in Nova Scotia per se. There is a bit, but not too many. Years ago it was that we were getting nothing for our codfish, so we killed all the codfish off and we didn't really get the benefit of the codfish. We've got to change how we do business here in Nova Scotia - not just here, but everywhere - but I'm only interested in Nova Scotia.

 

            If we can take and move that product, and make it a luxury item when we export it instead of a commodity, then we have achieved what we need to, with the price that goes with it. That's the problem we have because it's not consistent. Although our processors do a great job and the buyers do a good job and the fishermen do a good job, we can do a better job. If you go buy a suit such as the nice suit you're wearing there, if it falls apart in a week, you're not going to buy one of those suits again. That's what I'm talking about. But if you buy a nice suit that lasts and wears well, looks nice, you're going to go buy another one of those suits. You'll pay a little bit extra money for that suit and you'll be glad you did because, you know, it worked.

 

            It's the same thing: if you buy a car and it falls apart, you're never going to buy another one of those. It's the same with the lobster. If you buy lobsters that all die off before you can consume them, that means the gentleman or the company that's selling your product outside of Canada is losing money. He'll only put up with that for a very short time and then he'll say, no more lobsters, we don't want them anymore, they're no good. Then, bang, your market is gone and it will take years and years to get that market back.

 

So we want to stop that. We really want to make it from the catch to the plate, and that's what we're working on. That whole chain is what we identified. If I go to the wharf in Pictou and buy one of the top quality lobsters that are in Pictou, because they are top quality lobsters there, and I take it to your place and you and I have a lobster boil at your house - which would be fun to do, as long as you're buying the lobsters - or if I'm a customer in say somewhere in Asia, when I eat that lobster, it's the same quality as you had the day you got it off the boat. That's what we're after.

 

            We know we can achieve it. The industry wants to achieve it but they've never had a vehicle before so that's what this pilot project is about. They've never had the co-operation that was needed or the will, in the past, to do this; so it all comes together working as a team, through the whole value-chain we have in the lobster industry and the province working with them to ensure that we get that quality that we need to move forward. Again, the winners at the end of this are the fishermen, the buyers, the processors, the marketers, and the Province of Nova Scotia.

 

            MR. HOUSTON: Do you have a statistic or a rule of thumb of the amount of time from catch to plate? How long does it take right now, the way the channel works, how long does it take to get from catch to plate, on average?

 

            MR. COLWELL: That is a difficult question to answer because some lobsters we can ship by air and have them to the plate very quickly. That doesn't mean they're in good shape. The point is we need to have consistent quality. If a lobster is caught today and we can get it to an Asian market or U.S. market in three days' time, that sounds like a short time and the lobster should be great, but if it's not handled at every step of the way, from the boat to the buyer, processor, shipper, receiver and holder of that lobster, it doesn't mean the quality will be there if it's not done right.

 

            Whereas you might have a lobster that takes 10 days to do that or 30 days to do that, that can be a better quality, if it's looked after properly and that's the key. There are so many things that need to be done with the quality, as it moves forward, and we have to do some more science around quality as well. We're committed to doing that. What's the ideal temperature to hold a lobster at and when should that temperature be there? It could be different in the summer than in the winter - those are some of the things we're looking at.

 

            In order to get that top quality lobster every time, we have to have the proper handling on the boat, by the buyer, on the wharf, by the buyer who transports it, as it gets to the fish plant, to handle a lobster and to store a lobster. When the transportation from the processor to the plane, if you're sending it by plane or whatever way you're going to do it, properly handled, on the plane handled properly. When it gets to the other end it has to be handled properly and held properly. At the end of the day it's really the shrinkage and quality you have to look at for a goal. If a wholesaler in another country is paying a high price, he wants a very low rate of loss and he wants the best quality that he can get because then he can sell his product on quality and put the price up.

 

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: The honourable member for Clare-Digby on an introduction.

 

            MR. GORDON WILSON: It's on a rare occasion I get a chance to stand up and do an introduction. In the east gallery I would like to bring the attention to two very special ladies, one in particular, Pat Potts, my mother, and Jean Germaine are here tonight. Just for a note, Pat Potts, my mum, was also my official agent during my election and has been my guiding light for many years. They are here celebrating a birthday, both of them over that wonderful magic age of 80 - I won't say how far over - and enjoying some of the city. Please give them the warm welcome of the House. (Applause)

 

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: I hope your guests enjoy their evening in the House.

 

            MR. HOUSTON: Thank you Madam Chairman and I would like to have a word with the member's mother maybe after a while. (Laughter)

 

I appreciate that response, minister, and the reason I ask about these types of statistics - about how long the supply chain is, if you have any sense of that - is because I know there are numerous supply chains but I didn't get the sense that we actually have a handle on how long these things are taking. The reason that is important to me is the quality changes over time. The longer you go from the catch, the lobster will degrade over time.

 

I don't want us to overthink this. It's my sense that if you have the buyers then the lobsters will get to them quicker. If you don't have the buyers then you have to hold the lobsters and you have all kinds of other moving targets that are all playing a part here. I say that in thinking of the marketing levy versus a fee. I know my colleague mentioned earlier that that's just shaping terminology. To me it's much more than that and it's much more than that to the fishers that I'm speaking about because what they really want is the marketing. They want the customers there and when you start talking about a fee, you open a lot of doors where money could get siphoned off for other purposes away from marketing.

 

My sense is that most of the fishers in my area want the marketing. I did have a chance to attend one of the consultations but I was ushered out before it over. The reason I wanted to be there was because my good friend John Cameron is very involved in the blueberry industry and he gave a presentation that day about the levy in the blueberry industry and the incredible success they've had at improving the prices they are getting for their blueberries.

 

I know that was a compelling argument and I just want to make sure that when we start talking about different handlers and people receiving it in different countries and making sure that they are handling it properly and this and that and other thing, we don't try putting all of that on the shoulders of fishers, we don't even try to put all of that on the shoulders of our government. The fact is, if we can build the market so that the end customers are paying, then they will make sure that everyone along the step treats their product that they're purchasing with a due amount of respect.

 

            My question in saying all that is, how important is the marketing to you as minister versus more investments in research and other initiatives because with all due respect, we don't need to invent the Honeycrisp apple of lobster. We have a great product; we just need help marketing it. That's what I'm hearing from my fishers so I'm just wondering, when you talk about a fee, have you thought about how much of that fee will go to marketing, how much will go to research, whatever? That is what I'm really interested in, that we stay focused on the marketing. Could you respond to that?

 

            MR. COLWELL: You make a good point. We have to do all of those things. We have to do quality. You can't market junk, as a lot of companies have out and a lot of them are now since gone. We have to have a consistent quality product to market, so we need both. We need a consistent quality product and you need the marketing. That can either be some generic marketing towards a Canadian lobster or it can be very specific marketing. Very specific marketing is different in each area you go to and the marketing of venues is a whole lot different.

 

As I said, this is the first time that I am aware of that we have half a million dollars in the budget - a quarter of a million last year and a half a million this year - to market lobsters. We know we have to market lobsters but the point is we're selling all the lobsters that we catch at the present time. The thing we have to do is get the value up on those lobsters. That's just marketing. You can market anything but if you're not successful and you have quality, you won't market it for long. You're going to be wasting your time. Market it at high value. You have to get the high value because if you don't get the high value, it doesn't work either.

 

            You need both things running in tandem. It's not just on the shoulders of the harvesters, it's on their shoulders to make sure that they get the best quality product they can to the buyer. The buyer's responsibility is to get the best quality he can get, to keep that quality intact, until he gets to the processor and all the way up the value chain. Once you get that in place, it's really easy to market. It is the same as if you bought a whole bunch of steak that was so tough you couldn't eat it, you're going to try and make sure you know where that came from and make sure you don't buy it again.

 

            It's the same thing with lobster. You want to get a quality lobster that's consistent and once you do that then you market everything out of it you possibly can, that it's the best, prove it's the best and then get the high price that we need to grow wealth in the province and create jobs. That's where we need to be.

 

            I keep going back to Iceland; they did this with the cod fish. They were getting $1,700 an ounce out of some enzymes from the backbone of the cod fish. They did that with research. There's not a single piece of that cod fish that is wasted and everything along the whole value chain makes money. They've done the marketing in conjunction with that. You have to make sure you've got consistent value, you have to make sure you have consistent quality, in order to be able to market the product effectively. You're wasting your money to market early if you don't have the product to follow it through.

 

            We have some very high quality fish plants in the province that market our lobsters at a very good price and they sort it out now for quality. If we can get it sorted out earlier, they'll have more of those high quality lobsters to sell and there's still a place for all the other lobsters too. If we get consistent top quality, it means that the market is easier to penetrate and we'll be in the market and established as a standard in the world that you're going to judge everything else by.

 

            That's where we have to get and we're working on that now and we're going to achieve that. It will take some time. We have buy-in now from the industry and as time goes on and this is successful, which I know it will be, the rest of the industry will come online and then our issues are going to start because how will we handle all this all at once, as your colleague had said earlier. We look forward to that challenge but today we just need to make sure we're on the right road and I believe we are, by working towards quality and marketing and value along the whole chain.

 

            MR. HOUSTON: Just to paraphrase, you're focused on changing the constitution of the harvest right now to more quality lobsters - marketing comes later.

 

            MR. COLWELL: Actually, no, this value chain that we're working on also includes markets. We already have markets lined up, we have processors lined up, we have buyers lined up, all with the same quality initiative and to get the higher price and good marketing. This is a whole program right through and as it says: it's from catch to plate and everything in between.

 

            We need to do all that and it's surprising the buy in we have. We are beyond anything we thought was possible with the buy in and that's what it is going to take to make it work.

 

            MR. HOUSTON: At one point earlier - and I don't remember exactly who you were speaking with at the time - but I wrote down that the couple of pilot projects are to establish research ideas. Could I ask if those research ideas are completely focused on quality or is there any other kind of research that you see that might be needed that you're interested in pursuing further?

 

            MR. COLWELL: At this point it's going to be around quality so we can make sure we get a consistent quality on the plate as we move forward, but there are other things we have to do. We have to do some research on holding on the boat, holding on the buyers' vehicles, holding by the processor, holding at the airport or wherever we're going to send it, holding at the other end. It's right through the whole value chain.

 

            I can tell you that lobsters have been held up to two years in the right environment, the right temperature, with relatively good quality for a two-year lobster. That has been going on for years. I know it has been going on for at least 20 years and with great success but it's at a level that its technology is proprietary to the company that has it. They've done it very well. They did the science, they did the research and they are very successful. We have to get that information either by learning how we do it. At that time they were just holding the lobsters. They would sort out the lobsters, get the best ones, hold them and then market them when the market was right so they would get the maximum price.

 

            We have to emulate that somewhat but again, we need to do more research to see what temperature to hold the lobsters at different times of the year. You can't take the lobsters out of the water in the summertime and shock it by putting it in too cold water; vice versa, you can't take it out in the wintertime and put in too warm water that is not the right temperature. We have to investigate all these things. Those are things that will set us apart from anywhere else in the world when it comes to lobsters.

 

            MR. HOUSTON: The holding facilities are very capital-intensive. I'm just wondering if there's anything in the budget for this year that could be allocated towards creating some of these new facilities, spending capital on some of this infrastructure that would be required for some of the initiatives that you may have in mind here?

 

            MR. COLWELL: I can't really answer that question because we're still looking after it for a partner with the federal government and we're hopeful that we can get that in place. We don't specifically have money this year for it but we will come up with the money somehow when the time comes to do this.

 

            We're not quite at that stage yet because first, we needed the buy-in. We're getting the buy-in now. We're starting our first pilot very soon, actual live, so we're going to gather information this year and then start working more and more towards getting the problems resolved through the value chain. Some of these problems that we're hearing are anecdotal and not necessarily backed up with any real facts so we need to get the facts in place. We've got a whole tracking system in place to track the lobster from the time it is caught until it's on the plate and that system is in place now.

 

            When the time comes to put this in place, we've been talking to the industry, it will be a joint venture with the industry and ourselves to do those improvements as the time is appropriate. We're not quite there yet.

 

            MR. HOUSTON: You made the comment earlier that there are many lobsters on the market that should not be there. I'm thinking of that in terms of the whole philosophy from catch to plate. I know the minister would be disappointed if I didn't ask anything about turkeys when I was on my feet. In thinking about some of the changes the minister has done in the turkey supply chain, I'm just wondering if he envisions anything similar in this supply chain. If we have a sense that there lobsters on the market that shouldn't be there, have you isolated well - are there some processors that needs to do their job differently, as we had in the turkey industry? Some of those abattoirs didn't fit the bill. Have you focused in on one part of the lobster supply chain that would be your first place to look to make sure we get the quality up?

 

            MR. COLWELL: Well, as we indicated when we were talking about turkeys the other day - I'm still waiting for the affidavit, by the way - it's a different situation because all the fish plants in Nova Scotia are Canadian Food Inspection Agency-approved, all of them. They have to be in order to export, so they have a minimum standard of cleanliness and processing that they have to meet and they all do that. It's difficult to do, a whole lot more difficult than the provincial standards we have in the province. The provincial standards only allow you to sell in Nova Scotia but the CFIA ones allow you to sell anywhere in the world. It's a world-recognized situation.

 

That isn't a problem at all for us. The problem is making sure the lobster is a good quality when it enters a plant, good quality when it leaves a plant, and good quality that's handled right after it leaves the plant to get to the customer. That's an education all through the chain. That's right from the boat, buyer, processor, transportation, in between everything, and then to the wholesaler at the other end, if there is a wholesaler, to make sure they hold them properly so that when it gets on someone's plate, it's something you enjoy and you want to buy again. That's the thing.

 

            Sometimes we hear with lobsters that have been shipped, that maybe aren't up to the high standard that they should be, a lot of these may go into Maine that they process anyway and they still get value out of them; they are not lost on value. Top quality lobster in Maine isn't a full meat body lobster. They have marketed it very well so that the lobster doesn't have to have full meat. As we know in Nova Scotia if you don't have a lobster that's full of meat and really firm and all the other things, we don't think it's a good lobster. That's what we want to market - full body, full meat, high blood protein. All the things we need to do to put that on someone's plate so they enjoy it as much as we do.

 

If we can get that in place, then we have succeeded, and I know we can. There is a will to do that now. There's a recognition that has to be changed by the whole value chain and they're excited about it. They are excited. We will achieve it; it's going to take some time. We're going to make some mistakes along the way but every mistake is going to be tracked. Everything we do right is going to be tracked so we know what happens to the lobster all the way through the system so we can say that lobster got there in excellent condition because all of these things were done or it didn't get there in excellent condition because this thing wasn't done right.

 

            That's where we have to go. We're on that road and we're very excited about it and it will make a huge difference to the economy of Nova Scotia once we get this in place and get it working properly. It's going to take some time. It will take some time.

 

            MR. HOUSTON: I just want to switch gears on these fish harvester organizations. In northern Nova Scotia there were eight fish harvester organizations. There have been a couple that have been dropped off, some changes happening there. I'm just wondering, with the changes to the regulations that were made that had to do with how many members you had whether or not you remained certified, for lack of a better word, I was just wondering if the minister can shed any light on the thought process behind limiting the number of harvester organizations in that area, especially when you consider that in southwestern Nova Scotia there are none. You have to deal with 1,800 fishermen down there and in northern Nova Scotia there were eight groups and there was still somehow a desire to shrink that down. I'm just wondering if the minister can shed a little bit of light on why that was and why that wouldn't have been prospected and grandfathered in, those two groups that got left off the list.

 

            MR. COLWELL: I just want to get a clarification on that. I want to make sure you are talking about the two organizations that we recently notified, North of Smokey and MFU. Well, basically we worked with both organizations for over a year trying to get their membership up so they would meet the requirements of the FHOSA. Unfortunately under the Act, there is no provision in there for grandfathering.

 

We asked them to come back with any documentation they had that would indicate that they had a previous commitment from the last government or any individual from our department, anybody at DFO, anybody that could shed a light on this and say indeed they were grandfathered in that area, and that indeed they could continue to operate because the last thing we want to do is undo any organizational activity that has happened.

 

Unfortunately, under the present rules we couldn't let that continue. As it was, I let it go too long and we should've done it sooner but we wanted to give them every single opportunity we could to raise their numbers or find a reason that we could say yes it's there. They couldn't prove anything to us; they couldn't indicate anything to us where they had been grandfathered. There was no documentation, no letters, no meeting minutes or anything else that indicated that, indeed, they could be grandfathered into the system. We looked, they looked, and at the end of the day, we have to follow legislation and the legislation dictates we had to do what we did. We reluctantly did that and unfortunately they didn't take the time they had to sign up new members. That was a choice they had. It was made very clear to them over a year ago that's what they had to do. They didn't manage to do that for whatever reason and because they didn't do that, we couldn't grandfather. That's it. From there, I can't tell you past that.

 

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: The honourable member for Argyle-Barrington.

 

            HON. CHRISTOPHER D'ENTREMONT: Thank you very much Madam Chairman. It's my pleasure to maybe get up and pick off where I left off before when we were talking about aquaculture and more specifically, I was talking about Antigonish Harbour. We had the opportunity to meet with a fisherman from Antigonish Harbour who harvested oysters from Antigonish Harbour. Apparently those fishermen had been doing a lot of work in that harbour over the years and basically taking care of this bed. This was not a previous lease, this was open water that fishermen had been taking care of, taking their fish out of, taking the oysters out of and using and selling, and then apparently a request a lease came up afterwards and it was granted to a proponent.

 

            What the department ended up doing is basically giving all that work away that the fishermen had done in taking care of this bed for many years - given away $100,000 worth of oysters to that proponent who wouldn't even have to put a cage in to be able to harvest the stuff that was already on the bottom of the ocean.

 

My question, again, when it comes to oyster leases or leases recently, and something maybe you and I can talk about later with your Director of Aquaculture, is just what happened in there that the fishermen's voices were not heard when this was established in Antigonish Harbour.

 

            MR. COLWELL: That is a very simple answer. There were several leases in that area that were proposed. They didn't meet the requirements that we had for an aquacultural lease and it appeared, at the time, six applications were approved, six rejected, and five withdrawn. The ones that were rejected didn't prove that they were actually doing aquaculture at the sites; they just wanted to protect fishing ground, which is not appropriate.

 

If that's the case then it should be an open thing. Five of them were withdrawn and they can apply again anytime under the new rules we're going to have. They didn't do the proper community consultation that should've been done. They just figured they could get the leases and not have to do anything. That's not the way it operates. Even at that time when they did it, they had to do community consultation. The ones that were approved did do the consultation, did get buy in from the community; the other ones didn't.

 

            If you're going to perform aquaculture in the province, you have to actually do aquaculture and you have to prove you are doing aquaculture. Just to protect the bottom so that you can be the lone harvester of that area doesn't cut it.

 

            MR. D'ENTREMONT: Thank you, and I think that's what was confusing here. Because of this lease there was a similar request made in the little harbour area more over towards Pictou County and that was turned down by the department because the fishers in the area, who actually harvested oysters in that area, felt that it was a part that they use in the wild fishery and the same thing can overlay in this one in Antigonish Harbour.

 

So I was just wondering how that decision got made. I'll share the information that I have with you from the local fishers and maybe something can happen but as far as I know - and sometimes you don't know what the dynamics are amongst people as well - but I think the guy who won the lease had been bragging that he basically won the lottery because of the amount of oysters that are held within it. I just hope to have a commitment that we will sit down and talk about this one soon.

 

            MR. COLWELL: I would be very pleased to do that. Actually we want to get as many aquaculture sites as we possibly can to be active aquaculture sites not just protecting the bottom in places because the ones that are actually aquaculture are improving the grounds, looking after the area, and will be more productive than ones that the wild oysters can grow in. If it's a good place to grow oysters, we want to make sure that we exploit that, I shouldn't say exploit but do a proper business approach to that, so you can get a maximum harvest out of it and still maintain the resource in a very healthy manner, but we will talk about it.

 

            MR. D'ENTREMONT: Let's get into the big one which is the issue of finfish aquaculture in Nova Scotia. The previous government invested a lot of money with Cooke Aquaculture. There were a lot of promises on production of fish, construction of fish plants and hatcheries, and then three quarters of the way through that process the Doelle/Lahey report was called for. I'm just wondering if you can give us a quick update on where finfish production is going, especially in the south shore, and is there anything to report when it comes to the construction and the further work by Cooke Aquaculture. You would be the one speaking to them, I think, more than anybody else, so I'm hoping you might have an update on that.

 

            MR. COLWELL: To start with, I can't discuss the deal with Cooke Aquaculture here, and it's not one I can discuss anyway because it was with Economic and Rural Development and Tourism. I would assume it's within the Department of Business now, so you would have to ask them about that.

 

            The issue around finfish aquaculture, we are very happy, as I said earlier with the Doelle/Lahey report. I think they covered a lot of area that people didn't have faith in the government, didn't have faith in the industry to really be accountable to the public. I can guarantee you when our regulations come out and our Act comes out we're going to be more than accountable. We are going to make sure we follow the recommendations of the Doelle/Lahey report, in some cases more than what they have suggested, and in some cases a little bit differently than they suggested but achieve the same goal. We are very conscience of that.

 

            At the time that I came into office, we didn't even have the ability to go on the site ourselves. We had to rely on the operator of the lease to go on the site so they could pick and choose when they would let us on the site. That is changing, that will be changed, and we're changing a lot of things. We're going to do a very stringent environmental monitoring. As I said earlier we're going to make sure we replace hearsay with science, and if indeed there is an issue around a site or sites or just general things - because one of the things lobster fishermen automatically say is it will kill my fishing grounds. Then when they get the sites there, lobster fishermen say they love it and the aquaculture of finfish sites says there is a problem with the buoys getting tangled up in their nets. Which is right?

 

            We're actually starting a process now to discuss with the fishermen, through one of the universities that has nothing to do with the industry now, totally independent, independent of us, to go out and talk to the fishing community. What are your concerns around finfish aquaculture? Let's find out what the concerns are and then we'll see if there is any science now available that has already been done, research that has been done, that we can utilize. I mean credible research by a university or by a scientific organization that says here are all the parameters we've tested, here's what the results are, and if the results say for instance that you should not put a finfish site where you fish lobsters, that's what we will do. If it says it doesn't hurt the lobster industry, that's what we will do.

 

We're going to go by science not hearsay. Hearsay doesn't help anybody and at the end of the day we want to grow industry but we've got to do it in an environmentally friendly way and a cost effective way through the whole industry. So we are moving towards science instead of hearsay and I think it is about time we did that. There are too many people who - to quote some of colleagues in other areas - they say we have the Internet scientists.

 

There is a lot of good information on the Internet and a lot of no-good information on the Internet. We're not going to rely on that; we're going to rely on actual scientific fact and put that together with the Doelle/Lahey report and the recommendations we're putting there. We are pretty excited about this and I think that everybody will be pretty happy when we come out with the regulations. We're there, we're going to be regulators now, we're not going to be the police anymore; we're going to be the regulators and we're going to try to promote the industry where it makes sense to promote the industry.

 

            MR. D'ENTREMONT: I like what the minister is saying. He does have a challenge before him from the issues that have been left over. I mean the issue between Cooke Aquaculture and the Department of Business or ERDT or whoever the original plan was set out with - I think you had a government that backtracked a little bit on it and I guess we're going to have to try to fix that issue because the people of Shelburne have been sitting around and were promised a plant and that hasn't happened. The people of Digby have been promised a hatchery and that hasn't happened because there has been no opportunity for Cooke to grow the amount of fish that it requires to have those facilities here.

 

            I am a proponent of finfish in this province. I think it can work in the right place under the right conditions. Can it work everywhere? Absolutely not. But at the same time we should be able to designate certain areas where this is going to be successful. I mean in no other agriculture or aquaculture can we actually take a pound of feed and turn it into a pound of fish, or kg of feed and turn it into a kg of fish, or a kg of protein - let's go down to the basics of it.

 

            I hear the Internet scientists quite often who have this and that to speak against it but at the end of the day why would an aquaculturalist not want it to succeed? Why wouldn't it want to make sure that it is the most pristine product that it possibly can be, grown under the safest of conditions, to be able to get that product to market?

 

            To hear organizations speak against it, I think does a disservice to the opportunity that it is for rural Nova Scotia. What other industry could we talk about that brings people with this kind of schooling, education? The biologists who come into this, the people who are involved in it are people who go through some very specialized training in order to do this.

 

I think it is ludicrous to think that we have probably one of the best halibut hatcheries in the world sitting in Clark's Harbour and yet we have almost nobody who produces the halibut to market size in Nova Scotia. It's ludicrous. They ship those eggs and those tiny little fish all around the world because we do it the best. Yet we can't seem to figure out how to get it into the water and grow it here, or at least come up with some kind of program or process that will be able to grow it correctly in a land-based facility.

 

            Guys like Paul Merlin and those guys are doing a phenomenal amount of work to get product growing on land but their product is in small amounts at this point, as we start to do it. We have miles and miles of coastline and thousands and thousands of bays where we should be able to do these things.

 

            Again my call to the minister is, yes, we need to be the regulator. We need to set a smart bunch of regulations forward so that this industry can grow, not hold it back but to grow, to create these opportunities for our young folks who want to have that kind of business.

 

            I had the opportunity to go to Norway and see what they do there. It blows my mind that they took our technology and ran with it the way they did, but they did. They are growing our product in Norway and in Scotland. We are left behind once again, starting things but we never seem to get it to that next step so I'm hoping that these regulations have it within it. The policing should be done by someone else, let someone else do the policing and we can be not necessarily the cheerleader but at least the promoter of a smart aquaculture industry here in Nova Scotia. Maybe I'll give you a few minutes to answer that.

 

            MR. COLWELL: I totally agree. It is a great opportunity to grow our economy, but we have to do it in an environmentally sound way. The food conversion you are talking about is very near 1:1 so the waste component is very small compared to a cow, for instance. A cow is eight pounds of input of food for every pound of beef. When you talk about a finfish, it's close to 1, 1.1, 1.2, depending upon the food and the process the system uses and the grower uses.

 

            So it makes a lot of sense. It's probably the most environmentally sound thing you can do to grow high value, really good protein that not only is good protein but it has the omega-3 oils in it that help prevent heart attacks and all the other things in the industry. There is a lot of misconception out there around aquaculture. There have been a lot of mistakes made over the years on how things are done.

 

You will notice the last time we had that superchill - I hesitate to use that word but that's exactly what it was - we came out in front. We announced that right away. We said this is what it is. We were just about ready to have the findings of our lab results because we had to send them outside the province to get those. It appears, preliminarily, that indeed that was the case; there was no disease or anything else. We want to announce that as soon as we get it and put it out there.

 

            That's the beginning of the new accountability by this government. We will tell people what's happening. We're designing a new website now to keep people informed of exactly what's going on, every site we have, where it's going and where it has been. If you talk about halibut, I met with the people from Norway here recently and they are selling their halibut in Norway for $20 US a pound; today that's probably $28 a pound Canadian. That's a pretty darn good price for halibut. We do have the best hatchery in the world because that's what everybody wants, the halibut, and they can't produce the little ones fast enough for the market.

 

            It's there and it's there to do but we have to do it right. The biggest problem we have is confidence from the community that we are doing it right, we're watching it right, we're regulating it properly. There have been a lot of mistakes made in the past and people have latched on to some of those things, and rightfully so. We have to make sure we do what we say we are going to do, we get the enforcement people to enforce the things that need to be enforced, and hopefully we don't have much enforcement because I really believe that most of the aquaculture producers in Nova Scotia and in the world really don't want their fish to die. They lose millions of dollars when that happens.

 

            We need to work with them and make sure the sites are the best, that they flush properly - we set the environment up for them to succeed. But they also have a job to do too. They have to go to the community, be honest with the community, what they're doing, how they're doing the approach and that's all part of this thing working properly.

 

That is all going to be reflected in our new regulations. We're pretty excited about where we're going with this and I think that at the end of the day we'll have a well-balanced process. The thing that may be a little bit different, once we get this process in place, it's also going to be fluid. If we made a mistake in the regulations, we are willing to look at them again because we want this to work. I think it is a great opportunity for Nova Scotia to create some very high value jobs.

 

            The other myth out there is that these jobs are minimum wage jobs. An average wage job at an aquaculture site is $35,000 a year. That's pretty darn good for rural Nova Scotia where the cost of living is so much lower and they are year-round jobs, so it's not part-time jobs. The more experience people get, the more money they make and the more successful at the site growing the fish more efficiently, which means better food conversion.

 

            We were in BC about a year ago and there was a competition between the different sites in the same company - who gets the best food conversion. That team gets a bonus for doing that. That's good business because that means they are using less fish; they're using less food to feed the fish; they get a better return on their investment, plus it helps the environment at the same time. All these things are very positive. I'm glad to hear you are in favour of that, that will help. We'll be discussing that with you with more details as we roll this out because we want this to work at the end of the day.

 

            MR. D'ENTREMONT: So I guess that goes for Aquaculture. Another couple of quick questions - FTE counts within the department. I'm wondering, quickly, where we just talked about a regulatory framework for aquaculture and trying to do a better job on that side - is that going to require people? What is your FTE count right now? Because I thought you had lost a few people in your department, maybe you can give a little run-down on your FTE counts?

 

            MR. COLWELL: We actually had last year 76.8 full time equivalents, and we now have 75.7 full time equivalents, but that changes because of the 1 per cent reduction we had to do. As we move forward with aquaculture, we are going to need more staff and we're in the process of looking at that now, but first we've got to get our regulations in place and everything ready to go, then that requirement will be filled as we need it filled.

 

            MR. D'ENTREMONT: There are a whole bunch of other questions that we could be asking about. I'm just wondering, maybe looking at some of the supplemental details as we flow along here, there were a number of payments to different organizations. Let me just pick a couple of them before we finish up.

 

            There was a payment to East Coast International Trucks for $124,437. I'm just wondering how many trucks does the department own? Was that a bill to purchase a new truck or was that just service costs as well, because $124,000 seems a lot for trucks.

 

            MR. COLWELL: Most of that money was for two new five-ton fish stocking trucks and some repairs on the other ones. Actually, the other trucks we had were breaking down and costing us a lot of money in repairs so it was time to replace them.

 

            MR. D'ENTREMONT: There was $52,760 to Market Research Associates. Maybe the minister could provide us details on what the research the department was doing for that and what was the outcome?

 

            MR. COLWELL: This was for the Marine and Coastal Advisory Services section for the Marine Division.

 

            MR. D'ENTREMONT: The last one I have - in October of last year, a vote was taken by fish harvesters in Region 2, the eastern half of Cape Breton from the Inverness-Victoria county line, the Canso Causeway enabling them to be now represented under the Fish Harvesters Organization Act. Will the minister explain how things have gone since then? By the sound of it the North of Smokey group is not a part of it. There is a little bit of debate over who is representing. Maybe that's something you can share with me later on, but it sounds like there is a bit of a dispute on the North of Smokey Fishermen's Association being part of zone one or zone two.

 

            MR. COLWELL: I'll share that information with you afterwards.

 

            MR. D'ENTREMONT: I want to thank the minister for that. That concludes my questioning for tonight. I know the member for Queens-Shelburne does have a few to finish up.

 

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: The honourable member for Queens-Shelburne.

 

            HON. STERLING BELLIVEAU: Thank you very much, Madam Chairman. I would like to take the minister in a new direction. I want to point out that District 33, the lobster fishing area and that fishing zone is, to my observation, the largest or the fastest growing area in Atlantic Canada as far as the expansion of the fleet and I want to bring that to the minister's attention. The fishermen in East Port L'Hebert have made a presentation or a request to the federal government for harbour dredging and for additional berthage at their local wharf.

 

I have drafted a letter and sent that off to Madam Shea in Ottawa, with the understanding the community cannot wait five years for this project to proceed through the application process; five years is a lot of time when that fleet is rapidly expanding. There is a safety issue around these large vessels which need more depth of water to be able to berth in the harbour docking facilities. I know that the provincial minister is aware of this and this is a priority with that community, and many other communities in Nova Scotia, so can the minister enlighten us and update us? Are there discussions going on with the federal counterpart and can he bring us up to date? I'm sure East Port L'Hebert would be interested in his comments.

 

            MR. COLWELL: You bring up a very important topic because we indeed want to do everything we can to support and promote our industry and we will work anyway and every way we can to try to encourage the federal government to make these upgrades as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, they have their own set of priorities but we are willing to document anything we can in support of that so we'd be willing to work with the honourable member to see what we can do to move that forward.

 

            MR. BELLIVEAU: Madam Chairman, I certainly know that you will be earning your money tonight so I'm going to ask you to observe the clock. I will be concluding my remarks roughly around 9:17 and allowing the minister to add his final comments, but just a few more questions.

 

One of the interesting questions that I have observed in the last year was this whole discussion about an invasive species. There is an invasive species called the green crab. I know that some of the scientific communities and some of the industry have said - most recently I observed one as saying - the invasive species of the green crab has been here since the 1990s. I can assure you in my communities there are senior fishermen who have dated and witnessed the green crab on our shores back in the early 1950s. There is some discussion or debate around how long this invasive species has been there but the interesting scenario is, there were some concerns raised by some scientists about a parasite, and I'm not one to dwell on the negativity. I really think there is very positive potential and opportunities for fishermen right across Atlantic Canada.

 

            I also know that there has been research done in PEI about making this a commercial product. I am interested in that research and I want to ask the minister if he could update us on any discussions he is having with his federal counterpart and the potential of this green crab, which is introduced to our shore as an invasive species.

 

            MR. COLWELL: Indeed the honourable member brings up a very good topic here. This green crab is causing a lot of difficulty in the clam flats, on the seaweed, in the seaweed and eel grass, and everywhere they are and it has been an issue. We've been working very hard to work with our federal counterparts to try to get this as a harvestable product, something we can market and add to the season.

 

As the member knows, the more we can add products to the season that means we can have extended seasons for some fishermen who may not be able to work most of the year and I think that's important that we do that. It is one of the things on top of our priority list to work with the federal government. We have brought it up several times with the federal fovernment and we'll continue to do that.

 

I know there has been some experimental fishery done very successfully done in areas where they have basically cleaned up some of the green crab and the eel grass and the other aquatic products have come back very quickly. We understand that's happening. It's very possible the Gulf of Maine Council is very interested and we're working on some research on the green crab. So we share your concerns with this and we're doing everything we possibly can to get the result.

 

            MR. BELLIVEAU: There is one topic that I would love to have ample opportunity to discuss and that is safety in the industry. I can assure you from a fisherman's perspective I basically live for that and I know it is certainly important. I know that everyone here is looking at the industry and how we can improve it. One of those ways, and something that was always interesting to me, is creating a friendlier personal floatation device, PFDs. I know that there has been ongoing work with the department and I just wanted to know if the minister could update us and if that work is still ongoing with some of the manufactures of these personal floatation devices.

 

            MR. COLWELL: It is a very important question. As I said earlier we have had some deaths this year that may have been able to - you never know what the circumstances are totally - have maybe avoided a death or more than one death in the industry. One death is not acceptable and the personal floatation devices we have invested substantial resources, along with the Worker's Compensation Board, as you are well aware, in a project, I believe you started. We are continuing that project and I think it's essential to the industry because as we move forward safety is a critical factor for the industry.

 

            For so many years it has been an attitude that we don't need the safety equipment. I guess it is the same for all of us, when the seatbelts first came out we didn't even want to wear seatbelts but we have seen the benefits of that, and now the personal flotation devices. One thing that irritates me to no end, when you see shows on televisions, either sport fishing or commercial fishing, they are not wearing personal floatation devices. That's something we have to address.

 

We will continue to work with the industry, provide resources so that we can get that in place, and make sure that eventually everybody has a personal floatation device and they are work-friendly so people can wear them all day and know they have got something that works really well. We are working closely now with the Fishery Safety Association of Nova Scotia to make that happen.

Actually this year at the minister's conference that I initiated 15 or 16 years ago, they did a presentation today on these ones that you inflate - how to inflate them if they don't inflate by the little cylinders with them. We are diligently working towards that to get it in place and I appreciate that question.

 

MR. BELLIVEAU: It really leads to another question in another area. One of the things that I've observed in this budget process is that there are many things that dominate the time. One thing I always was troubled with, one particular sector within your mandate, is that the inland fisheries does not get the time and the recognition that this important commercial or recreational fishery deserves. I guess my initial question is - and I know I'm fighting the clock here - appreciating the value of that, I would like you to give us an update.

 

I know there was almost perfect timing to raise the question regarding safety. One of the things that is most disturbing to me is knowing that when a lot of fishermen go out on our lakes and streams, if they were encouraged to wear these new hybrid personal floatation devices, we would not have some of these sad stories that we are faced with almost on an annual basis. We are almost at that time when our inland waters are going to be used for recreational use. I ask the minister if he could update us on the value of this valuable inland water recreational fishery and also on the safety aspect.

 

            MR. COLWELL: I would ask the honourable member to check the budget this year and you will see that the inland fisheries did very well this year. We had another $186,000 put in the budget for inland fisheries. We are very proud of the work they do and as you have indicated, they have a tremendous impact - I think it's $86 million in economic benefit to the province. As an avid sports fisherman, I would like to see that doubled and we are going to work towards that over time.

 

            The personal flotation device is very important in the sport fishing industry because we usually have more deaths in the sport fishing industry from drowning because of people not wearing them than we do in the commercial industry. We don't want death in any of them, so it is one we are promoting. I'm glad to see that the training program was put in by the Coast Guard a few years ago and now applies to all personal watercraft, no matter what it is.

 

            I can tell you from personal experience, I fell in the lake one time and my PFD saved my life. It was in the Spring of the year - very cold - and it is worth it. I will hardly wade in the water anymore without a PFD on. They are well worth wearing. There is nothing any harder than someone getting news that one of their loved ones was in an accident and actually died because of not wearing a personal flotation device, which is not very expensive.

 

            MR. BELLIVEAU: I'm looking at the clock and I really appreciate the engagement. I want to thank the members opposite, the PC Critic for his involvement and I thank the minister for his comments.

 

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: Would the Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture like to make some closing comments?

 

            MR. COLWELL: I want to thank my honourable colleagues for the very insightful questions they have asked. I will follow up with the discussions that we talked about and look forward to that, and look forward to their ideas as we move forward and try to build the economy around the fishing industry of the Province of Nova Scotia. I think we have great opportunities in aquaculture with the lobster fishery - all the fisheries we have in the province - as well as the sport fishing.

 

            I think it's time that we started co-operating with the sport fishery and the salmon industry. I think that's very important. There are a lot of people spending a lot of money every year and if we can make that experience even better for them and higher rates of catches and more fishery turning to the rivers, I think that's something we really have to work on. I've got some ideas around that and I want to meet with the Atlantic Salmon Federation and the Nova Scotia Salmon Association to see if we can work in that regard as well.

 

            When I was minister before, we started liming the East River in Nova Scotia, and the Sheet Harbour area, with very great positive results. I'm an avid trout fisherman and I love to salmon fish, which I haven't done in years, simply because it's like playing golf - it's almost a disease you get and nothing else matters. That's all you want to do. You're hooked on it and away you go, and I was hooked, I can tell you. If I ever venture out and hook another salmon, I'm finished. I know what it's like to see that salmon just sit on the bottom and wait and do the tail walks and all the other stuff they do. So I understand where the people in the industry are coming from who appreciate this sport fishing so much.

 

            I'm looking forward to working with you as we move this industry forward. As everything goes, we hope to grow Nova Scotia's economy through aquaculture.

 

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: Shall Resolution E10 stand?

 

            Resolution E10 stands.

 

            The time allotted for consideration of Supply today has elapsed.

 

The honourable Deputy Government House Leader.

 

            MR. TERRY FARRELL: Madam Chairman, I move that the committee do now rise and report progress.

 

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: Is it agreed?

 

It is agreed.

 

Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

 

The motion is carried.

 

            [The committee adjourned at 9:21 p.m.]