[Page 417]
MR. CHAIRMAN: Good morning. I want to welcome everyone here. We're going to continue the estimates for the Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture.
The honourable member for Shelburne. You have 40 minutes.
MR. STERLING BELLIVEAU: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank the minister and his staff again. We had our introductions last night and I won't go into much more than that, but I do thank you for the opportunity for being here and addressing the minister during this budget process.
I'd just like to highlight a few things that we talked about last night. There were two points before we had to stop at that particular point. We discussed the fisheries, the cusk, and I think I made that point very well - I'm just kind of reviewing here. I'd like to go back and talk about the loan board before I move on to other topics.
Since last night I had the opportunity to go back and look at my notes, Mr. Minister, and there was one area I felt needed clarification - there were two points, actually. I made reference to if there was the average licence in southwest Nova Scotia, in District 34, roughly $0.5 million, and the scenario I was painting with the literature that I presented to you was that if 25 or 30 applications came on your desk, and you alluded to the fact that in the budgetary review or snapshot here, that the $821,000 that was allotted to the loan board was just for staff administration cost, the point I am trying to get to is this pot of money that's there. To me it's a mystical pot of money and the scenario I'm trying to paint, I see there's going to be a number of transfers in the next half decade, and if there were 25 or 30 applications come in for $0.5 million, would this magical pot of money be enough to address the potential demand or request?
[Page 418]
I'm just looking at District 34, and if you multiply that by all the regions throughout Nova Scotia, the question that I'm asking - is there going to be enough money in this particular pot to address the demands that I anticipate?
HON. RONALD CHISHOLM: Yes, right now we have a $88 million portfolio with the Fisheries Loan Board that we manage year in and year out and that seems to work quite well. Basically all it is is a fund that is drawn on as they give out loans for boats or gear or whatever and then it is paid back. So over the long term it is money that's out and money that comes back in. So our loans for licences program will be basically the same thing. As I said yesterday, we have an estimation of probably about $75 million take-up in the first five years and the government is committed to that and that's what our plan forward is.
Like I said, I met with the loan board two days ago. They are quite excited about the program and they feel they have - and I feel as well - the expertise is there, the people who are on that board are people who are involved in the fishing industry right down to the processing part of it as well. So yes, the government has made the commitment - we're going to get into this business, so we have to fund it.
The Minister of Finance, in discussions I've had with him about it is that yes it's a program that over the long term will recover. Like I said yesterday, there probably will be quite a bit of uptake that we'll see in the first few years of this program, but I think we can manage it and manage it properly, and I'm sure the funding will be there.
MR. BELLIVEAU: Just before I leave that, there are two points I want to make on the access to capital. First of all, I see it also as an issue regarding the large processors, processors who are handling large volumes of lobsters for instance. They need access to a large amount of capital when they tie up that volume in their holding facilities. I don't know if that's something that the loan board has gotten into yet, but I do see that as a concern if we want to keep more of these underutilized products in our community.
The final point, before I move from the loan board issue, is fishermen have contacted me and are saying a lot of these loans, especially through the banks, are usually designed around the 10 years, and one of the requests is to have that period of payback extended to 15 years. If you do the math, you can quickly see that if you can extend that out to five more years, that those individuals can actually pay for their children to go through university. That's basically what you could do with the savings and it actually reduces the principal amount and it's more of a comfortable feeling if you can extend that. So I think that's something that the loan board, or whoever designs these programs, needs to look at - extending that.
MR. CHISHOLM: That certainly is one of the areas where we've had quite a bit of discussion already, myself and staff - well right now for our loans for boats, we can go with
[Page 419]
a longer term than the banks normally can, and if you can get a 10-year term with the bank you're doing quite well because usually five to seven years is the maximum that they will go.
We feel we can go probably up to 15 years on these loans; we also can be a little more lenient. You know, if there's a bad fishing year in one area, that some fishermen are having some difficulties with that, we can be a little more understanding probably than the banks. We can work with the clients to make sure that, you know, whether it's they pay interest for one year - there are ways that we can work with them to sort of alleviate some of the problems they may be having.
I guess one of the major concerns, and one of the reasons why we now have - I think there's $100,000 in our budget this year, that we feel is to hire somebody, somebody who is knowledgeable and qualified, I guess with a financial background as well as knows the fishing industry, who can determine, along with the loan board, as to the value of, say, a lobster licence in District 34, that sort of thing. So we don't want to get into a situation maybe that we got into when the Marshall decision came down, where the federal government was buying up these licences, and a lot of the licences, I think, got inflated just because the federal government was doing the buying - so we want to be careful with that. That will be another area where the loan board, as well as the person we have assessing the value of the licences, will come into play.
There's a lot of work that has to be done over the next nine months to a year, and you said yesterday the loan board - I met with them two days ago, I had about a two and a half hour meeting with them and brought them up to speed as to what our plan was as a government and a department. We committed to every meeting that they have, our staff will have - there'll be a spot on the agenda for them, for staff to update them as to where we are with the regulations, policy, all that sort of thing, and to get their input as to which way we should be going.
So I think the process within the next couple of weeks, once we get our budget finalized hopefully, we'll be moving forward with getting regulations and policies and the person in place as fast as we possibly can. I think, like I said yesterday, probably by January 1, 2009 we'll be able to take applications, and we hope by April 1, 2009 we'll be getting loans out the door. So I got the commitment from my Cabinet colleagues and my caucus and we are committed to this program. I know it has been a long time coming; I know both the critic for the NDP and the critic for the Liberal Party have brought this concern forward to me for the last two years that I've been minister. I have to congratulate the staff that I asked to come up with a proposal, a way of doing this and to work with the federal government to try to make sure that we get the security for these licences because basically, even though it's money that's coming in and coming out, it is taxpayers' money, so we have to make sure that the security is in place to protect our tax dollars that we're using.
[Page 420]
We are very, very committed to this program, I can assure you, and I know staff are very excited about it, the loan board is very excited about it, and I know staff will put every effort into it to get it done as quickly as possible. Like I said, we can't just do it quickly to get it done, we have to make sure we do it right as well - and probably, there's no doubt, there will be some growing pains when we first start; we know that. I'm looking forward to getting it going because I know that I've had a lot of interest from a lot of fishermen right around the province - wherever I go it's mentioned.
The minister's conference that we have on a yearly basis, we always get a request there for it. So I believe it's a good program. I think staff has done a great job of getting the proposal together to where we are now, and doing my proposal to my Cabinet colleagues, it went very well and was well received by my Cabinet colleagues. I see absolutely no reason why there are going to be any big, major issues with this program - it will work similar to our loans for boats, and we've been very, very successful on that. Our success on loans for boats has been great; there are very few that we have to take back.
We have the ability to be able to work with the fishermen - our staff work with them if there is an issue or problem, a bad season on lobster in a certain area - they know that, they can work with them. We have to protect taxpayers' dollars, and I think it's a good program. I think it's one that will work and I think it will be good for the fishermen and the taxpayers. Anyway, we are where we are on it and we're not backing down.
MR. BELLIVEAU: Mr. Chairman, just a point, if I could. I'm getting conflicting information on the timelines. It's my understanding that I had two hours for my questions - I would just put that to you - and the time you allotted me was to 9:10 a.m. if I'm correct. Not to dwell on this, but it doesn't add up with the time that I had last night to now, so I'll just bring that to your attention.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Just to comment on that - last night you had 20 minutes and 40 today, which would be your hour, then it was switched to the Liberal caucus and it will go back to you for another hour.
MR. BELLIVEAU: Okay, I just wanted to understand the format. I appreciate that.
Mr. Minister, before we broke last night I passed out a status report regarding the halibut research project. I don't know if you had a chance to review that, but I looked very interestingly upon aquaculture back a few years - I actually was involved in growing some longline mussels, and I did some work there for 10 or 15 years, and I participated in the wild fishery for all of my life.
[Page 421]
[8:45 a.m.]
Without getting into great detail, I think we can all agree that the wild fishery needs kind of an enhancement, or boost, because we are so dependent on the lobster fishery that we just got through talking about here. I looked through your estimates and I notice that the inland fishery, there is money allotted for fish stocking programs, salmon enhancement programs, et cetera. If you look at this report dealing with halibut, and I know the minister, along with your staff, have had an opportunity to review the Scotian Halibut plant in Clark's Harbour where - and I want to make sure I underline this - because they are basically capturing wild broodstock halibut, and they're bringing that into their facility, and they successfully learned how to spawn and grow those juveniles to maturity. I'm impressed with that and I just see an opportunity in our wild fishery. If you look at the last decade, the groundfish have declined, there's no question about that, and the boats are frequently tied to our wharves in the summer months. There's one bright spot in the wild fishery, the halibut have actually, kind of, out of this slowdown in the groundfish fleet, the wild halibut have actually successfully increased. To me you look at it, here we have the technology, we can capture the wild broodstock, bring them in. Why can't we have an enhancement project?
If you look at the scientific information here, you will see there was a tagging program done and it actually goes into great detail here. I know I'm not allowed to use props, but if you look at the information, it's very clear that these animals stay roughly within the normal traditional fishing grounds of our coastlines. Just going back here, we spend millions of dollars to enhance salmon, we spend millions of dollars to create lobster research to enhance lobsters. Here is an opportunity and here is the science that will back that statement up, that we can raise these juvenile halibut and if we had a pot of money, again, to do this, the statistics and the science will say these animals will stay on our grounds - and I encourage an extensive tagging program to prove that.
Let's say we invest $1 million. In two or three years time that generates $15 million to $20 million in a commercial value and we've employed hundreds of people around Nova Scotia communities. The key here is that we're going to diversify this industry. Instead of totally depending on the lobster industry, we're going to have another species to go in the off season. To me, this would be a win-win situation for everybody. We could create, enhance our wild halibut fishery and have the opportunity of creating a recreational halibut business. I can visualize the charter boats and all this, in the summer months, going out and catching these halibut and enhancing the wild fishery. I think it's an excellent idea and the point I'm trying to make here is that we need to direct some of this money - and if we need to get Ottawa to match it - but my question to you is, do you visualize a comprehensive enhancement program directed toward enhancing our wild halibut stocks?
MR. CHISHOLM: I strongly support the work of, as you mentioned, Scotian Halibut. They are doing some wonderful work down there. They have created a lot of good partnerships with a lot of people in the industry and they've worked very hard at what they're
[Page 422]
doing. They have some people there who are very committed to the company and to the project that they're working on.
Nova Scotia did an aquaculture trip to Ireland and Scotian Halibut joined us on that. They met quite a few people in Ireland and there were companies very interested in doing exactly what you were saying. We very much liked the idea of a study with Scotian Halibut to do enhancement work, but the issue boils down to the financial part of it. I know what Scotian Halibut Limited does and the grow-out operations that they have in Woods Harbour and the other one in Clark's Harbour and they do great work, but as I said, the issue is money. I think DFO are basically responsible for the halibut fishery and we have to have some discussions with DFO. Maybe there is some financing available we can get to help with a project like that. We'll certainly pursue that idea.
I think I mentioned yesterday that Loyola Hearn is sort of committed to coming to the province maybe sometime in June, so my plan is the three of us will have the opportunity to sit down and talk to him about some of the issues and we can certainly discuss this one with him at that time. I think it's good and we would strongly support a program such as that and we will bring it forward to the federal minister and like I said, the three of us can do the same thing as well when we do sit down with him.
MR. BELLIVEAU: Okay. If I could just move on to marketing. My understanding of Nova Scotia's fishery in the past and I'll ask you to correct me, my belief is that the provincial government over the last 10 to 15 years have weaned off the marketing money that is allotted to that. I sense that that is the wrong direction, maybe I can be corrected on that, but that's the sense I think a lot of people have. I think that's an area that we need to improve on.
Right now we're dependent on the American market with our lobster and I know the stats say 30 per cent goes to the European markets. Because of the strength of our dollar now, Mr. Minister, myself and the Critic for Fisheries and Aquaculture, the member for Digby-Annapolis, joined you in Chile.I was intrigued with one of the cities there that had over 6 million or 7 million people and to know that a lot of restaurants or clientele there never had the opportunity to see Canadian lobster and that's just one city. To me it is interesting that if we can go out and develop, for instance, not to get into the business plan, but we looked into the capability of a wholesaler bringing in lobster and holding them in a facility there.
I'm just kind of looking ahead here and saying if the provincial government designed a small refrigerated case or showcase or whatever you need to accommodate 2,000 to 3,000 pounds of lobster and go in and show people how this can be done and set up the travel airline cargo and a system of doing that, that would be a quick way of developing some markets. The opportunities I think there would be great and it would be a great shot in the arm of our traditional fisheries, which I have to say, the marketing strategy has not changed since grandfather was a boy. We continue to put our product on the back of a truck and ship
[Page 423]
it to the New England markets, New York, Boston, or Montreal and we haven't changed that strategy much. I'm asking you is there an opportunity - and you were in Chile, you saw that with your own eyes - something there, an opportunity that we should be moving in that direction, especially with the European markets and doing something like that?
MR. CHISHOLM: First of all, our marketing group is still, we still have a good group of people in our department, I think they sort of work between agriculture and fisheries. Basically, I'm not aware that there's been any decrease in our budget for the marketing people that we have. Like I said before, we do share our marketing services with Agriculture. As I mentioned in my opening remarks yesterday, we have Select Nova Scotia that was initiated about a year ago. We have applied more money to that this year, another $350,000 to that program and that program seems to be working quite well. I believe the Minister of Agriculture would agree some great strides have been made in that front over the last year.
We do have 10 seafood companies that are participating in the Select Nova Scotia program. We'd certainly like to see more. I understand what you're saying about the European market. Our department had a very strong presence at the Brussels Seafood Show and Convention in Brussels about a month ago. We had our booth set up and did as much networking as we possibly could there.
There's technology out there now that we saw in Boston at the seafood show. They are building tanks with recirculating units in them that make them - I don't know all the details of it - they can ship lobster to Europe now in containers with the recirculating system. There are companies out there doing some great work on that front and we are working with those companies to try to get them more involved in the European market.
I hear you, but what we're saying on the U.S. - I think our lobster export sales are around $400 million a year with most of that going to the U.S. I guess the quality of our lobster in Nova Scotia is such that they are in high demand in the U.S. That has always been our traditional market, we've shipped to Boston for years. But, you're quite right, we have to make sure we do as much as we can to get into these other markets. We shouldn't be depending on the U.S. market for all our exporting.
We are working on it, our marketing people are, I believe, very good at what they do. They're very active in trade shows and working with different companies to try to get them to expand to other markets. There are companies that are looking at other markets in Europe and so we will continue to work with those companies and anybody who has any ideas as to how we can better do that.
MR. BELLIVEAU: Okay, if I could just shift gears a little bit, or take you in a different direction, Mr. Minister. The Nova Scotia Community College has assisted in establishing, or conducting, aquaculture courses across Nova Scotia. In particular, if you look
[Page 424]
at Shelburne County, there was one there for a number of years and my understanding is that was cancelled.
Again, if you look at the success of aquaculture in Shelburne County, we have a large marine Irish moss grow-out site there. It's surprising how many people are involved in the salmon aquaculture. You look at Scotian Halibut Ltd., again, to me, for that course to be cancelled, I question that direction. I guess I'm asking, from an individual that comes from basically a fishery-driven community, are we sending the wrong signal by cancelling those courses in our community colleges?
MR. CHISHOLM: We were disappointed when that happened. I guess, at the time, there wasn't enough student uptake in one area to make it viable. I think what they're doing now, they have some modules that go to different communities and if they can get enough in a program, they will do it in that community, whether it be the Strait or whatever campus they can do it.
[9:00 a.m.]
At that time the aquaculture industry was sort of on a downward spin but it seems to right now be coming back a bit. I know the Agricultural College, I believe, had a bit of a program going there as well. I think they maybe still do, a degree program. There are, I guess, ways of getting it, these aquaculture programs, but it is probably not where we would like to see it be.
When we get more interest, we get more aquaculture going in the province. I think the interest will be there and that we can probably work with the industry to bring back these programs to some of the community colleges. I think there is great opportunity around the province for aquaculture and you know the amount of coastline that we have and the number of small fishing communities we have and our coastal communities.
There are some great opportunities, some great companies around now that are very knowledgeable and very good at what they do in aquaculture. Just for an example is Cooke Aquaculture. Cooke Aquaculture probably employs about 1,400 people in aquaculture operations in Atlantic Canada. As I said yesterday, we feel about 900 people in Nova Scotia work in the aquaculture industry. Cooke Aquaculture just bought, I guess not quite a year ago now, Shur-Gain Feeds in Truro and have expanded that company. They will supply all of Atlantic Canada fish farms with feed to feed these fish. They will be trucking their feed to Pictou to load on barges to send to Newfoundland and Labrador which is going to help the stevedoring group in Pictou and the trucking industry in the province. So there are some tremendous opportunities here.
You go to St. Andrews, New Brunswick, or St. Georges, New Brunswick, where Cooke Aquaculture has quite a large operation and you see a plant there with well over 100
[Page 425]
people working in that plant on two shifts a day, processing salmon and the value added that they do as well with that product. So great opportunities, I believe. There is a company that is associated with Cooke Aquaculture that do all the netting and building the nets and the cleaning of the nets. They have 50 people employed at $14 and $15 an hour. The twine and some of the rope that goes to that company in New Brunswick comes from a company in Yarmouth. So it is all tied together and I believe there is great opportunity.
The aquaculture industry, in my mind, has come a long way over the last 15 years. At one time it wasn't thought very highly of and I guess in some areas it is still not thought very highly of. People don't seem to want to have it in their backyard but we have to look at the overall picture, I believe, and try to enhance that industry as much as we can.
I just mentioned we were in Chile a few months back, the three of us. What we saw in Chile in the operations down there, a salmon farm with 750,000 fish, salmon. In Puerto Montt, where we worked out of for that week, 50,000 people are directly associated with the aquaculture industry in that area.
So you know we have to do, I believe, as much as we can to promote our aquaculture industry. I also mentioned in my opening remarks yesterday that the young people who are associated with the aquaculture industry, when I go around to these farms and see the young people who are involved, 75 per cent of the people who work in the aquaculture industry are under 40 years old. So it's the biologists and the veterinarians and the people who are going into those fields who are coming back. I know I had a girl in my area, she is in Prince Edward Island training to be a fish veterinarian. She was out the last couple of summers in British Columbia working in the aquaculture industry. We've come a long way over the last few years, just with the monitoring program that we have in our department. I don't think there's one any better in Canada, that I know of, with the work that they do and these are not guys we picked off the street. They're people who are well trained, well educated, and are very committed to the environmental process and making sure that things are done environmentally right. They do a tremendous job of monitoring the sites that we do have in the province and they will continue to do so. In my mind, if we needed more people to put in that program, I would certainly be after my Cabinet colleagues to ensure that we have enough money to be able to do that but, as it stands right now, we have a good process.
The companies that we have in Nova Scotia see our guys out on the sites monitoring, even taking samples from the bottom to be analyzed, so I believe we're doing things right in aquaculture. We have two of the best fish veterinarians in Canada. We're very fortunate that we've been able to keep them. I mean CFIA and there are any number of provinces in Canada that are fighting and trying to get them all the time, away from us but they have committed to Nova Scotia and they're here and they're very good. So in my mind we have some opportunities. If we don't seize these opportunities, we're going to lose them. Countries like Chile, over the long term will be feeding us our fish. Right now 43 per cent
[Page 426]
of the fish that we eat worldwide is aquaculture fish and in a few years time that will be over 50 per cent.
So we have an opportunity to create jobs in our communities, we have an opportunity to enhance a lot of our coastal communities, and I believe we've got to grab on to that opportunity. If we don't, like I said, Chile will be supplying us all our fish. If we can get the capacity of our aquaculture up, there are processing jobs that are going to be available as well, but we have to get the capacity to be able to do that. I think right now we're not too far off that. There is a small plant down in Port La Tour, I think it is, that's now processing some aquaculture fish that's being grown in Nova Scotia and other provinces. I won't say which ones but in other provinces. So there's a small plant in Port La Tour that's doing some processing.
So if you can go into a community like Shelburne and start up a fish plant that's going to employ 75 to 100 people processing salmon, I'll tell you it's a good opportunity. I look back a few years when we had Scotia Rainbow down in the Arichat area and really that was a good grow site. There might have been some managerial problems that caused the company to go down but, as far as growing fish and the processing part of it, they did a great job, they had 75 people working there processing fish.
So there are great opportunities and, like I said, aquaculture is not what it was 15 years ago. The technology and the different types of cages, all that sort of thing, have changed. They use cameras for feeding them now. The technology that they have is just tremendous. They can even tell by watching the fish on the cameras underwater how much food they should have at a certain time, whether they need it or they don't need it. It's not the same as it was 15 years ago for sure. So, anyway, I guess I rambled on a bit there but I believe very passionately in this aquaculture and the need to try to somehow get our communities to understand where we're at and the benefits that will arise out of this if we can continue doing it.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Excuse me, the time has expired for the NDP caucus. I'm going to turn the microphone over to the Liberal caucus.
The honourable member for Digby-Annapolis.
MR. HAROLD THERIAULT: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Mr. Minister. I would also like to thank the member for Shelburne, I have a great respect for the member for Shelburne and what he says about the fishery. His family and my family have been in this fishery probably before this great House of Assembly was even built in this province. So, when he speaks about the fishery, I listen and I want to thank him for that. Also, Mr. Minister, I want to thank you and I want to tell you one thing I want to thank you for is what you've done in the budget this year to help our young people to get into the fishery. You mentioned that I brought it up to you two years ago. Well, I brought it up to the
[Page 427]
former minister before you. Whether he ever told you that or not I don't know, but it was certainly brought up to him.
MR. CHISHOLM: Well, he was quite supportive when I brought my proposal to Cabinet I can tell you.
MR. THERIAULT: Anyway, I want to thank you for that. It's something that we've needed for a long while, to help our young people out, and I want to get into a few questions about that. Probably, maybe, you'll be repeating yourself but I don't think so. The first question I would like to ask is, can you try to explain to me what you believe a first-time buyer will be? Have you got that fathomed out yet, what a first-time buyer will be and, if not, can you give me your idea of what first-time buyers will be?
MR. CHISHOLM: We haven't got that tied down yet, that's for sure, that will be part of our policies, when we determine what they're going to be, and our regulations. I guess a first-time buyer could be a family member who wanted to buy the family business, you know, maybe he has been working on the boat for so many years; or it's somebody who has been working on a boat that the owner wants to sell. So I guess there are a number of - and, you know, I guess we would have to look at what licences they've held, licences before, and all that sort of thing. A lot of that has to be determined so, you know, that will be worked on over the next little while.
I guess we're open to suggestions as well. If there are some thoughts that you have on that, we'll certainly entertain them. I guess we would be looking at people who haven't held a licence before but have the ability to, or have worked on a boat, like I said, if he was a crewman on a boat and now wants to buy that enterprise, then we would look at that; family operations that the father wants to sell to his son or daughter, those sort of things. Anyway, that's yet to be determined and we'll work on that to make sure that it's the best for everyone.
MR. THERIAULT: Why I brought that up, Mr. Minister, is because for the past 10 to 12, well, over the past five to 10 years, five years, there have been these so-called trust agreements, that the only way our young people could get into the fishery was probably to get into these trust agreements, and you know how they work.
MR. CHISHOLM: Yes.
MR. THERIAULT: Somebody is fronting the money and keeping control of things, you know, for as long as they want. So that's how a lot of our young people have got into this fishery. It has been stated the last little while by our federal Minister of Fisheries and Oceans that these young people have to find a way to get out of these trust agreements. They have the next few years to try to do this.
[Page 428]
[9:15 a.m.]
Without being able to borrow the money, they haven't been able to do this. So, now the loan board is opening up and this is a chance for them to receive some funding, or go after funding, to be able to buy these rigs on their own. If they are able to do that - but really, on paper, in the offices of the Department of Fisheries, they're not first-time buyers. They've owned the licence in the Department of Fisheries, but in reality, they haven't owned this licence.
MR. CHISHOLM: Yes.
MR. THERIAULT: The person who fronted them the money from wherever, whatever, owns that licence legally. So, would this possibly be in the plans of being able to help these trust agreement people get these licences on their own through the Nova Scotia Fisheries Loan Board?
MR. CHISHOLM: Well, right now, staff are looking at that very issue. We know of the trust agreement situation. I'm not sure when the date was that these trust agreements had to be declared to the federal government. There should be a list of them sometime soon, I would think. We're certainly aware of those agreements and the situation they've created. We will review that portion of it to see if it can be incorporated into the development of our loan plan.
Really, the person really hasn't held that licence. Like you said, the person who has fronted the money for the enterprise has ownership of the licences. So, if somebody like that would come in, to me, they would be a first-time entrant and they would probably qualify. We'd have to work that out. As we move along, we'll keep you both posted as to where we are in the process so you will know all the steps.
MR. THERIAULT: There are several different kinds of trust agreements. There are neighbour trust agreements, family trust agreements, corporate trust agreements. Somehow, someone else is attached to that licence and they really, the first-time buyer, in the Department of Fisheries, is a first-time buyer because the licence is in their name, but in reality, in the back rooms, another person has control of the licences.
MR. CHISHOLM: We have discussed this with staff and they are, right now, looking at that as we move along and develop the program. Hopefully in the next few months, we'll have some information on who will be eligible and all that sort of thing.
MR. THERIAULT: Another point I would like to make on that too, in reality, a lot of this was caused by the federal government. I'm not putting all the blame on the federal government for the high price of licences. There was a lot going on to make that happen, including the 1999 Marshall decision, where this all started happening. So, when that
[Page 429]
happened, the federal government stepped in and have helped First Nations people and I praise them for that. They've done all they could to help satisfy the Supreme Court ruling and they had to do that.
In the meantime, it's got our people, our fishermen, into this pinch of being into trust agreements. It was all caused from that.
So, I would like to see the federal government have a role in this loan board, in the Nova Scotia Fisheries Loan Board. I don't see why the federal government couldn't help with financing, because I know that 10 per cent of boats and enterprises change hands in this province, in the inshore fishery especially. That's 10 per cent yearly and that's quite a figure. I don't know what that will average out to, probably about $500,000 per boat and 10 per cent of the fleet, which is 30-some hundred boats - so what I'm getting at, it's going to be a lot more money, I believe, than the $75 million that you're talking about.
The question is, could the federal government be approached on this? I think we, as a province, especially your department, is going to be pinched for financing when this kicks into gear, 10 per cent of these boats start changing hands, plus all the ones that are in these trust agreements, and we don't know that number yet, but there are quite a few. I think, to get it all kicked off, it may take more than the $75 million that we'll have to do this. Can the federal government be approached on this issue?
In reality, the federal government was part of making this happen, along with the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia. They made these trust agreements happen and I think we need help. If they're saying to the fishermen, you have so many years to get out of this, how about some funding to help these people to get them out? Is that something that can be done?
MR. CHISHOLM: Certainly, yes, we've already brought it up with Minister Hearn. He didn't say yes, but he didn't say no either. We'll keep the dialogue going with them at the federal level just to see where and if we can access anything from them.
I'm not a financial expert, but I think the way these loans we have for boats now, it's just a - I think it's $88 million we have as a portfolio for our Fisheries Loan Board. I guess it doesn't really affect the bottom line of the province's finances, it's a loan board. I'm not sure how that works, but it seems to work quite well and I'm sure the financing will be there.
We don't know, we're just guessing as to what the uptake will be in the first year, the first five years. That was just sort of a guesstimate at $75 million, it could be more, it may not be that much. It's a program, we certainly support any help we can get from the federal government and we'll take it, but, really, right today, this is a made-in-Nova Scotia plan, made in Nova Scotia to work with the loan board and it's our program. But, as I said, we'll take any financial help we can get from the federal government.
[Page 430]
I believe, as a government, we're committed to make this work. I know my department staff are committed to making this work, I know the Premier has indicated he wants to make it work and the Minister of Finance. I believe the commitment is there by government to do it, to get it done. Whatever the uptake is, we'll have to handle it.
We'll keep pounding on the feds, trying to get a little bit of their money, but if we don't, I'm sure that we will be able to move this forward - we're committed to it.
I am told, too, as it goes along there will be payments going out but then there will be payments coming in, so it just recycles. It's money going out, coming in - similar to the boats that we have now. Like I said before, we have very, very little losses there; we don't very often seize a boat. So we have had great success at that and I don't see any reason why we wouldn't have the same success with the loans for licences program. The biggest thing is, I guess, with the federal government, that we have to - I think we pretty well have it tied down, but there are some loose ends - there is the security for the loans through the licences, and we are working with the federal government on that one, and I am sure we could come up with a reasonable solution to it.
Like I said, we have been very, very successful. I believe the loan board has done a tremendous job for the fishermen in the province, as well as the taxpayers of the province. So I don't see anything that will change that. Like I said, we are committed to doing this and my hope is - and I believe it will happen - that by January 1, 2009, we will be taking applications and by April 1st we will be putting money out the door for fishermen to buy licences and enterprises. So that is our time frame and we are going to do everything possible to get there in that time frame.
MR. THERIAULT: Thank you. I still believe that we will need the federal government there for backup because you mentioned, Mr. Minister, that this is a made-in- Nova Scotia program, but the program we are making here in Nova Scotia, we are buying into something that wasn't made by Nova Scotia - it was made by the federal government. So the federal government has to be there for backup at least, because I still feel that the $75 million to clean up this trust agreement mess is going to be a lot higher than that, plus the 10 per cent that exchanges hands anyway.
One more question on that. It mentioned new species licences, to be able to purchase new species licences - can you elaborate on that? The new species, would that be existing experimental licences that are happening? There are a few experimental licences out there now and I suppose it would be anything that is coming on, that may show up, that we could fish for, but would that cover any experimental licences out there now, like the rock crab licence, Jonah crab licences? They are all experimental and they are on the markets for probably $100,000 or whatever - so does that cover experimental licences that exist now?
[Page 431]
MR. CHISHOLM: Well, I guess the way we feel it would work is that if you are a lobster fisherman, and all you had was a lobster licence, lobster quota - not quota, there are no quotas in lobster, but you wanted to buy a scallop licence, that would qualify, and another one would be crab. Snow crab would be another one, if you wanted to buy into the snow crab operation or a tuna quota, that sort of thing.
Experimental, I am not quite sure. It could happen, I guess, but we have to probably look at that to see if when they say "experimental" it may be just a temporary thing. But anyway, that will be part of our discussions and all of those issues will be discussed and implemented as we move forward. But that is the way we see it now. If an operator has just, say, the lobster and he wants to get a scallop licence that was available, he could purchase that and that would qualify.
[9:30 a.m.]
MR. THERIAULT: So if you hold a core licence, even just one single licence, and you need to get into other fisheries, that is a good idea, that gives you a chance to diversify and to fish for other species . . .
MR. CHISHOLM: It gives you a chance to diversify and to fish for other species and to fish longer and not just depend on the lobster fishery alone. So anyway, those are our thoughts on that, and I think that's a good opportunity for a lot of fishermen, if those licences can become available, they'll have the opportunity to be able to access money to be able to purchase them.
MR. THERIAULT: Thank you, Mr. Minister. There are probably other questions on the loan board, but I think in the next few months, along with the member for Shelburne, I think that if we could have input into that as this unfolds, I think it would be great for the whole province and all the fisheries involved.
MR. CHISHOLM: And we'll certainly do that. We'll have regular updates with you and the member for Shelburne and we will be looking for your input.
MR. THERIAULT: Thank you. Now if we have five or six hours I'll bring up the word "seal" - but I've got to bring it up, I said when I came to the House this year, I said I'm not going to mention it. I said that the federal minister and the provincial minister of Newfoundland and Labrador have done a good job this Spring of handling it and I praised them for what they've done. It has been quite a fiasco and we know that that is a growing problem for this province, for all the Atlantic Provinces. We know what needs to be done. When you've lived on the water for 15 generations, as my family has - and the family of the member for Shelburne, too - you can talk to anybody on this coast, anywhere on the coast, and it is a huge problem and growing.
[Page 432]
I'm sure that in time nature will take care of it. I don't know how long that will be, it could go the next generation without nature taking care of it, but I think in time a disease will come in those animals and we'll lose them all, and that'll be a sin. When you have 850 million people on this Earth who are hungry today and that kind of protein is out there that can be used, there's got to be a way that that can be used - anyway, I'll get into that later.
I want to get into a person who is creating a big problem - I did a resolution yesterday in the House on him. This man states that there were this many seals before. He said when John Cabot came here there were twice as many seals as there are today. I want to start off with this, and I'll tell you the number out there is roughly 400,000 huge grey seals and there are probably 6 million or better of other seals on our shores. So we have close to 7 million seals out here in our waters. You can take a pen and paper and figure that right up, just even 10 pounds apiece to feed them - figure it all out, it's just mind-boggling. But I won't get into that, that has all been recorded, all those numbers.
I want to get back to Mr. Watson saying how many seals there were here when John Cabot came over, and a little after. I just read a book called Sable - pick it up anywhere and read it - and they put a man out on Sable Island approximately 200 years ago, in 1800 it was, in 1802 or 1801, and a lot of ships were going ashore out there. There were no navigation aids then, so the government in their wisdom put some people out there. They had a crew out there of eight or nine people and a couple of families on Sable Island. He kept a daily record, every day he wrote in his journal and I read the whole thing. It was pretty interesting because I keep a journal. I've kept a journal since 1974, every day - fish are caught, where, what the weather is doing, who I talked to, it is interesting, and now, if I miss doing it a day, I feel guilty.
Anyway, I read this book and they had supplies enough for their own food. When they went to Sable Island they had food enough until they learned to get the gardens going out there and growing more in the summer. If they would have a shipwreck there, they had extra people which they really didn't count on, so what they would do is go hunt some seals for food - the best kind of food. So every once in a while in his journal he would say how many, he would go to this point or that point or he described all around the island through the whole book - every point.
I got to know the whole island by reading that book. There would be 150 seals on this point, 100 on that point today, as low as 20 and 30, never over 150 on a point, but if you added all the points together I figured up about 2,000 seals, grey seals, on Sable Island in 1800. Today there are 125,000 seals there - horses, too, they're still there. The same amount of horses are there today as there were in 1800. That's kept a good balance, but those 2,000 seals that were there in 1800 turned into 125,000 today. Now unless that man was lying in his journal, his private journal, that's the truth. So get the book and read it and you figure it out as you're reading it how many seals are on that island.
[Page 433]
Mr. Watson says that when John Cabot came here a few years before that, there were twice as many seals there as there are here today. You know, I have nothing against Mr. Watson, I think he's probably a fine man, but what he's doing, he's not only trying to save the seals but, in trying to save the seals, he's harming the people in Atlantic Canada by not letting us work to find that true balance there again to help bring our ground fishery back so our people can survive here in the coastal communities. By him trying to save the seals, he's driving our people away and there are 850 million people on this Earth who are hungry, too, so with all this protein out here, millions and millions of seals that nature will wipe out after a while - I know it's going to happen, it's a shame. Somehow we can be doing something with that, I'm sure.
I want to get to Mr. Watson again. When Mr. Watson was a child he was traumatized as a five-year old child. He lived in St. Andrew's, New Brunswick, and when he was little he would go aboard the boats with the fishermen, probably his father I believe it was - this is documented - and he watched them kill a seal and he watched them kill a porpoise for food, but he was traumatized by it because he still speaks about it today.
Now Mr. Watson is using this thing of what happened to him years ago to make him rich today, to make that whole organization rich. When I was a child, five years old, I had seen something that traumatized me for quite a little while. I was in my uncle's barnyard, I was five years old, and he brought a chicken out of the chicken house. I never saw anything like this before in my life, I can still see it, I can still picture it. He grabbed that chicken by the feet and put its head on the chopping block and cut its head off and let it go and it ran right up over top of me. Blood all over me that went everywhere, and that wasn't bad enough, had boiling water there and after that chicken died down a little bit, still running around the yard, took that chicken and put it down in the boiling hot water.
I was traumatized. I didn't eat chicken for a few days, maybe a few years, I can't remember, I grew up and I realized that's survival, it's part of survival. But if I carried that with me to today, I could have went and got me a bus, a black bus, named it the Feathery Mowat, and run across this country and I could put every chicken farmer out of business if I would have let that bother me today, being traumatized by seeing that chicken. Mr. Watson is using that and he's using this as a gain, and I want to read you something here and I'm going to table a document. Am I taking up too much time, Mr. Chairman?
MR. CHAIRMAN: You're doing fine, member.
MR. THERIAULT: This was an interview with the late Barbara Frum of Mr. Paul Watson in 1978. Probably you fellows all know about this but I want to make sure this is recorded today in Hansard. I'm just going to read a little bit of it and you can take your time and read the rest yourself. This interview recorded on CBC Radio in 1978 goes a long way towards revealing the motivations behind the activist groups that campaign against the
[Page 434]
Canadian seal hunt. The interviewer is the late Barbara Frum and the person being interviewed is Sea Shepherd founder and leader, Paul Watson.
"BF: Mr. Watson, how easy is it to raise money against the hunt?
PW: Well, I think that of all the animals in the world or any environmental problem in the world the harp seal is the easiest issue to raise funds on. Greenpeace has always managed to raise more money on the seal issue, for the campaigns, than has actually been spent on the campaigns themselves. The seal hunt has always turned a profit for the Greenpeace Foundation. And then other organizations like IFAW, API, Fund for Animals, also make a profit off the seal hunt.
BF: Are you suggesting that they fight for seals rather than other animals because it's easy, or easier to raise money that way, or because it's a profit maker for them?
PW: Well it's definitely because it's easier to make money because it does make a profit because there are over a thousand animals on the endangered species list and the seal isn't one of them, the harp seal isn't one of them.
BF: Did anyone in Greenpeace ever express that aloud, that it was easy to make some hay on seal hunt so let's get into that?
PW: Well, a lot of people have done that. See the thing is the seals are very easy to exploit as an image. We have posters, we have buttons, we have shirts, all of which portray the head of a baby seal with tears coming out if its eyes. Baby seals are always crying because the salt tears keep their eyes from freezing. But they have this image - they're baby animals, they're beautiful, and because of that, coupled with the horror of a sealer hitting them over the head with a club, it's an image that just goes right to the heart of animal lovers all over North America. And now we have a dozen people this year from Greenpeace California - I mean they're coming from the highest standard of living region in North America - they're traveling to the place with the lowest income per year on this continent telling them not to kill seals because they are cute. But they're not an endangered species."
[9:45 a.m.]
Now, you can go on later and read the rest of this document. That's where Mr. Paul Watson is coming from and it's all recorded about this trauma he had when he was five years old, the same as me with the chicken.
[Page 435]
I want to touch on Hay Island here a minute. I mean I was all for - I won't go on about Paul Watson any more. We know where that has come from. We know the federal government and the provincial government in Newfoundland have done a good job this Fall and for what Paul Watson did, I don't know that Paul Watson will ever come back here. I know he won't be welcomed by myself, that's for sure, but if he comes back, we'll deal with it as it happens.
I want to go to Hay Island for a minute. Hay Island is a place where these seals gather, just like Sable Island, and it was suggested this past year that we try to go there and bring some of these seals down. Like I said before, what Paul Watson is saying, the ugliest thing you could see is a human being going up to an animal, I don't care if it's little or big or what, and beating it over the head with a stick. It wasn't as bad as the axe across the chicken's neck though, but that's a terrible, terrible image to have and I didn't like that myself. That turns me off to see that, that's not a good thing to see, but Paul Watson will always use that, you know.
So with what happened on Hay Island, the question is who regulated that to happen like that? Was it the Department of Fisheries and Oceans of this country that set the regulations on what happened on Hay Island?
MR. CHISHOLM: Is it the issue with using the clubs that you're asking?
MR. THERIAULT: Yes, with the club and not even to use the hack pick.
MR. CHISHOLM: I guess the issue with clubbing the seals or the killing of seals is, you know, it's a hot topic, no two ways about it. Like you said, the images are there and that's what they use. I guess the issue of whether to use a club or a gun out on Hay Island was one that was, you know - there was a fear that we were hunting on an island where there are some rocks and the fear was that there could be ricochets. You get 10 or 12 people out on a small island with rifles, you know, the fear is that somebody would get hurt, or God forbid die, because of that.
The issue of the clubbing of seals is one that has been agreed to by the American Veterinarian Service. The Canadian Veterinarian Service has agreed that this is a humane way of managing the seal herd in the killing of seals. The sealers are trained under the direction of, I believe, DFO as well as Veterinarian Services. There's a certain way you do it that is instant and all indications are that - I mean when you get the American Veterinarian Service saying that it's humane and the Canadian one as well - they feel it is a humane way of doing it. Like I said, it's not the prettiest picture that you can have in the back of your mind and that's what the activists against the seal hunt use against us. It's a process that has been used for many years, on the Newfoundland seal hunt for years that's all they've done for the killing of seals.
[Page 436]
There are pros and cons on each side but I guess the concern that we did have, DFO had as well as ourselves, was that the use of rifles on Hay Island may be too dangerous. The sealers who were on Hay Island were all trained, professional sealers, trained in the proper way of managing the hunt and doing the hunt. It is a tough question, but I agree with you, we do have to figure out a better way.
I certainly agree with everything you've said on the Paul Watson thing and the number of seals. We even think there are probably more seals on Sable Island than you mentioned, probably up to 300,000 seals in the Sable Island area. There are a large number of seals in the Hay Island area and you were absolutely right, both those areas are areas where they congregate. It's the only area really where if you're going to do a sustainable hunt, try to manage the herd, those are two areas that have to be looked at.
So, we did have quite an interesting late winter when we did get permission to go to Hay Island. There were a number of people who certainly didn't want us to do that, but anyway, I commend our Minister of Environment for allowing us to do at least a one year hunt. It was not the easiest and I want to thank my colleague, the Minister of Agriculture, too, I happened to be out of town at the Boston Seafood Show when this all took place and he was the acting minister and did an incredible job with some interviews he had with some of the local media. It was an interesting time, I can tell you, but if we ever expect the food fishery, our ground fishery to come back, we have to do something to manage the population of seals.
I look at my own niche in Nova Scotia, just the Canso area for an example. Sixteen or 18 years ago the moratorium came on, back in 1992, I believe it was. The moratorium came on the groundfishery in that area and at that time DFO was speculating that it would be three to five years and the fishery would be back. Now here we are 16 years later and absolutely no recovery of the fish stocks in those areas. The fish stocks that are there that they are seeing are so polluted with parasites from the seals, the seal worm, they're really not worth going for. Stocks just haven't recovered either and I think one of the biggest reasons is because the seal population has exploded in those areas.
I have fishermen in those areas who used to put traps out for herring or mackerel as bait for lobster traps and they can't do that anymore, the nets are torn to pieces and their traps are damaged, torn to pieces, so it's just not worthwhile. They are taking in bait now from other provinces, frozen, for 65 to 70 cents a pound where probably if they were fishing on their own it would cost them 25 or 30 cents a pound. We do have to somehow try to manage the seal herds. I know it's a difficult issue and there are a tremendous number of people who are against it. I think there is a lot of opportunity in seal as well, we should be able to market the whole seal.
I know Denny Morrow and his group were at one time, and I think they still are, very active in trying to market more of the seal products and they're doing quite a good job of it.
[Page 437]
A couple of years ago they tried to send a container or two to Korea and China and they couldn't get enough seals to fill the container because we didn't have access to Hay Island or we didn't have access to Sable Island where they do congregate.
Anyway, like I said, it was an interesting winter as far as the seal went and I agree, we have to figure out a way that we can get to Hay Island and these places without the controversy. The seal hunt is not only a management thing, these people who do sealing have been doing it for years, it's part of their livelihood. They know their business, they know how to do it, they've been trained to do it and there's no reason why we shouldn't be managing the herds better than we are. Somehow we have to get the public to understand that.
I think, overall, there were people who certainly were against the seal hunt, but there was a lot of support in the Province of Nova Scotia for what we were doing. A lot of the local fishing communities around Cape Breton were very happy to see that we were doing what we were doing. A lot of the associations have indicated to us that they're very happy as to us getting access to Hay Island. It wasn't easy, it was a battle, but we got there and we'll see where it takes us from here on in, but I think we have to keep working at it.
MR. THERIAULT: I think what we have to work at, Mr. Minister, is this perception that's going on. In this day and age there is a way that we can bring those animals down more humanely and that's the image we have to show out there. It's the only thing that I had negative back, was that image that Mr. Watson shows out there, you know. But then again, they still show the little white pup being killed that hasn't been killed since 1986, for 20 years or more. We have to get away somehow from that image of the baseball bat, I think.
[10:00 a.m.]
Another thing is we have a wonderful product there of protein, beautiful protein, the best on Earth, seal meat with the Omega 3 oils in it. It's the best protein, it's a better protein than moose meat or beef. The Inuit, that's all they ate, they lived up there in 40 or 50 degrees below zero and ate seal meat, that's what kind of protein that is, to sustain people. With the hunger that is going on in the world, maybe Paul Watson should rig that Farley Mowatt up for a freezer ship and fill that full of meat and take that to where people are hungry and paint her white instead of black. I think Mr. Watson would be praised around the world. Maybe he wouldn't make quite as much money at it, but at least he would do something good other than portray us as barbaric people here in Atlantic Canada, just killing animals for the fun of it, and the fur, and that's what we have to get away from.
Anyway, has the department looked at, I know there was a little debate going on in Newfoundland and Labrador a while back about doing away with a hack pick up there and they said they needed it, it was a safety reason because they used it to haul themselves out. You could certainly carry a hack pick with you, but still have a humane way of putting those animals down. Maybe we could use the tasers that we have, just give them a little more
[Page 438]
voltage, I'm sure that would do it, there has to be a way. Has the department looked into or had any talks with Newfoundland and Labrador or the federal government on this issue?
MR. CHISHOLM: We haven't had any real discussions with any other governments or provinces on the issue, but we know we do have to talk about it and come up with a different way. Then again, it's still not going to go away I don't think. Maybe we can get rid of that image but they will still take us to task for even killing the seals. It's a tough one, really, on Hay Island at least, we felt that the best way to do it was with the club and not with guns because of the hazards, the dangers. But, you're absolutely right, we have to figure out a way that we can do it and we will talk to the other provinces, especially Newfoundland and Labrador where they're pretty active in the seal hunt, as to what can or cannot be done. We will do that.
MR. THERIAULT: I believe in the aquaculture industry now and probably you know this, Mr. Minister, even the fish that are taken out of the water, and are taken live out of aquaculture sites, and they are being shocked before they touch them with a knife or anything else. Maybe that's something that could be looked at if you could stun that animal more humanely before it is touched with anything. We do it with the fish, why not with the seals?
MR. CHISHOLM: We could get a bunch of stun guns or something, tasers.
MR. THERIAULT: I think probably that's enough on the seal. All I want to say is that the negative I heard back from Hay Island was the image that is being shown. If we can turn that around and show that this can be done more humanely and use this meat for a good thing, if we can show that, I think probably that will take a lot of wind out of Paul Watson's sails. If he ever sails back here again, which maybe he won't, he probably would have no place to lay his boat anyway if he does bring a new one back. I don't think he's too welcome up in the Gulf area, that was shown, that's for sure. Anyway, I won't go on too much more about that, but I just needed to say that.
I'd like to talk on Workers' Compensation for a few minutes, in the Nova Scotia fishery, especially the inshore fishery. Workers' compensation is quite a tax burden to the fishermen, they are up there in the big numbers now of paying a big share. Not to take away from anybody else in Nova Scotia that has to pay workers' compensation, any other businesses, but when you're in the fishery and you're competing with other provinces next to you for the same catch, all around Nova Scotia, particularly New Brunswick.
The fishermen here, it's mandatory to have workers' compensation on their people, if there are more than two aboard the boat, three. In New Brunswick, the fishermen don't have to pay workers' compensation until there are 25 aboard - 25 people before it kicks in to be mandatory in New Brunswick. You have fishermen in Nova Scotia paying as high as $8,000, $9,000 per year to this tax and most of the fishermen have private insurance too, that is better coverage. The workers' compensation only covers them when they step aboard the
[Page 439]
boat. When they step off that boat onto the wharf, they're not covered anymore, where the private insurance will cover them for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year - no matter where they are, as long as they're on Earth, and for probably 15 per cent of the cost of what workers' compensation is.
It's a big thing with fishermen and I hear it all the time - every day. When they're out in the Bay of Fundy or up in the Gulf competing next door to the New Brunswick fishermen, same fish, same catch, same price, same market, but yet, we're burdened. Our fishermen are burdened with this huge bill every year. They have to pay on income, I believe now it's something like $7 or $8 per $100. Every $100 you make you have to pay nearly $8 for this compensation that covers you aboard the boat.
Anyway, that has been brought to my attention many times. I'd just like to bring it to - I know it's not in your department, but where it's fishermen and the inshore fishery, have you ever, ever sat down with the Workers' Compensation Board or the minister of that department and discussed this to see if something more fair could be done to lessen that tax burden on our fishermen versus New Brunswick fishermen? Because it's just not a fair ball game, that's for sure. Have you ever discussed that with that department?
MR. CHISHOLM: No, not really. We haven't had any discussion with the Minister of Labour and Workforce Development, I guess it's called now. It may not be a bad idea that we do that. So, if you were to write me a letter on that issue, I will bring it up with the minister responsible and try to set up a meeting and maybe send you an invite as well. Together, maybe the three of us, if Sterling wanted to go as well, we could maybe go to the compensation board and make a presentation to that effect.
I guess we can do that. So, we'll endeavor to do that, you just write me a letter indicating some of the problems and we'll try to set up a meeting as soon as possible. I certainly agree with you, I have heard it on the wharves as well, the cost of insurance. I was in Cape Breton just awhile back and some of the fishermen there brought it up. I think if there's over three in a boat they have to have it, they're required to have it. That's a new regulation that I think came in a couple of years ago or three or four years ago. I'm not sure if it has been in place that long. Anyway, we will certainly have that meeting set up to meet with them and relay the issues to the Workers' Compensation Board to see if there is anything . . .
MR. CHAIRMAN: Excuse me, the time is expired for the Liberal caucus.
The honourable member for Shelburne.
MR. STERLING BELLIVEAU: Mr. Chairman, I wanted to pick back up on the Nova Scotia Community College but the member for Digby-Annapolis got my mind thinking about the seals and I just want to touch on that before the next half hour expires. I just want to
[Page 440]
make note, I, too, grew up in a coastal community and I realized that my parents, in the community, produced cattle and hogs and I can still visualize seeing the hind quarter of a deer or a hog on the northern side of my parent's home. After a period of time, I realized that that is how we survived. They raised seven children and was I interested in participating in the harvesting of those animals? No. I was a child and I had the same experience as the member for Digby-Annapolis.
I realize that that was a part of our culture and I just want to point out, Mr. Minister, that we go to great lengths of having lotteries for moose draws, the Nova Scotia Government does. We have great recreational use, particularly in my county, when it comes to deer harvesting. We take it for granted.
A quick little story about my breakfast this morning. I had bacon and eggs. You know the hen participated in that lunch but the hog was committed to it. (Laughter) You have to use a little humour sometimes, but not to make a joke of this particular harvest. This is a part of our culture and it bothers me to have - and I wish I had the pictures here, Mr. Minister, and I can produce them - we talked earlier about halibut and I am talking about a 200 pound, beautiful fish that we produce in our Atlantic Ocean was stripped, right to the core, and it looks literally like an apple core, where seals have basically done their job on that fish and the fishermen haul their longlines in and this is the apple-core effect. This is what fishermen are seeing. The population of seals have increased. I do understand the visual effects and I do think, and I made note of, we need to find a different way, a humane approach to harvesting these seals, and there is.
I am not too familiar with the slaughterhouses we use for harvesting cattle but I understand that there is no gun used. It is a high-pressure air gun. I am not a great technician or an engineer but I think that we can move, and I will put that out there as a challenge to your department, to put this option out there, make it available, that we can design a high-pressure gun that isn't a projectile, it is just a simple mechanism that forces a lever out that only extends out one or two inches out of the barrel, the same as they put down cattle. This is not a projectile that goes out and I know the danger that the seal harvesters feel when they are using high-powered rifles. I think that is an option and I think it is a very humane option.
I think we need to manage our resources as they are having an effect on our groundfish. Is it the total collapse of the fisheries? No, and I will be the first one to admit that. I also think that as Nova Scotians - and I was basically challenged when I took on this role and an individual said to me, you will never have the support of your Party when it comes to a seal harvest. I made one phone call this last session when a unanimous resolution went through this House supporting a humane seal harvest on Hay Island. It went through unanimously, all Parties. I made one phone call, Mr. Minister, and I had the pleasure of informing that individual that they should check the paper the next day and there was unanimous support, so I made my point. Anyway, I want to move on, I just wanted to get that on the record because time does fly by when you are addressing these issues.
[Page 441]
[10:15 a.m.]
If I can just take you back to when my time ran out, expired, I was talking about the aquaculture courses that were severed off in our community colleges. I want to thank you for actually making the case. If you go back and read the transcripts, you actually made the case for having that course restored to Nova Scotia Community College so I thank you for that and I encourage whoever is reading this in the future to go back and hear your comments.
I just want to spend some time here - the federal government, again, is putting out these messages that the fishermen need to be highly trained; they must have medical certificates; they must have navigation skills; and all these requirements to meet the safety standards are being pushed down from Ottawa with suggested dates of one, two, three years down the road that everybody has to be registered. Everybody has to participate or else somewhere along the line you're going to pay the price and you don't get this licence, you don't get this inspection, whatever.
As a young man I participated in our fisheries and I can remember the community hall in my community - this was similar right across Nova Scotia - if I wanted to take a net mending course, I could take it in my local hall. If I wanted to take a navigation course, there were actually trailers brought in and we took the course during the down time of our fishing season. I'll challenge you, Mr. Minister, this is one of the problems with our education system. I give a classic example of that, our education has never tried to adapt to our culture, especially when it comes to fishing communities.
I'm using this as an example because we're asking these individuals to be highly trained professionals and they have no trouble going to take these navigational courses. The problem is that when you have individuals like this who have a mortgage, a family and they're being asked to go to great lengths to travel, to tie up anywhere from 8, 10, 15 weeks for these particular courses, I think that's totally unfair.
Look at the particular industries in that community, for instance, and I can go and I can set up the modules that will fit in Shelburne County and say, we're going to have two to four weeks in late January, early February - the down time of our season in our industry - and I can put two to four weeks into late September, early October and it fits perfectly. If we had those courses again in our local communities nearer where these people live, it would encourage people to go out and participate and be trained.
To me, this is where the message has to come from, your department, saying, listen, we need to go back and redraft this educational system and we need to get the courses in our local community colleges. Why not have them in our town halls? Why not have them in our libraries? I think a lot of people can benefit from that. I'm just going to ask for your response on that idea.
[Page 442]
MR. CHISHOLM: I guess when they shut down the - I shouldn't say shut down, they still have the modules going on the training aspect of it from the community colleges, that's basically, I think, the direction they've been trying to go. Now we have to move ahead with that same direction to bring the training programs into the communities. I think that was the plan when the Shelburne Community College stopped that program. Basically they stopped it because there wasn't much uptake.
We'll work with the School of Fisheries and the Department of Education to try to move that forward and get more of these training programs into the communities, like the community centres and the community halls. (Interruption) I'm told, too, that we can probably get a meeting with the principal of the School of Fisheries and maybe the Strait Area Campus, Bert Lewis, I think, is one of the guys and invite the critics along and we can have some dialogue on it, some discussion, to see if we can't speed that up. I know that's the direction that they were supposed to be taking.
MR. BELLIVEAU: Again, the honourable member for Digby-Annapolis raised the issue of workers' compensation and, to me, again, I think I put a question or a resolution in the last session, or the previous session before that, and if I remember correctly, our Nova Scotia fishermen are faced with one-third higher rates than P.E.I., if my memory serves me correctly. This issue has been brought to me a number of times and you're talking a substantial amount of money for individuals, I think somewhere between $7,000 to $10,000, to have workers' compensation on these vessels. It's not that I'm saying that they shouldn't be covered but I'm saying that it sounds like it's almost an unfair rate.
I've raised the question a number of times that they need to have a thorough review. I think that this has to be addressed because, if my memory serves me correctly, we have one of the highest rates in Canada and my observation is that one of the reasons is we're lumped in with all the offshore fleets and, to me, I would just simply separate that and my observation would be, again, we have a large fleet of 50-foot and under, in particular the lobster fleet. If we could designate that particular fleet of 50-foot and under and capture basically the lobster fishery, I think that the accident rate would be a lot lower and I think a lot of fishermen would be into that. Is that something, Mr. Minister, that you could bring forward and try to address?
MR. CHISHOLM: Yes, definitely, I mean the sector council has been working on that issue. We've had workers' compensation I believe at one, if not two, of our ministers' conferences to discuss that very issue. As the member for Digby-Annapolis brought up, I'm sort of committed to meeting with the minister and probably some people from workers' compensation for the three of us to sit down and talk about it and try to come up with some solutions.
Like I said before when the member for Digby-Annapolis asked the question, I mean I hear it as well. I hear it at the ministers' conferences, I hear it on the wharves. Just a few
[Page 443]
weeks back in Cape Breton the same issue was brought up. So we do know it is an issue and it's being worked on to some degree but we haven't been very successful in getting any results out of it. So we will endeavour to get that meeting set up as soon as possible and the three of us will sit down with the minister responsible and try to come up with a solution.
MR. BELLIVEAU: Again I just want to shift gears because a lot of these policies that I observed and hopefully we'll get a chance to talk about it when I have the opportunity for my 15 minutes in the House to bring attention to my particular area. A lot of these policies that DFO, the federal DFO, puts out there on us are created in Ottawa with very little consultation with the industry and I'm going to take you in a direction here now of incidental catch. It's not the cusk, this is another, this is the groundfeeder, it's called a sculpin. You know, sculpin has been traditionally a part of the lobster bycatch in our traps, again back to my grandfather when the traps first started to be invented to catch the lobster that we all enjoy. This November, in District 34, in Shelburne County, when the conditions of licence came out, the very first one I read in there was that sculpin would be classified as an incidental catch. It would be illegal to have that fish aboard the boat and it had to be returned to the water. I want to point out, from personal experience, that you are not going to get any better bait than a sculpin this time of year. I don't think you are going to have too many people who will challenge me on that statement. It's kind of a secret, but all the fishermen know that, and the secret will be kept in here, I'm sure.
AN HON. MEMBER: Your secret is safe with us.
MR. BELLIVEAU: The point that I am trying to make here is that there has been no scientific evidence produced to say that this is going to have a harmful effect on anything. Again, I want to point out that there is no commercial value. As a small child, the first money that I collected was out on a wharf, a lobster float - I would say car but that's a local terminology, which is a float - and all the young kids around our community had a station at each corner to catch sculpin because, again, it was a priority with the fishermen who wanted to catch lobsters. We were basically in the way. We were in the way of tying these vessels up but not one buyer would go out and say you are in the way, get out of the way here, because they knew all the fishermen wanted these. So we basically had the rule of that environment because they were important and the fishermen used them.
The point that I am trying to say here is, here is a condition that was kind of parachuted in on the fishermen's conditions, a long list of them, and instantly I sent out a press release. There has been no science. It has been parachuted in and this is wrong. The fishermen are - to me it's a trap of here you are setting the fishermen up to be legally charged. Again, there has to be a strong message from our provincial department saying there is no commercial value here.
How did this evolve and get in our conditions? I put that question to you. All fishermen across Nova Scotia enjoy this as a bycatch and why, again, I guess it's another
[Page 444]
question that we posed to the federal minister. My understanding of it is that because of the cod moratorium, this particular sculpin is classified as a fin fish and thus has to be returned to the bottom of the ocean simply because we had a cod moratorium placed in the early 1990s. The question I am having here is that every fisherman is opposed to this condition and we need to simply get it out of the regulations. So I am asking your opinion on it.
MR. CHISHOLM: Well, you know, we have heard the same issue brought up many times. I guess DFO has made the decision. We have opposed them, we asked questions about it, that sort of thing. The officials we have going to these meetings from our department bring it up all the time and we know there is an issue there for sure. So I guess the only thing we can do is try to keep the pressure on the federal government to be more open when these decisions are made and consult the industry before they make the decisions as to what they are going to do in situations such as the sculpin. We will bring it forward to the federal minister again and keep pounding away at it as long as we can to bring those issues forward.
MR. BELLIVEAU: I am going to raise one more point again before I turn it over to my colleagues for some questions. My final question or concern - again this is a federal issue and a lot of these things are federal policies. I think we need to be a strong voice provincially and I think that's one of the roles of your particular office.
[10:30 a.m.]
I want to point you in the direction of our swordfish harpoon fleet and I want to paint you a scenario. Their allotment, I believe, is 10 per cent of a quota that is allotted to Canada in general, of which Canada has 10 per cent of the overall international quota, it's a complicated formula but I hope I didn't lose everybody there. So Canada is allotted from Japan and the United States 10 per cent of the overall international swordfish quota. Out of that 10 per cent that the Canadian fleet has been allotted, the harpoon fleet gets 10 per cent of that. That's actually a fraction of the overall quota.
This harpoon fleet has been there for generations and my grandfather travelled from Grand Manan to Cape Breton in the early 1930s and it's a major industry. Each year in the last two years has been a bumper crop, a bonanza crop for people having the opportunity to go out and literally be successful in harpooning swordfish. I think last year they were closed down within two or three weeks and the place was literally full. We all know when you shut down this fleet, of all the topics we talked about here is that the fishermen are only going to go in one direction, that's why people are going out West, it's because of these policies that affected our communities.
The question I'm asking you is, we have an opportunity - and I sent a letter to the federal minister asking him, why can't we go out and have an opportunity to transfer the international quotas the Americans or the Japanese have available, the American quotas were available the last year in 2007, I can show you the numbers. The point I'm asking here is that
[Page 445]
there is the potential to transfer these international quotas to our Canadian fishermen, particularly the harpoon fishermen. If we had a mechanism in place to allot 10 or 15 tons, we create hundreds of jobs in those coastal communities. We would not have those vessels tied up at the wharf, we'd be creating jobs and it's a simple mechanism that we need to generate.
I believe that we should be taking this concern loudly to the federal minister and he respond saying we need to create this mechanism in this international arena, so this can happen. My question to you, Mr. Minister, is there a possibility again of this long list of things we need to address to the federal minister, of this being addressed?
MR. CHISHOLM: I guess this one is a very complicated issue because it is an international quota. We have to be very careful how loudly we holler for this because we know the Americans are not really keen on giving up quota that they may have to Canada. I think the quotas for that are 10 per cent to the harpooners and 90 per cent to the longliners, of the quota that we do have. I certainly hear what you're saying, there are some issues around the bluefin tuna, as well, basically the same thing, that there's a bunch of American quota that's out there that is not accessible to Canadian fisheries. It is an issue that you have to tread a little bit carefully because you don't want to get into, as I said, the Americans are pretty protective of their turf and their quotas and getting access to that would have to go through the - but there are groups that really want to change that policy too. So we have to be careful, but we still talk to the federal minister on those issues and we'll continue to and move those issues forward on behalf of the fishermen of the province.
It is kind of a complicated issue, it is a world quota and it is distributed evenly - or not evenly - distributed between countries. But we will keep the pressure on them, the federal ministers, as much as we can to try to access it. Like you said, we knew of excess quota that was in bluefin tuna here a year ago that some of our fishermen tried to access and pretty well had everything lined up to be able to do that and in the end it got turfed because the Americans, I guess, people who are against it because they think the stocks are in trouble, they will make representation to the U.S. or whoever, the world organization that distributed these quotas, and they will shut it down and basically that's what happens.
We certainly know what you're saying and I know the issue with the bluefin tuna last year got scuttled basically because of that. We thought at one time that we were very close to getting a bunch of that American tuna that was available but it ended up we didn't get it. But we'll keep the pressure on the federal minister if there's any way possible of moving it forward and getting access to some of that quota.
MR. BELLIVEAU: Mr. Chairman, at this time I'd like to turn my time over to my colleague.
MR. CHAIRMAN: The honourable member for Pictou East.
[Page 446]
MR. CLARRIE MACKINNON: Thank you very much, Mr. Minister. It's always a pleasure to interact with you and I have eight questions and I just jotted them down here as we were talking. I probably won't have time for all eight of them, I have only 15 minutes.
First of all the proposed support, the lending support on licences - and this was probably already covered - but this has been talked about for over a dozen years and I'm just wondering if all the details and all the stumbling blocks have been worked out this time and when we will be proceeding with that.
MR. CHISHOLM: Well all the details and all the workings of the loans for licences program have not been worked out yet. They have not been worked out. We got sort of an idea of where we're going. You see in our budget this year we have provided for about $100,000 to be used to hire a person to come in and work on regulations, work on policies, work with the loan board, to try to get everything in place.
It is our goal - I guess what we're looking at now, is that we hope by January 1, 2009, we will be in a position to be able to accept applications and hopefully by April 1, 2009, we will be able to issue some loans for licences.
MR. MACKINNON: Well thank you very much, minister. As you know, this has been talked about at ministers' conferences year after year and whatever we can do to help you out in that regard, there is support for what you're trying to do.
Very quickly, I know that seals have been well covered with the two members who have been questioning you, but in relation to Hay Island, Hay Island opened for three to five days, I understand, right, that was the thrust and it had to close by March 15th, if I remember correctly. At the time you indicated in a press release that this was a one-year situation. Grey seals were a problem when there were 30,000 of them and I think there's probably, in what we would call the Sable Island colony, something like 400,000 today. I don't think I'm exaggerating because the numbers are just so great.
My concern is that - and I'm not asking you to show your hand in relation to this, but I think we have to look at Hay Island and other concentration of population areas and consider this in future years because it's a real problem out there. It used to be a problem with damage to gear and the spread of the cod worm - which I like to call the seal worm because of actually the gestation in the digestive system and the spread of the worm situation - but as the consumption also now, the retarding of the comeback of the fishery with so many of them out there, so whatever you can do would be appreciated, but are your plans going to be strong in the future?
MR. CHISHOLM: Well, you know, our plans are to hopefully go back to Hay Island again next year but I know we have some work to do with our Minister of Environment, and we'll continue to look at ways of, how can I say it, getting to Hay Island on a long-term basis.
[Page 447]
So internally in our department we're discussing that, we're discussing that with the Minister of Environment and at some point I hope this Fall that we'll have some real answers, but at this time I just don't know what they are.
MR. MACKINNON: World Ocean Day is coming up in the first part of June and that's becoming a big event throughout the world. What is your department looking at doing for a special event to raise awareness? Certainly it's something that we should be doing and supporting and I hope your department is looking at some special awareness-raising event.
MR. CHISHOLM: We are setting up a display, I guess you would call it, or booths inviting all the industry and people down on the waterfront, down around the Museum of the Atlantic. We've done that before and the last two years we've done that and will continue to do it, we'll be doing it again this summer. It is an important event so we will be there. I'm told that it is on June 6th that it will be held so all members of the Legislature will be invited down to that.
MR. MACKINNON: Thank you very much. I'm sure the commercial fishery was well covered, when I've been in and out, I know it was well-covered when I've been in, but in relationship to the sport fishery, we don't talk too much about that and it's worth about $100 million, I believe, in this province - $92 million or something like that was the figure used about a year ago . . .
MR. CHISHOLM: $95 million.
MR. MACKINNON: So say $90, $95 million.
Last year you had a sportfishing weekend with no licence required, are you going to do that again?
MR. CHISHOLM: Yes.
MR. MACKINNON: That's pretty successful, isn't it?
MR. CHISHOLM: A very successful weekend.
MR. MACKINNON: And when is that going to be held? In June?
MR. CHISHOLM: I'm not sure of the week but it is in June, sometime in June. We'll find out and that will be well advertised.
MR. MACKINNON: Thanks. One thing . . .
[Page 448]
MR. CHISHOLM: If I could, just for a minute, get into our inland fisheries. Like you said, we don't talk about it a lot, it's an industry that's worth about $95 million a year to us. I think last year our licence sales increased, we know that, but we had about 59,000, 60,000 licences that were sold in the Province of Nova Scotia last year, under 16 years of age the kids don't need a licence, so we estimate about 100,000 people probably participated in sport fishery over the year.
[10:45 a.m.]
We're very, very proud of our hatchery program that we have in the province at McGowan Lake as well as Fraser's Mills and taking over the Margaree Fish Hatchery, the salmon hatchery there, to be part of our hatchery program for the province. Our inland fisheries is very important, we have a tremendous number of volunteer groups around the Province of Nova Scotia.
Last night I was out at the Sackville Rivers Association. They're celebrating their 20th year as an association on the Sackville River and they clean up and stock. There was a guy there last night, Walter Reagan, who has been very active on the Sackville River system. He told me last night they estimated in the last 20 years, since the department and our inland fisheries have been helping them with their stocking programs out there, we've probably provided in excess of 200,000 fish to that river system, in the 20 years. Just a rough guess would be probably something over $200,000 that was given to them just because of the stocking program that we have. We're very, very proud of our inland fisheries, our hatcheries, our stocking programs that we do, and the programs that are put on for students and kids to take part in that sport fishing.
MR. MACKINNON: Thank you. I think the sport weekend actually does - some people actually get the feel with the free days and they end up, probably, buying a licence after that.
MR. CHISHOLM: We've seen increases in the number of licences sold in the last two years.
MR. MACKINNON: One of the things that I don't hear as much about, and I used to be involved with fish harvester organizations in relationship to it, and it was a very controversial issue, and that is professionalization in the fishery. Is that still on the back burner? Are organizations still promoting, or are some promoting and some not?
MR. CHISHOLM: That's probably a good way of putting it. There's still some controversy, some people for it, some against. I think they're working fairly closely to see that some of it happens in certain areas, at least.
[Page 449]
MR. MACKINNON: A follow-up question, if I could. There is still federal money going into that?
MR. CHISHOLM: Yes, I'm just being told now that they're waiting on some federal money right now, a $50 registration fee or something that's going to be provided for. That's being worked on now with DFO.
MR. MACKINNON: I'm certainly not promoting it here in this forum, I'm just asking the status of it.
I think perhaps I'll combine a couple of questions. The department at one time - and I'm sure it still is - was actively involved with the Fisheries Resource Conservation Council in relation to quotas and also with the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization. The Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization has been - I think the meetings this week were in Montreal, if I remember correctly, in relationship to international dragging - the large vessels, not some of the small draggers off our inshore fleet. What is the department's role in those two areas now?
MR. CHISHOLM: We still have Clary Reardon, you probably know Clary, he's still very involved in that process. I think he or Cyril Boudreau would have been at that meeting this week. They are very actively involved and will continue to be actively involved in that process.
MR. MACKINNON: Certainly, the name you mentioned, Clary Reardon, is a very capable person on your staff, as are other staff members that you have as well, included my old colleague sitting beside you, Greg Roach, and others.
MR. CHISHOLM: That free weekend, for your information, I just got it, it's June 7th and 8th.
MR. MACKINNON: So actually we have on the 6th the World Oceans Day and then the 7th and 8th, so this is probably the first time they've been consecutive days like that. I'm going to have to turn my time over here in just one moment but one last question very quickly. The Nova Scotia Fisheries Sector Council, the department has always been working with the council, how active is that council right now, it's Yarmouth based, but I'm just wondering what issues they're dealing with at the moment and what the department is doing to support that council? There were a lot of players involved in that council and I don't know if they still are or not, but there were a lot of departments and agencies that were supportive.
MR. CHISHOLM: We're still very active in that. Greg Roach, my Assistant Deputy Minister, is part of that group and I guess eco-labelling, professionalization, workers' compensation, that sort of thing is still being discussed. That is ongoing, we're very much a big part of that and will continue to be.
[Page 450]
MR. MACKINNON: That council has taken a leadership role on a lot of occasions and I'm glad you're still working closely with it. I'm going to bounce over to my colleague for Pictou West, my sparring partner.
MR. CHAIRMAN: The honourable member for Pictou West.
MR. CHARLES PARKER: Mr. Chairman, good morning minister and staff, I'm certainly glad to have an opportunity to talk to you here for a few minutes on the fishery issue. I wasn't going to go into the inland fisheries, but since it came up I just want to quickly mention Lansdowne Outdoor Recreational Development Association, LORDA Park, I think we talked about this last year. I'm just wondering, Mr. Minister, if you ever had the opportunity yet to visit that park? It's a great facility for seniors and disabled people. Actually, there were about 16,000 Nova Scotians and others that visited it last year and it's just a wonderful facility for seniors and disabled people who can't get out on the brook, the river or the lake. Have you had that opportunity yet, Mr. Minister?
MR. CHISHOLM: No, I apologize that I didn't get the opportunity, but our staff still are involved in that facility and will continue to be. These are great programs, out in Mount Uniacke in that area they have a fishing weekend as well for disabled people and they have a boardwalk right along the front of the lake and people in wheelchairs and disabled people can go and fish, it's just a wonderful program that they have going there.
MR. PARKER: Certainly, LORDA Park is something very similar, it has been going for 25 years or more now and like I said, thousands of people come there. Again, personally, I'd like to invite you to come out to that and actually June 14th is Keep The Park Day, as it's called, and there's going to be all kinds of people around on that Saturday and it's perhaps a good opportunity to visit there if you could. My invitation to you is to come by and visit and visit with Dave Leese, the curator and the staff that is there and some of the folks who use the facility.
MR. CHISHOLM: We've marked down the date and we'll try to make sure we're available for that day.
MR. PARKER: One other suggestion before I go to the ocean fishery. You talk about World Oceans Day coming up in early June and I think perhaps I mentioned this before, the value of advertising our fishery in the province. We've had open farm days in the province with the agricultural sector and I think the idea perhaps of an open wharf day is a good opportunity for the general public to learn more about our fishery. It might be something you could tie in to either World Oceans Day or at another time, but just for a chance for folks from the town or the city or anywhere to come and interact with fishermen, see their boats and see what catches are coming in that day, or whatever. Something to promote a way, I would call it Open Wharf Day, but whatever name you come up with would be suitable, just
[Page 451]
a chance to promote our Nova Scotia fisheries, which is the largest fishery in Canada, as you know. It is just another suggestion I am just passing along to you.
I guess my first question then, really, is around our lobster fishery on the Northumberland Shore. It's not as good as it could be. In fact, I think it probably has the lowest catch of any area of Nova Scotia and yet a very important component of the livelihood of many of our coastal communities in Pictou County, Antigonish and Colchester-Cumberland and so on. It seems the further you go west up the shore, the poorer the catches are. This year it has been tough with the increased cost for bait, fuel, help, insurance and so on and the prices have been down for their landing. So they are squeezed into a pretty difficult situation.
I recall, I don't know, is it two or three years ago, there was a working group on the Northumberland Shore. A committee was set up and it was composed of a number of scientists from DFO and elsewhere and there were provincial representatives from P.E.I., New Brunswick and from this province. They were to sit down and look at what is causing these low catches. Why are the catches so poor? I am just wondering if there is any update on that working group committee. Have they come back with any results yet or just where is it at?
MR. CHISHOLM: Well, there are really no signs as to why the low catches are in the Northumberland Strait now but it has been our observation, I guess, over the years, through the department, that these things sort of go in cycles. They are up and they are down and we are hoping that we are just into one of those low cycles now and that in the next year, the next five years, we hope they will start to rebound.
We have been taking part in the lobster hatchery facility in Pictou that has been established there. They are doing some tremendous work growing lobsters to stage four and then reintroducing them into the wild. That program seems to be going quite well. We are just in the initial stages of that too, so we don't have a lot of data as to how good it's going to be in the end, what the end result is going to be. We are hoping that some of those things will help, but we are not sure.
Lobsters - it seems I look at the Eastern Shore now. For a number of years, the lobster fishery there was basically in the tank as it is on the North Shore right now. In the last three or four years lobsters have rebounded in that area. It's amazing the catches they are getting there now.
MR. PARKER: I know it has certainly picked up in Guysborough on the Eastern Shore, but there have certainly been poor catches for a good number of years now on the Northumberland Shore and certainly that lobster hatchery program in Pictou is a wonderful addition to provide some hope, I guess, really, to fishermen down the road. I think it is about seven years . . .
[Page 452]
MR. CHISHOLM: The fishermen's associations that are involved in that are very committed to it.
MR. PARKER: It's a joint effort between the Northumberland Fishermen Association and the Fisheries Museum in Pictou. Last year there were about 20,000 stage four lobsters that were seeded back into the Northumberland Strait. They are hoping this year to have even more. Perhaps, as you mentioned, it's too early to know whether that is going to bear fruit, as they say, down the road but it seems to hold out some hope that it could and it might be a pilot project that could be repeated in other areas, if it works well there.
I have had the opportunity to visit that facility, as I know you have, and it is a great program for providing some opportunity.
I did want to come back to this working group on the Northumberland Strait. That was a provincial-federal committee. Is it still operating? Are they still studying the problems and do you have any idea what they might be finding?
[11:00 a.m.]
MR. CHISHOLM: It is still operating. The deputy ministers have a working group and there is a steering committee and Greg is part of that.
MR. PARKER: Any results yet? I know they've looked at what it could be. Is it pollution, is it sedimentation, is it seals, is it the fixed link across the Strait, you know, there's a whole lot of suggestions out there but nobody seems to know for sure why the catches are down.
MR. CHISHOLM: And that's basically right, I mean we still don't know exactly what the cause is of the downturn. It could be just natural. There are lots of different groups and organizations that will have their interpretation as to what is happening but basically scientifically we don't really know and that's one of the problems with the lobster fishery, you know, we're doing some lobster biology work down on the South Shore, on the soft shell issue, and we've committed quite a bit of money to that program. We're doing a lobster larvae study in eastern Guysborough County trying to - and basically all we know about lobster is that we go and catch them. I have some concerns about the lobster fishery as to how we are managing it and where we're going with it. I mean there's a considerable amount of pressure on lobster at this point in time and sometimes I wonder in the long term where it's all going to end up. If the lobster fishery goes south on us, our fishery, all fishery is in serious trouble.
MR. PARKER: It's our most important fishery in the whole province and in most areas of the province this is also true, but I would encourage your deputy and your department to stay involved with that working group.
[Page 453]
MR. CHISHOLM: We definitely will.
MR. PARKER: And hopefully come to a bottom line here of what is the cause and then hopefully work towards a solution.
MR. CHISHOLM: Yes.
MR. PARKER: Okay, I want to shift gears here a little bit and talk about labour shortages in the packing industry or processing. Recently we had an announcement that one of our plants, Cape John Seafoods in Pictou County, is not going to be opening, not going to be operating, simply because they don't have the manpower to carry on. They've invested quite heavily in new wells and new equipment but last year they operated on a part-time basis but this year they've closed their doors and they just can't get enough people to come in to process the fish.
So I'm just wondering, are there any initiatives or any help in the department to perhaps look at recruiting fish plant workers either in other areas of Atlantic Canada or other parts of this province, or even offshore, to help out? It's not just Cape John. I know North Nova has had a similar problem and I'm sure there are other areas of the province with similar difficulties. So how can we get more employees to process our fish?
MR. CHISHOLM: Well, you know, it's not a problem that's unique to Nova Scotia. I mean Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, every province is having issues and problems with trying to find workers to work in fish plants and not only fish plants, other sectors as well. We don't have anything right now in our department that will provide for say immigrants or bringing workers in from other provinces or anything like that. I know other provinces have brought in some people from Russia, I believe, into Prince Edward Island, brought some Russian people in to help with the processing. I know some of my people from Canso are over on Prince Edward Island processing lobster and some of my people from Canso are in North Nova Seafoods in Caribou.
MR. PARKER: That's right.
MR. CHISHOLM: So they are trying to get them wherever they can but, you know, it is a problem and even on some of our fishing boats I guess in Southwest Nova we find that getting crews for the boats now is getting more difficult with more people going out to western Canada for the big dollars.
MR. PARKER: It seems like it may be something the department could be looking at because if we don't have the manpower - not just for our plants, but for our vessels and so on - if the people are not being trained to carry on in the industry . . .
[Page 454]
MR. CHISHOLM: I think that's part of the mandate too of the new Department of Labour and Workforce Development, to look at that issue and try to come up with some strategies as to how we can solve the problem.
MR. PARKER: Okay. A couple of other short snappers here for you. The School of Fisheries in Pictou has been a very important component for training for the whole province and certainly to our local economy there on the North Shore. What do you see as the future for the Fisheries School? I know it's tied in with the community college, but are there any changes planned or is there still strong support for it? Where do you see a vision for the Fisheries School?
MR. CHISHOLM: That comes under the Department of Education, but I guess we have no indication, at this point in time, that there will be any changes in that facility. I know I toured the facility some time ago and we certainly support that. Our department supports the Fisheries School, where it is in Pictou and I'll continue to do so. We helped set up courses in the field to . . .
MR. PARKER: Well, long may it continue to serve our fishing communities. I also want to ask about the Northumberland Fish Co-op in Toney River. I think we've discussed this before, they have buy-in licences, but they don't have any processing licences. They'd very much like the ability to process there in Toney River. I know you visited the plant at one point - is there any hope or possibility that a processing licence could be made available to them?
MR. CHISHOLM: Well, there are some species that are open, some not. I guess the best thing for them to do is to apply.
MR. PARKER: I think they have applied in the past, without success.
MR. CHISHOLM: Maybe the best thing to do with that is, we'll take note of it here and I'll get some more information and get back to you before the House rises.
MR. PARKER: Okay, thank you. How much more time do I have?
MR. CHAIRMAN: Approximately two minutes.
MR. PARKER: Okay. Quickly I'll ask about the Nova Scotia Fisheries Loan Board. I've had a couple of fishermen - young people - who want to get into the industry. Of course, there are older folks who want to get out of the industry. One of the stumbling blocks they run into is the boat that had been used for 10 or 15 years, that they were hoping to buy, along with the gear and the licence, was apparently not approved. It wasn't built by an approved builder and that was the stumbling block, they could not buy that boat gear and licence from the retiring fisherman. If there were some way to inspect the vessel, make sure it was sea-
[Page 455]
worthy, quality and good - why wouldn't that suffice, rather than have to be on an approved list of builders for the boat?
MR. CHISHOLM: We do have a fairly major boatbuilding operation going in the province and we try to support our Nova Scotia boatbuilders as much as we can. When boats are being built, the loan board has inspectors that are monitoring and inspecting as the boat is being built.
MR. PARKER: In this case, it was a boat that was built, I think, in P.E.I., but apparently they weren't on the approved list, therefore, it prevented the sale from the retiring fisherman to the new entrant. It was still a good boat, but it apparently was not on the approved list initially.
MR. CHISHOLM: Yes. We've had some boats that were built in Newfoundland, they were trying to be purchased by a new operator in Nova Scotia and were having difficulty with those issues as well. They were built in Newfoundland, they weren't inspected by our inspectors. This created some difficulty.
MR. PARKER: I guess I'm just asking if there is any flexibility. If the boat was seaworthy and good, it could be inspected on the spot for approval for a sale rather than not be on the list 12 years ago when it was supposedly built.
MR. CHAIRMAN: The time has expired for the NDP caucus. I am going to switch over to the Liberal caucus.
The honourable member for Digby-Annapolis.
MR. HAROLD THERIAULT: Mr. Chairman, maybe the minister would like to have a break for 10 seconds, maybe?
MR. CHISHOLM: No, keep her going.
MR. THERIAULT: Okay, because I have had mine. Anyway, I would like to jump back to aquaculture, Mr. Minister. I have always believed in aquaculture. I have known since 1994, when we had to part from the groundfish fishery, that we have to grow fish in this province, in this country, you know. I want to just touch on the trip to Chile for a second. I want to thank the minister for inviting myself and the member for Shelburne along on this trip because I know it opened my eyes and I am sure it opened the member for Shelburne's eyes too about aquaculture around the world, especially in Chile.
It amazed me. I knew that Chile grew a lot of fish but I just couldn't see how much 650 tons was until we got there and saw it. What else surprised me, too, was it being a Third
[Page 456]
World country not too long ago and how fast this country has come ahead, growing fish for not only themselves, but for the world.
This country grows approximately, per capita - if we were all to eat three to five pounds of fish each, our fish would be cleaned up here in this country. That is pretty much how much fish we grow. Per capita in Chile, it is approximately 80 pounds to 85 pounds per person that they grow. So that probably gives you a better idea of how big they are and there is even talk of growing bigger because the demand for fish around the world is growing. They are even getting into more fish, you know, different growing fish. I believe they are even growing mermaids there. I saw some mermaids there and I believe they might be growing there. They were nice looking mermaids, too. Nice looking. So were the fish that they were growing there.
Anyway, what else surprised me, too, they were using a lot of Canadian technology in Chile to do this. I said to myself, why are we sending our technology and our expertise to this country to grow fish, you know, with the coastlines that we have. I have questioned this since 1994, why we aren't looking at growing more fish. You bring it up to people and they say, well there are environmental problems with growing fish, but there is the country of Chile, next to Argentina, they don't have as many environmental problems growing fish as Argentina does growing beef next door to them. There seem to be more environmental problems in growing cattle.
There are environmental problems and diseases in everything on this earth, from our trees to our people. What more and greater diseases are there in people? Every day we hear of a new disease, but hopefully we can be smart enough and keep ahead of it, in our trees and in our animals that we grow, in our fish that we grow and in our people that we grow.
We are always going to have that challenge, but we can't think that well, we can't grow fish because there are diseases there. If we think like that, we're going to have Third World countries feeding the country that's supposed to be one of the greatest fish producing countries in the world - and that's Canada. It was that way until the downturn of our ground fishery.
[11:15 a.m.]
Our ground fishery, our traditional fisheries will be there, and I think we can even bring them back to make them better. In time we will do that - once we can get the proper balance in our ecosystems we will bring our traditional fishery back. It'll always be there, but it will never feed us again - it'll never feed the export markets that we had because the population of people is growing and the demand for fish is growing.
What's the alternative? If we don't grow fish, we're going to be left behind and the coastal areas of Canada will become "Third World" provinces, at least. That's where Nova
[Page 457]
Scotia is headed - we're a have-not province, going lower, because we're not utilizing the coastal areas of our province that built the province and the country in the first place. So we've got to grow fish.
We need industry in our coastal areas. Everything can be done in moderation. I've come to the point, in western Nova Scotia, in the last four or five years I realized there are two things that we can do in that area for industry - and that is we can grow fish or we can turn it over to the Americans for gravel pits and let them haul our land away to build the roads to the United States. Those are the two things that I've come to in the last four or five years - and my pick is fish. It's sustainable; it's food for the world. There are 850 million people on this Earth hungry. Somebody better get growing something - and fast - and I believe we can do that.
I want to get back to the perception of some of the people out there in the coastal areas in this province who believe that by putting these cages around the coast that they're going to cause environmental problems; they're unsightly. I want to ask this Department of Fisheries if there has been much public relations work done with the people in coastal communities to try to change this perception and, if not, are there any plans in the near future to get this perception changed?
I'm working at it in my little end of this province and I'm hoping the Department of Fisheries of Nova Scotia will work with me to do the same all around Nova Scotia.
MR. CHISHOLM: Thank you for that. I guess since I've been Minister of Fisheries, one of the areas I've been quite passionate about is the aquaculture industry. What I've seen in other provinces, in other countries, what they're doing in places you mentioned - like Chile - in aquaculture and how they're growing and what it has done for the economy of that country.
We have the ability here in Nova Scotia to really make a difference as far as growing fish in our aquaculture industry. We have tremendous coastline, we have everything going for us, as I said in my opening remarks - environmental monitoring programs; fish veterinarians; the people we have on staff; and the companies that are working in our province. I referred to Cooke Aquaculture as one example. They're in Shelburne. They do a tremendous job down there; they work within the community.
The other one, in Liverpool, they got wiped out in Hurricane Noel, and the community just came out in droves to help that company clean up when they lost the fish farm in that storm. They were a company that was involved - just a couple of young guys involved in their community. They worked with the fishermen who were on the wharf that they worked out of - and I guess your question was, you know, like our public relations, maybe it could be a lot better, but I believe we are doing some of the right things. We go into communities with our schools and that sort of thing, with our touch tanks and programs like that; we have our aquafest every year in a different area of the province, in an area that, I
[Page 458]
think in Shelburne we had it last September and I know the year before that we had it in Mabou, and I know one year, I think - I'm not sure who was the minister. Chris? - we had it in Guysborough?
HON. CHRISTOPHER D'ENTREMONT: Yes.
MR. CHISHOLM: So we go around the province. Yarmouth County as well, it was down there. We have been very active with that. That's real good, we got a tremendous response in Shelburne this past September when we were there, probably one of the rainiest days in the Fall, and we still had, I don't know, 200 to 250 people probably who came out to that. So it's very, very well received as far as those things go.
We're taking a more active role in putting more of these op-eds out in the papers. They seem to be going over quite well. So we are trying to be more proactive in trying to get our message out about aquaculture. I know we have work to do. I do know that companies like Cooke Aquaculture have people on staff, that's their job, they promote the company, they promote their business in the communities where they're involved and going to be involved and they do a very good job of that.
I know Cooke Aquaculture right now is looking at probably maybe six or seven sites in the Province of Nova Scotia that they have identified that they want to start up an aquaculture site. So we're working with them, but in some areas, you know, it is difficult. People don't want their view obstructed by any kind of what they deem to be unsightly cages out in the harbours and all kinds of reasons that they come up with that they don't want it, but I think environmentally it's a very sustainable industry and, like I said, we have people on staff in our department who do nothing but the environmental monitoring of these sites and they do it on a continuous basis - if there is a problem on a site, they nip it as soon as possible to get on top of it quickly.
The only problems with these sites is basically directly under the cages, directly under, you know, once you get outside of that perimeter, there's absolutely nothing, no environmental damage at all. We know from previous sites, like the Scotia Rainbow in Richmond County, when they went out of business we had divers and our monitoring group went in there, and six months afterwards you couldn't identify, you couldn't tell where those cages were - the bottom had all regenerated and there was absolutely no indication of where those sites were.
That's just the normal part of fish farming, the same as the Port Mouton application we have in, and what that company wants to do. They want to expand, they want to make their site larger so they can fallow sites over time. Every year, every two years they move to a different site to let that previous site regenerate. So they just do it on a rotational basis, which is better for the fish farm, better for the environment, and that's just basically a part of farming. Agricultural farmers fallow their fields - well, it is the same idea with the fish farms.
[Page 459]
We do have a job to do, I think, in our communities. We have to be more diligent in trying to get our communities more involved and more, I guess, in tune as to what aquaculture really is. These fish farmers, companies, they have people on staff who are scientists, biologists, veterinarians. They can't have a bad fish farm; they can't have sick fish. Sick fish are no good.
Right now I guess we feel that we're about $47 million basically on farm gate as far as the aquaculture fish goes right now, and we know that it could be a lot more. I guess a goal of mine would be that in the next five years it could be $100 million that we have at the farm gate. As I said, I think one of the other questions from one of the other members, of processing - if we can grow the capacity of these companies in the province, then we get into processing. They have told us that time and time again - they need a certain number of fish to make it a viable operation and, unless they get that, the fish that we are growing here is going somewhere else to be processed.
That's an area where I think there are good jobs. I mentioned Cooke Aquaculture in St. George, New Brunswick, 100 people working a couple of shifts, I guess, there at that plant. The net manufacturing plant that employs 50 people - and a lot of that stuff is connected back to the Province of Nova Scotia. As I said, a Yarmouth company supplies the netting and the twine for that facility, and there's no reason why there couldn't be a cleaning operation and a net-building facility in Nova Scotia. Why do we have to go to New Brunswick for that sort of thing? But we have to build the capacity of the industry in order to be able to do that.
So we have a selling job to do, and we're looking at different ways. I know in Shelburne, our staff went down there and met with the council, they met with the community, they had their open house, I think, as far as the application for Cooke Aquaculture goes, and it seems to be going quite well - but then we get into areas like Port Mouton where we're just pummelled by people, letters from all over, against.
So we do have a selling job, I think, and we've got to make our communities - and it seems, you know, we look at St. Anns Bay down in Cape Breton when the application came in there for the mussel farm, the number of people who were against that. But you know the government went ahead and made the decision, yes, we're going to go ahead with that application and put a mussel farm there. Now it's there, it's up and running, employing people, and they're looking at putting a processing plant in there and people have accepted it. We certainly don't get the negative feedback that we were getting at one time. We have some work to do.
[Page 460]
[11:30 a.m.]
MR. THERIAULT: Thank you, Mr. Minister. I would like to go to another thing that there's quite a perception of and that's the wild Atlantic salmon. I want to read a little thing that was in the paper here the other day, in Portland, Oregon. For years the sea lions lounging at the Bonneville dam have had easy pickings from salmon waiting to go up fish ladders, up river to the spawning grounds. Over the weekend the federal protected sea creatures were themselves easy prey for gunmen who shot and killed six as they lay in traps meant to humanely catch them. State and federal authorities were investigating the shooting, which came less than two weeks after appeal courts issued a temporary injunction against authorities killing the salmon-gobbling mammals. Fishermen and American Indian tribes have pushed to protect the salmon and remove the sea lions, by lethal force if necessary.
Now here's a river where in Portland, Oregon, there were six seals, sea lions, the same size as our grey seal off of Nova Scotia, six of them they were worried about. Now here not long ago I heard a report that the Atlantic Salmon Federation, I believe - I may be wrong - but the federal government granted them $15 million to do studies on what is happening to the Atlantic wild salmon. When I heard that, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I hear all the time that these aquaculture sites are killing off the salmon from diseases that are spreading into the wild ones. I mean, with the amount of sites around Nova Scotia, I don't even know if there's one near a river anywhere.
If you want to look it up, and I've got it in this book somewhere, do you know the prairies in this country grow pretty near as many fish as we do here in Atlantic Canada? You can look that up, I mean it's not a - I don't know where they grow them out in the prairies, the fish, but they grow pretty near as much fish as we do, maybe more than we do here in Nova Scotia, I don't know. I don't know what effect it has had on the animals out around the prairies. I know one thing, it hasn't hurt the gophers, there's lots of them out there that they're getting rid of.
I can picture the salmon, and anybody can, I'm sure the member for Shelburne can picture this one, too, and probably anybody can. These fish that leave this area, what few salmon are left, and they go to Greenland in the wintertime, and the gill netter - I believe there's gill netting going on in Greenland for wild salmon. Anyway, what few there is left in that stock are coming back across, and I'd say probably, right today, they're hitting the Grand Banks because they're coming on now, I would say, salmon, to come over here to come up to the rivers.
They're coming across the Grand Banks right now and in their way - they have to come in and come down along Newfoundland, across the Strait, a lot of them, and what few that are left that don't get up into the rivers are coming around here to the Bay of Fundy, all down along the shore of Nova Scotia. This is from the Grand Banks to the Bay of Fundy that those few hundred thousand salmon have to travel, whatever is left in the wild stock.
[Page 461]
In that area that they're travelling, there are about seven million sea lions, seals, that these beautiful, oily - the best fish in the water probably is wild salmon. Grizzly bears are waiting in the rivers now for what two or three they can get that make it to the river, if any make it, and they've got to come through those seven million seals, from the Grand Banks to the Bay of Fundy, to get up into the rivers here in Atlantic Canada. In Portland, Oregon, they're worrying about six sea lions down there at the mouth of one river.
Now can anybody in their right mind imagine that, coming through those seven million seals and those seals are smart. They've been waiting. They are twice as good as a codfish or twice as good as a herring, twice as good as a haddock or any groundfish we get on this shore. These salmon are their delicacy, just like Christmastime. When we have our Christmas feast, those salmon, what few there are, are coming this way now. Some will make it, two or three, how ever many are making it. How in God's Earth could they ever get through those seals, how do some get through those seals.
I talked to a fellow out of Peggy's Cove last year - and I've told this story - he went out fishing one morning, this time of year, a little later, May, June, and he sailed east about eight or nine miles, a calm morning and all this oil was all over the water, slick. He thought there was an oil spill somewhere. The sun was coming up and he could see these shiny little fish scales in the water, salmon scales. He looked around and all he could see were seal heads coming up out of the water. It was salmon oil, that's what he said, it was salmon oil on top of that water from the salmon coming through those seals and they were cleaning them. We can't see this stuff, you have to try to picture it.
If Jacques Cousteau were alive today and went out to Greenland and followed those salmon across in his submarine with a camera, we would see it. And they give that association $15 million to do a study of what's happening to salmon, I'll do it for nothing. That is what I picture is going on with the Atlantic salmon. I had a call last week, I spoke about aquaculture and I had a call from a person saying there's one little site there in the Digby Basin, that she thought that site was stopping the salmon from coming up into the Bear River, one little site there, but she believed that stopped the salmon from coming up into that river, that it was killing them, the diseases coming out of it was killing the wild salmon off. That perception is everywhere, I hear that all the time how these sites are killing the wild salmon off. But they can't picture these salmon trying to get through those seven million seals coming down these shores in the Springtime.
My question is, does the Nova Scotia Department of Fisheries know anything about the research that's being done by this organization, that we're wondering where is the research to try to find out where the Atlantic wild salmon are going and what's happening to them? Does the department know anything about this?
MR. CHISHOLM: I guess we know a little bit about it, Junior. We know that it's a $30 million fund and it comes out of the Endowment Fund and it's just getting started. We do have some people from inland fisheries, Don MacLean or Murray Hill, either one of those
[Page 462]
guys would be part of that working group, along with the Nova Scotia Salmon Federation. So we are involved in it, but you're probably right as to where the oil slick came from and I'm not sure why they'd need $30 million to figure that one out, but anyway. We are involved and we will continue to be involved.
MR. THERIAULT: Does that federation ever speak about this, about the seals? I've heard them speak about aquaculture harming the wild salmon, but I've never, ever heard the federation speak about what's happening out here on our Atlantic coast.
MR. CHISHOLM: Yes, usually these guys are, the Atlantic Salmon Federation people are fishing on the rivers. They probably could see a seal up a river, but they do and that's when they do talk about them and the damage they figure they're doing to them.
You know, we are on the committee and we will be involved in the process and we will be defending the aquaculture as well. Even some of the - when we talk about the seals - some of our aquaculture sites have predator nets around them now so the seals don't get in at the salmon. Apparently they can push the bottom of the net up in the cage and they can chew the belly out of the salmon through the net. They now have predator nets just for that.
It's a problem in every sector of the fishery, there's no two ways about it. I'm not sure we made a big difference this year with our foray into Hay Island, but hopefully in the next few years we can make a little bit of a difference there. We'll keep working at it.
MR. THERIAULT: I just hope that some of this money that they've received for research goes into what I'm talking about. I don't know just how they'd go about that. If Jacques Cousteau were still around, he could probably follow those fish across the Atlantic and watch what goes on. It must be quite a flurry when they hit the shore and those hungry seals are waiting for their Christmas dinner, or Spring dinner, whatever you want to call it.
Anyway, I didn't want to bring seals up again, but I had to. Everything you look at out there, there's the problem.
MR. CHISHOLM: Yes.
MR. THERIAULT: That will come from any fisherman you want to talk to on the water. It's a job for the Department of Fisheries sometimes to listen to fishermen, I don't know why.
MR. CHISHOLM: We'll make note of that concern, Junior, and we'll pass it on to our people who are on that committee. Greg will do that.
MR. THERIAULT: I brought this up in the House the other day in Supply, the price of fuel for not only the fishing industry, but the trucking industry. I heard this morning on CBC that the truckers, and I heard this a week ago from truckers, that they were having
[Page 463]
problems, any industry is having the price of fuel problem. I won't go on about it, but I wrote the minister a letter. I don't really know the answer to this problem, other than I said the other day, we have to be careful, we may repeat 1929 again here in North America. When you go out and look around and see what's happening in the United States and this country will follow, I'm sure. If the price of fuel doubles again, the way they talk, the next year, year and a half, I don't know what's going to take place. I don't even want to think about it.
The minister wrote me back, I brought it up because fishermen came to me - the Digby scallop fleet - the scallops they're catching now up in the bay, they're only getting 200, 300, 400 pound a day or whatever, they're coming in the end of the week. The crew of one boat last week, out of four solid days fishing, the crew ended up with $90 take home. Four days and nights of fishing. You can't catch that fish with any less energy. You can't. Unless you maybe put a sail up, if there's a gale of wind, a sail up might help a little. You might have gone home with $95.
But, I wrote a letter to the minister and I cc'd it to the federal minister for the fishermen down there because I saw the problem. They are coming in, tying the boats up and they just can't get back out. Even the fuel companies down there are getting nervous about who they fill up because they are afraid that they are not going to be able to pay that oil bill at the end of the week, you're talking $3,000 to $5,000 fuel bills for that amount of fishing.
[11:45 a.m.]
So one boat, out of $6,000-some stock, for the four days, the fuel bill was over $2,500 and the food bill, for the four days, for three men came to nearly $3,000. The boat takes 50 per cent so the boat took over $3,000, which runs all the boat and keeps the boat going and the crew gets the other half, but they have to pay for the fuel and the food out of that. When they took the fuel and food out of it, they had $90 each left. So they are coming in, tying the boats up and getting on the nearest bus, or whatever they can get on, to go West. I don't know how many are tied up down there now, but it's happening more.
Then the truckers are talking about coming off the road. They can't charge any more. It's costing more to move a loaf of bread now than it does to make the loaf of bread. Anyway, I wrote a letter to the minister, I cc'd it to the federal Minister of Fisheries and Oceans just to bring it to their attention. I got a letter back from the minister and there is just a line here in the last paragraph: However, assistance is available through the innovation program for fishers who want to develop or implement new technology or vessel designs that may reduce fuel consumption. Can you fill me in on what that means, what that is about, innovation programs?
MR. CHISHOLM: We have a program in place called our innovations program where fishers can apply for, I guess up to 50 per cent, no it wouldn't be that, it wouldn't be 50 per cent - there is a cap on how much they can spend - but 50 per cent of a certain amount, where they can do an assessment on the technology of different boats, new boats, new
[Page 464]
technology on the boats to make them more fuel efficient or that sort of thing, gear types. We do some slipways around wharves, we do some winches on the wharves, that sort of thing would come out of that program.
I understand, too, there is a group going to Iceland to view different mechanisms, I guess that they have fishing technologies there to make boats more fuel efficient and that sort of thing, to switch over to Danish seining from dragging. So it is probably not a great deal of money that we can give to individual ones but if there is a program or project that comes forward to our innovations people, it will be assessed as any other would be and we would look at helping to fund it.
The actual cost of fuel, I guess, is really the issue. You are absolutely right, it is not just the fishing industry that is having that same struggle, it's our trucking industry, our forestry industry and then if you tie that in with the value of the Canadian dollar, right now it is pretty devastating for all our resource sectors. Agriculture is no different than our fisheries, our beef commodities and our hogs and whatever. It certainly is an issue. How governments deal with that, I can't answer that right now but some suggest that we reduce the gas tax on gasoline and on fuel. To me, you know, right now we spend every cent that we bring in through gas taxes and through licensing. It goes back into our highway infrastructure whether it be capital costs or the maintenance of our highways. So, you know, reduce the gas tax in that area, then our highway system will suffer more and we're in great need of getting highway infrastructure in this province. Basically that's how we generate funding to put back in our highways is through our gas taxes.
For the last number of years every penny that we've brought in in gas taxes has gone back into the highways and more, you know, I think last year there was about $6 million more than was generated through the tax system and the licensing fees that went into our highway system. So if we get rid of one, we're going to probably hurt another but, anyway, I don't know where it's all going to end up but I certainly hope that it levels off at some point in time not too far down the road.
MR. THERIAULT: Thank you, Mr. Minister, that answered the question on that. I just wasn't aware of that innovations program but I can certainly tell the fishermen about that and, as you said, I don't know the answer either what it's going to be.
All I can tell after reading about the Great Depression in 1929, investors in future oil beware. You can make a lot of money on it but if nothing else around you is working, you can have all the money in the world, a barrel full of it, and you won't be able to buy a chocolate bar with it because nothing else will be moving. Just like I said the other day in Supply, money is like manure. If you want it to grow things, you got to spread it around. If you leave her in a pile, she's just a pile of manure.
MR. CHISHOLM: That's right, exactly, yes.
[Page 465]
MR. THERIAULT: Anyway, coastal protection, it has been in the Throne Speech, the planning. I know since things went on with the quarry down in Digby for the last four or five years, people have been asking about how can we get coastal protection in place or get coastal areas zoned so we know in the future where we're going and what we're doing. We've gone through a couple of battles down there on the little peninsula of Digby Neck and about two or three months back we met with the Mining Association of Nova Scotia and they want the same thing. They want to know where they can mine and where they can't and people want to know, not only mining, but people want to know what can be done around the coastal areas and what can't be done. It has been stated that the Nova Scotia Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture will be taking the lead on getting this going. So maybe the minister could fill us in on that and give us an idea what's happening and what's going to happen?
MR. CHISHOLM: Well, you know, over the last couple of years we've been doing some work on that as well. We have a couple of people designated in our department who have been working on that. There has been some federal funding that we have had access to to start doing some of that work. It was in our Throne Speech that we were going to have a Coastal Management Framework in place by 2009, which is next year, probably late 2009. This year in our budget I think there's $200,000 allotted to keep that process going and it will be going. You're right, Fisheries is the lead on that file. (Interruption) We have a Provincial Oceans Network that's called POD, and there are 10 or 12 different departments that are involved in that, Environment would be one, Fisheries, Economic Development, a whole host of departments are involved in that and they will be quite involved in the program as we move forward with it. But we do have a committed $200,000 this year to get that process going, speed it up and get it on the rails. For all our coastal community I think, you know - I guess we're the only province in Canada that has started this type of a project where we put in place a development strategy, an environmental strategy, and a whole framework around our coastal communities. I would expect probably late in 2009, that we would have that framework probably in place, and a coastal inventory will be done in 2008, I'm told as well. That's being worked on as we speak and will continue to be worked on.
MR. THERIAULT: I went and got a coastal management plan that New Brunswick put into place, approximately 2002, I believe it was, or 2003, and that seemed to be quite a document that I read through, you know, of how they had done that. Is that something the province could look at, what New Brunswick has done?
MR. CHISHOLM: That will be part of it, but the way I understand it in New Brunswick, it was basically where you could build along the coastline and how far back you had to build and that sort of thing. So ours, I believe, will be a lot more extensive than that. It will have a development component and the whole type of activities that can be done on our coastline, all that sort of thing. So in 2008, we'll have an inventory of it done, in 2009 we'll have the framework agreement in place, the strategy. So, anyway, quite a bit of work is being done and we have two people hired in our department who are just totally dedicated to that project.
[Page 466]
MR. THERIAULT: Does that take in any of the water or just the land?
MR. CHISHOLM: Land and the coast, just the coastline.
MR. THERIAULT: Yes, to the low water mark?
MR. CHISHOLM: Well, with the interests of the fishery and the aquaculture industry in mind, you know, it will basically be coastline, but we're looking forward to it. I think it's - like I said, I think we're the only province in Canada that is going this far with it, you know, we're taking it to the limit and I look forward to working with that group and seeing it through.
MR. THERIAULT: Will the public have input into this?
MR. CHISHOLM: Definitely, yes.
MR. THERIAULT: Definitely.
MR. CHISHOLM: Definitely there will be - I'm just not sure yet how that will be structured, but we will be having consultation with the public and different coastal communities. Probably there will be meetings held and that sort of thing. We haven't got that all developed yet as to how we're going to do that, but the public will be well advised in advance before we do it and we're going to try to make sure that all the interests in our coastal communities and coastline are there, not just the environmental groups that we tend to see appear at these type of meetings. So we will have the aquaculture, we'll have the fishery and everybody will be involved.
[12:00 noon]
MR. THERIAULT: I'd like to touch on one more thing - the clams in the Digby area specifically, maybe all over. In the open areas in Digby, Digby Basin, there were two organizations there, just lately they've come together, the Annapolis-Digby Clam Harvesters Association. They've pulled together and come as one. Probably I brought this up last year, about asking the department if they could help reseed clams in the province, or wherever.
I was told to get somebody to organize a plan and I put that word out down there that they need to be better organized and probably get somebody who can draw up a plan for them. I talked to a lady, Belinda Casey, and she said she was going to work on that. Has anything ever come from that organization yet to help reseed that area?
MR. CHISHOLM: No, we haven't seen anything, any proposals or any presentations come forward from any group down in that area. We do have a group, I believe, going down into Maine - they already went down into Maine - to observe and get more information on
[Page 467]
the growing of clams and that sort of thing, seeding technology and stuff that they do down there.
We don't have a system or a budget in place where we can subsidize wages or anything like that that we can help with the reseeding programs. I'm being told, too, that we did, apparently, a while back, get one just for the wages part of it and we don't have a mechanism in place to be able to do that. Actually we don't have enough money to be able to do that.
Whether Economic Development or another government agency would have that, I don't know, probably not. But, we know the issues with the clams in that area and the issue we did have was, basically, the closed areas, I think was the big one. We tried to resolve that problem and in some levels of the community it hasn't been well received and in other areas it has. It has been kind of a difficult situation, but we had to do what we did. Our concern was for the - anyway, it wasn't only our concern, it was a concern of the federal government, CFIA and other organizations, you know, contaminated clams could get sold to the public.
But, in the end, if there are any of these clam areas that come open again, the option is there for the community to be able to get back into their digging. Otherwise, it has to go through a depuration plant and, as we both know, there's only one down in that area that can do that and they are employing people and I believe they're doing some very good work.
I think the plan and the way to move forward with that was the right one. I think overall it's working quite well. I do realize there are some people in the community who are not totally satisfied with the way that was done.
MR. THERIAULT: Thank you. I just want to follow up on what the member for Shelburne spoke about earlier, about the cusk. I heard that earlier too from DFO and I heard it from fishermen. I just want to say that I fished all my life - both hook and line and with net too - and I fished from Emerald Bank to Georges Bank to the Head of the Bay, from 20 fathoms of water out to 140 fathoms of water. Never in my lifetime fishing on the water or fishing grounds did I ever see any huge amount of cusk. Never was. Never, ever, if you went to deep water and fished for hake, out of 100 fish you might get one cusk, in the shoal waters, sometimes around the hard ridges, you would get the same amount. Never, ever was there any large amount of cusk from Emerald Bank to Georges Bank up into the Bay of Fundy.
In the lobster fishery, we would catch in the Bay of Fundy half a dozen cusk maybe, especially in the Spring of the year from March on. Today, that same amount is there. Nothing has really changed when it comes to the cusk in that area. From Emerald Bank or Western Bank to Georges and all up in through the Bay of Fundy, that's quite a big area. But for some reason, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans is saying the cusk could be extinct. Well, 35 years ago they could have said that too. There's no change in 35 years ago to what there is today being reported by the fishermen.
[Page 468]
Some people say that fishermen may lie, my sons do not lie to me. They're in the fishery and they've been there since 10 years before I quit five years ago. Nothing's changed there, so for whatever reason, if somebody in Ottawa is using this for some kind of conservation reason to close off valuable bottom to lobster fishermen in LFA 34 and 33, it needs to be addressed. I thank the minister for his answer earlier to the member for Shelburne, that he will bring this up with the federal minister.
MR. CHISHOLM: We have brought it up. Really, DFO are working hand-in-hand with us on this issue. It's not DFO that's making this decision, it's the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada - COSEWIC, I guess, is what they call themselves. They've determined that cusk could be a species at risk.
DFO, I believe, are quite attuned as to what could happen here if cusk is made an endangered species. We'll continue to work with the federal government trying to make sure but our staff, at their meetings at their level - deputy as well as Clary when he goes to his meetings and the scientists' meetings - they're totally disagreeing with the cusk being put on the endangered species list because of the reasons you have given us.
We will continue to do that. We certainly know the issue and what will happen if that is developed. The lobster grounds will certainly be - well, you're going to lose lobster ground and we know that. We'll do what we can to make sure it doesn't happen and we'll keep working at it and we'll keep you posted as to what is actually happening there. If we do get the minister down here sometime in June, we will certainly have that chat with him at that time.
MR. THERIAULT: Thank you, Mr. Minister and thank you, Mr. Chairman.
MR. CHAIRMAN: The honourable member for Shelburne.
MR. STERLING BELLIVEAU: Thank you for the opportunity to close. I want to thank the staff, first of all, and the minister for your presence here today. I'm encouraged by the comments I'm hearing regarding the Fisheries Loan Board. I'm encouraged by that, I want to see that fulfilled. I also want to point out, in the last session, there was unanimous support in this House for a humane seal harvest. I also want to recommend that we need to have a strong voice with our federal partner, especially on some of these issues that we addressed - I emphasize the cusk situation. I look forward to possibly putting that resolution back on the floor again, as the minister had suggested, on a personal note.
MR. CHISHOLM: Yes.
MR. BELLIVEAU: I think that needs to be unanimous and I want to emphasize one more time that, with these discussions with our possible federal minister in the next few months, that we need to seriously address a halibut enhancement project.
[Page 469]
Again, I want to thank the member for Digby-Annapolis and I thank you for your time. Thank you.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you. At this time I recognize the minister to close debate on his estimates.
MR. CHISHOLM: Well, if I could, Mr. Chairman, I would like to thank my staff as well for the work they have done with me over the last year. I also wanted to thank the member for Shelburne and the member for Digby-Annapolis for what we've been able to accomplish together over the last year. I think we had a good year, we keep in touch with what's going on in the fishery and it's good to have two critics, I can tell you, that have been involved in the fishing community all their lives, know the fishery and it makes my job a lot easier to be able to work with you guys. The input you give me and to people in our department is valued and I certainly want to continue that dialogue and that process.
Having said that, thank you again and thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll read this resolution on the estimates:
MR. CHAIRMAN: Shall Resolution E10 stand?
Resolution E10 stands.
On behalf of the committee members, we wish to thank the honourable minister and his staff for their co-operation and information provided. That concludes the debate on the Estimates of the Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture. Thank you.
MR. CHISHOLM: Thank you.
[12:15 p.m. The subcommittee recessed.]
[12:19 p.m. The subcommittee reconvened]
MR. CHAIRMAN: Good afternoon. I want to welcome the Minister of Health Promotion and Protection and African-Nova Scotian Affairs for Resolutions on Estimates and Crown Corporation business plans for the fiscal year April 1, 2008 to March 31, 2009, Honourable Barry Barnet.
ResolutionE12 - Resolved that a sum of not exceeding $87,526,000 be granted to the Lieutenant Governor to defray expenses in respect of the Department of Health Promotion and Protection, pursuant to the Estimate.
Resolution E18 - Resolved that a sum not exceeding $42,543,000 be granted to the Lieutenant Governor to defray expenses in respect of the Executive Council, pursuant to the Estimate.
[Page 470]
MR. CHAIRMAN: At this moment I'll ask the minister for his opening comments.
The honourable Minister of African Nova Scotian Affairs.
HON. BARRY BARNET: Mr. Chairman, I was excited when I heard you read the resolution, the $87 million and then the $45 million. I thought that's great that we'll be able to do a lot of work with that but then I realized that that's only our share of the Public Service votes. However, what can you do? You can always hope.
Mr. Chairman, if I could ask the time that we started.
MR. CHAIRMAN: We started at 12:18 p.m. We have approximately until 12:35 p.m.
MR. BARNET: Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I would like to speak to you beginning today about my responsibilities with respect to the Office of African Nova Scotian Affairs. Let me first introduce the staff who have joined me at the table: budget manager, Kevin Elliott; and from the Office of African Nova Scotian Affairs, our chief executive officer, Wayn Hamilton. As well, we're joined behind me by Angela Johnson and Natasha Jackson, they work in the Halifax office of the Office of African Nova Scotian Affairs.
Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to report that the Office of African Nova Scotian Affairs achieved a number of its projected goals this past year. The key priority has been the establishment of the Cape Breton satellite office. An open house was held in Sydney in April 2007 to mark the official launch of the first regional office with three staff members joining the African Nova Scotian Affairs team. Since then staff have partnered with various government and community organizations on more than 20 projects, programs and events. They have helped a number of activities within the African Nova Scotian business communities in the region.
For example, we have provided leadership in the development of the African Nova Scotian service providers network. This network will assist in creating strategic initiatives and ensuring there are opportunities to share resources and community development strategies. It should be noted, Mr. Chairman, that in March we celebrated our regional office's one year anniversary. In support of the government's vision for, The New Nova Scotia: A Path to 2020, African Nova Scotian Affairs will continue to promote an integrated approach within government on matters related to African Nova Scotians and enhance the awareness and the understanding of African Nova Scotians' experience to government.
Mr. Speaker, African Nova Scotian Affairs will work within the province's social and economic framework to undertake a number of key initiatives. I am proud to say we successfully launched two of our proposed primary reference groups known as African Nova Scotian Community Action Partnerships, commonly called ANSCAPs. In the Spring and summer of 2007, submissions were collected for both the youth leadership and community engagement of ANSCAPs and selected members for their first meeting in November.
[Page 471]
Mr. Chairman, our ANSCAPs act as a resource for us. They assist us with our goal to work collaboratively with government structures and the African Nova Scotian community to foster development and capacity building. These two groups are currently developing project proposals for workshops and a professional development series as well as writing several position papers on issues that reflect the office's strategic goals and needs of the African Nova Scotian communities. We also look forward to creating two additional ANSCAPs in the areas of health, culture and heritage.
Mr. Chairman, one of the key initiatives for us this year was African Heritage Month in March 2008. I want for a moment to just leave my prepared remarks and to talk about one of the opportunities that I took advantage of, as the minister, during African Heritage Month. Members would know that in the development of the Office of African Nova Scotian Affairs my executive assistant and I travelled extensively around the province to meet individuals, groups and organizations, and we met them in their homes, in their rec rooms, in their kitchens; we met them in community halls, in church halls, and in offices. It gave me the ability to do the work that I needed to do to help us establish the Office of African Nova Scotian Affairs.
One of the first meetings that we had was in Sydney; we were travelling to Sydney to do some mixed business. I was, at the time, the Minister of Service Nova Scotia and Municipal Relations and the newly sworn-in Minister of African Nova Scotian Affairs in our brand new office.
On our trip to Sydney we arranged to meet with some community representatives and we did that at the airport in Sydney. They brought to us an issue of concern with respect to the UNIA Hall in Glace Bay. The hall was slated to close and go to tax sale - it had been left in an abandoned situation for a number of years and the municipality had placed it on the municipal tax sale list. The advertisement had gone in the paper and a date for auction and sale of that particular property was slated in the near future.
Immediately after meeting with the community group, I was meeting with the mayor with respect to my other ministerial responsibilities on municipal affairs, and I convinced the mayor to drive me to Glace Bay to visit the hall. We drove to Glace Bay, we actually drove up Sterling Road and visited the hall. The hall was in very bad shape, but I knew that the community group that approached me were sincere about their desire to save this hall; they were sincere about the historical connection of that hall to the Sydney and Glace Bay area and, indeed, to the Province of Nova Scotia. It was the last standing UNIA hall left in the Province of Nova Scotia and there was a desire to save it.
I was able to convince the mayor to bring it to council, to talk about an opportunity that council could have to save the hall from the tax sale and we worked very closely. The mayor, to his credit and to council's credit, did just that. They removed the hall from the tax sale roll and they did the work that was necessary to secure it in the interim.
[Page 472]
Through our office we were able to identify some revenue and that money was used to refurbish that hall. The hall - and the reason that I raised this is because I was able, during African Heritage Month, to go back and visit that hall, now three years later, and I'm proud to report to this committee and to all Nova Scotians that the hall has been restored. It is a vital part of that neighbourhood, that community. They've been able to save a number of historical artifacts and have developed it into a very nice community hall.
During African Heritage Month they invited me to launch a book on the history of African Nova Scotians in the Sydney area. The book was launched as part of the African Heritage Month celebrations in that area. It was prepared and written by a local author who is a professor at the University College of Cape Breton - is that how you say it? - the Cape Breton University. I was so proud standing there in that hall because that, to me, represents one of our very first accomplishments as the Office of African Nova Scotian Affairs.
[12:30 p.m.]
I commend the community group that really led the initiative to repair that hall. I know now, three years later, that the small investment we made was absolutely worth it. Now there is a solid structure there with a great community group around it. It actually speaks to the value and the purpose of the Office of African Nova Scotian Affairs. It's about providing an opportunity and a gateway to government departments so that when concerns like this are raised there is an opportunity to have them addressed and we're able to work as a government, across government departments. It just happened that I happened to be both the Minister of Municipal Affairs, and African Nova Scotian Affairs. The initial contribution towards that, I believe, came from Service Nova Scotia and Municipal Relations, but since then there have been other funds that have supported that and the community did a great deal of work.
So I was proud to go back to Sydney to see the work that was undertaken on behalf of UNIA Hall. I want to point out that that hall has historic significance in Nova Scotia because that hall was one of the places - and maybe the last remaining place - where Marcus Garvey spoke, and his significance needs not to be mentioned at this committee - everyone is fully aware of that.
Let's go back to the prepared remarks now. As I said, African Heritage Month this year was launched in the Red Room of Province House, right here, marking the formation of the African Heritage Month Information Network. To ensure a province-wide calendar of events and activities were held and highlighted, the office assembled various community organizations from across the province to create the African Heritage Month Information Network. Mr. Chairman, the network afforded an opportunity for members to share information and resources and partner on activities. The result was a wealth of African Heritage Month activities held in every region of the province during the month of February. Along with this, our key contributions to the month were the African Heritage Month poster
[Page 473]
and events calendar. They featured a local artist's rendering of an historical figure and included a list of events - it's not in my notes, but the historical figure was Marcus Garvey.
Mr. Chairman, in addition to this the African Nova Scotian Affairs Web site featured a page dedicated to the month, with biographies, historical information, and links to other African Heritage Month Web sites. Our partnership, and the resulting activities for African Heritage Month 2008 were a great success, and planning has already begun for African Heritage Month 2009.
The office's long-term strategic goals continue to include the delivery of information sessions to government and community organizations, to develop communication strategies for African Nova Scotian communities about government, and to coordinate and facilitate forums with African Nova Scotian stakeholders. To enable the office to enhance its delivery of service, we will be adding new staff in our Halifax office. These human resources will increase our program administration, research and communication capacity. After almost five years in operation, Mr. Chairman, we have determined these positions are necessary to address and respond to the emerging needs of our stakeholders and increased requests for our services and expertise within government and in the community.
Mr. Chairman, staff at the Office of African Nova Scotian Affairs sit on more than two dozen interdepartmental government committees, or working groups, and collaborate with many community groups or organizations to address the needs and the concerns of African Nova Scotians. Some examples include our partnering with the Public Service Commission on the provincial diversity round table; the Department of Tourism, Culture and Heritage on the recently released provincial heritage strategy; with the Department of Health Promotion and Protection on the provincial suicide prevention framework; and the Nova Scotia Volunteer Community Advisory Committee.
Mr. Chairman, most recently, with the help of the public and private sector partners and in recognition of International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, March 21st, the Office of African Nova Scotian Affairs brought diversity educator and activist Jane Elliott to Nova Scotia to deliver a series of presentations. On March 18th to 19th Ms. Elliott delivered her lecture, entitled, Power, Privilege and Perception - the Anatomy of Prejudice, to the business community, to government employees, and to high school students.
Our goal was to target the leaders of today and tomorrow. As I am sure you are aware, Nova Scotia has zero tolerance for racial discrimination and we will continue to work to ensure that every Nova Scotian practices equality.
Mr. Chairman, it is the duty of each of us to combat racism and racial discrimination in our society, in our education system, in the workforce, and in general. We believe, given the demonstration of support for Dr. Elliott's, Ms. Elliot's - she corrected me on that - visit, all Nova Scotian institutions are active players in the elimination of discrimination.
[Page 474]
MR. CHAIRMAN: Excuse me. The time for estimates for Friday, May 9th, has expired and we'll resume on Monday. Thank you.
[The subcommittee adjourned at 12:36 p.m.]
