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MR. CHAIRMAN: Order. Thank you very much. If we could, I think we do have a quorum, so we will begin. We have the Minister of Environment and Labour, Mark Parent.
Resolution E7 - Resolved, that a sum not exceeding $34,767 000 be granted to the Lieutenant Governor to defray expenses in respect of the Department of Environment and Labour, pursuant to the Estimate.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Minister, you have the floor. The time is 2:11 p.m.
HON. MARK PARENT: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Before I start my remarks I want to introduce, to my left, Laurie Bennett from the Department of Environment and Labour, and to my right is the deputy minister for the Department of Environment and Labour.
It's my honour to present to you, my colleagues, and to the people of Nova Scotia some preliminary details of this year's budget for the Department of Environment and Labour, and I want to say how proud I am to be minister of this department. We've accomplished many great things in 2006-2007 and I am certain that we'll build on these accomplishments in the coming fiscal year.
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The department's mandate, as you know, is to protect and promote the safety of people and property, a healthy environment, employment rights, consumer rights, public confidence in pension services and in the alcohol and gambling sectors. As you know, the Department of Environment and Labour has a very broad and diverse mandate. Fortunately, for me - and I say this with heartfelt conviction - we have a very talented and dedicated workforce in the department to help us deliver that mandate. They work in countless ways, every day, to protect the environment and human health in Nova Scotia. And in particular, Mr. Chairman, if I can just very briefly, although I'll have opportunity to do this, I'm sure, later in the year, but this will be the last occasion that the deputy minister is here at estimates, and I want to personally thank him for all the work he's done, not only for my department but for the Government of Nova Scotia and the people of Nova Scotia.
Today, we'll discuss only the highlights of our 2007-2008 budget, but I'm well aware that our past successes and ambitions for this year are the product of every one of our nearly 500 staff working throughout the province.
I want to mention very quickly one of the things that we're doing, the Competitiveness and Compliance Initiative, which is a $900,000 initiative, and this year we will continue to invest in the Competitiveness and Compliance Initiative. It's the department's response to the government's better regulation initiative and, because we are the major regulator in government, CCI - the Competitiveness and Compliance Initiative - sets the pace for better regulation. This initiative has made great progress, both for discreet accomplishments as well as for the creation of overarching policies and processes that are improving the way regulation is crafted and applied.
[2:15 p.m.]
Mr. Chairman, the initiative, both the better regulation and the CCI, which is the department's response to the better regulation, are viewed across Canada in terms of one of the innovative ways to deal with regulations in a way that simply doesn't act in a simplistic manner, but actually betters the regulatory process.
The second thing I want to talk about very quickly is an Environmental Home Assessment Program - a $1.5 million program - the program was introduced in late Fall and since that time we were able to do 400 assessments from Sydney to Yarmouth. The objectives of this program are very simple, yet valuable: to protect the health and well- being of Nova Scotia families and to protect the environment from the harmful effects of poorly maintained oil tanks and septic systems; to encourage homeowners to test their well water on a regular basis; and number three, which we all like, to save Nova Scotians money.
The third program I'll just touch upon is the Septage Treatment Facility Program, because the management of waste water doesn't stop with private septic systems. The septage removed from these tanks, Mr. Chairman, must be handled, stored and treated
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properly if our groundwater is to be protected, and that's why we spend $1.25 million in this fiscal year on the Septage Treatment Assistance Program whose purpose is to ensure construction, maintenance and operation of septic treatment facilities.
Since the government - and I know the people of Nova Scotia - want one of the cleanest and most sustainable environments in the world by the year 2020, we will be launching tomorrow, strategy that will protect our most important asset, which is our water. Water has become an increasingly important natural capital asset that needs to be managed and protected properly, and so building on our Drinking Water Strategy, which was launched in 2002, the purpose of this initiative is to develop a comprehensive approach to effectively manage water resources in Nova Scotia. We will spend $200,000 this fiscal year to start developing our strategy - a water strategy that will set out the priorities and principles of government in making water policy decisions. It will also provide a framework for the department's water programs and decisions related to complaints, permits, industrial approvals, and ministerial orders.
As part of our green plan commitment, consultations with Nova Scotians will take place over the next three years to develop a strategy that will address security and sustainability of our water supply. This will help protect our health, the health of our ecosystems, and ensure the long-term prosperity of our water- dependent industries. The end result, I hope and I'm sure, will be a comprehensive strategy that will protect our water and benefit each and every Nova Scotian.
Another program that I want to highlight in these brief remarks is our environmental health protection initiative well watering audit, which is a $212,000 program. Continuing with the theme to protect the health and safety of Nova Scotians, my department is part of a broader program to protect environmental health. We're all well aware of the connections now between health and the environment, and that you can't have proper health without a proper healthy environment, and so the environmental health protection program is a collaborative program of several departments including Health Promotion and Protection, where the secretariat for this program is actually located; Environment and Labour; and also Mr. Chairman, you yourself as Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, are involved in this program. Our part in the program is to ensure the safety of drinking water and consistent well water auditing programs that will ensure the construction of wells in Nova Scotia are built according to recognized standards.
In January I announced my approval of a large project that my government's been involved in and that our department's been overseeing and that is the environmental assessment of the Sydney Tar Ponds and the coke ovens remediation site. At that announcement, I assured the people of Sydney that my department will have the staff and the resources to effectively regulate a remediation project of that size and scope. I assured them then, and I assure the members of this committee now, that the cleanup is moving forward
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and my department will be there every step of the way to ensure environmental protection at all times.
This will be the largest remediation project that we've tried in Nova Scotia and we expect that expertise we gain in it will be a value in not only in providing employment for people in that area, but in providing expertise in remediation which can the be exported to other countries. I know that Cape Breton University and the First Nations in that area are looking very energetically at how they can take the expertise that's gained from the remediation program and use that to help other projects and to boost industry in the area. The Department of Environment and Labour will have an extra $201,200 added to our budget to hire staff to ensure that the Sydney Tar Ponds Agency is in compliance with the terms and conditions of approval set out in the Environment Act.
These are just a few budget highlights, but any estimates' discussion would be incomplete without referring to the ongoing work of our department because, as you know, the Workers' Compensation Board, the Department of Environment and Labour, the Workers' Advisers Program, and the Workers' Compensation Appeals Tribunal are partners in workplace safety and insurance system, and we're very involved as a department in that. We have a direct role in occupational safety and health and have some thirty-two occupational health and safety enforcement officers in our department - I'm pleased to say I rarely find them at their offices because they're out in the field where we want them to be, working with employees and working with employers alike to make our workplaces safer.
I was just speaking at one of the organizations that we work with, the Safety Nova Scotia organization celebrated their 25th anniversary this year and are recognized throughout the Atlantic Provinces, and they hold an annual conference - one of the leading conferences - to which all people come who are interested in helping worker safety. We have made great progress in that, moving from 10 accidents per 100 in 1985 down to 3 accidents per 100 in 2005, but we will not rest until we get that down even further.
As part of our strategy in that regard we are going to be unveiling soon, violence in the workplace regulations and a full plan to deal with violence in the workplace, which has become a problem that we are well aware of, and which other provinces are dealing with as well. Government will consider these regulations very, very shortly and I'll have more to say about that next week.
I'm also pleased to report that $100,000 and an additional full-time employee will be added to the Pensions Division to help implement the hardship provisions that the Legislature passed last year, if you remember. In addition in the Legislature and outside the Legislature, we have been approached several times about the solvency deficiency test for assessing the health of pension plans. So what we will be doing is hosting a one- or two- day symposium of leading experts in the area on solvency to try and come up with some sort of
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template that would help protect pension plans and also deal with the solvency deficiency issue.
I want to conclude just by talking about one major project and that's the recently announced Act Respecting Environmental Goals and Sustainable Prosperity. The bottom line is to have an internationally recognized sustainable environment - one of the cleanest and greenest in the world. You're well aware of the various goals we've set along the way to getting there, and I'm sure we'll have some discussion on that in the questions that follow. It's a major commitment on behalf of my department, on behalf of this government, and a major commitment on behalf of the people of Nova Scotia, because we know that without proper care for our environment our traditional measures of progress are illusionary. We envision then a province where health, economic prosperity, and environmental management go hand in hand. We believe in it, we know that Nova Scotians share that vision and we want, as a department, to be part of the leadership that helps in achieving it.
Thank you very much and I look forward to your questions.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Minister. The first line of questions will go to the Official Opposition.
The honourable member for Halifax Atlantic.
MS. MICHELE RAYMOND: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I really appreciate the opportunity to speak with the minister and with the consultation of his deputy. Thank you very much for being here.
I suppose the first thing that I should say is to commend you on the introduction of the Environmental Goals and Sustainable Prosperity Act. We are all, as Nova Scotians, very grateful to see this step forward, to see put into legislation some of the commitments which are so profoundly needed. The question that a lot of people have, however, is what exactly that looks like on the ground - what the details, which come from the regulations framed by the sustainability Act, will look like. That's perhaps why I'm going to end up turning a fair amount of my question time over to other members of my caucus colleagues who have individual questions concerning the environment in their own ridings.
That's something that I find in my role as Environment Critic - the trouble is that the environment is everywhere and, like politics, all environment is local, so these are the things we really do need to be addressing. With that in mind I think, as we were discussing the other night, one of the concerns that we have is even more than local environment, it is the question of local politics, local decisions, and what this Act actually is going to mean for municipalities who have so many of the decisions which have significant impact on the environment of this province.
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As you know, and as the national roundtable on the environment and economy has stated in great detail, a lot of the environmental issues in the country, and certainly in the province as well, are concerned with settlement with cities, with towns, with villages, with development patterns, with energy use, with water use, and with sewage disposal. When building is permitted, particularly I'm looking at building and development permits, sometimes what we find is that other levels of government are left to scramble to catch up, and I'm wondering just what you, as minister, see the impact of this new Act is going to be on the Municipal Government Act specifically?
MR. PARENT: That's a very good question because we - my department - work collaboratively with municipalities on a great many issues that deal with the environment. Municipalities in some senses, in my experience, are ahead of the province in promoting sustainable environments. For example, the Municipality of Wolfville and the Municipality of Antigonish have actively been working on sustainable prosperity plans, one through the national step program and the other using a model set out by the Worldwatch Institute.
The impact upon communities comes in two main areas, I would respond: One is in waste treatment - the municipalities are tasked with dealing with waste, they're the reason we're able to reach the lowest disposal rate per person in the country, and they're the ones who will be tasked to bring that disposal rate even lower. Now, we intend to help them and that's why the electronic waste program was unveiled, because this will help divert more from the waste stream so that their disposal rate can be down, and we assist them in every way we can. The other area is in the treatment of water - through the MRIF fund, through Service Nova Scotia and Municipal Relations, we have been very proactive in targeting a lot of that infrastructure money to help with green technologies and to help municipalities deal with the demands that are being placed upon them for safe, clean, drinking water and for proper treatment of their waste systems.
There are many different ways that we work collaboratively with the municipality and seek to help them to do their job, and I mentioned some of them in my opening remarks - the septage program system helps municipalities. So we work collaboratively, in partnership, with the municipalities, but those are the two main areas where I've had extensive discussions with municipalities on solid waste, and on both waste water and drinking water.
MS. RAYMOND: I'm just wondering when you say proactively targeting MRIF projects for green infrastructure, what does that actually look like from the province's point of view?
[2:30 p.m.]
MR. PARENT: Service Nova Scotia and Municipal Relations has funded all of the drinking water strategies and waste water treatments, and have assured us that more money
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is coming - they have given me a figure which I want to verify, but they have been very, very helpful in that regard. I know in my own riding for example, with Canning and Port Williams, which are villages that have had to buttress their water treatment facilities, that grants have been coming. I know that municipalities across the province have been receiving similar grants and that will continue to happen. In Canning and Port Williams, it was a total of $100,000 for each of the villages; in HRM it has been a lot higher. So the MRIF fund recognizes that, and almost 100 per cent of it has been going for green technologies.
MS. RAYMOND: Okay, so that's a more general proactive targeting I was wondering about. I guess that would bring me to one set of questions, which is about soil, and one of the issues of course that does come up with waste disposal and so on is that a lot of it does end up in landfill, in soil, and in groundwater. I am just wondering, specifically in the e-waste question, what are the interim provisions and are there remediation provisions for - there was a program before - previous known deposits, shall we say, of electronic waste? Is there any work being done on that?
MR. PARENT: For contaminated sites that include e-waste, but other sites as well or just e-waste?
MS. RAYMOND: No, let's say contaminated sites in general.
MR. PARENT: On all the old landfills, and there were about 100 of them back not that long ago - all of that material has been moved to the new second-generation landfill. There are seven in the province now.
In terms of beyond the landfill, the environmental amendments that we brought in last session will help us deal with contaminated sites more fully - old gas stations, et cetera, like that. All of the old dumping sites - which really, they were dumping sites - all of that material has been moved to the second-generation sites and the soil has been remediated and we hope to have an electronic system in place on contaminated sites so that people can check on the site on-line. That should be up and available very soon.
MS. RAYMOND: I know one of the sets of contaminated sites that were mentioned - well, first, two questions. One is, what progress has there been in the past year since that? Two, I think it was about three years ago that the Auditor General, in his report on the Department of Transportation and Public Works, and on parts of the Department of Natural Resources, mentioned in both cases that there were sites contaminated by oil from fleet vehicles. I'm wondering, what work has been done on those sites, specifically those government-owned sites?
MR. PARENT: I don't have the specifics for you at the time. I can get them to you, but generally, my department assures me we're pleased with what Natural Resources and
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Transportation and Public Works have been doing with regard to the sites that you mentioned. If you want more specific detail, we'll arrange to get that for you.
MS. RAYMOND: That would be great, actually. Oil contamination is one of those things that seems to be an ongoing question, certainly in the area of the city. I think we talked about this before, last year. I am unclear what the relationship is between contaminated soil which has been removed from a site and knowledge of where it eventually goes. What tracking provisions are there?
MR. PARENT: I know that's been an issue that we talked about last time, tracking contaminated soil to make sure it doesn't get dumped in some other place and then just move the problem from one place to another. Remediation is taken and we have various methods of doing that.
What we demand is that the soil be cleaned up at the site. Then, once it's cleaned up at the site, then where they take that soil once it's cleaned up, really, is up to the company that's done it, but they must clean up the soil. Say you have an oil well that's contaminated soil, so the soil gets cleaned up through various processes. There are different means of doing it. Once that soil is cleaned up, then it's clean soil and it can be used elsewhere.
Now, are you asking whether that clean soil should be tracked?
MS. RAYMOND: When soil is removed - I think soil is sometimes considered to be contaminated at the time it is removed from a site.
MR. PARENT: It's removed from sites, it's cleaned up at that site.
MS. RAYMOND: At the original site?
MR. PARENT: Yes.
MS. RAYMOND: Okay. I know there are numerous cases of domestic oil spills and so on and you're saying that the cleanup of the soil takes place there? So does that mean the soil then doesn't have to go anywhere?
MR. PARENT: If it's a big project, as I've said, it's cleaned up on-site. If it's a small householder, then there are various facilities throughout the province approved by us, where the soil is taken to and cleaned up there. Until it's cleaned up at the site, it's not allowed to be disposed of.
MS. RAYMOND: Okay, so you have a way of knowing that when it is removed from a smaller site, it does, in fact, get to the treatment facility - you don't know that for sure?
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MR. PARENT: Oh, we do know that, yes. The site professional who does the work is licensed by our department. If we find him in any of our auditing that the site professional is taking that soil and dumping it elsewhere rather than taking it to the remediation site - to the treatment facility which is licensed by us as well - then they'll have their licence revoked and can be charged. That's the auditing that we do on it.
MS. RAYMOND: That's the auditing, okay, yes. As you know, I've brought at least one case to your attention where it seems there may be some difficulty, because the person doing the auditing would appear to be the same person doing the clean-up.
MR. PARENT: We're looking into that case right now, and I think I may have sent you a note on that.
MS. RAYMOND: Yes, you did. But it does point to a larger problem, of course, when . . .
MR. PARENT: And it may well be that there are firms that take the easy way out in dealing with soil, in which case they'll have their licence revoked and be dealt with appropriately.
MS. RAYMOND: We'll have to count on the auditing project to do that. Going back, I guess, to the water questions, a little bit. One of the things that I'm a little unclear about, coming out of the new Environmental Goals and Sustainable Prosperity Act, is what exactly is meant by no net loss of wetlands and wetland function? Could you distinguish for me, the difference between wetland and wetland function and the no net loss, what that means? What I'm wondering about is, in other net loss provisions, in other Acts and so on, net loss can simply mean that if something is removed then it can be replaced elsewhere without necessarily a prescribed distance away, but the phrase no net loss of wetlands area and function, are there any kind of constraints on what is an appropriate way of ensuring that there is no net loss?
MR. PARENT: Right now we have a policy in place and putting it in legislation will enshrine that policy and make it firm. Clearly, no net loss means that if wetlands are affected for some reason, it has to be compensated for elsewhere but not just compensated - and I think this is what you're getting at - not just compensated for in some sort of simplistic way, but we have to be assured that the function the wetland served originally is reduplicated in the other. We know that wetlands are the lungs of the world and that they have special values. They have flood control values et cetera. All those sort of things are what's considered in the function. If you had no net loss per se, you could just have a hectare here for a hectare there, but that hectare there would not be serving the same function as the initial hectare in terms of flood control or migratory birds, habitat for wildlife. So that's why both of them are in there.
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MS. RAYMOND: Do you have any sense of what the compensating wetlands are going to look like? Are they going to be within the same watershed, within a geographic distance? Are they going to be - you're suggesting perhaps that they won't be broken up into a group of smaller ones - will they be within any particular distance of the original wetland?
MR. PARENT: I can't tell you all of those facts right now, but our department is very proactive and very rigorous in terms of wetlands because we have had many wetlands in previous years that have disappeared and we know, increasingly, the importance of wetlands, for their function in maintaining and purifying the environment and providing habitat for wildlife. So we will be very proactive and very rigorous in demanding that not only the size, but the function be maintained. But for me to say, will it be 100 metres away or 10 metres away? I can't say at this particular stage because each case is individual.
I think that you should take some comfort from the fact that we're not stating net loss, we're stating no net function loss, as well. The staff are very rigorous in maintaining this. We have one right now, for example, that we're dealing with, up in Bedford area. One of the few remaining wetlands in the city, which unfortunately most of them are filled in, and even before this legislation was brought in, our strict policies about wetlands came into play. It was grieved, we upheld. We went to appeal. The appeal was upheld because we consider wetlands to be very important. But for me to say exactly that any wetland that's disturbed, the mitigating wetland would have to be less than 10 metres. I can't say that right now.
The first point I need to make in wetlands is that if there's any possible way that wetland can be avoided being impacted on, that's the first thing that needs to be done. And it's only in those rare cases where they feel it can't be and they convince my department that it can't be, then we look at compensation.
MS. RAYMOND: Interesting, because there is one case I'm aware of, down the South Shore, where it would appear that a municipality has granted development permits for a piece of land which is essentially isolated by wetland. So what it means is that the developer has said, well, it's unavoidable that I infill this wetland in order to get road access to my property, for which I have a permit. So how does that work? How does that play out?
MR. PARENT: It's an interesting case that you refer to and my commitment to your colleague on it and my direction to the staff has been that once they impact the wetland, a stop work order is to be put on it. That sort of - what's that game where you put a pea under a cup and then switch your cups around and try to get . . .
MS. RAYMOND: Shell game.
MR. PARENT: Yes, that shell game - we're not fooled by it in any way and we don't allow that to happen. With that property, I've given express direction, according to our wetland policy, and talked to the inspector for the area as recently as yesterday, who assured
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me that he's in constant contact with the family and that if any wetland is removed or touched without them talking to the department, the stop worker order will be placed.
MS. RAYMOND: Great, I'm really pleased to hear that because I know there have been a lot of cases which don't necessarily come out of the Department of Environment and Labour, but where simply lack of coordination between departments has allowed things to happen. So I'm really pleased to hear that.
[2:45 p.m.]
That one actually is interesting to me too because it's a coastal wetland and I think we may have discussed this before and I'm just wondering if there has been any progress at all from the province's point of view, but more specifically from the Department of Environment and Labour's point of view, about the issue of coastal infilling. Now I realize that it's the Department of Natural Resources which officially takes jurisdiction over the land between the high and low water marks.
You know, under the Beaches Act, if things are designated then they're protected, but there are numerous cases and they're increasing all the time, as the value of property in the province increases and particularly the value of waterfront property, where what you get is people extending the useable part of their property by infilling the intertidal zone. I would imagine that the members of the Department of Environment and Labour - the staff and minister and so on - are very well aware of the ecological value of the intertidal zone and that's without even getting into the human functions and all the rest of it that that provides in terms of access. Probably well aware of it. Probably well aware of some of the specific and problematic cases that have been coming up in places like Lunenburg, Shelburne, North West Arm. Has there been any engagement of the Department of Environment and Labour, to this point, in the protection of the intertidal zone?
MR. PARENT: There's an innovative project - which if it was estimates for the Minister of Fisheries, you could ask him about - called the Provincial Ocean Network System that my department co-operates in, that's working on intertidal zones. But in addition to the water strategy that I'll be launching tomorrow, in the long run I wanted to look at the whole issue of water and it touches on the coastal zones in regard to climate change and rising sea levels. So there will be some work done on it in that regard, but the Provincial Ocean Network System that is led by the Department of Fisheries is doing some innovative work on that and we're co-operating with them. So you may want to, if you can grab the Chair after the meeting, you may want to ask him about that.
MS. RAYMOND: Okay. Thank you very much and I will be certainly looking forward to some real new regulation, or legislation ideally, coming forward to ensure that we don't continue to lose that and as you say, to ensure that we don't lose the coastal function as well, the function of the intertidal zone and the protection, the buffering zone, particularly
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in the area of climate change. I think I've mentioned to you before, my family comes from Bermuda, which is very low lying indeed and we're only too aware of just how important it is to protect what is between the high and low water marks.
The South Shore case then is not going to, presumably, run into being one of those ones that will be compensated by a restoration of some net wetland elsewhere? The case we were talking about, we can look forward to that wetland not being infilled and replaced by a wetland elsewhere in the province?
MR. PARENT: I've received no application and, as I said, my commitment here is that until there is an application, if they touch the wetland, there'll be a stop work order placed on any construction or road management or anything like that.
MS. RAYMOND: Great. I'm wondering if you can tell me anything - well, okay, another question sort of touching on the area of climate change, municipal affairs, all these details - energy use, planning and so on. One of the things that a number of my constituents certainly talk about and I think it's a problem throughout the province, as you would be aware, is that we have a number of older settlements. They're scattered around the province and increasingly, it's difficult for people to actually get access to services without taking their own vehicle or car pooling and so on.
That's true even within the larger municipalities. I'm thinking specifically of my own area, which is the Halifax Regional Municipality. Yes, it is a municipal function to provide public transit, but has the Department of Environment looked at setting any parameters around public transit and the density areas in which it really is required. That would be either in or out of the larger municipalities.
MR. PARENT: With regard to public transit, we're very supportive of it. That falls under the Minister of Energy - he made an announcement yesterday that you may have known about, hybrid buses for HRM. I'm hoping that some of our other larger transit systems, such as Kings, could move in that direction.
We need to move towards encouraging and helping more people to use public transit and that's a real challenge in the outlying areas, as you know. Whether we actually set parameters, as you say, that public transit has to be available will depend really upon finances. I'll be making an announcement along with the Minister of Environment federally sometime this week - it's supposed to be Monday, now it's Tuesday - and part of that announcement, I think, will allow some funding to be leveraged from the eco-trust that would help municipalities to use the money in ways they see fit. One of them could be in public transit.
MS. RAYMOND: But, it's pretty much as seen fit. Hybrid buses are fine as long as there are buses and where we don't have buses, we have single vehicle transportation and one
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can talk about educating and encouraging people to use public transit, but if it isn't there, all the education and encouragement in the world will simply do no good whatsoever. I would hope that there will, in fact, be some real decisions made about when population density actually reaches a point at which it makes sense to provide some level of public transit. It doesn't have to be all the big buses.
MR. PARENT: What I would like to see, if you're talking about dreaming, this only answers part of the problem because it maybe covers 60 to 70 per cent of the population, we'd still have 30 per cent to cover otherwise, but I would love to see some sort of system that operated from Bridgewater, Kentville, Truro and a ring around that would come in on buses that would run on a regular schedule to depots around HRM, where then they could move onto the HRM system. That's a dream of mine. Unfortunately the railways were pulled up so when people talk about rapid transit, not doing that.
I think that's a goal that we need to work at in those density centres to cut down on the number of commuters coming in. Increasingly, as HRM expands, many of the communities such as Truro, Bridgewater where my honourable colleague comes from, Kentville, myself, are becoming commuting neighbourhoods for jobs in HRM and bringing in their cars, so you need to provide some sort of system.
The key to that is providing enough flexibility and hours that people aren't stuck with one trip in at 8:00 a.m. and one back at 4:00 p.m., that there's some flexibility, which is also important in staggering traffic congestion. That's a dream of mine and I'll be pushing that, I can assure the member. Whether I'll be fortunate or not, I certainly am strengthened by this bill. If the members on either Party support it, that will give me some strength in pushing some of these projects forward because I'll be able to say we need to do this to meet these goals.
I'd appreciate your help in getting this bill through the House and through Law Amendments Committee because I think it will give that sort of impetus that is needed, not just to this government but to any government that is in place to say, listen, these are targets we have to meet and these are the things we have to do. That would be a vision of mine that I think is doable within those centres. We already have the Green Rider in communities, I assume they're in Truro and Bridgewater. I know they are in the Kentville area, Hantsport, that are van companies that provide van pools into the city to try and cut down on greenhouse gas use and also on the stress that it causes people to have to commute every day. So when we're talking about dreams, that is certainly a dream I'd like to put out there.
MS. RAYMOND: I'd like to ask you just a little bit more about process. One of the tools, of course, that the Department of Environment and Labour has at its disposal is that of environmental assessments. I know there is a lot of discussion in the public about the desire for environmental assessments to take place in various cases. Certainly there are a
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couple of questions around asphalt plants and so on, which apparently do not need an assessment, is that true?
MR. PARENT: No, the asphalt plant, if you're talking about Lafarge, it needed an environmental assessment when it began its operation to make cement. However, that assessment was given, that approval was given but if it is going to change the manner it's doing it, from using Bunker C and coal to using some other fuel, it would need an industrial approval change.
MS. RAYMOND: No, no, sorry, about actually building new asphalt plants. I understand that an asphalt plant does not require an assessment?
MR. PARENT: No, they need an environmental assessment.
MS. RAYMOND: Okay, I'm sorry, that's a misapprehension on my part. How many applications do you actually get for environmental assessment in the run of a year, do you have any idea?
MR. PARENT: We get 20 in a year and I just want to be clear, I said environmental assessment, I meant industrial approval for asphalt plants. The industrial approval process is, in many ways, as rigorous as the environmental assessment. There needs to be public consultation, et cetera. What it says is that asphalt plants can be - really by having to go through industrial approval, in a sense you made a decision that you will allow asphalt plants in the province. The question then becomes so if they're allowed in the province, they're an allowable activity, then they have to have industrial approval. That's as rigorous, in many ways, as an environmental assessment. We get 20 applications, is the answer.
MS. RAYMOND: Twenty in the course of a year.
MR. PARENT: Okay, so in environmental assessments it can range anywhere from eight to 22 - I gave you an average number of about 20. In industrial approvals we get many, many more than that.
MS. RAYMOND: That's what I was wondering, yes.
MR. PARENT: Those range in the hundreds, maybe thousands.
MS. RAYMOND: So what is the distinction, then, if the industrial approval is as rigorous as the environmental assessment, what do you see as the major distinction between them in how they're carried out - not in what their purpose is but in the actual execution of them?
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MR. PARENT: Well, from my experience, the actual purpose is very different but in actually how they're carried out there is not an awful lot of difference; the public consultation is the same, the period for them is roughly the same. Yes, there is more mandatory for the environmental assessments but the industrial approval is a fairly robust approval process that they have to go through as well. The environmental assessment, can this activity occur, yea or nay? Let's take Keltic, for example - there are many industrial approvals that that company will have to go through but the environmental assessment was given that it can go ahead, but unless it meets the conditions that we set out and then also along the way industrial approvals, then it will not proceed.
So really it's based upon the level of risk; if the risk is high, then the industrial approval is a very rigorous one; if the risk is low then - I mean it still fits the project but it would be a lower threshold. So with the industrial approval that's been on your mind and on the mind of my colleague here, the threshold is very high and the industrial approval will be a very rigorous process.
MS. RAYMOND: What is the status of that? I assume you're talking about Lafarge?
MR. PARENT: Yes, the status of that is that there's a draft report from Dalhousie University. I guess the status is, to go back just to refer, the RRFB has given a tender to Lafarge to deal with tires in the province. Currently my understanding is that those tires are being shipped out of the province to a cement kiln factory, I think, in Quebec. That may continue ad infinitum until RRFB gives another tender out for the disposal of used tires.
If, however, LaFarge wants to use those tires in a different way, such as using them for fuel for their kiln, they have to have an industrial approval. They have not yet made that application. I have a study that I have got out there proactively, anyway, from Dalhousie. There's a draft of that study in my office. I have not yet seen that draft but I understand they finished the study because I usually don't take a look at the draft until it's actually finished. The finished study should be in my hands at the start of next week, I hope, and I'll be able to make some sort of report back to you at that time. So I haven't seen the draft and once it's in a finished form, I will see it and I understand that could be as early as next week.
MS. RAYMOND: But you haven't yet received the IA application which, it is reasonable to expect, is coming?
[3:00 p.m.]
MR. PARENT: I haven't received any IA application and I only know what I read in the media and I'm not sure if Lafarge will go ahead with it at this stage. They seem to have, and the media had, a slightly different tone than originally, where they were going to proceed straightforward on it.
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It will take quite a bit of time. There's a couple of things, if they do move forward and it will take time for the application to come in, but the kiln right now in no way could even be considered at this stage so there would have to be quite a bit of money spent if they're going to go ahead. That's really jumping ahead of the process and I don't really want to do that but I have no indication of any application coming in now or in the near future.
MS. RAYMOND: There's another environmental assessment that is certainly on a lot of people's minds, too, and that's the whole question - or sorry, there's not an environmental assessment, but it is the whole question of the quarry at Digby Neck.
MR. PARENT: Just to give you the latest update on that, which I probably should have given the House because I knew about it yesterday when I responded, but I forgot, so I'll give it to you people first. There's a joint federal-provincial panel set up and they were to report by the end of February. They've asked for an extension, though, to do their work properly and I've granted them that.
MS. RAYMOND: Yes, they were actually - I thought that was one of the more egregious examples of environmental assessment proposal, or of proposals, that was something like a thousand . . .
MR. PARENT: From the company, you mean?
MS. RAYMOND: Yes.
MR. PARENT: So the panel has asked for more time and we granted it to them. I did the same thing with Keltic, Keltic asked for more time. We view that as standard because we want these panels to do a proper job and we certainly don't want the panel to feel that they're rushed into making some sort of decisions because of the time frame. So in Keltic, for example, there were about 7,000 pieces of paper that the committee had to go through. They asked for an extension, and it was granted. I know that wasn't viewed upon favourably by many residents in Guysborough but it is the stance of our department and my stance, as minister, that when we put the panels in place, we should resource them and give them the proper time to come up with wise decisions, and the panels only go in place basically for very difficult issues and questions. So they asked for 15 days and I granted them that. We expect that the document should be complete by the end of March and then public hearings will be held in late Spring or early summer 2007.
MS. RAYMOND: Without that panel, the Digby Neck thing would have needed an industrial approval?
MR. PARENT: No, it would have needed an environmental assessment, but what we've done is, and it was done by my predecessor, that is really at the highest level now - a joint federal-provincial panel.
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MS. RAYMOND: Yes, I understand that.
MR. PARENT: And it's looking at socio-economic factors as well as environmental factors, I understand. It has the respect from what I understand not only of - well, I'm not sure if it has the company's respect but I know it certainly has the respect of the department and the respect of the opponents who feel that the people who are on the panel are of top quality. So I assume it has the respect of the company as well and that's always a challenge for any panel. It is from what I understand one of the better panels out there. We always try to get the very best panels, but this is one that has people who have a high degree of expertise and so that's where that particular issue stands.
MS. RAYMOND: So pits and quarries under four hectares, right, that's without an environmental assessment of any kind?
MR. PARENT: We're busy right now with looking at regulations for pits and quarries under four hectares. We have a committee. I think there are about 20 people on it the last I looked at it and a bit of a briefing on that, I can certainly get our officials to fill you in further if you're interested, but it includes various individuals, municipal representatives too, and that should be coming forward - let me just check on the timelines. (Interruption) About May/June they'll be coming forward with some recommendations.
MS. RAYMOND: I'm just curious about that. I realize my time is probably running short but what - no, actually I'm going to switch, sorry, because my time is running short. This is a completely different question.
Of course, one of the other areas we haven't touched on is the whole question of the department's responsibility to deal with wilderness areas and protected areas. I know that the department has set the goal of attaining 12 per cent protection and so on by 2013, is it?
MR. PARENT: By 2015.
MS. RAYMOND: Oh, 2015, I'm sorry. One of the things, of course, has been the question of usage and what it means to have a protected area. There are different levels of protected areas and, of course, we've recently had the question around the use of ATVs and the minister's discretion, your ability to grant at discretion the right to use OHVs within wilderness areas. What are you feeling about this right now with respect to that?
MR. PARENT: I've stated publicly that as long as I'm Minister of Environment and Labour, I won't be granting recreational ATV-ing in the protected areas.
MS. RAYMOND: Would you be in a position to extend that though so that applies to the future protection under future ministers as well?
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MR. PARENT: At present, no.
MS. RAYMOND: No, okay. I guess these things change, yes, okay. I have another question and it's Environment. As I say, sometimes as an MLA I find it's bats, birds, mice, rats - what's the best way to get rid of mice? I appreciate (Interruption) I think it says get a cat. If your cat . . .
MR. PARENT: Well, before I got my cat, I had 19 mice caught in traps and mice poo all through - of course, this is before I got remarried so maybe that's why - but all through the linens and the silverware, and it was not a very pretty site, through my pots and pans, so after the cat came that solved the problem. So I mean I can only speak from my own experience that it's the best way to get rid of them.
Actually with bats, bats are a benefit and a lot of people in my area have bat houses. They tried that down in the Florida Keys. I was down there this summer and they had an area that was just a swamp there. They tried to bring in all the bats and the joke is that the mosquitos were so bad, they ate the bats. (Laughter) I know they aren't the nicest things to have in your house but they certainly are beneficial - the bats. So I wouldn't put them in the same category as mice.
MS. RAYMOND: I honestly will try. All right, because I will tell you that it's one of those things, being here, that you have to deal with all the time.
MR. PARENT: I understand. (Interruption) Yes, bubble gum can be effective too.
MS. RAYMOND: Okay, I think it's . . .
MR. CHAIRMAN: No, you have a little more yet. You're good until 3:24 p.m. It's 3:07 p.m.
MS. RAYMOND: Sorry, I thought it was 3:11 p.m. Okay, no problem. So a whole other bunch of things then.
The Medical Officer of Health, Robert Strang - do you find yourself referring cases to him very often and back and forth? I'm thinking about environmental contaminants.
MR. PARENT: We have the Medical Officer of Health and an environmental specialist named Anne Richards, then we use medical officers scattered throughout the provinces to help us in our work. I'm glad you asked that question because increasingly - and in fact the deputy pointed out to me - in all of the polling that shows the environment now is the number one issue or the number two issue, it's environment and health or health and environment. That's because the two are intimately connected to each other. So we have a specialist named Dr. Anne Richards for the province and then we work with the medical
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specialists. We also work with Mr. Strang as well but there is an environmental specialist called Anne Richards.
MS. RAYMOND: Okay, because I have a couple of areas of concern in my own riding, actually; one of which I think Dr. Strang has been involved and I don't know whether you're aware of it or not. There is some question as to materials that may - and you may not be aware of this because this is a federal area, but the Department of National Defence firefighting school appears to have been burying some of its firefighting materials back in the 1970s. I believe he's involved with that but I guess it's the Minister of Health I should ask about that, is that right?
MR. PARENT: Yes, anything on a federal property will be dealt with by Health Canada and Environment Canada. So if it's a federal property, they deal with it.
Again, I commend you on your question because one of the things that I referenced in my opening remarks was the Secretariat for Environmental Health. Now our piece of it right now really mainly deals with water, but we foresee that as a growing area that we wanted to facilitate environmental concerns with health and the interface between them. So I think it's about $900,000 the government put in the budget this year, parceled out through Agriculture and Fisheries, Environment and Labour and then the secretariat itself, which would be in Health Promotion and Protection.
MS. RAYMOND: Okay. The second area of concern that I have is one where there hasn't been any testing. I have raised it with your predecessor on a couple of occasions. There is an area of my riding, Weavers Lake in Harrietsfield, where there seems to be a lot of concern about the dumping of soils. I believe - and I don't know whether somebody here may not know - that on the shores of that is one of the places where the CNR roundhouse soils were deposited. I don't know if anybody is aware of that. The difficulty is to get . . .
MR. PARENT: The gentleman who just spoke to me, I'm sure you are aware of - Gerard MacLellan. We're not aware of it but we would be happy to look into it. So maybe afterwards you could just touch base with him.
MS. RAYMOND: Okay. Even getting groundwater testing in that area would be, but certainly we will look at the whole package around it.
I'm going to turn this over to my colleague at the moment, if that's all right.
MR. JOHN MACDONELL: Mr. Chairman, I don't know if you have to announce me or not for the record.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Yes, I do. Sorry about that.
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The honourable member for Hants East.
MR. MACDONELL: Thank you very much. I'm not sure if the people who are recording this would know that, just by my voice.
MR. PARENT: You have a distinctive voice, John.
MR. MACDONELL: Thank you. That's more to do with what I say, I think, than the fact that I say it, if that's what you mean.
I have a couple of things. I have people in my area, actually, farmers in particular, who are interested in biogas. Actually there are a few who are interested in windmills and they're thinking about ways to supplement their farming income. So I'm wondering if the province has looked at any other jurisdictions where this may be taking place and if they thought about incentive programs or any way to see whether there is some viability in bringing about any of these types of operations - pilot programs. Have you given any thought to that?
MR. PARENT: There is a federal program - a biofuel program - through the Department of Agriculture, federally, that I've been in contact with my colleague, Brooke Taylor, on because I actually have S.F. Rendering in my area that wants to move forward on biofuel in an agricultural area. There's also renewable fuels, $1 billion in the budget and we'll be announcing next week the Ecotrust money, parts of that might be accessible for biofuel projects, so I would encourage farmers.
I know the Federation of Agriculture has targeted this as one area that they see as being an area that could help reduce costs for farmers and make farming more profitable, so there are three different ways that it can be accessed through federal money. I would encourage you to talk to the Minister of Agriculture because the federal ministry has targeted this quite specifically as an area that they want to look at and I would hope that all the money in that regard wouldn't flow to the west, that some of it would flow east.
MR. MACDONELL: Well, I hope so too. I'm wondering what your understanding of the biofuel is - you said someone in your area was interested in biofuel?
[3:15 p.m.]
MR. PARENT: Yes, S.F. Rendering - he's looking at growing canola for biofuel. Right now they use all the used cooking oil across the Atlantic Provinces and turn it into fuel, so there are different ways. I do have some concerns, like ethanol, for example - corn production for ethanol, in my opinion, is not a very good method of producing ethanol. Its greenhouse gasses are not good and I think we need to be careful in renewables not just to latch onto every renewable. Certainly the federal government has targeted this and I know
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that Brooke is working with the federal government, so I'd encourage you to talk to him and, in his absence, I'm sure the acting Minister of Agriculture could give you more information.
MR. MACDONELL: Okay, I'll approach the acting minister and see what he can tell me. Yes, I have to share your concern on the fuel notion of using corn or ethanol, if that's the direction. Some reports indicate that there is more energy used in the production of it than we're getting out it, so that's a bit of an issue.
When you made your introductory statements, you talked about health and you said you can't have health without a healthy environment. So I'm curious as to how the burning of tires would fall into that kind of thinking. It seems to me that wouldn't be creating a very healthy environment.
MR. PARENT: When I tasked Dalhousie to make the study, one of the key areas I wanted to look at was the health effects and, if they haven't looked at the health effects properly, I'll ask them to go back and look at it more thoroughly.
MR. MACDONELL: So was that in regard to the burning of tires per se? Or is that in regard to whether or not the burning of tires would create any more pollutant than whatever fuel they were presently using?
MR. PARENT: Well, it would certainly be the latter because if it creates less health problems and pollution than what they're doing now, then I would expect that if the application was made, people would expect me to move in that direction. Certainly the burning of coal and bunker-C, we know, has health impacts and that's why we put it in our air quality emission standards to reduce by, I think, 25 per cent, sulphur content, mercury content, nitrogen oxide content.
We will never as human beings be at the place, I think, where whatever we do has no impact upon the environment - it's the question of managing that as safely as we can. So if the Dal study came back and we're able to prove scientifically that this is better for the health of people, then I would expect the people in the area who are concerned now would say by all means, let's change if Lafarge makes an application. But I guess my commitment to you is that that's one of the main areas I asked this study to look at and, if that is not looked at properly, I will be asking it to be looked at further.
MR. MACDONELL: I'm a little worried about repeating maybe what somebody else has asked you, but I'm curious - the $3 that's charged every time we buy tires, is that going to continue, are we still going to pay for the recycling of tires that are going to be burned?
MR. PARENT: Yes, that will continue. Most of that money - and I've stated this on various occasions - the vast bulk of it covers the pickup and transportation and the storage of those tires at a central warehouse. Tires are not, as opposed to, say, cardboard which can
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be sold on the open market, tires cannot be sold on the open market. They're a commodity that's not a benefit in any way, but in fact a liability.
In fact I understand - and again this is a bit of hearsay - that many of the companies would not bid on the RRFB proposal because there was no way of making it economically fit, and if we had a higher environmental fee on tires that that might change the water on the beans for them. But at $3 a tire, that's basically just covering picking them up and taking them to a central point. They're not an economic benefit in any way - on the open market, cardboard can be sold, but used tires are a liability.
MR. MACDONELL: I'm just curious - where's the central point that tires are picked up and hauled to because behind every gas station, every salvage yard, every place I can think of there are tires, so nobody is picking them up and hauling them to a central location.
MR. PARENT: We had a backlog of tires in Atlantic recycling, I forget - the ARR, there was a backlog of tires. We've fixed up the backlog of tires in salvage yards and are working on gas stations now.
MR. MACDONELL: Okay, so where is that?
MR. PARENT: It would be, I assume, near the Lafarge plant because then they truck them out. There are a couple of marshalling spots throughout the province - we can get them for you, the exact locations - and then they're shipped off to Quebec.
MR. MACDONELL: So they're shipping them out to Quebec. All right, what happened with that? How come we went to burning them if we're shipping them to Quebec? They don't want them anymore, or . . .
MR. PARENT: Well, we're not burning tires right now.
MR. MACDONELL: Well, I know that, but you're going down the road to burning them as far as I can tell, so . . .
MR. PARENT: RRFB, just to repeat - RRFB went to tender because ARR wasn't able to handle the tires under the process that they had been using. So RRFB went to tender and three companies tendered. The company that they awarded the tender to was Lafarge. The tender with Lafarge is that Lafarge takes these used tires; however to use them for tire-derived fuel at the Lafarge plant, they have to have an industrial approval. They haven't applied for that, and they haven't been granted that. So concurrently right now they are in various marshalling spots throughout the province, getting them and then trucking them up to their cement kiln in Quebec, where they do have approval to use them for tire-derived fuel.
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MR. MACDONELL: So isn't that a good solution for Nova Scotia, to keep sending them there?
MR. PARENT: It may be one possible solution. You would have to look at the greenhouse gases that are burned in transportation and factor that in, but basically that's a decision that Lafarge will have to make.
MR. MACDONELL: Lafarge will have to make a decision about sending them to Quebec or burning them here. Is that what you're saying?
MR. PARENT: Not the decision about burning them. They'll have the decision about continuing the practice there now since they won the tender, for the life of the tender, or if they want to use them here they'll have to demand industrial approval to change the approval that they were given, because they don't have the approval to use them - nobody does in the province.
MR. MACDONELL: That's interesting, thank you very much.
Can I ask you a question on the labour side? Workers' Compensation would come under your jurisdiction, and I have an individual - and I can give you more specifics on this - but anyway he came from the West, was injured I think in work there, so he wanted to apply for a hearing aid. On the application form, he has to give - you know, wherever he was in Calgary, or wherever that he had his hearing tested, and this is like 30 years ago, and he has no notion of where that would be, and we seem to have come to a stalemate about an incomplete application form, and I don't know how to get over it. He doesn't have the information to fill out the form.
MR. PARENT: We have an excellent customer relations person at WCB whom I work with all the time through my office, and I would recommend if you haven't, to talk to Tim McInnis. I would be happy to provide you with the phone number afterwards, and to call Mr. McInnis myself on your behalf if you want, but Tim is excellent on customer relations and his ability to work magic, as it were, with people who for some reason aren't fitting into the system properly or falling between the cracks is legendary. Everyone I know who deals with him finds that he treats them with ultimate respect. So, could you check with your constituent and then we could talk later about it?
MR. MACDONELL: Sure, that would be great.
MR. CHAIRMAN: The time allotted for the Opposition Party has elapsed. I now turn to the Liberal Party and the honourable member for Preston. You have one hour. At 4:25 p.m., you're done.
The honourable member for Preston.
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MR. KEITH COLWELL: Mr. Chairman, I've got a whole series of "all over the place" questions, so I apologize to your staff to start with.
MR. PARENT: You'll do the scattergun approach.
MR. COLWELL: Yes. One thing I'm going to ask you about first, I mentioned it in the late debate or the debate the other night, is solid plastics from manufacturing facilities that aren't your typical pop bottles, or stuff that you would have from a household, but solid plastics. Now a few years ago a friend of mine had a very small manufacturing operation and he had offcuts from plastic sheets and all kinds of different things - he knew exactly what the material was and could identify the materials and would even mark the materials, but come to find out he couldn't put it in the garbage and couldn't take it to the recycling depot; in other words he just simply couldn't get rid of it. Now, this was quite a substantial amount of stuff for a small operation. So I would like to know if that has changed or if there's a place where some of these big operations can actually take their plastic - or what are they doing with it?
MR. PARENT: It is a problem that you reference, Mr. Colwell - have I got it right? We had some fun earlier on names.
We banned them from the landfills, as you correctly identified, so what we work with is individual companies, to find a market for them. So if this company owner - and we work through RRFB. If you would like to speak to myself or to my staff later, we will work with the company to try and find a market, a way of recycling their product that would meet their needs. But it is difficult because they are banned from the landfill, but any company that's in that position, that has plastics to get rid of, we will work with them through the RRFB.
MR. COLWELL: The company has since closed. This was one of the problems, they had so much trouble getting rid of this stuff - not the total reason they closed, I wouldn't insinuate that, but it was a serious, serious problem. They tried contacting the department - actually talked up to the deputy minister, prior to your existing deputy minister being there - and were told, point-blank, that we don't know what we're going to do with this stuff.
Hopefully, that's changed since, it was a couple of years ago . . .
MR. PARENT: I can assure you that we would not leave a company in that position now. There have been some - well, anyway, I'll leave it at that.
MR. COLWELL: Can you give me some examples of how this has worked? Some of these companies are pretty large and . . .
MR. PARENT: Well, there's Interpolymer in Truro, and what they have done - they had plastic wrap, and they were shipping in cardboard cores to wrap this on - which cost
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them money - and they realized they could recycle their plastic and make plastic cores out of their own recycled plastic to wrap their cores on. Not only did they recycle their leftover plastic, but they also didn't have to buy the cardboard cores, so they saved money. There's one example.
MR. COLWELL: That's the kind of example I like to hear about because it's very, very positive.
That's fine with a company that's dealing with one type of plastic - it's very specific and you can invest in the equipment to do that. But a small manufacturer who might be dealing with polyethylene today and Teflon tomorrow, and something else the next day, and something else the next day and the next day, not enough of any one thing to get a process through, because you can bring a grinder in and pelletize it and you can sell it that way, as long as you know exactly what it is and it's all exactly the same material, and when I say exactly the same material, I use Deleron for example, there are probably 1,000 different types of Deleron - what does a small company like that do?
MR. PARENT: It's a good question you ask, Keith. Certainly we will look into that and see if there are some measures that we can meet for small companies. On the large system, as the example I gave, that worked well - but you're right, there is a problem there.
There's a study being done, I'm told, by the RRFB on markets for plastics. We'll get you a copy of that.
[3:30 p.m.]
MR. COLWELL: Okay, that would be good. The same guys that give the tire recycling to Lafarge to burn - I'm losing a little bit of confidence in the RRFB. Good people, but I know they have some problems getting rid of this stuff.
That's one question I had. Now I asked you in Question Period about the report on the tire burning that you commissioned to Dalhousie - which, by the way, I'm very pleased you and your department did that; I have a lot of faith in Dalhousie University and the scientists there. On March 21st, you told me you expected the study was going to be available, on March 21st actually. I'll just read what you said in the House: "Right now I have commissioned a study by Dalhousie. I understand the study is available as of this morning. I have not yet seen it. I will over the next few days take a look at it." And it says including the health concerns and stuff - you probably remember what you said, but I would assume that was a draft copy that you talking about at that time?
MR. PARENT: Yes, it's a draft copy, and the finished copy should be available Tuesday, next week, for me and I'll be seeing it at that stage. I haven't seen the draft copy yet. I know that my department officials have seen the draft copy and I've asked them to get
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the finished copy as quickly as possible, because I know everyone's eager to see what it says in there and I'm as eager as anyone else.
So, the draft copy was available on the date I gave you. I haven't seen it. I was told that ministers don't usually look at draft copies, so I haven't looked at it, but the finished copy should be out next week.
MR. COLWELL: Does your staff have a definite date for that?
MR. PARENT: Wednesday is the date we have now.
MR. COLWELL: Wednesday of next week, which would be the 4th of April? Is that correct? Yes - your staff is saying yes in the background. So that will be good.
Would it be possible to get a copy of the RFP that you put out to do the study? I would like to see what that requested.
MR. PARENT: Yes. I think we provided that to the critic for the NDP, the terms of reference. We'll give you that.
MR. COLWELL: Okay, I just like to see that because the terms of reference often influence what the outcome is. I ran a business for a long time and that's very tricky, you're going to learn very, very early.
Another question I have about tires: In the past, a long, long time ago when all this tire situation and discussions started about it, there were some people who claimed - and I stress only "claimed" - that they had a use for tires that was environmentally friendly. They weren't going to burn them or anything, and they couldn't get tires - the RRFB wouldn't give them to them. In other words, if they could go to a tire place and they could pick them up and take them and process them, whatever they were going to do with them, again after being approved by Environment or whatever the case might be, some kind of processing operation and then take those and sell them and make a profit on it and ultimately pay for the process - is that still the case?
MR. PARENT: Not that I'm aware of, and if it were the case I would certainly encourage RRFB to use that process. Used tires seem to be a problem everywhere in the world, so if there were some way in which tires could be recycled in an environmentally friendly fashion that was cost- effective, I'd be eager to know about it. I'm not aware of that.
In fact, the problem that RRFB has is that the tires are a liability. That's why the environmental fee is there, to help offset that to a certain degree. It was set quite awhile ago at $3 and that is barely sufficient to cover now the pickup and distribution of it. But I'd be happy if there's more information on that. I'd pass that on to RRFB.
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MR. COLWELL: I just wonder if that's a policy - maybe you could ask RRFB or staff could ask RRFB if that indeed is a policy?
MR. PARENT: How long ago . . .
MR. COLWELL: This would have been first, when the process was set up.
MR. PARENT: At one time, they were taking the tires and using nitrogen and freezing them and then smashing them and pelletizing them, but that was an extremely expensive process, and actually the production of nitrogen to freeze them was very heavy concentrated greenhouse gases, so that process became economically unfeasible.
MR. COLWELL: Again, this question - staff may have to go back for answers and, if they do, that's fine - has the RRFB looked at being really innovative with tires and see if there's some way they can actually - with the $3 they collect, and I realize some of that's for transportation, but in other resources they have, to see if they could take and help some other entrepreneur who may have a solution for this? To invest in equipment or whatever has to be done to get rid of some of these tires and make some money on them.
MR. PARENT: Yes, we're very open to suggestions on this, Keith. We have about one million tires that are produced, so that needs to be able to handle that volume. There are some technologies out there that can handle a very small amount of tires and recycle them, but the volume is what's needed and that's where we're having the problem - to handle the volume of tires. So any suggestions that would come, anything you hear of, we'd be delighted to hear about that.
At one time, we were using the pelletized tires for mats for cows to stand on and also for that artificial turf where the pelletized rubber is in, but it just became prohibitive - it wasn't economically feasible for companies to do that.
MR. COLWELL: Sometimes the solution to these things - as I say, I have an entrepreneurial background, so sometimes I look at things differently than perhaps some one in the bureaucracy would look at it, where they're used to having to follow the rules and do this and this is what you have to do today. I spent most of my life developing new products and new equipment and new processes, and there are a lot of people out there who do the same thing I used to do. Even if you could get rid of some of the tires in a process that could grow very rapidly if it was there and made available to entrepreneurs to do that sort of thing - and I'm not talking about not sensible, approaches, let's put it that way - I will be polite, approaches that would possibly get rid of maybe 5,000 tires.
Those are a lot of tires gone, and if someone could do that on a small basis and make an income for themselves, maybe in some rural part of Nova Scotia, and someone else did the same thing or a little bit different thing through different parts of the province.
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MR. PARENT: If that was the case, I would certainly encourage RRFB to break down the tender, if there was sufficient volume that maybe two operations could handle it. I know the entrepreneurial spirit support - we have a fund for new environmental technologies that we give out grants to companies to encourage them to be innovative and we are trying to do more and more of that. So spread the word and let us know of anything.
It's interesting, you talk about tires and innovation - I just go back to my childhood. They knew how to get rid of tires in Bolivia, they made sandals out of them - and bungee cords, which is a very innovative way to deal with them. In fact, I have one to keep a tarp on that works better than anything you could buy at the store here.
So, yes, innovation is important and sometimes we overlook things which is, I think, what lies behind your questioning. I will push RRFB on whether there are some innovative practices out there. I already have talked to them about it, if there are innovative practices out there that have been overlooked, and certainly there is that fund that is available to help with new environmental technologies and to encourage companies to be innovative.
MR. COLWELL: The other problem may be - if you are looking at 900,000 tires and some entrepreneur is looking at it and they imagine that pile growing in their yard somewhere that they aren't allowed to have there, and they are going to use 4,000 or 5,000 tires a year to start, or a couple of thousand, whatever the case may be - that's just too big to handle. So really what should be done is - and oftentimes government gets so big with these things, that you say, okay, there is only one person who can handle them and probably that's part of the process, although I don't agree with the deal with Lafarge. Even the burning of them in Quebec is a problem for us here - if the winds blow those contaminants here and, as you have said, the greenhouse gases to get them there.
If you break it down in little pieces or make it available in pieces - if you put your tender out and said, we want to get rid of 900,000 tires, give us a proposal for that but also if you can get rid of 100 tires or 1,000 tires, we will entertain that as part of the overall package, separate from some big company taking them all over. It would be so simple to do. If no one comes forward, you have lost nothing, and if someone does come forward, you might spur a new industry. It might be someone who is going to make blasting mats; it could be anything.
MR. PARENT: It's a good question. I have pushed this question in terms of buying local, and one of the things I was pleased to hear about in buying local is that instead of just the tenders going out in, say, the Capital Health District for meat, they go out now for beef, for pork and they have broken that down into the various meat products so that smaller companies can tender on them.
I take your remarks under advisement. I think that if the study proves that these cannot be used in a safe fashion - I don't know how long, Lafarge has the tender contract,
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how long is that for? I guess it's a five-year contract Lafarge has, which isn't going to make you happy, I know.
MR. COLWELL: Five years?
MR. PARENT: Five years, yes.
MR. COLWELL: That wasn't very carefully thought out. Anyway, so basically for five years Lafarge - best circumstance that we could have in Nova Scotia, which is horrible - they ship them to Quebec and burn them?
MR. PARENT: Yes. Anyway, it's a good point you make.
MR. COLWELL: So that is our best situation. Our worst situation, potentially, is that they will burn them here, or a large number of them here. You can't comment on that, I know, because you haven't got the study, so I will leave with no answer on that point.
It goes back, again - I have a lot of faith in the Resource Recovery Fund Board and what they do, but my faith is growing shorter and shorter, and my confidence is lapsing here because there are so many things it could be doing. I brought up before an issue that happened in my area, we have an illegal dump - well, it's not an illegal dump, it's a road with all kinds of garbage along the side of it. It cost the Province of Nova Scotia - the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal actually - $140,000 to clean it up about two or three years ago, and that's with all kinds of volunteer labour. If they wouldn't have had the volunteer labour, it probably would have been over $0.25 million to clean this one area up.
Now, the municipality doesn't make it easy for people to get rid of their garbage and I don't mean stuff that they don't want in the landfill or stuff they don't want recycled - that's another issue which I want to talk about in a minute, but they don't make it easy. They are limiting the number of garbage bags you can put out now, which there is a tendency to do that but if you are going to do that, you have to make it easier to recycle. So you have to have more things that you can recycle, because now, personally, I put out one bag of garbage for every blue bag, and the blue bag is solid full and the garbage bag is maybe half to three-quarters full. So we are going in the right direction. That's just me doing the stuff that you are supposed to be doing with recycling - and sometimes we slip, maybe put a piece of plastic in garbage that you shouldn't, but it would be very little - so we are going in the right direction.
The real answer to help the municipality is to make sure that we recycle almost everything, absolutely everything - and I don't think we are moving fast enough in that direction. I know it's on council to build these cells they have out here, which is another topic. It is several million dollars for the dump and if we can eliminate those things, the cost
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will save the taxpayers and the municipality a pile of money and also will eliminate the dump, which would be really nice.
[3:45 p.m.]
Has the department got anything really aggressive toward recycling more of the products or processing them in another way? I know the composting facility seems to work pretty good, but I won't buy any more compost in there because it is full of glass and plastics and all kinds of stuff, but the idea is good and it still has a lot of use. So it is a lot better than putting it in the dump.
MR. PARENT: Well basically our latest effort in that regard is the electronic waste recycling program. That program, as you know, was announced not that long ago because there are about 4.5 million kilograms of electronic waste products that are thrown in the landfills right now - and I know you are wanting this to move along a little faster than the one year, but we are quite enthusiastic about that program and we don't intend to stop there.
One of the things we are looking at with the other Ministers of Environment across Atlantic Canada beyond the electronic waste, which I don't think any other province has moved on yet in Atlantic Canada and it may well be that they follow our model - I hope so - but also our oil filters. Right now the oil is recycled, but the steel in the oil filter is just tossed into the garbage. So we need very much, as you say, to offer recycling opportunities and to be more aggressive and not just to rest on our laurels, but we are very, very proud of the e-waste program.
If you forgive me for boasting about it a little bit - because it was something I had a part in - most of the work was done before I got there clearly, but we had some interesting negotiations with industry and we were able to move further than any other province in terms of the range of products that will be handled. Those took some, I will just say, interesting negotiations that I was involved in personally, but we are very proud of that. So we will not only deal with the computer monitors and the large projects in Phase I, but Phase II will start to deal with cell phones and other products like that. And they have talked about it, but no other province has put time limits on when those will be dealt with, but we need to do more of that and we intend to do more of that.
As I said, e-waste is one; oil filters we've looked at as being another. Paint, we're already working at fairly aggressively and there are many other products that could be treated in that way, and we intend to move in that direction. To get the disposal rate down to the goals that are set out in the bill that I tabled is going to be challenging so we need, as you say - and I appreciate what you say, Keith several times - we need to make it as easy as possible for people because, if we don't, they'll just toss it in the woods. We need to provide for municipalities as much relief as possible by providing products that are recycled.
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So on both of those goals we're trying to make it as easy as possible, which is why in our Enviro-Depot program we have 60 sites throughout the province, geographically spread out, and we keep working at that very hard and are trying to get more products diverted in order to help the municipalities. The e-waste program is the latest one, but we won't stop there.
MR. COLWELL: I think I mentioned this to you before - I recently had my propane tank filled and I was over the 10 years and they wouldn't refill it. The guy asked, do you want to leave it here and my answer was of course, because I can't get rid of it anywhere else. So I went on to ask him - and it was just a guy filling the tanks - and he said they're 10 years here but in another country they're 20 years. He said they gather them up, get them refinished and they sell them and make money off of them. That's fine with me because I'm getting rid of a problem, but why hasn't the Resource Recovery Fund Board found out about this? They could take those to the Enviro-Depots and the Enviro-Depots can move them on and do whatever they have to do with them - it may be another business for someone in the province to employ a couple of people.
MR. PARENT: It's a good point. I'm informed that we work with the industry, so if the industry is willing to move in this direction we encourage and support them. I guess we don't want to hog all of the money from industry if they can make money on recycling, but there are also some concerns about insurance liabilities with anything that could be potentially explosive around the property, and that has been a concern that has been raised in terms of propane tanks.
We are not having a problem right now. The tank is taken back by the person you buy the tank from so it's not proving to be a problem, and if they can make some money on it then- although I'd like to see RRFB have as much money as possible, because they fund educational programs - personally I guess that may be a benefit to that industry and as long as it's not becoming a liability, where they're dumping tanks somewhere, then perhaps that system works fairly well. But there is some concern about liability.
But we do work with industry on - like the stewardship program, the electronic waste is very much an industry-led initiative, that we'll be working with them. They have to do the stewardship programs and I have to sign off on them, but they have full power to set fees; they will have a large say, we encourage them in will they set up their own collection system or use the RRFB - we're encouraging them of course to use the RRFB; and then the dismantling of them and how they're used. We're working with them through various projects.
New Directions has talked to me about various organizations that they work with across the province. One in New Minas for example - the Flower Cart - with people who are differently-abled and they would very much like to be able to be part of the process of the dismantling of these electronic products. That's the situation that happens in Saskatchewan
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and it works well and it provides employment across the province for individuals who might not be employable otherwise, so it gives them a sense of self-respect. But industry ultimately, because it is their plan, will be the ones who make that decision. We will put as much suasion on them as possible for that, so we do try and work with industry extensively in terms of recycling.
MR. COLWELL: There's another propane problem that hasn't been cured as far as I know, and it's the little tiny ones that you screw onto barbecues and other things. Lo and behold, a gentleman called me up in my riding and said he had seventy-five of them and can't get rid of them. I don't know how long he was collecting these. I think he had a little propane barbecue; I don't know what he was using them on - it doesn't matter but the point was, I started checking and I checked everywhere. You're not allowed to put them in the garbage, you're not allowed to put them in recycling, and you can't take them to the scrap yard because there's propane potentially in them and it could be explosive.
They would take the steel if you could give them a guarantee that all of the propane was out of them - and they will take the big ones once they're drained, and they'll crush them. There was no other place to put them, but he said he refused to dump them in the woods, he refused to do that. Thank goodness he said that, because they have a plastic bottom on them - they're all steel with a brass valve in them, I believe. So that is an issue that has to be addressed.
MR. PARENT: We'll have to get back to you on that. You've raise some very good questions there, Keith, and that's one of them. We're not sure, I know individuals have just tossed them in their garbage in the green bag, quite a few individuals.
MR. COLWELL: Well I hope they don't crush them and blow up the truck.
MR. PARENT: Yes. So we will get back to you on that, it's a very good question.
MR. COLWELL: I think pretty well everyone is getting rid of them, and if that hits that truck wrong and it's got the wrong concentration of propane left in it - if it hits the wrong place in that truck it could explode the truck, I would think.
MR. PARENT: We'll get back to you on that.
MR. COLWELL: So that's an occupational health and safety thing, for the garbageman, which goes beyond recycling.
So that's something I think that could probably be recycled too. Again if we can get some innovation here - go to a small company and say we've got this problem, what can you do to fix it for me? I know when I had my business, if you would have come with those little propane bottles it would have been a week and I would have had a solution on how to get all
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of the propane out of them and strip them down to get the plastic off of them so then you could take them to the scrap yard, if nothing more, and sell them for scrap to make some money.
There has been one really good thing that has happened - and I've mentioned this before, I think - that a refrigerator or a stove or anything with any steel in it is not a problem anymore. If you have one that you want to get rid of, I have some friends of mine who work and make their winter living off of collecting these things and taking them to the scrap yard. They're quite valuable for the steel in them, which is really positive I think. The other thing with those are though, and I think we talked about that briefly before, if you're moving away and you have to get rid of a fridge or stove, now, here in the regional municipality, they have a really good program for taking refrigerant out of refrigerators. You have to call and it takes up to two weeks to a month to get the guy to come and do it but it's free which is a good arrangement and even at that, waiting that time is not serious. I mean that's not a problem.
An individual is moving away who has to get rid of a fridge and a stove, maybe a dishwasher, because the people who bought their house don't want it, they put it out by the side of the road, which is illegal because you're not allowed to put your garbage out now before 7 a.m in the morning - everyone does it, but nobody gets fined very often unless someone complains. So you're moving away and it's the day after garbage day so it sits out there for two weeks and the garbage guy comes along and says, I'm only allowed to take one appliance, so he takes whatever and two appliances are left there. Two weeks go by, he goes back, one more appliance, so six weeks later, unless one of my friends come along or people in the community come along who figure they can sell these things, which hopefully happens first, it's gone.
Why can't that individual take these things to one of these Enviro-Depots? These things are not dangerous, even with the refrigerant in them. Then get the regional municipality to come and drain the refrigerant all in one spot, save them a lot of money, and then have the stuff trucked away, because it does have a value.
MR. PARENT: The Enviro-Depots are not really set up for those types of articles, so it's a good point you raise. The municipalities, say HRM, takes care of them but some municipalities don't. The problem in HRM comes specifically when someone is moving. I guess they could replace all of their appliances at once, but traditionally they don't. If they move and there are appliances then it does become a problem. I'll look into it and see if there's any solution to that, but off hand I have no answer to give you. But that would be, I think, fairly small and it would be mainly when people were moving and the appliances may be old, because traditionally I think - at least I know my practice. We replaced a stove and then a couple years later the fridge and so that wasn't a problem, but I could see a problem if someone's moving and their appliances, the person had brand new ones that they wanted and the person didn't want to move their old ones - that could become a problem.
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MR. COLWELL: Yes, I recently got rid of a wall oven - it actually worked - and I put it out by my roadside and two days later it was gone, but I wasn't allowed to really put it there when I did. Also I could have got a fine from the municipality for having it there.
MR. PARENT: I've done that, too. It's amazing what people will take.
MR. COLWELL: I think it's great. It is great if they can use it.
MR. PARENT: It's good, it's great entrepreneurial spirit.
MR. COLWELL: But you realize in the regional municipality that if you take that out of my yard, where it's out for garbage, you can get fined. You're not allowed to take it. So there are a whole lot of things here set up that are against ease of getting rid of garbage, and what could happen with that is the municipality takes it - hopefully they've got a good system of getting rid of it, I'm not convinced they have - but if they do have, someone could take and strip all the copper wire out of it and throw the rest in the woods even if they did take it. So, you know, there are all kinds of problems there. So if it went to a place like the Enviro-Depots and was processed - to strip a stove for instance, take the insulation out of it, the wire, and separate all the stuff - they wouldn't have to do it there, but somewhere to do that and you might be able to get a little business going for somebody doing these things.
MR. PARENT: The RRFB, I understand, is going to be looking at the recycling of white goods, appliances, in the future. So there may be a fix coming for that.
MR. COLWELL: Good, not soon enough as far as I'm concerned.
You just have to make it easy for people, and that's a problem. What I'm fighting with every day, and a lot of these questions come from illegal dumping - I have a tremendous problem with illegal dumping. We're just far enough out of the core of the city, it's a short little ride and you take and dump the stuff in the woods and you are rid of it. In the meantime, it could cause an environmental hazard. It depends on what they dump. It could be paint, it could be solvents, it could be old gasoline which is another problem, a lot of these things that are so difficult to do.
[4:00 p.m.]
For instance, in the regional municipality now, if you have household hazardous waste, if you have a spray bomb full of household cleaner, or a bottle of dishwashing detergent that you don't want to use for whatever reason - say, if you use it you get a rash on your hands - you've got to take that one Saturday, and it's not every Saturday, way out to the industrial park in Halifax and get rid of it. You're not allowed to do anything else with it. You can't take it to the Enviro-Depot. It's not really hazardous waste. You can't take it to the Enviro-Depot; you can't do anything with it.
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So let's say you live in Ecum Secum, at the far end of the community, it's a two- and- a-half to three-hour drive to this household hazardous waste facility that's open some Saturdays. It doesn't make sense; it simply doesn't make sense. So what do people do? Dump it down the drain, dump it in the yard, and then they put the container in the green bag with what's left in it, which you really aren't supposed to do either, and then they got a problem again.
MR. PARENT: A lot of that comes from economies of scale, as you know. I have the same problem with the pesticides in agriculture where leftover pesticides, which were never going to be used, had gone bad, and people were just dumping them in the woods. There is a program that's industry-led, and that we helped with in the past, and I think this past year we helped with again. Hopefully the industry will be able to cover the costs for them totally, but I made the same argument as you did - that, you know, it's far better putting a bit of government money if we have to than these things ending up in the woods where they're going to create long-term problems.
We also have to move aggressively in terms of industry - or the producers of these having a responsibility, extended producer responsibility. So that's something that we need, too, that people can't just sell products and then that's the end of their responsibility for the product, and that's what we were doing with e-waste.
I mean I agree with you on ease, but people I think have to take pride in their environment, and we need to make it as easy as possible, but people also have to be willing to put some effort into it. I know that that's an educational process. RRFB has a very good educational process in the schools to encourage children, and as they grow up it becomes sort of second nature to them, but once you do get outside the built-up cores it becomes far more tempting just to throw it in the woods, and that's the problem that you're talking about in your riding.
We'll take a look to see if maybe we can expand, but a lot of it is just economies of scale, you know, having places that can handle certain products. We can't have them everywhere because there's just not enough of that product to make it feasible, but certainly I'll push RRFB in that direction.
MR. COLWELL: Yes. The other thing is, again, we've got all these Enviro-Depots, and they are small businesspeople who are out there trying to make a living. Some of them I think do okay, but none of them really make very much money doing what they do. There's no reason at all that they couldn't be handling some of these, what we call household hazardous waste. Now, I'm not talking about dealing with gasoline or things that are explosive, but a lot of the things like household cleaners and stuff like that, as long as they're in a good tight container that they originally came in and things like that, there's no reason that they couldn't collect those in a closed-in container of some type that would be
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appropriate for that, and then maybe a couple times a year they come around and collect this material, so it's handled at the time and makes it easy for people.
It's not an issue where you get rid of it, and it would probably be a whole lot cheaper than what HRM does. HRM costs, by the way, if you set up - the household hazardous waste guys come, $10,000 a day for those Saturdays they have there, and ultimately the staff at HRM are totally responsible for what they do, not the contractors. So whoever wrote that contract didn't do a very good job, but that's another point. So if you can make those things easy for people to do, but safe - and I think it's easy to do. I don't think the RRFB really has a vision for anything that's sort of not the norm and maybe they're not tasked to do that now. Maybe they should be tasked to do that and find innovative ways to do these things.
Sometimes these innovative ways, actually people when they start working at these things will make money at it, so it won't cost the taxpayers anything, or RRFB anything - and sometimes it won't, but that's what they're there for, and that's why we pay deposits and that's why we do these things. Now, that's just my opinion.
MR. PARENT: And I appreciate that. I know for example, my executive assistant - her husband came back from Hawaii and because she's now working with me, although he would have done this anyway in the past because he's very interested in the environment, but he brought back a little jar which they passed on to RRFB. What it was, was crushed glass and they're using that as gravel in fills, et cetera, over in Hawaii because it's inert and it takes care of a problem that they were having there.
So any ideas that come, we certainly look at, and RRFB I know is active in various conferences and we're active as a department. In fact my secretary likes to tease - she came from Community Services and she says, your staff here are going to various conferences in Toronto, Ontario, and Newfoundland and Labrador, even down to the States, wherever. The reason why is because we're very interested in the department - in both Labour and Environment - in best practices. So any ideas like that, we will accept and pass on, encourage RRFB, encourage our department to use them, and so the little model of crushed glass - and that's how Hawaii deals with all their glass. They've turned it into a product because they don't have a lot of aggregate there that they can use. So now they've solved two problems in one, which is what you're getting at.
So I appreciate this and certainly I'll make sure RRFB gets a copy of the recordings of this procedure - these are recorded, aren't they, Mr. Chairman?
MR. CHAIRMAN: Yes.
MR. COLWELL: And overall I think RRFB is doing a pretty good job, don't get me wrong . . .
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MR. PARENT: I know you do.
MR. COLWELL: . . . it's just the fact that I think we've got to progress much faster with these things and we've got to really look at again - I can't stress enough - innovative ways to do these things and to really push forward and resolve these problems.
MR. PARENT: I was just determining, Keith, where the innovation fund was. I knew RRFB had one, but I didn't know if we had a similar one. But they have an environmental innovative fee and we will, as a department, do specific projects from time to time - so I'm sorry for talking while you were, but I was trying to get that in my mind as well.
MR. COLWELL: No problem. Just a question about those now that you mention it. How difficult is it for someone to access those funds? When I say that, I want to qualify it because I want to make sure that someone who is qualified to do the work gets the money, not just someone gets the money for some idea.
MR. PARENT: I've confirmed that it's a fairly simple process and the big projects or small projects qualify. It's not just for big projects, because that is often a problem that we have, that just big projects get money - but small, little projects, thousands of dollars, are eligible for this. If the project is innovative and deals with helping the environment, it gets funding, and the department will do specific ones as well that augment that.
MR. COLWELL: Okay, thank you.
Do you, as minister, or the department. have the ability - if you found that this burning of tires is really, really bad with the study you are having done, or any future study - to cancel the five- year contract with Lafarge?
MR. PARENT: The authority I have is to not let them use tires for tire-derived fuel if the study shows that, but in terms of the contractual arrangement they have with Lafarge, I have no authority to cancel that.
MR. COLWELL: Okay, that being the case, would it be possible to get a copy of the contract that Lafarge signed with RRFB?
MR. PARENT: Once the contract is fully signed, we'll get you a copy of it.
MR. COLWELL: When do you feel that will be?
MR. PARENT: Because they won the tender, as you know as a business person, they have a certain contractual right by law, but they haven't yet signed the contract. I don't know exactly when they will do that, but the moment they do I will get it to you.
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MR. COLWELL: Is there any possibility that since this contract hasn't been signed, that it won't be signed until this study is released and see if it is safe to burn tires even in Quebec? We're going to get some of the results of that, where they're burning them in Quebec now.
MR. PARENT: I'll check into that, Keith, I can't give you an answer right now.
MR. COLWELL: That's a very important question.
MR. PARENT: The RRFB is at arm's length, and as you know . . .
MR. COLWELL: I realize that.
MR. PARENT: . . . was set up by a previous government that you were part of. That's why we're in the situation we're in right now, in the sense that the RRFB has a perfect right to make decisions but because I have the authority as Minister of Environment and Labour on the industrial approvals, they can move towards awarding the contract for the use of tires but they can't award them for tire-derived fuel, in spite of the fact that RRFB clearly feels, because of studies they have done, that that would be a permissible activity. I want to respect the independence of RRFB so that's why I answered the way I did.
MR. COLWELL: And who ultimately does the RRFP report to?
MR. PARENT: Well ultimately I'm the sole shareholder of the RRFP, but they are set up as an arm's length enterprise, similar to the Workers' Compensation Board - well, slightly different than the Workers' Compensation Board, but they have an independence that has to be respected because we wanted political interference out of it, but ultimately to the Legislature, as WCB does, they report through me.
MR. COLWELL: The reason I ask that is that as the sole shareholder, you probably control something to this extent and I can understand why it was, and I know why it was set up the way it was and I think that's the proper way to do it. This is a very unusual situation here and it's unfortunate that it worked out this way. It would have been nice if someone had come along, so we could use all these tires and turn them into something that can be used, and I know that they did look at some other alternatives.
MR. PARENT: It's the question of independence and accountability, and trying to work those two together in a balance that works best for the citizens. You know all about that, and most of the time it works well. Sometimes the balance is off on one side or the other.
MR. COLWELL: Another thing, too, that I always thought might be interesting, because the municipalities - and I think this is a good idea - are encouraged to recycle and
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reuse and reduce and get the ratio of their garbage as compared to the recyclables, as high as they can, and they get a cash prize for doing that, let's say. I know, I have been there several times when RFB has come in with a pretty substantial cheque for the Halifax Regional Municipality, which was rather nice to see. It didn't nearly pay, not even a fraction or scratch the surface of what it costs to run the system they've got and that's a discussion for them, not us.
We go back to the illegal dumping - now the regional municipality typically has bylaw enforcement that can come out and say, clean your property up. So if you own a property here in the Halifax Regional Municipality and I take and dump my old tires and my old car and every other kind of junk that's possible and dump some oil on your property, bylaw enforcement comes along and says guess what, you've got to clean your property up. That's the way it works and that's the way it is.
Can we change it so that the RFB could - like the incident that happened that the province had to pay for, and luckily they did on this one particular road and they went a little bit further than they normally would do and I appreciate that they did do that, as a community does - why couldn't, instead of the municipality getting $3 million or $4 million, why didn't we take $140,000 off of that for this cleanup, that they did nothing to prevent, and took no real action to do that and it's within the regional municipality? They'd only have to do that once or twice and they'd get real tough with their bylaws and they'd be out there after people and charging people for illegal dumping.
[4:15 p.m.]
MR. PARENT: Yes, I remember you making the suggestion in the House, I listened with great interest. Again, that's a bit of a dance that you'd know something about with the municipalities and right now there are certain municipalities that are wanting to speak to me about the onerous task we put on them of taking care of solid waste.
I'd have to think very, very carefully about that because we have to work co-operatively with the municipalities in terms of the ways we set targets and goals. They're the ones who meet them and they have different ways of meeting them. We depend on that good sort of relationship, so I'd have to think very carefully about that one. I did listen with interest when you made the suggestion in the Legislature.
MR. COLWELL: I remember years and years ago - and it tells how old I am now - there was a police strike here in Halifax and people were setting fires downtown here, they were racing around with their cars and doing all kinds of stuff that wasn't acceptable. So that went on for three or four days and the RCMP was here and they just couldn't handle the situation because they didn't have enough resources to do it and they couldn't get them in here quick enough.
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I remember the story in the paper, the guy came in and he spun his tires and was not just a little bit but really caused a problem. So it was the first case that morning and he went in to see the judge and the RCMP was there and they explained the situation, a ticket and everything, and the guy started to talk about something and the judge said, $3,000 - do you want to do it in jail time or pay cash? There was no more burning downtown, there were no more problems downtown - that ended the problem. So that's why you use the analogy with the municipality. Now you can work towards that over a period of time and give them time - and I realize they do need time to work on bylaws and maybe laws that we would have to pass here to help them, to make illegal dumping a pretty serious offence. You only have to do it once, and it's rampant. I mean this is not just a little problem, this is a huge problem. Eventually something is going to happen with some of this stuff and it is going to cause some kind of an environmental disaster. It is going to get in somebody's well, or it is going to get into the water system, some of this junk, and whoever does it is just going to walk away. Anyway, that's just something to consider.
Okay, I'm going to switch now to the Workers' Compensation Board which, by the way, have been really good to deal with lately. I think they're going in the right direction and the complaints I have about the board - except for individual cases which I won't discuss here today of course, they seem to have turned over a new leaf. I remember when I was MLA many years ago, when someone came in with a workers' compensation problem I just knew that was it, we can forget this and go on to something else because you wouldn't get any information, co-operation or anything.
I can remember only one case in about a six-year period where we were successful with the Workers' Compensation Board, and I simply wrote a letter off to the Workers' Compensation Board and they said the person wasn't disabled - but they had received Canada Pension Disability and they got disability from and insurance company, so I just wrote them a letter and said how come these two people say they are disabled and you say they aren't and they approved it. I don't know if that affected it or not.
Anyway, back to chronic pain, how is that going? How far along are we with that? Is there any chance of an unfunded liability with that?
MR. PARENT: That was a concern of mine when I became - well, prior to becoming Minister of Environment and Labour, when Kerry Morash was the minister, because there was concern that the chronic pain would break the system, it would be so expensive.
We're on track, we're about $170 million, which is within what the projections were. I was just talking to the Chairman and to Nancy MacCready-Williams and they feel that they'll be able to wrap up the first part of the chronic pain and that they'll have been successful in dealing with it.
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We are, across Canada, one of the jurisdictions that are most generous in dealing with chronic pain. It was something that when the Supreme Court made their decision, of course, the Workers' Compensation Board had a lot of consternation about, and my department as well, because as you know the Workers' Compensation Board, the unfunded liability was about $400 million and climbing. It was a great concern and some of the larger companies were complaining the system was broke, they were going to pull out of the Workers' Compensation Board. So, as a result of that, the Dorsey report, lots of things, we set up a new governance structure with stakeholders and I understand the unfunded liability is now down, the last I heard it was about $350 million. So progress has been made and hopefully that will begin to flow back in both lower costs to employers and higher benefits to employees.
MR. COLWELL: Yes, and I really like the process they've gone through to penalize the unsafe employers, because I think that's part of the problem.
MR. PARENT: And that's what we've said. I was approached - sorry to interrupt, but I was approached by a big employer, which I won't name publicly, and a couple of times, and they said bring our Workers' Compensation Board payments down, you've got to do that or we'll leave the province and people will be out of work . My response has been - you know a lot of that, most of that, is in your hands; you bring down your accident rate and you'll bring down your payments. I think a lot of companies have gotten the message and realize that if they want to save on their bottom line, one way is to have fewer accidents and the WCB payments come down.
Also, there has been a shift in emphasis from dealing with the acute cases, which we still do, to trying to deal with prevention - similar to what's happened in the health system - and that has proved to be a benefit. I mentioned that in the early 80s it was 10 accidents per 100 employees - let me get that figure right, I had that in my mind, it just flows, but it has come from 10 per 100 down to 3 per 100. Yes, 10 lost-time accidents per 100 employees down to 3 per 100 employees, so we're moving in the right direction. We'll not be content until we bring that down, if we can, to zero and certainly will not be content until we bring down the fatality rate. The fatality rate, by the way, for this year is down substantially. So the fatality rate is coming down as well.
MR. COLWELL: That's good news. Over a longer period of time it will be better for everybody, especially the people who are getting hurt.
MR. PARENT: Some of the industries, as you know, Keith, were very high accident rates and the WCB really targeted them, worked with them, not just the stick but also worked with them to help them bring down their accident rates and it's been successful, as you mentioned.
MR. COLWELL: I have many more questions to ask.
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MR. CHAIRMAN: You have one minute.
MR. COLWELL: Okay. I just want to draw your attention to one thing. It's the mandate of the department. It says - and I don't know which page it's on here - but it says the mission of the department is to create a healthy environment. I would just ask you to consider that beyond anything else when you think about burning these tires and giving approval. That's all I would ask. Thank you.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Your time is elapsed.
The honourable member for Dartmouth South-Portland Valley, and the time is now 4:24 p.m.
MS. MARILYN MORE: Mr. Minister, I would like to ask a few questions regarding the environmental side of your responsibilities.
As you probably recognize, the former City of Dartmouth used to be called the City of Lakes, and waterways in Dartmouth have been critical to our past, or heritage. They are critical to the current quality of life, and they are a legacy that we want to leave for future generations. I have to say that since I was elected four years ago, a surprisingly high number of inquiries and concerns have come into my office about the integrity of waterways in the Dartmouth area. There have been concerns about lack of coordination; residents expressing concerns over water quality in a particular lake being directed back and forth among the three different levels of government; concerns about the lack of coordination and the lack of regular monitoring; and just a general sense that water quality in our waterways within our municipal region are deteriorating.
I had the opportunity to bring together a number of community organizations, local monitoring groups, interested citizens, and provincial organizations, last fall and we've had a second meeting. We created what we call DAWN, the Dartmouth Area Watersheds Network. I'm very pleased to say that it has been handed over and the coordinating group for DAWN is now a subcommittee operating under Clean Nova Scotia and they are providing considerable leadership and support to that initiative.
I am raising this because I think it's a prime example of how government and community and the voluntary sector can work together in communities on environmental concerns. So I'm just wondering - in the past it has been my impression that one of the main focuses of your department has just been sort of drinking water quality and some other areas. Now I realize that apparently tomorrow you are announcing a water strategy, but my chance to question you is today so my questions may be a little premature and you may not be able to answer them in entirety. I'm just wondering, does your current budget for Environment include new money that is going to broaden your interest and focus on protection of waterways in Nova Scotia?
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MR. PARENT: Absolutely. I do want to thank you, Marilyn, because when we spoke about it in the Legislature last year, I commended you on your question and commended you on the work that you are doing in your riding. I think it's somehow fitting that we are launching the water strategy in your riding tomorrow - and I think you got the invitation from me, handwritten.
MS. MORE: I did, and I'll be very pleased to.
MR. PARENT: There is $200,000 to be allotted this year, and we anticipate that will need to rise in order to do a proper water strategy, but we're getting started on it.
Water is the most valuable commodity we have out there, and we've taken it for granted. In 2002 we did the Drinking Water Strategy and now we feel that we're moving forward enough on that that we can launch a larger water strategy. I've said before to my colleagues and to the House that the effects of climate change when you look at it in water, in rainfall amounts, in melting ice caps, in rising sea levels, we need to get a handle on what is happening with our water system, on protecting it - not simply with drinking water, but beyond that. Your colleague raised the issue of intertidal coastal properties - and all that's going to be grist for the mill. One of the things the media have been very interested in is fees for bottled water, and that has certainly been something that has been of interest for the Canadian Ministers of Environment.
I was interested to see - we've been working on this water strategy, I've been promoting it ever since we chatted in the Legislature before that, and before that I'd been interested in it as well, but I was interested to see that the federal government is too, it has realized that water is one of the key components and has launched a National Water Strategy and there is some funding that, hopefully, we can access provincially to help augment what we're doing.
So, the figure is $200,000 for this year.
MS. MORE: That's province-wide, to develop a provincial strategy?
MR. PARENT: It will be - we're anticipating a three-year strategy. I'll be certainly going back to the Finance Minister for more money on it.
It's also competitive advantage - GPIAtlantic did a study on how much water is worth to the Province of Nova Scotia and I think came up - don't quote me on this one, but I think it was about $3 billion. Over three billion litres of water are extracted by Nova Scotians per day for various uses - drinking water, industrial uses, watering their lawns, all sorts of uses. And it's throughout the world, the estimates are by the year 2030 about - well, right now there are 400 million people who don't have proper access to water, and that's estimated to
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rise. The most alarmist figures I've seen are four billion and I'm sure that one's too high, but I know that it will be much higher than it is now.
[4:30 p.m.]
If you look in China right now, the Yellow River, the Yangtze River, the pollution; and you look in the United States, the Colorado River just ends now in the desert, it doesn't even reach the ocean. So water will become an increasingly important commodity, and particularly of interest in agriculture - and I'll shut up because I'm going on too long, I know, but water's something that I'm very, very interested in.
I'll just mention two things and then I'll be quiet, Marilyn, because it's your time to ask questions - one is in agriculture, and I think it may be the competitive advantage that will help sustain agriculture in the Valley, so it's very important to me. We've done a study on the aquifer in the Valley through federal funding - a $50,000 study on the volume of water and the discharge and the replenishment rate.
The other thing is I was listening to BBC News not long ago - I bought myself a satellite radio for Christmas, so I get to listen to BBC News - and a bulletin came on that Nepal had a $140 billion resource that India was willing to pay $140 billion for. So I perked up my ears thinking, have they discovered oil in Nepal? What's going on? It was water. So I want to thank you for the leadership you've shown, both locally and also raising the issue.
Another important example of co-operation that's a good model is one the deputy has worked on very, very hard and that's the Bras d'Or watershed system, where the five municipalities and the five First Nations have come together, and that's a very, very good model for Bras d' Or, which I guess means "shining waters". So with DAWN, which we're aware of and we've been participating in, and the Bras d'Or, there are some good ones out there.
MS. MORE: My time is almost up, and I just want to ask one last question - will there be any money in this year's budget for action by community groups, or are you anticipating adding that into next year's budget, because to be a truly collaborative model it's going to require all levels of government, including community groups, to work together?
MR. PARENT: Could I save a little suspense for tomorrow?
MS. MORE: Sure.
MR. PARENT: Good, thank you.
MS. MORE: At least I could get my concern and priority on the table today. Thank you very much, Mr. Minister, and thank you, Mr. Chairman.
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MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, and we'll now go to the member for Bedford-Fall River-Beaver Bank.
MR. PERCY PARIS: You're close, Mr. Chairman, you're in the right church, but the wrong pew - Waverley-Fall River-Beaver Bank.
MR. CHAIRMAN: The honourable member for Waverley-Fall River-Beaver Bank, and the time is now 4:33 p.m.
MR. PARIS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Minister, I'm glad my colleague started off with water because that's where I would like to start; I would like to piggyback on her recent comments.
In the riding that I represent, the beautiful riding of Waverley-Fall River-Beaver Bank, we have numerous waterways - both surface water and underground water. I only mention that because we also have high residential development going on in the riding, which has had an effect on our waterways.
In Waverley-Fall River-Beaver Bank, because not all the residents in the riding have HRM water, city water, a lot of individuals draw water from the earth. That's their water source and what has happened is, I've got a concern with respect to the water table. Some of those residents who have been drawing water from natural sources for the last - well, for decades, for generation after generation. I don't know if this is because of the rapid development or what, but a lot of people are losing the water. A lot of people who had water, and it looked like there was an abundance of water, have now lost their water. They're without water. They have to have water trucked in, and they're hauling water themselves.
So my question is: For a riding such as mine, is there any type of monitoring that goes on by the Department of Environment and Labour with respect to the water table?
MR. PARENT: There are two answers to your question. I mentioned at the start, in the introductory comments, that we're putting $212,000 into well-assessment programs, which is available, and also in the Municipal Government Act I understand that municipalities now have the right to ask for hydrological assessments before a development is allowed to go ahead.
But certainly the problem that you mention is one that I've experienced too. I actually lived through it in New Minas when our well lost its water, that was back in the 1970s when I was going to divinity school, and wells were being lost all through because of the increase in population. We have the same problem. And the Chairman has brought the same problem to me in his riding and we're working with the well field up there. So we're moving forward on that, but that's one of the very reasons why we need this water strategy because I'm not
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convinced that we have enough handle on water, on the aquifers, on the water replenishment rate, and how much that can handle.
The only one I know that has been studied in real depth is the Annapolis Valley aquifer - others have been studied - but in really substantive depth because of the federal money. However, we do have, as well, twenty-three stations around the province that monitor water table levels to try and get some information back, and I'll get you a list of where those are and if there are any in your riding, because you'd be interested in that, and we can get you the results of the monitoring if there is one in your riding.
We're not exactly sure where those are right now, but we'll get them for you, Percy, and if there are any around your riding, we can get you the results. If there isn't one in your area, perhaps maybe we should look at putting one in your area.
MR. PARIS: Okay, thank you. Still on that same theme, with water, some of us when it comes to the environment - and I think it's very good, we have to be diverse - there are some people who are looking at air quality and there are individuals like myself and like my learned colleague next to me, really, really high on water concerns. I would probably echo what my colleague said about water for my particular riding, it's such a vital - it's more than just a commodity.
I know there have been discussions with governments at various levels and I also know that water for Waverley-Fall River-Beaver Bank is an HRM responsibility; however, having said that, if one's going to look at capacity building in partnerships. We hear conversations and talk about offering incentives to motor vehicle drivers, and right now they're talking about putting water in Fall River Village. I would say that for residents of Fall River Village to get HRM water, there will be a cost there in the vicinity of no less than $20,000 per household.
As a result of that, a lot of people can't afford the water so I guess my question is, are there any incentives on the radar screen for those ridings such as Waverley-Fall River-Beaver Bank? That city water is so close but yet so far, so has there been any discussion with respect to partnerships with the municipalities to achieve the goal of getting water for residents?
MR. PARENT: Yes, the department of Service Nova Scotia and Municipal Relations - most of their Municipal Rural Infrastructure Fund, the MRIF, has gone towards green technologies, and we received word from the department not that long ago that they had received some extra money from the federal government that they would flow through to help with access to drinking water. So I'd encourage you to talk to the Minister of Service Nova Scotia and Municipal Relations.
In my riding, in two villages that needed to upgrade their water plant, I was able to access money through that, and I know there is some funding there. Usually it's on a cost-
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shared basis where the municipal unit puts forward some money and the province puts forward some money, but there is some money and there's some extra money that's flowing through.
Now, for the challenge that's there, it's never enough money, but there are funds there and I'd encourage you to talk to the Minister of Service Nova Scotia and Municipal Services.
MR. PARIS: I don't know if I can get this in because I think I'm almost out of time, but water goes hand-in-hand with septic, and we also use septic fields, which there's a lot of rock in the area and I have a similar question about monitoring, because there's also at risk, where there's a high density of rock, that a lot of the water may be going into - I'm sorry, from the septic fields, the drainage problems it may be creating in some of our waterways.
MR. PARENT: Yes, we launched a program that will help assess septic systems and provide up to $3,000 to help fix them up if they're faulty. So that's the Environmental Home Assessment Program. If you need pamphlets on that, we can get them for you for your constituents.
MR. PARIS: Thank you, Mr. Minister. I guess in my hearing then there is a monitoring process in place when it comes to development as far as drainage goes, and filtration.
MR. PARENT: The municipal government now has the right to ask for hydrological surveys. They've done that for New Minas, and for example I know of one development where a hydrologist was contracted with and the hydrologist will give the opinion, yes, the water table can sustain that development, or no they can't.
So there is that system in place, there's the monitoring - but the water strategy, we're moving forward to get an even better handle on that.
MR. PARIS: Mr. Chairman, I think my time is up, so I'm going to relinquish the microphone to my good colleague from Shelburne.
MR. CHAIRMAN: The honourable member for Shelburne, and the time is 4:42 p.m.
MR. STERLING BELLIVEAU: Mr. Minister, I appreciate the time allotted to me today to ask a question, and if I could just take your attention back to your government's Budget Address, Page 31. I'll just read one paragraph there as related to this particular topic: "The world has long recognized the energy potential in the Bay of Fundy. It is estimated that its massive tidal swells can provide about 300 megawatts of potential energy from just eight small sites, enough to power roughly 100,000 homes. We will proceed cautiously to ensure the safest, most innovative use of our amazing resource. A $250,000 strategic environmental
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assessment will help identify the potential impact of these devices on marine life, fisheries, and many other factors and also set the stage for choosing an appropriate test site."
A few days ago, Mr. Minister, I asked you a question regarding water around Cape Sable Island, Shelburne County. I'll just refresh your memory - my question was to the Minister of Environment and Labour: "For some time, Barrington Municipal Council has been attempting to have the appropriate authorities complete an environmental study of water surrounding Cape Sable Island Causeway. I wish to table documents, from the Municipality of the District of Barrington, from 2002, concerning this issue." I asked the minister to ensure that his department carry out the environmental study. Mr. Minister, your response: "I can commit that if my department needs to do environmental assessments, they will be done."
I just want to put that all together because I felt that was a good example of your department doing an assessment on the Bay of Fundy, and I just wanted to draw your attention to the response that you gave me concerning a study which the Barrington Council has been pursuing since 2002 on the Cape Sable Island Causeway. Could you comment on your response that if your department does that?
[4:45 p.m.]
MR. PARENT: Just this morning I asked the department to look into the issue to see our responsibility and what we could do as a department on that issue. I had meant to ask them yesterday because you raised it, I think, on Tuesday and I responded to you. It slipped my mind on Wednesday, so today I instructed the department to look into that and I'll have a further response back to you.
MR. BELLIVEAU: I take it from the response that was in the message, the Budget Address, that basically your department is responsible for doing that. I just want to highlight that we know the Bay of Fundy is an important water system, and also I want to point out in the Cape Sable Island Causeway the importance of fish plants in that immediate area, the proximity of a number of lobster holding facilities, the tourism that's related to the beautiful beaches in that particular area, and there are aquaculture sites and there are also clam flats in that area. So I think that we can make the case very strongly that not only freshwater, that you talked about earlier in your strategic study of watershed, but also saltwater is very important to many coastal communities across Nova Scotia. I think I'm going to win the argument that Shelburne County depends on our coastal water supplies for the number of fish plants and processing facilities in Shelburne Counties.
I look forward to your response and I thank you for your time.
MR. PARENT: Thank you for your comments. There is a project we work at with, that the lead agency on is the Department of Fisheries, called PONS - Provincial Ocean Network System - and we work with Fisheries on that. They're the lead agency - the
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provincial Fisheries - and certainly if it's not my department that is involved directly, I'll talk to PONS to see what they can do, and the Ministry of Fisheries and also the federal Fisheries. So I'll follow this up and that's my commitment to you.
MR. CHAIRMAN: The honourable member for Pictou West, and the time is 4:47 p.m.
MR. CHARLES PARKER: I appreciate the opportunity of a few minutes here to ask a few questions of the Department of Environment and Labour. I guess I'll start with welcoming the minister and all his staff who are here this afternoon. It's good to have everyone here.
First of all, I want to start with the wilderness protection areas. In my constituency there's a new wilderness protection area - I'm sure you're aware of Gully Lake, partly in Pictou County and partly in Colchester County. It was quite a process; it took a long time to get there and I just want to confirm that we are there - has it been fully designated as a wilderness protection area, or are there any steps left?
MR. PARENT: I'll just double-check on that, I think it was fully designated under my predecessor. I'm 99.9 per cent sure it's there, but we will find out the 1 per cent for you and get back to you. However, for awhile we weren't even stating the goal of 12 per cent, now we've enshrined it in legislation, so I think you can rest easy on Eigg Mountain-Gully Lake, but we'll just double-check for you if the process is all the way through.
MR. PARKER: Okay, if you could.
MR. PARENT: We list it as one of our protected areas and we have pictures of it as our protected area, so I'm 99.9 per cent sure that it is, but my staff member isn't here right now just to give you the 100 per cent surety. If it's not, I'll commit to making sure that it's 100 per cent.
MR. PARKER: A lot of people have worked very hard to make sure it was designated, and I would just like the final assurance that it is - and perhaps most famous in that area is the home of the "hermit of Gully Lake", a beautiful area and we certainly hope it will be there forever and ever.
I want to ask a related question then - recently, as you know, provincial money was used to buy lands from Bowater for more of that 12 per cent towards designation as protected land. I'm supportive of that, as is our Party, and I've had a group from my constituency who are strongly interested in acquiring some land from private owners because they want to see it also preserved forever and ever, and don't want to see it clear-cut, don't want to see it cut down. In their eyes, it's a special piece of land, it contains some old growth, some newer growth but, most important, they want to see it preserved for generations to come. They're
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negotiating now with the forest company that owns it to see if they can purchase it and at what price.
Of course it's going to cost some money, but they want to see it preserved in a pristine environment for all time. I understand there is extra money in the money that was allocated from the Bowater purchase. Is it ever in the department's mandate to consider helping non-profit groups like that? They've actually set themselves up as a society, and they're registered, to keep that land forever in a pristine state. Would the department ever consider helping a registered society like that to obtain land to have it forever and ever under protection?
MR. PARENT: There are various opportunities that way through the Nature Reserve Trust and others. The Department of Natural Resources is the lead one that procures the land and then my department works with them to determine if that land is of ecological significance that it should move from Crown land into protected land.
So it depends on the sort of level of protection that they want and it depends on whether it's ecologically sensitive that it moves into the protected land category. Perhaps the best thing to do is to get the group to give either the Minister of Natural Resources or myself, or preferably both of us, a phone call to see if there's any way we could help.
To reach that 12 per cent goal by 2015, we are going to have to be fairly aggressive. Even if all of the Bowater lands, and certainly they are not going to be, but even if they all went into the protected land, that would only raise it by one percentage point, basically from 8 per cent to about 9 per cent. So that's a substantial amount of land.
Particularly, I have an interest in protecting land in areas where there is not a lot of protected land. There are some ridings where there is a large amount of protected land - the Tobeatic is a large piece of protected land, for example, next to Kejimkujik. So you have a large piece there, but Pictou County doesn't have a lot, and my county doesn't have a lot, Lunenburg County doesn't have a lot. So my department is interested in trying to scatter those out to make sure that all counties have their share, but it also depends upon the ecological sensitivity. John Leduc, in my department, would be very happy to take a look at the land at some stage to give some sort of preliminary analysis, if he has not already done so.
MR. PARKER: Okay, so I could go back to this group, the society, and suggest that they call either yourself, Mr. Minister, or the Minister of Natural Resources, to get some answers if there are some possibilities of making this happen.
MR. PARENT: Sure. And an OIC in 2005 confirms what I said - Eigg Mountain and Gully Lake are protected areas.
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MR. PARKER: So it's 100 per cent for sure?
MR. PARENT: It's a 100 per cent, yes.
MR. PARKER: That's wonderful. Super.
I want to go on to a different topic. Again, there is some overlap here with another department, this being the Department of Energy, but I'm sure the Department of Environment and Labour has some jurisdiction here as well - it's concerning wind energy and wind towers. I think all of us, like motherhood and apple pie, are in favour of alternate green energy, so there are more and more wind towers sprouting up around the province. And generally it's good to see that energy source coming on-line, but sometimes there are problems, too, that are associated with that - problems around the view plane, problems around distance from residences, issues around real estate devaluation and so on. So while there are a lot of good things with green alternate wind energy, there certainly can be some problems.
So my question, I guess, is around setback distances from principal residences. Does the department have a guideline or a recommended distance that a wind tower should be from a principal home?
MR. PARENT: Yes, we have guidelines that they have to adhere to and I sign off on the wind projects once they have met various guidelines. To my mind, the only problem that we have had in terms of wind power is down in Pubnico where we have had some concerns about - I forget the technical name for it, but it's not so much noise that you would hear in your ear as much as noise that you would feel in your body. We have been working with an owner down there. There is a guidance document that will be coming out this month on what people have to do in terms of wind power and the regulations that are out there, because with the tax benefits that we have now given to municipal units and with the mandate of moving towards at least 18.5 per cent renewable, we anticipate more wind projects going ahead. So this guidance document will be coming out.
MR. PARKER: I want to mention, besides Pubnico there is an area in Pictou County where there have been some problems with setback distances, and that's on the Fitzpatricks Mountain near Scotsburn. There are two wind towers there at the present time. The closest one is probably about 400 feet from a dwelling, and there are a number of other homes in that area that are affected by it. It's a real concern to those folks. They are concerned about the noise and on windy days or certain atmospheric conditions, there is a louder noise than other days.
Also, they are concerned about their property values. They feel it would be difficult to sell a home with that so close to their house and even, as I mentioned, the view plane - I guess looking at a number of towers, it might affect their peace and quiet and enjoyment of
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the property. Anyway, the closest one, as I said, is 400 feet, and there is a real concern there amongst the neighbours - is there a provincial distance or is there a setback distance that the department has as a guideline?
MR. PARENT: There are. It depends upon the megawatts being produced, how big a unit - do you know?
MR. PARKER: I think each unit is a 0.8 megawatt.
MR. PARENT: Okay, if they're below 2 megawatts, then they don't need an environmental assessment. That may be the problem that we're looking at with those units. We have that with various things where below a certain size they fall under a different regime and it's an issue. So I will certainly take a look at it again in terms of wind energy. These are basically house units more than commercial units?
MR. PARKER: They are principal residence, year-round homes, and people are not very happy, I can tell you that.
MR. PARENT: No, I mean the wind turbines.
MR. PARKER: They are on the grid. They are coming onto the Nova Scotia Power grid. Anyway, I will leave that with you, Mr. Minister. If there's something you can do to set standards . . .
MR. PARENT: We will certainly look into that, okay?
MR. PARKER: Okay. I will leave that with you.
MR. PARENT: Could you tell again the location?
MR. PARKER: It's Fitzpatricks Mountain, near Scotsburn. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I'm going to turn my time over to my colleague.
MR. CHAIRMAN: The honourable member for Halifax Citadel.
MR. LEONARD PREYRA: Mr. Chairman, I have one general, political science type question and three short questions. One relates to the idea of a central agency. Certainly if you look at the rhetoric coming out of the government on environmental policy, on the greening of public policy, if you look at the legislation on sustainable prosperity, comments on the green filter, for example, it all suggests that the Department of Environment and Labour is going to become a central agency, because so many of its declared responsibilities cut across economic development and all of the other various areas.
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[5:00 p.m.]
I'm wondering, just to take the idea of the green filter, what mechanisms has the department put in place to oversee the activities of the various departments and to regulate their activities? For example, one department today is recommending strip mining, while your department is trying to cut down on greenhouse gases. I'm wondering, how do you make your department a central agency and how do you impose this green filter on the activities of other departments?
MR. PARENT: It's a very, very good question. I go back to the very first Ministers of Environment meeting of federal, provincial and territorial ministers in Yellowknife. The minister from Saskatchewan, an NDP Government . . .
MR. PREYRA: A very good government.
MR. PARENT: He also happened to be the brother of the VP of Academic Affairs at Acadia, so I knew his brother, they're both minister's kids, a Lutheran minister, big bear of a man, about six foot six, interesting fellow, and a good friend of Angus MacIsaac who used to be Minister of Health. He said to me, Mark, what is going to happen in the future, there will be three departments in government - Health, Education, and Environment. I told that to my colleagues when I came back and found out very quickly I shouldn't be saying that, because they didn't want to hear that.
There is the need to coordinate across departments, so there are two things that are happening now: every R&R that comes before Cabinet has a section on how will this affect the environment, and they have to fill that in, so if the department requests an Order in Council from Executive Council they have to fill that in; secondly, and more importantly I think, is the Premier set up a deputy ministers' forum, announced that there are nine deputy ministers, the Ministers of Finance and Treasury and Policy Board are on that, which is really important, and that deputy ministers' forum is co-chaired by my deputy minister and the Deputy Minister of Economic Development. They have had about four meetings to date, but it was set up at my suggestion and the Premier's desire, because I felt the need to coordinate across the various departments if we were going to have any hope of achieving these goals.
So there is a little sign-off on all the OICs that come forward from each department, but this deputy ministers' forum is meeting and I think - I not only think, I know - that we'll see the coordination that's necessary in the future.
MR. PREYRA: I guess my question was a little bit more specific, does the existence of the green filter effectively give the department a veto over projects that are proposed or recommended by other departments?
MR. PARENT: No, not at the present time.
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MR. PREYRA: So the green filter is quite a large, porous filter, then?
MR. PARENT: The green filter is being developed through the deputy ministers' forum.
MR. PREYRA: I have three more specific questions. The Northwest Arm is an issue that I have pursued in my constituency for quite a long time and, as you know, where we stand with this issue is really quite disgraceful. The municipality claims that it is not responsible for anything below the high-water mark and the federal government is responsible for everything below the high-water mark; in other words, anything above the high-water mark is a municipal responsibility, anything below is a federal. So what has happened there is that the provincial government has essentially abdicated any responsibility for protecting the shoreline.
What we've had is an infilling along the Arm, where people just dump things into these submerged lands and build subdivisions. So they get approval to infill, and once they've infilled the municipality can kick in but no body exists that can prevent that infilling from happening - and it seems to me that's an area where the provincial government, particularly the Department of Environment and Labour, should step in and say we're going to take some ownership of that issue.
MR. PARENT: There is a new working group, that I wasn't aware of, called the Submerged Lands Working Group - and I don't know if you're aware of it. We're going to get you more information. DFO is sitting at the table. (Interruption) Yes, we'll get you more information on it, but it is an issue. A colleague previously raised it on the intertidal land and the effect on the environment on that, and the fact that when you get overlapping jurisdictions you get, oftentimes, someone doing nothing about it and just passing the buck between the feds and the province.
So there are things coming forward. This submerged lands, which we'll get you more information on, that is dealing specifically with HRM, and there's also - I was mentioning it, I forget the an acronym for it - PONS, the Provincial Ocean Network System, that's led by the Department of Fisheries with officials from mine on that, but there's more work that we need do. Part of it is a jurisdictional . . .
MR. PREYRA: It is a general problem with coastal zone management, and even in this inter-agency group the province's representatives are saying we have no jurisdiction above the high-water mark and we have no jurisdiction below the high-water mark, which means we have no jurisdiction.
MR. PARENT: And no, it's an important jurisdictional issue you raise, and one of the things that we're having to learn - and we're having a very hard time learning it - is how to deal with the environment when governments are set up with different jurisdictions and
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different departments, and yet the environment is something that touches everybody and it's . . .
MR. PREYRA: That's what I was getting at in my first question - what kind of leadership do you provide these representatives on the inter-agency groups to say we need to exercise some responsibility here as well?
The third question - and I don't have a lot of time, I'm sorry I'm racing through this - Sable Island is part of my constituency and, as you know, it has an awful lot of research going on, there are a number of scientific agencies there, it's in the forefront of climate monitoring, and I'm wondering whether or not the provincial government is going to take some more responsibility for supporting some of the research that's going on there, especially given how important the offshore is there, to monitor conditions there and to ensure the long-term survival of that, and passing a bill on the Sable Island horses - but apart from the horses, you know there is this question of research at Sable Island.
MR. PARENT: So Sable Island is part of (Interruption) Oh, can I just respond? Is he out of time?
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Minister, I'm sorry?
MR. PARENT: You're the chairman, what's . . .
MR. CHAIRMAN: Is the member for Halifax Citadel finished?
MR. PREYRA: No, I had a question and then I'm finished after I get the answer.
MR. PARENT: I'll have to get the minister from the Department of Natural Resources to get back to you on that. I've not had a chance to visit Sable Island; I'd like to at some stage and perhaps as the MLA, we can go out there. I'd forgotten because Jane Purves told me once that Sable Island was part of her constituency, so I forgot that it was part of Halifax Citadel, but really the lead on that is DNR so I'll have to get back to you on that.
MR. PREYRA: Thank you.
MR. CHAIRMAN: You would want to be sure, member, he gives you a two-way ticket.
MR. PARENT: We do - just very quickly - contribute $25,000 to the work on Sable Island from my department. That'll pay for our helicopter ride out. (Laughter)
MR. CHAIRMAN: The honourable member for Cape Breton Nova.
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MR. GORDON GOSSE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My question is around Boularderie Island. I would like to know why the minister signed the order for strip mining when you know that coal increases greenhouse gases and which you are trying to reduce but yet you signed an order for Boularderie Island for strip mining. I'm just wondering, could you explain why you signed that order?
MR. PARENT: There are three answers to that. The first is that the order for the environmental assessment was signed off before I became minister. What I signed was the industrial improvement. There's a difference between the two. The decision was made to go forward with the mine. When I became minister, the decision I was faced with was, can it be done in an environmentally safe way, and the conditions that were put on the company convinced me that it could. I had asked for a further study in terms of the water table and water withdrawal. So that's one answer.
The larger answer you ask is the use of coal in energy and the impact it has upon greenhouse gases. There are two things that we need to respond to that. One is that, in terms of greenhouse gases, the main focus is not so much on what's producing the energy but on the emissions that particular energy source is giving, and that's the focus we need to keep on. I'll be making an announcement next week that will have some impact upon that. There are some technologies that are being investigated in the United States and there's some work being done at Dalhousie University on clean-coal technology - or coal sequestration - which have some impact upon that.
I know in Washington, when I was down with a colleague of yours at an energy conference, there's great hope that they might be able to find some clean way of burning coal. If they do, in a way that doesn't affect the environment, I would see coal being used more and more but until they do that, the use of coal will become less and less because of its greenhouse gas effect.
MR. GOSSE: Now, I'll switch over to another department of yours - workers' compensation. I'm just wondering, I'm hearing some stories in my riding about people going to Columbia Health and coming back home medicated, you know, from being up in Columbia Health, and I'm hearing all kinds of stories. I always ask for your side of the story, my side and the truth. So the reason I'm going to ask this question today is the chronic pain issue and the Supreme Court Order - you know, back in October, I think in 2003. I'm wondering, why are so many chronic pain sufferers being turned down by the workers in the department? I hear that 70 per cent so far have been turned down with chronic pain.
MR. PARENT: Your figures are right. I want to flip that. I don't get involved directly in terms of the assessment of chronic pain, but compared to other jurisdictions - with other jurisdictions, the success rate for chronic pain appeals are at 17 per cent and 18 per cent. We're the highest jurisdiction in Canada at 30 per cent. I can find out for you the exact - I mean it would vary from case to case why one case is awarded and one case isn't, but I do
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know that the overall statistics show us as the leading jurisdiction in terms of awarding payments to chronic pain patients. But you are right on your statistics - it's 70 per cent, a denial of 30 per cent acceptance.
The only thing I can say to that is that the WCB is the one that does that and our acceptance rate is almost double what other provinces accept.
MR. GOSSE: Well, you can understand, actually, for all the heavy industry that we've had over the years in coal mining and steel plant and coke ovens, that we would have such a high rate of this chronic pain in such an industrial area. That's why those rates and those numbers would be quite high. It just seems like I get calls from constituents and people and the Cape Breton Injured Workers Association, wondering why that's such a high rate. It's just something to look into anyway.
I'll focus now, I guess, on the Sydney tar ponds. A question I would like to ask on the tar ponds is that recently there were contracts put out. One was for the Native set-aside project for the cooling pond - a $10 million set-aside project, the first of its kind in the country. Also, the contract for the security of the site was tendered out. Both of these contracts were not given out. Both were withdrawn and both of the contracts - and I will say this, all the people who bid on both contracts, one for the cooling pond and one for the security - both of those contracts were withdrawn, yet all the bids by all the people who bid on both projects were given to all the competitors. I'm just wondering, is that standard practice within the industry?
MR. PARENT: The Sydney tar ponds falls under the Minister of Transportation and Public Works and I would encourage you to ask him that question. However, what I can say on that is that in the environmental assessment that we conducted on the Sydney tar ponds, what was put in and we use that with Keltic now, too, as a model, is that the socio-economic benefits should flow to the local population. That was in the environmental assessment. Now, that is not always possible, but certainly that's a consideration that's part of the assessment process. So I can get you that assessment approval. You will see it written there and perhaps you can use that in your questions to the Minister of Treasury and Policy Board under whom the Sydney Tar Ponds Agency falls.
MR. GOSSE: The reason I ask that is there's that component that's called "local benefits". I think there are so many points awarded to companies that benefit the local economy and I think that's one of the reasons the contract was withdrawn, because it was put out without that benefactor of having a local contract.
Before I turn my time over, I will tell you a little saying where I come from. Now, we have more engineering firms on Charlotte Street than we have lawyers, so you know what they're all doing there. So I will finish up with that remark and I will pass my time over to my colleague here.
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MR. CHAIRMAN: The honourable member for Pictou East.
[5:15 p.m.]
MR. CLARRIE MACKINNON: I know our time is running out, just about, so I could use the rest of the time with a preamble in relationship to Generator 5 at Trenton. But we all know the background, so I will dispense with the background in relationship to that if the minister could just be very brief, and I would be very happy if he would just give me a yes in relationship to my first two questions.
The first one, of course, is in relationship to the seeking of an independent monitoring station at Greens Point in Hillside where a lot of fly ash is spewed out of No. 5 and lands over in that general area.
MR. PARENT: I have asked our air quality expert, one of them, to meet with the citizens there to go over the air monitoring system and to talk with them. I will look forward to the response I get back from that meeting. We don't measure for specific industries. We measure airshed qualities and what I was told is that the siting of those would give the best monitoring for the airshed. I've asked him to meet specifically with that group and you can inform the group of that. His name is Johnny McPherson, he will be doing that.
MR. MACKINNON: Another question which I'm raising again is in relationship to the East River. The East River has a flow that's much diminished from what it used to be and I had requested in the past that a flow monitor be put on that river. There are things happening there. Maybe it's in relationship to some clear-cutting that's taking place, maybe it's in relationship to drier seasons, less snow, but the flow is down considerably and it is a concern to people in my riding and in an adjacent riding. Mr. Minister, it's fundamentally wrong that the flow on the East River, the very important East River, is actually extrapolated from a monitor that is on the Middle River and it makes no sense whatsoever. There should be a flow monitor on that river. They're two separate flows.
MR. PARENT: We're making notes on that; we will look into that again. It may well be with the new water strategy where I have a bit more money, there might be some funds. Certainly the water strategy wants to look at a variety of different things, among them the flow of rivers, so it may be that we can satisfy your request this year. I'm not promising for sure because the staff person who takes care of that is off at another meeting right now. But we're taking notes on that and we're working with Environment Canada on a stream gauging network, so hopefully keep pushing.
MR. MACKINNON: Thank you, minister. I know my time is just about up. I have a series of questions in relationship to the constituency. I found you good to relate to one on one in the past. Two quick questions, as the Natural Resources Critic, we have an overlap between Natural Resources and the environment on many issues. There's a moratorium in
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relationship to uranium mining in Nova Scotia. I'm told by a caller, the price of uranium has increased from $10 to $85 per pound. Is there any discussion at any level in relationship to uranium?
MR. PARENT: I know that my colleague, the Minister of Natural Resources - I don't know if this is personal or whether it bears any departmental background so you may want to ask him - has raised the issue of nuclear reactors with me. Certainly, it's probably occasioned by the fact that New Brunswick's moving in this direction as a way of dealing with greenhouse gases. But there's been nothing official in my department that we've looked at in terms of uranium for awhile. I think the issue is coming back to the fore because of New Brunswick and because of the whole push on greenhouse-gas-free energy sources.
MR. MACKINNON: The situation also at Moose River, there is some talk of developments there in relationship to gold mining. There are certainly environmental concerns that I'm getting as the Natural Resources Critic. We need industry in the province and I'm just wondering what you're hearing in relationship to that. You must be getting it as well from an environmental perspective because I am as a critic, so you must be getting three or four times as much.
MR. PARENT: The public comment stage lasts until Friday, March 30th - that's tomorrow. The environmental assessment review, I have to make a decision by April 10th.
I met a gentleman today who was in the lobby - I didn't have time because I was doing bill briefings - and he wanted to talk to me about Moose River. I haven't yet had a full briefing on Moose River because it's been in the EA process. What we heard in these consultations, I can't tell you yet, but I understand I will be getting that very soon.
MR. MACKINNON: Thank you. Going back to one of the concerns that I hope to have had time to raise, a constituent who has been in the septic business for 25 years is concerned about revisions of septic field laws and how they are relating to the little guy. His concern is that these changes are, in fact, hurting him as a small operator. I just put that forward, not knowing all the background.
MR. PARENT: It's a concern that we have in my department trying to work with various sizes of companies. I have just announced the new on-site septic regulations to a very favourable response. The Water & Wastewater Association had been after the government for many, many years - 10 years now - to do something and we're very pleased that finally we are able to do something, but the issue you raise, a philosophical issue, is one that we are very cognizant of.
In terms of the electronic waste regulations, we held them back for a full year because we went back to small companies and said, listen, the HPs, the Yamahas, the Compaqs, the Motorolas, the big companies have no problem, but we have a problem with it. So please
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devise the regulations in such a way that you accomplish what you want and yet also take into account that smaller companies have bigger challenges. I haven't heard of the concern that you have raised specifically in terms of a particular company, but I would be happy to look into how it works with the new on-site regulations which were just announced yesterday.
MR. MACKINNON: Well, I thank you for your responses to all questions and I guess I probably have another minute or two, do I?
MR. CHAIRMAN: One minute.
MR. PARENT: Honourable member, if you could give the names to my staff afterwards, we'll follow up on it.
MR. MACKINNON: Thank you very much. In the few seconds that I have left, I have wanted to raise something in relationship to chronic pain. We've already heard a little bit of a response to that. Having said that, I want to indicate to you as minister that I have had a very good response from a member of your staff. Tim McInnis has come to my office on three occasions and I don't think you could have anyone more responsive to meeting - not meeting the needs because he, of course, is not in any decision-making role, but at least giving an ear to these people. On one occasion we had lined up a series of people for him to meet with during a day, which he followed through on. I know, as an MLA, that is most helpful when you have staff members who come into your constituency and pay that kind of attention to an extensive list of people, and he was there yesterday as well. So please extend a thank you to him.
MR. PARENT: I'm happy to hear that, and I have had the same experience with Mr. McInnis too.
MR. CHAIRMAN: The honourable member's time has expired.
The honourable member for Digby-Annapolis.
MR. HAROLD THERIAULT: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Mr. Minister, for entertaining a few questions of mine. I won't keep you too long - I can't stay long, I've got to go to other places and talk about other things. (Interruption) Come on over at six o'clock and find out. (Interruption) Late debate, right on. It's late debate all day I believe in these Chambers. Anyway, I want to start off with - and I'm sorry I missed the earlier part of this. Probably you've already talked about quarries, I imagine you probably have. That would be a good guess, I think.
I would like to talk about Porcupine Mountain and maybe you can help me along with this. I've talked to fishermen up around that area and they're telling me that area has a lot of
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silt in it. They've told me that Environment and Labour comes periodically and checks it and they're supposed to keep silt nets in that area to collect the silt, but yet the nets don't seem to stay there. The least little breeze comes in out of the east or in through the Strait, and the nets are torn away. Does Environment and Labour do regular assessments of that quarry?
MR. PARENT: Sections are done periodically, but I don't have the exact number for you. So I'll get you the number that we've done in the past three years so that you can have the number of inspections that were done. They're done at variable periods, so it's not as if they're done every three months or whatever. I'll have to get you that list later.
MR. THERIAULT: So you can't tell me whether there's a silt problem there or not?
MR. PARENT: We'll check to see if they have concrete berms at the base of Porcupine Mountain for siltation problems, we'll certainly check into it. Siltation is a problem that we face in various areas. I wasn't aware of it being an issue at Porcupine Mountain, but we'll check into it for you.
MR. THERIAULT: Did Porcupine Mountain have to go through a Class 2 assessment?
MR. PARENT: We're talking about right by the causeway?
MR. THERIAULT: That's right, in the Strait. Porcupine Mountain, I believe it's called. Maybe I'm calling that . . .
MR. PARENT: No, no. I've actually flown over it in a helicopter and it's like a tooth that's decayed in the middle. It's quite surprising when you look at it from an aerial view. But that was in 1950, I think, when they began the operation because the material used from that was used for the building of the causeway to Cape Breton, so some of that pre-dates the formation of our department. I understand there has been an environmental assessment on it - a Class 1 environmental assessment - but I'm trying to find out when that was done.
[5:30 p.m.]
As I said, it was in the 1950s, prior to the formation of the department, but last year they expanded the site and so had to go through a Class 1 environmental assessment. We'll get you the results of that.
MR. THERIAULT: So you're saying it never went through a Class 2 assessment?
MR. PARENT: Not that I'm aware of.
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MR. THERIAULT: Do you know how much tonnage is taken out of that per year - out of Porcupine Mountain?
MR. PARENT: No, I don't, but I can get you that information as well and that probably is in the Class 1 environmental assessment, which I'll get a copy of to you. It was done last year when they expanded their operation.
MR. THERIAULT: So we've had a quarry in this province, a major quarry, since the 1950s and we don't know a whole lot about it, it sounds like.
MR. PARENT: There are a number of quarries, I think, that are in that same area, so we have to get you that information on the Class 1 assessment that was done just recently.
The activity really does predate our department - the original activity - and predates a lot of the environmental concerns that have arisen recently. There's a much higher level of environmental scrutiny that we have now than they had back in the 1950 and that's good that we've progressed.
All provincial quarries have Class 1 assessments, but Digby quarry - the proposed Whites Point quarry, colloquially known as the Digby quarry - is special because it's bumped up to a federal-provincial review. I don't think you were here when I mentioned that the latest information on that - which I should have shared with the House because I knew it when they asked me, but slipped my mind - is that they've asked for a 15-day extension to that, which I granted to the panel to do their work.
It should be going to the public consultation phase again, I think, in the early summer, so they have an extension. We grant extensions routinely, not because they're not important - I don't mean that when I use the word "routine" - but because we want the panel to have the time to do a proper review. So the most up-to-date information is that the panel asked for a 15-day extension two days ago, I believe it was, that I granted to them.
MR. THERIAULT: So we're doing a Class 2 assessment in Digby on Digby Neck.
MR. PARENT: No, we're doing a Class 1 - sorry, on Digby it's a Class 2.
MR. THERIAULT: A Class 2 assessment. So you're telling me this assessment will be done very shortly?
MR. PARENT: The panel asked for a 15-day review. Unless they come back and ask for another review, we should have the final panel findings within that time frame, and then it goes on to the next step. I haven't seen the panel report and the latest update I have on it is that I gave them - they asked for an extension to do their work and they asked for a various number of days. In Keltic, for example, they asked for 60 days because it went over
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Christmas and it was about three different industrial approvals all rolled into one, so they asked for 60 days. This particular panel has been working at it longer and all they asked for was 15 days, but it was granted to them.
MR. THERIAULT: So has this panel asked for any information on Porcupine Mountain?
MR. PARENT: You would have to ask the panel on that. One thing I've ascertained on the panel - because it was set up prior to me becoming minister, I wanted to know the quality of people on the panel. I was assured that they are the top quality and have the respect not only of the department, but of the opponents and the proponents as well. In fact, opponents of the project - many of who are in the Wolfville area, so I hear from very consistently - tell me that the panel members have their utmost respect and confidence. What they're worried about are the terms of reference for it but the terms of reference for it, I think, are fairly broad and I can get a copy of that for you, if you're interested in seeing that.
So the panel is a panel that has utmost confidence and, as I say, I gave them an extension because it's important they have time to do their work properly.
MR. THERIAULT: So your department doesn't know whether this three-person panel that's assessing a quarry in Digby Neck, the Class 2 assessment - you don't know whether they have any information on Porcupine Mountain, which people up there claim there are problems with, which had only a Class 1 assessment - your department doesn't know if they have any of this information?
MR. PARENT: I would be very shocked if they hadn't looked at that. (Interruption) We provide support to the panel, but the panel does the actual work.
MR. THERIAULT: So they're collecting their own information outside of the department?
MR. PARENT: Oh yes, they're an independent panel, a joint federal-provincial panel.
MR. THERIAULT: And they've never asked the department for other quarries in this province about . . .
MR. PARENT: Yes, they have, and that's been provided to them.
MR. THERIAULT: Okay. So you're telling me that you haven't had regular talks with this panel, that they don't have regular talks with the department at all?
MR. PARENT: They talk with the department but not with me, and that's done specifically to avoid political interference in these very sensitive environmental panels. So
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the NSEL staff provide them support where needed, information where needed, and the same with Keltic. I, as minister, do not get involved so that they have maximum independence and freedom to do their job without political interference.
I can tell the honourable member that I have, on both sides of the issue, many people - Keltic is one example - who want me to get involved one way or the other and I refuse to do so. The panel needs to have that independence, so the staff provide them with support, information, anything that they want in that regard that our department can provide them, but as minister I will not know, until they produce the report, what their recommendations are, and then I will have my chance to review it. Staff may have some hints, I suspect, just in conversations, you know, on what they're asking for, where the direction is going, but the staff don't know either, until the panel review comes back. Then we do a staff analysis and the ministerial analysis, based on the review, and that's done specifically for the independence and integrity of the process.
MR. THERIAULT: I would like to know - I don't know if you can answer this or not, because you don't know whether this quarry is going to go ahead or not, in Digby Neck.
MR. PARENT: I do not know what the panel will recommend. I do know that the panel recommendation will play a very, very large part in my decision. It's very rare for a minister to overturn a panel recommendation but the possibility and the freedom is there for me to do so, but no, I don't know.
It is not an easy position to be in at times. I'll go back to Keltic. There were very few people who were pushing me not to go ahead with that, as opposed to the Digby quarry where the opposition to that is well formed, but there are a great many people who were upset, angry. In the Guysborough paper, you could read, why did I give the extension, why am I taking so long? It's a no-brainer, this should just be signed-off on.
As Minister of Environment, I tell on both sides that the integrity of the process has to be respected. So I do not know what the panel review is going to suggest. So there's nothing I can tell you beyond that, besides that any support we can give them, any information we can give them and time extensions that I give them to do their work properly, are done. I can tell you about the process but in terms of any content, I really don't know.
MR. THERIAULT: In the end, it's possible that this government may say, after the panel report, after the review - this could probably take quite a few months, or maybe even years. Does this government have a plan in place, if this is going to start, if we're going to start opening up quarries, you know this one goes, there are people who feel - the feeling is that with the people, a lot of people are concerned about the environment, the silt, the destruction it will cause.
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Then you have people saying, what are we going to do, just give more of our land away now? Give it to the Americans to put on the roads, and then another one opens up down the road, another one opens up down the road and 200 years between them digging off the eastern end of the province and the western end, it'll come together here and take the city after awhile, if this ever goes, you know, if it opens up big enough. So you have people saying, well, someday we're going to have to go to the United States to go to Nova Scotia, at least we can drive on it.
Is there a plan in place - you know, I mean everybody's got a Plan B, always have a Plan B. If something ever happens that this goes, is there a plan in place that maybe we could get some kind of a royalty out of this, you know, to pay for our gas to go down and drive on Nova Scotia someday, or are we just going to shovel it on the boats and give her all away? Are there any long-term plans like that, with Environment and Labour?
MR. PARENT: That would be through the Department of Natural Resources and certainly I know they are looking at the whole issue of quarries. Our side of it is looking at the environmental implications of it.
I will say this, that in my opinion, for too long not only Nova Scotians, but Canadians as a whole have been hewers of wood and drawers of water, and that's why one of the big pushes in my department is to move to a new economy, an economy based not simply on the exploitation of natural resources, but on the expertise that we develop in environmental products and environmental stewardship, and we've had great success in that.
I have a subdivision of money that was taken out of Economic Development and put into Environment to move forward in that. I am absolutely convinced that's the direction we need to move forward in terms of sustaining a healthy environment and economy in Nova Scotia, so I will say that. In terms of the actual question that you ask right now, I know that DNR is looking at that. I'm sure they will ask my department for advice and I would encourage you to speak to the Minister of DNR about what their long-range plans are in that regard.
MR. THERIAULT: I don't see anything wrong with shipping natural resources, you know, especially ones that are sustainable but your raw land, once you put a shovelful aboard the boat, it's gone.
MR. PARENT: Sustainability is the key.
MR. THERIAULT: Your land doesn't come back unless you buy it back.
Anyway, I just want to touch on tire burning. There are 900,000 tires in this province a year, I believe, that somebody wants to burn up. Down home, seven years ago, there was a stretch of dirt road. We have about 200 kilometres of dirt roads in our riding, very costly,
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put gravel on them every year, every year, every year. They just keep sinking away, sinking away. So they did a kilometre of road where they junked up tires as big as your fist and put it about a foot deep and then covered it with four, five or six inches of Class A gravel, seven years ago. This kilometre of road has stayed wonderful. It doesn't make potholes, where the rest of the dirt road will absorb water and in the Spring it beats potholes in it like crazy. This piece of road doesn't do that. I believe it's because it has great drainage. I have even heard tell of one person using it for a septic system. It works wonderful for that. I won't say who, because probably it's not approved. (Laughter) But it works.
[5:45 p.m.]
Has Environment ever done any kind of study on using these tires for something like the roads? This kilometre of road down there that's done - South Range Cross in Digby - has proven well locally. So has Environment ever studied - I believe we have lots of room for 900,000 tires a year if you want to hand them over.
MR. PARENT: There have been studies done by RFB and they have used it - roads, septic systems - and it has worked out fairly well. The problem that we have, as you mentioned in the very beginning in your statements - it's 900,000 tires. So engineering applications like that could take a small portion of those 900,000 but not all of them. That's the problem.
Now, your colleague before you was saying - should RFB be looking at, instead of one tender to handle all the tires in the province, looking at maybe five tenders that might be able to handle smaller amounts where you could use them? That's something that I promised I would talk to RFB about. On the tires, we have too many tires for the small applications to get rid of and not enough volume to make some other applications possible because we about in the 900,000 per year, as you state. So it's the volume that becomes a problem. But in terms of the actual use of the tires, they have done tests and in many ways they have worked out well, but they just can't handle the volume of tires that we have.
MR. THERIAULT: Do you know how many tires went into that kilometre of road?
MR. PARENT: No, I don't.
MR. THERIAULT: I have a feeling 900,000 tires won't do our dirt roads in Digby County. They put that a foot deep for a kilometre-long - junked up tires. I don't know how many that is but it's one whack of them.
MR. PARENT: I will certainly talk to the Minister of TPW. I know he has looked at rubberized asphalt, but you're using tires as a sub-base, junked up. I know you made the suggestion in the Legislature at one time. I think he was listening very carefully. I will certainly be happy to talk to him because if that could be used and the tires could be disposed
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of in that way, that sounds like a very ideal way of using tires, as long as the tires don't disintegrate and cause problems with the environment. That's one of the testings that has to be done.
I was mentioning to a predecessor of yours that my executive assistant - her husband came back from Hawaii with a small glass of crushed up or pelletized marble, which is what they use for septic systems over there because they don't have much aggregate that they can use. Certainly we will pass that on to the RRFB. With tires, the studies that have been done on them, the function works well. We have a question of volume and pricing but I'm not sure about the long-term environmental effects of tires because it would be different. I don't think they are inert the way glass is but I can find out more information on what has been done on those studies. You may be interested in getting them.
MR. THERIAULT: I would love to see that because I believe we could put those to good use rather than harming our environment more with smoke. That's something I want to get into right now. I went to a cancer society meeting yesterday morning and it frightened me what I heard, that 2 in 5 people that I know are going to have cancer in the not too far future. It was 1 in 4, not too long ago. This day that just went by, or is going by, 15 people found out that they have cancer. I spoke to one lady who said that we've seen a dramatic decrease in cigarette smoking and yet the cancer rate is climbing. She looked at me and said, my boy, it's the air we're breathing and the water we're drinking and maybe the food we're eating. That's quite a frightening statement. So is the Department of Environment and Labour doing anything to look into what's creating this great increase in cancer?
MR. PARENT: Not specifically in regard to cancer but we have launched a $900,000 environmental health secretariat. That secretariat is physically located, its lead is within Health Promotion and Protection, but also it shares - part of that money flows through to the Department of Agriculture and Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture and part of it to the Department of Environment and Labour. Our portion of that is about $200,000 for mainly water testing and drinking water, making sure that water is pure.
Increasingly more work is being done on the interface between the environment and health concerns. When you look at the polling data on what are the top concerns for Canadians, the environment has now become the number one concern and health number two in some of the polling data. I thank that really to make that division is a false division, because of the fact that the two interact with each other. That's why the new health secretariat has been set up to the tune of $900,000.
There is also a working group in the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment on the environment and health gathering data, but I'm convinced like you are - I was at the same breakfast as you and I was asking the staffer with the Department of Health, is it genetic? I'm convinced there are a lot of environmental factors. We have one of the highest rates of cancer per population in all of Canada and in the Annapolis Valley, I
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know that we have high rates. My local doctor was doing a quiet sort of study on it over a five-year period and unfortunately her husband went back to Dal to study psychiatry, so she never finished the study. It's sensitive in my area because of an agricultural area and the use of pesticides of course.
I'm convinced that environmental factors play a big part in cancer and I welcome the increased interest in how the environment affects our health.
In terms of the Lafarge project, I have made the commitment in the Legislature - I will make it to you here - that the draft study now is in the department. I haven't seen it yet. I understand I will get the completed study probably by Wednesday next week. If it does not deal with the health concerns and with the impact upon health, I will ask for further study on that because that was part of the terms of reference I gave to the study - how would this proposal impact people's health in comparison with what is going on right now? If that data isn't there in a satisfactory form, I will ask for further study to be done on it because the impact of the environment on people's health is very clear and that's why this secretariat we've set up - $900,000 through Health Promotion and Protection but involving other departments as well.
MR. THERIAULT: Thank you, Mr. Minister, and thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will hand my time over, I guess, to the members across the table here.
MR. CHAIRMAN: The honourable member for Halifax Atlantic.
MS. MICHELE RAYMOND: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Actually I think I'm just going to jump in here very quickly because as I think I mentioned to you earlier, almost all of my colleagues have questions that they want to ask you on the environment. I have at least another one I was anxious to talk to you about.
There was one question I meant to ask you earlier which is again about waste management. There are various issues around the province, particularly with the construction of second generation landfill, which have caused the various municipalities, I believe, to be looking at controls on the movement of waste as a resource that feeds landfills. I'm wondering what your position is on whether it is, in fact, appropriate to control the movement of waste between municipalities. In other words to constrain it to the place where it is generated, what is your position concerning controlling or not controlling waste movement between municipalities?
MR. PARENT: Right now, HRM is appealing a decision that was made regarding this issue where waste was - well, it's not flowing right now, but the proposal was that waste be moved from HRM to a landfill in Hants County. They went to the courts to get the courts to make a decision on whether this was allowable or not. Minister Muir and myself wrote a letter about that issue which probably you have a copy of. The court decided, in its wisdom,
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that it was allowable and HRM is appealing that decision and there are some grounds to feel that appeal might be upheld. That appeal, I don't think, has yet come to court, so I want to phrase my comments very carefully.
I've had meetings with Mayor Kelly, with my counterpart, Jamie Muir. My concern, as Minister of Environment and Labour, is the integrity of the waste management system. While it's a municipal matter, I have made it very clear that whatever decisions we make should support the integrity of the waste management system that we have here in Nova Scotia. There is probably one more landfill than we need in the province right now and that is what's creating, in some sense, competition for a product. There are those who argue that competition brings down the cost to the individual citizen in terms of waste and there are others who claim that will end up in the end causing the system to break down because it's based on a finely tuned amount of garbage for the landfills that are present there.
So I don't know if that appeal has been heard yet but I'm waiting. The official response from government is, once the appeal was heard, we would respond to what the results of that appeal were.
MS. RAYMOND: Sorry, so you're saying the argument is that . . .
MR. CHAIRMAN: I would ask the audience to at least put their phones on vibrate. Thank you.
MR. PARENT: The appeal will be heard in May so we're looking with great interest, and Minister Muir and myself have committed once the appeal is decided one way or the other by the courts, we will be making a response as a provincial government.
MS. RAYMOND: Sorry, you were saying that the feeling seems to be that there's one too many or one too few landfills? I didn't catch that.
MR. PARENT: One too many.
MS. RAYMOND: Right, okay. Thank you very much. I will turn it over to my colleague, the member for Queens.
MR. CHAIRMAN: The honourable member for Queens.
MS. VICKI CONRAD: Thank you for the opportunity to ask a couple of questions here and thank you to the Department of Environment and Labour staff whom I know have many, many challenges. Mr. Minister, I'd like to bring your attention to the issue in West Berlin, or East Berlin rather, the Tousignant file that has been before you for some time now. As you're aware, and I just want to review some of the facts with you around that file, in
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2004 an offshore owner of some lands from Nova Scotia decided to, after purchasing some land in East Berlin, that they would like to develop that particular piece of property.
The land involved is primarily coastal barrens and there are three coastal wetlands on this particular property. Those three wetlands traverse on the Tousignant property; 80 per cent or more on the Tousignant land. One of the wetlands is certainly on their land and one slightly overlaps the land and one abuts their property line. The Tousignants became very concerned when they realized that the property in question would be subdivided and three lots would be developed on that particular property. They had offered to the resident looking at development a land swap so to speak. They wanted to offer the developer property that they had, coastal property, in exchange for the wetland property and if the developer would have agreed to that land swap of similar value, and some would even argue that the lands that the Tousignants were offering was actually and is actually of greater value than the barren and wetland property. Had that swap occurred, the Tousignants then would have proceeded to donate that wetland property for conservation purposes to the Nova Scotia Land Trust.
[6:00 p.m.]
This conflict has been going on now for almost three years - since 2004. As you know, it has not been resolved to this point. The Tousignants had a quick meeting with you back in 2006, I believe, and it was a very quick meeting because you were unable to stay any longer because you were called to other business, which is certainly understandable. However, they've had no contact directly from yourself and they have sent you a number of letters - one recently back in January and were still waiting for a reply from you as of a written letter to me on March 25th and also to department staff. They had reviewed a letter. They received a reply from your letter - sorry, I should back up - they received a reply from their letter on December 12th and on January 12th, they replied back to your letter. As of today's date, they still have not had a reply from you.
In their letter, they had pointed out they were quite concerned with some of the information you had shared with them in the letter that they were feeling was incorrect, that you didn't quite review the information accurately. Things are moving fairly quickly, or had moved fairly quickly at one period of time where the hopeful developer had started some construction in through the wetland area where the Tousignants had contacted your department on several urgent occasions asking them to come in and halt that particular construction going on in that particular vulnerable area.
The Tousignants have just recently received a suggestion from your department, or an offer, because so far the offer has been that - the Tousignants' offer has not been taken seriously by anybody, not the developer. The developer has not responded to the Tousignants in the last couple of years. It appears that the department hasn't really taken the Tousignants' offer seriously enough to really look into the mechanics of whether or not this developer should be able to just kind of . . .
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MR. CHAIRMAN: Excuse me, I wonder if you could move your mic over a little bit, they're having trouble hearing you - whatever way the mic works for you. They're just having a little bit of trouble hearing you upstairs. Thank you very much.
MS. CONRAD: So I'll back up a little bit. There is a wetlands alterations application in front of your department, submitted by the developer. It has been, or is still, under review by a committee from your department. The Tousignants have been told that they have no standing in this review process whatsoever and they're not given any information on the standing of this review process right now.
However, they did receive an e-mail proposal by someone in your department and if I could just read you this offer so that you are aware, and then when I . . .
MR. CHAIRMAN: Excuse me, apparently they're still having a problem hearing you and we want to be sure we get all this recorded. Whatever works for you. You could pull it in a little closer, too. Okay, thank you.
MS. CONRAD: Okay: By consensus, we, the committee, have agreed that if you would permit access to the far lot, the upland lot at the southeastern end of Mr. Schwartz's property, via your property in the back, it could provide a reasonable alternative to the proposed wetland alteration. This alternative could then be required of the applicant before the alteration is ever permitted. If it was on the applicant's own property, there would be no question of it being an alternative. It will be between both property owners on the route of access, keeping away from any wetland compensation for land, et cetera. If this is possible, the applicant will also be required to gain permission from the private road owners.
Apparently, there was discussion at a meeting with members of your department and the Tousignants, where it was understood that the developer has never contacted the Tousignants in regard to any land swap. So the question is, if the department is making this particular type of suggestion as a proposed solution, then what guarantee can the department offer the Tousignants that the developer will actually get in touch with the Department of Environment and Labour and agree to such a proposal? This has been, as I say, almost three years and this developer is just going ahead and submitting applications for wetland alteration to your department, but he hasn't really been in touch with anybody other than through the application process. The Tousignants are very concerned that since they can make no headway with the developer, how is it that your department can?
I want to leave with you, after I ask you a couple of other questions around wetland alteration, a series of questions that the Tousignants have in reply to your staff's proposal and I'm hoping that you will thoroughly review the questions that they are asking. I'm also hoping that you will reply to each of those questions in a thorough manner and perhaps also give them some indication of whether their suggestions, their thoughts about the issues that
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they have researched in-depth, and of course know the lands in question very well, that you will also allow this to be part of that review process.
In Bill No. 146 - and I know we're not addressing the bill particularly here, but I just want to bring up to you that in this Environmental Goals and Sustainable Prosperity Act, you talk about the term "net loss of wetlands" and basically what I've heard or what I'm seeing in this Act is the potential . . .
MR. CHAIRMAN: Excuse me, but I'm pretty sure you're not allowed to ask questions on that bill.
MS. CONRAD: Okay, I won't be asking a question on the bill, then. I guess if - we'll say if the developer is given a permit to alter this wetland, and if the developer is given the permit on the basis of that he can then, in turn, create another bit of wetland because he has been granted permission to go through a wetland, that should raise a lot of concern for a lot of us. Most wetlands have been wetlands for generations and centuries, so the ecosystem of a wetland is not something that we can simply just recreate by developing a new wetland system.
Of course we all know that once one waterway or one watercourse, whether it be a wetland, a stream, a brook or a river, once one bit of waterway is altered, then we can rest assured that another watercourse or a waterway will also be altered. Any construction that is done through a wetland, water has to move somewhere so it's diverted to another place.
That's a great concern if Mr. Schwartz's application for a wetland alteration is approved by your department. So my two questions to you will be - and I think I mentioned one of them - will you review the Tousignant information here and answer their questions thoroughly, to the best of your ability and your department's ability, and will you look at that with a critical eye and will you seriously consider not issuing a permit to this developer to see alteration of that wetland?
MR. PARENT: Thank you for the information. Certainly I know that staff have been involved very vigorously on this file, have spent a lot of time on it. In fact just yesterday I was talking to the inspector for the area about it, asking for an update for him. Certainly we will work with the Tousignants as best we can and we have a commitment to protecting wetlands, or mitigating or compensating.
I do want to state something, though, that I'm finding more and more with the department, which is that oftentimes landowners who have differences of opinion between themselves as landowners, are trying - I'm not suggesting in this case the Tousignants but I'm finding it in other cases - they are trying to use the department in order to force the other landowner to do something with their land, or not to do something with their land. Increasingly this is something that we're finding.
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We are not, in terms of the Tousignants, for example, where it comes into play is as they have asked my department to convince the landowner to do this land swap - that's not our job. I know that the mayor of . . .
MR. CHAIRMAN: Your time has expired for today. We'll be back here tomorrow - same spots, different time. I would ask the people who are here observing to make sure that their phones are off, and you are back tomorrow for another two hours or so, Mr. Minister.
MR. PARENT: Mr. Chairman, there was an agreement made with both other Parties that, because I'm launching the water strategy tomorrow, Health Promotion and Protection would start tomorrow. Were you not aware of - I made that with Frank Corbett and (Interruption) No, that's fine, you reserve the right to come back.
MR. CHAIRMAN: We are adjourned.
[The subcommittee adjourned at 6:11 p.m.]
