HALIFAX, THURSDAY, APRIL 21, 2016

 

SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE ON SUPPLY

 

3:00 P.M.

 

CHAIRMAN

Mr. Gordon Wilson

 

            MR. CHAIRMAN: I'd like to call the Subcommittee of the Whole on Supply to order. We will begin with the estimates of the Department of Agriculture.

 

            Resolution E1 - Resolved, that a sum not exceeding $60,217,000 be granted to the Lieutenant Governor to defray expenses in respect of the Department of Agriculture, pursuant to the Estimate, and the business plans of the Nova Scotia Crop and Livestock Insurance Commission, the Nova Scotia Farm Loan Board, and the Nova Scotia Fisheries and Aquaculture Loan Board be approved.

 

MR. CHAIRMAN: I would like to now invite the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries and Aquaculture to start with some opening comments and introduce his staff to the members of the committee. Thank you. The floor is yours.

 

            HON. KEITH COLWELL: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It's a pleasure to be here before the committee again. At the end of the meeting I may not say the same thing but it's a pleasure to start off, anyway. We have Deputy Minister Kim MacNeil with us this afternoon, and Jennifer from our financial department. They are with us and many staff members behind us here. Between myself and all our staff members, hopefully we can answer the committee's questions.

 

            It has been a very exciting year in agriculture this year. We have seen a growth in our exports by 21 per cent, we're very excited about that. We're moving towards the Ivany report goal of doubling agriculture exports in the next 10 years. We have to pick up the pace a little bit but indeed we are a growing industry.

 

I want to give credit to two places; number one, the industry itself. The industry has really stepped up and are innovating new ideas, new approaches to growing crops and new crops indeed, so I really want to thank them for the work they've done. I challenged them when I first became minister, I told them I would like you to make money. They told me they've never been told that before and they sure have responded and I want to thank them for that on behalf of our government and the people of Nova Scotia. We need a strong, safe, food supply in this province and indeed our farmers are stepping up to the challenge in doing just that.

 

            It's exciting, we are seeing new, exciting things happening in our wine industry in Nova Scotia, producing some of the best wine in the world and that's no understatement. We've had international competitions that our small wineries - and I stress our small wineries, compared to a lot of wineries in the world - for instance, one went to France and won a silver medal there; there had never been a medal won outside of France before for the region. That gives you an idea of where we are in the wine industry.

 

We've seen Nova 7 is the best-selling wine in Nova Scotia against all competition, including the cheap, $10 bottles of wine from other parts of the world. It's unbelievable, you can imagine that. Their big problem is they don't have enough grapes, more grapes and they will be able to supply the Nova Scotia market even better. They typically run out in the liquor stores and in their facility themselves in three months. We can't continue with that missed opportunity.

 

            The list goes on and on. In the wine industry we see awards after awards and we see the potential of growing this industry to the high value, labour intensive, very profitable business when it is done right. Again I want to thank that industry for stepping up to the challenge.

 

I set up a Wine Development Board, the only thing like it in North America, there had never been one before, to deal with government and industry working together. That has been very successful. I remember the first meeting we went to and I challenged the industry to be five times bigger in five years and after they got up off the floor and out of total shock they started talking about it. They said we can't do that, it's impossible and as of today we're on the road to doing that. Again, I want to congratulate them for their solid business sense, their solid production of quality products that are second to none in the world.

 

            Too often in Nova Scotia we say we want to bring in an expert from someplace else, they do it better someplace else. Indeed, I've travelled the world a reasonable amount in my lifetime and sat around a lot of boardroom tables and I see too many times - one of the telling tales is the iron ring that the engineers wear from Dalhousie, which used to be Technical University of Nova Scotia, they don't talk about it too much, but you'll see these rings in the boardrooms. They're making decisions at huge corporations. They're from Nova Scotia. They're Nova Scotians.

 

            We have to keep those bright, young people here to grow our economy, and we're starting to do that in the Department of Agriculture and the other department I represent, the Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture. We have to all work on that. That's so important for our economy, as we grow Nova Scotia's economy.

 

            It's exciting. The other things we've seen in agriculture is we have the biggest producer of sweet potatoes in Eastern Canada in Nova Scotia. Five or 10 years ago, everyone was told they couldn't grow sweet potatoes in Nova Scotia, and now we are and doing it very well. Actually, it's so successful that we have to expand that operation and hopefully more farmers will pick up the challenge on that and grow sweet potato crops in the province and indeed be able to export some of the potatoes that are grown here.

 

            We're typically not known as a potato-growing province, even though we do a substantial amount of them. Sweet potato is a new technology for the province, and again dealing with Perennia and our department, the farming industry has really stepped forward on new technology.

 

            I can go on and on about the successes in the industry and how excited we are to see what's happening. It's excitement that I believe is shared by the industry. They've stepped forward and come up with great ideas and innovations on their own and will continue to do that.

 

            One of our farmers in the province was supplying products into the Carolinas and on one trip they asked him if he could grow kale and he said, I don't know, it has never been grown in Nova Scotia. So lo and behold, they did a 10-acre plot - and this was typically on their own without any help from anybody - just to try it. They used innovative technology that the industry here had developed over time, and lo and behold, they produced four times the crop per acre that they ever accomplished in the Carolinas - for a crop that's not supposed to grow here. That's the innovation we have in Nova Scotia. We should be very proud of those people who are doing that and proud of the people in the province who are doing this work and working together.

 

            We've restructured our department to be customer oriented, working more and more directly with the industry, responding to their needs and doing the things that the industry really needs to help them grow and prosper. If the industry prospers in this province, so does our economy. It is that simple.

 

            So it's exciting to see industry coming and challenging us and working with us to develop new ideas and new approaches to things. We're very proud of the work that Perennia does working with the industry.

 

            I remember the first file I inherited that was a significant file in this province was this complex virus that was discovered in the strawberry plants. I remember meeting on a Sunday afternoon and the industry couldn't believe I'd meet with them on a Sunday afternoon to discuss this more than once - more than one Sunday afternoon. As a result of the meetings and the work that the industry suggested we do and work with them, and as a partnership with them, and working with the inspection process, changing our inspection protocol and doing many other things around that, that whole virus issue has virtually been eliminated in the province.

 

            We thought it would take probably five to 10 years to bring the industry back and, indeed, it was done in two years - a really unbelievable accomplishment when you think about it. Every strawberry plant in the province was plowed under and had to start from scratch again. The nurseries had to get new protocols in place and indeed they've done it. Our crops are better than ever and will continue to be better.

 

            As we look at the things that the industry has done, we are also setting the standard now for strawberry plants being shipped. We're working with one company in Nova Scotia and hope to work with other ones soon in a new quality assurance system for strawberry plants for Nova Scotia. We're going to be setting the standard in North America when it comes to quality assurance in strawberry plants.

 

            I want to commend the company that's doing that and also the other strawberry producers that have this excellent product to export. We're becoming one of the biggest exporters of strawberry plants in North America at the present time because of the quality we're putting in place, because of the way that the industry has responded. It's exciting to see this happen. It's exciting to see the industry stepping up to the plate and indeed doing many things to help us. I'm very proud of the work our department has done under Select Nova Scotia. We have been working now for over a year with Sobeys on the Select Nova Scotia program. You go into a Sobeys store now and you will see Nova Scotia product. Oftentimes you will see a Nova Scotia farmer with that product, talking about that. That has really substantially improved our penetration in the market with Sobeys and I know that Loblaws is not far behind them as they are trying to source more and more local products.

 

            I want to talk a little bit about Sobeys. It is very unusual to have a company, even though it is a Nova Scotia company, go knock on someone's door and say I want to buy your product but you don't meet the requirements we have but we will show you how to do it and we will work with you to make sure that happens. I think that says a lot for Nova Scotia and Nova Scotians. As we see this co-operative effort between a major retail chain and, indeed, our farming industry, they need each other and we need that product in place.

 

            One of the arrangements made with Sobeys was from one farm just outside of Truro that they would buy all their strawberries. This is a substantial size strawberry operation and Sobeys agreed to it. I can remember meeting with the manager of Sobeys that looked after the distribution, he said there were so many strawberries coming in that the store manager would tell him they couldn't sell them. He said we're going to keep shipping and you sell them and they sold every one. They extended the year, the time, they used the day-neutral berry and they extended the time. So if you bought strawberries last year or the previous year in Sobeys, there's a 99 per cent chance in the summertime that you bought Nova Scotia berries. That's a change from two to three years before that, so it's exciting.

 

            When we look at the innovation that is coming in the industry and the way the industry has really moved forward, it's a pleasure to see that innovation. That innovation means that families are making money, families can do the things they need to do and help grow and stabilize our economy, it's so important.

 

            We've seen NorthumberLamb being turned into a CFIA-approved facility. Now most people wouldn't know what a CFIA-approved facility is unless you are in the business - it is a Canadian Food Inspection Agency facility. Once you get that designation you can ship your product anywhere in the world. Before that, our sheep were being shipped out of Nova Scotia to be processed and then shipped from there to other destinations. Now we can ship our sheep products anywhere in the world. The best part of this - a lot of the distribution centres for the major grocery chains were outside of Nova Scotia so we couldn't even ship product to P.E.I. or New Brunswick and that was a major market, probably the only markets we can really fill at this present time.

 

But now we can ship those products to those facilities or anywhere else in the world. That's very positive, a small business, a lot of changes they had to make to do that and I want to give them credit for the work they've done in that area. It's all going towards growing Nova Scotia's economy in a very positive way. We have to keep looking at these opportunities and making these opportunities happen.

 

            We've seen excellent new products come out. We had one product - I was in China this year and from a two-minute conversation with one of our local farmer's representatives in China, they signed a multi-million dollar deal to sell blueberry juice in China and distribute it as Perrier water, the representative for Perrier water in China.

 

            These are things that are happening, these are things that are very exciting. Every time we can export something out of the province - I know when I was exporting out of the province the Department of External Affairs told me that every dollar we can ship out of Nova Scotia, even if it is to New Brunswick, has a $7 economic impact, so every dollar we can get out there is a $7 economic impact.

 

            Nobody has indicated that number is wrong. I've heard different numbers around that but it all works out to about the same. So every dollar we gain that way is someone else to help pay for other services we need to provide in the province. We need to grow the export industry and then have that grow.

 

            We are now in the process of trying to market our products with added value, any place we can market them. We are getting targeted more and more, to make sure we get those products in the marketplace and indeed, get a return for Nova Scotia.

 

            There's one thing we haven't talked about in the province very much and I'm starting to talk about it now and I would encourage my colleagues around the table to do this, the issue of food security. Now when you think of food security you think food safety. That's not what I am talking about. Food safety is very paramount in our industry and that is being well looked after by inspections now that are done by the Department of Environment and previously by our department and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

 

            I am talking about food security, the fact that you will have food to eat. If we had a problem and the trucks stopped flowing between the borders of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, they say the food supply would last two weeks. I would bet that the grocery stores would be cleaned out in 24 hours. That's very real and we have to start considering that. We have to get more product produced in Nova Scotia so we could survive and feed the population in the province if we did have a disruption for whatever reason - maybe a bad storm, maybe something happens, the trucking industry goes on strike, anything could happen. The more we could move towards self-sufficiency in food, the better off we are in the province.

 

We are going to be talking about that more and more and I would ask you to consider that when you are talking to people in the area and encourage them to buy good quality, reasonably priced Nova Scotia products when they go shopping. This is something we have to do together and I appreciate the Opposition Parties, the events I go to they are there supporting the industry. I want to thank you for doing that, too, because that's very important. If we don't work on our food supply together, we won't have one, we won't have a reliable source of safe food to eat. We can do without everything but food and water. Everything else we can survive, we can change, we can control, we can do a lot of things but if you have no food and water, you can't survive.

 

            I am going to end it there. I could go on with this thing for the whole four hours I have here today. It's just exciting doing the work in the department and, again, I can't stress enough how pleased I am with the staff I have working with me, directing me. I challenge them all the time to come up with new and innovative ideas. I've stopped challenging anymore because they're doing it every day and that's very positive - I don't have to challenge them anymore.

 

            We are seeing some great results from our department, great results from our staff and great results are showing in sales. They are showing in quality and in all the things we need to make Nova Scotia a better place to live and a healthier place to live. With those few short words, I'll turn it over to the Chair again.

 

            MR. CHAIRMAN: The honourable member for Kings North.

 

            MR. JOHN LOHR: Thank you, Mr. Minister, we certainly appreciate your remarks. I enjoyed hearing your description of some of the success stories in Nova Scotia and I realize there are many more, some of them my own neighbours so it kind of makes me smile to hear that. The kale project in North Carolina, I think actually when I rented the land to my neighbour, Bruce Rand, in the first year he did that project and it was very successful so I am very pleased to see that.

 

            I know that you have been Minister of Agriculture now for just about three years - not quite - and I appreciate there are many success stories. I'm just wondering if you could just maybe briefly tell me what, in your opinion, are some of the issues or constraints that hold back agriculture in the province or some of the things that you see that need to be worked on.

 

            MR. COLWELL: Of course there are always things that could be improved, there's no question about that. I think we have to move more towards more profitability in the farm, that's an issue I am concerned about. The farms do quite well, some farms don't do quite as well. If we're going to have a business for young people to take over, it has to be profitable.

 

            We talk a lot about succession plans and that is also an issue. You can have an easy succession plan if you have an operation that you are making money with. Lifestyle has changed for people and as you well know, the supply management of milk has been a great thing for the province and will continue to be a great thing, I hope for a long time to come. The new technology they have has allowed young people the opportunity to produce their milk very efficiently and still have a Saturday afternoon off, which is really nice, or be able to go to their kids' concert through the week for one night. That's what we have to move towards. We need to do more automation, we need to do more cost control, we need to do better quality control. Those are the things that will make a big difference in the industry, and we need the innovation that goes with that. That is being demonstrated now in the industry, which we're very excited about.

 

            MR. LOHR: I appreciate those answers. I guess there's lots of things to drill down into there. The question of farm profitability, it was a couple of years ago in this Legislature, I believe, that I brought up the issue that my neighbour, Art Woolaver of Basinview Farms, brought to me about the extreme competitiveness or, as he believed, dumping in our market from Quebec of cabbage and we raised the issue of cabbage prices. I know that at that time I believe you said you would strike a committee and report at some point on interprovincial inequities in trade or drill down into what the result of that was. When you mentioned farm profitability, to me the very low prices of commodities is a huge issue in overall farm profitability. I just wonder if you could tell me what resulted from that investigation into this issue that Art Woolaver raised.

 

            MR. COLWELL: You bring up a very good point and I'm glad you brought that up in the House before. We did put a committee together - Horticulture Nova Scotia - in our department to investigate the possibility that Quebec might have been dumping or subsidizing the production of cabbage.

 

            The report I received so far from the committee is that there is no definitive proof that has been happening. They couldn't find anything to that effect. It seems to be more that the Quebec farmers are more efficient because they have a lot larger crop size and space, maybe a little bit better growing conditions at certain times of the year.

 

            Saying that, and I met with Horticulture Nova Scotia about this exact topic and other crops that are faced with the same problem, we have to really look at more efficient ways to grow these crops. We have to be either very efficient at it or we have to look at other crops to grow. I think the blueberry industry is a prime example of that. The blueberry industry has come up through proper management of the soil and the crops themselves, five times the production they did even a few years ago. When I was talking to some of the growers, some of them are experiencing 15 times the production they have ever seen, and consistently now.

 

            That tells me we need to do science more strongly, we need to get more co-operation from the universities to really work on projects that make sense now. It's great, we need to do long-term research, that's critical to the growth of our economy in our province but we also have to look at ways to innovate to make sure that these products, that we can get the best yield safely and get the best possible return we can for the farm because at the end of the day it's like manufacturing.

 

This is a manufacturing process even though you are growing instead of making widgets. If you can't make them economically you've got to find better ways to operate, more efficient ways to operate or you've got to change what you do - one or the other. More efficient way to operate, more productivity, maybe different soil amendments or whatever the case may be, whatever science shows us, we could maybe become very efficient at this, still maintain the price we have and increase the profit margins because margins have to be up there. If the margins aren't there, it's not worth it.

 

            MR. LOHR: I'm just wondering what role you see. From what I think I hear you saying is raising the level of farm management skills in the province, what role do you see the Department of Agriculture playing in that?

 

            MR. COLWELL: We've been working with the Agricultural College in Truro to put some entrepreneurial business training courses on. They've started developing some courses and working on that. We've just met with the community colleges, my deputy and myself and some of my staff, recently to talk about how we can involve the community colleges in solving some of these problems and working towards solutions. So we're very confident we can come up with a solution over time. The solution isn't just us coming up with programs that we can do, the industry itself has to come forward and say okay, we're willing to take these courses, we want to know more about the science of how we can do these things and going forward, too, we have programs to help them do that.

 

            I can tell you we've already talked about some of these very successful things that our industry is doing but we want to see more of that. We want the industry to come to us and direct us where they want to go as well. So I think not just the department, we have to have a really strong partnership with the industry and work together to jointly find a solution to these things. Once we get the solutions, then we move on to something else we have to find a solution for.

 

            Again, about the strawberry virus; that was a huge economic hit to Nova Scotia and very potentially a very serious problem right across North America. The industry stepped forward, our department stepped forward, the staff stepped forward and a solution was found. Now they do monitoring on an ongoing basis at certain times of the year to look for aphids. When they find the aphids they take the treatments necessary to resolve the problem and it has worked very well. That is a made-in-Nova Scotia solution, in co-operation with the industry and our department working together. Those are the things we have to do.

 

            MR. LOHR: I think I heard you mention the community college and I assume you mean the NSCC system by that. Could you give me a couple of examples of how you are interacting with the NSCC?

 

            MR. COLWELL: Well right now we've been encouraging them to put more monitoring in place, field monitoring. They've done a very good job on it, that's information we need to grow different crops in different places, especially in the wine industry. We're looking at different courses they can put on that are needed for the industry, we're working on those now.

 

            When we met with them we talked about growing Nova Scotia's economy and improving the profitability in the industry and several things. We're very close to - I just was wondering where we are with the MOU with the community colleges - we're very close. That's something the deputy minister has been working on, that's why I had to ask him - very close to signing the MOU with them, to hit the agenda we have in the department to grow Nova Scotia's economy.

 

            They are very much onside, we've met with all the principals from the whole province a few months ago, again, with our staff, and we're very pleased with their response. They are there to work with us. They've come up with some excellent ideas as well, how we can help the industry. Before, they were not focused on agriculture. The environmental monitoring they have been doing is really useful.

 

            As we move forward there are going to be some courses in the wine industry they are going to put on to help us with that industry to grow and prosper. We are working with them and the university with courses on beekeeping. We made it a requirement that if you have a certain number of bee hives - last year we changed the program around that - that you have to have a course or else you are not going to get funding going forward too, and to increase the knowledge and the ability for the industry to make more money and to look after the products properly.

 

            MR. LOHR: I know that some of the NSCC schools in the Valley have begun to focus on agriculture. I'm interested, Mr. Minister, in terms of Dalhousie AC, what portion of the budget goes to Dalhousie Agricultural College?

 

            MR. COLWELL: One-third.

 

            MR. LOHR: Where would I find that line item there?

 

            MR. COLWELL: It's just under $20 million - $19.178 million, I believe. That's about one-third of our budget.

 

            MR. LOHR: Where would that line show up in this budget document?

 

            MR. COLWELL: It's under tab 3.2.

 

            MR. LOHR: Where was that? I'm sorry, Mr. Minister, I didn't quite catch where that was.

 

            MR. COLWELL: Tab 3.2 in the Estimates Book.

 

            MR. LOHR: Grants and Contributions? Right in the middle of the page?

 

            MR. COLWELL: We have a different book here so just one second.

 

            MR. LOHR: Can I ask you, do you see that number going up or going down or where that would be?

 

            MR. COLWELL: Yes, it's Page 3.2.

 

            MR. LOHR: Under Grants and Contributions, right in the middle of the page?

 

            MR. COLWELL: Departmental Expenses, under Grants and Contributions.

 

            MR. LOHR: Okay, that's where I thought it was. I'm just wondering what that number increased by year over year and what percentage increase is in that number? I know that you, minister, are probably well aware that the students at Dal AC are facing substantial rate hikes and possibly more than regular students in the Dal system in Halifax. I'm just wondering to what extent the department is continuing to be committed to Dal AC or increased funding.

 

            What percentage of funding year over year would you see that number going up or down?

 

            MR. COLWELL: Most of the funding we have, some of it is for operating money at the university and some of it is for research. There was an MOU in place, they haven't signed last year's MOU yet and we're going to work on a new MOU for the coming year. The funding has been pretty stable, I think, with a 1 per cent increase last year, something like that. It's totally separate from what they're doing with the tuition fees. We're actually giving them more money, I believe, than we had when the department operated it.

 

            MR. LOHR: So just to clarify, the MOU was unsigned last year but you're hoping it will be signed this year with them?

 

            MR. COLWELL: We're negotiating with them again for this year and we signed the MOUs, sent it to them for last year. We disbursed the money at the end of the year and we're looking forward to them negotiating again this year.

 

            MR. LOHR: I know, as a graduate of that institution myself when it had a different name, and just hearing what you said earlier about food security and understanding completely that we need to learn farm succession and how important it is to our province that young people have the opportunity to have an education in agriculture.

 

            I am also very pleased that the NSCC system is moving into agriculture a little bit but in reality this is our primary vehicle to teach young people how to farm. I just want to know, I want to hear your commitment to continuing, that your government will continue to fund Dal AC and continue to keep pace with inflation, at least in terms of how it is funded.

 

            MR. COLWELL: We are definitely committed to working with the agricultural college. You are absolutely right when you say that is the key element that we need in the Province of Nova Scotia to enhance the agriculture industry in the province. I think that has been the case ever since the Agricultural College was established way back when. They definitely serve a different purpose than the community colleges do but they both have a place in the system.

 

            I know from personal experience - I was doing to some research and development with my business years ago and lo and behold, I hired all different engineers, mechanical engineers, electronic engineers, out of university to develop products. One gentleman came to me one day and said, I'm a graduate from the Agricultural College. Well hiring him was the best choice I ever made. He understood equipment, he understood how to design things, build things, how they worked. We went from being the beginners or rookies in the commercial fishing industry and longline fishing to become the world's largest producer of longline fishing equipment in two years, with the help that we had from him.

 

            I really value the education system that the Agricultural College has put together. I think it's a combination of real research, practical research, some theoretical research, all of it is very important, and also practical, hands-on training, as well as very good theoretical training. It is probably one of the best universities we have for that type of training in Canada, without question.

 

            It's good to see the graduates, I'm running into them all the time. Now that I'm Agriculture Minister a lot of people come up and say, I'm a graduate of the Agricultural College and I work for some other company doing something totally different, as you are now, as an MLA. I think that's fantastic because that university has really served the province and the country very well and we are going to continue to support it.

 

            MR. LOHR: I appreciate those comments. I just want to switch gears. I know I told you I would be jumping around a little bit. I just want to talk about the Farm Loan Board a little bit. I noticed when I was reading the statement for the Farm Loan Board that there was substantial - and I guess when I read this document I read the Estimate, Forecast, Estimate, so forecast I think is in reality actual, although you don't totally know the actual - I think that would be correct. I see Jennifer nodding.

 

            I see a substantial increase in allowances for bad debt. I was just wondering if you could sort of drill down into that for us and what is happening there.

 

            MR. COLWELL: Most of that was in the mink industry. That was about $2 million is the number and the rest of them are all around $50,000. Some of those files, even though I asked them to identify them first when I was appointed minister, anything that needed to be written off to get the write-off done and go though it so we could move on and clean up all the files we had, that hadn't been done until recently. Some of these are old, some of them are really old. That's the best way to put it.

 

            MR. LOHR: I appreciate hearing that. I know some of them are. It wasn't just two years ago the mink industry - I believe in 2013 - was really at an all-time high and I think that in our first estimates I know that it would have been one of your examples of a success story in the province, in reality we all know that the circumstances are external to our province, they are global.

 

            I'm just wondering, given the high number of mink farmers in arrears or maybe possibly in arrears and probably that number doesn't represent all of them, I don't know that, I would speculate some of them are facing financial difficulties, what is your department doing about that or what is happening in relation to the mink industry?

 

            MR. COLWELL: Well the mink industry is suffering substantially from a downturn in the price of mink. We recently travelled to a mink auction in Toronto and got the lowdown from the mink industry, from that perspective as well as from our farmers. We've been working very closely with the representative that they have decided to assign to work with us to help resolve this problem long term.

 

            We're looking at solutions that I can't discuss here today, unfortunately, because the industry is not aware of the work we are doing, they will find out shortly, we will get their feedback and then we'll see if we can implement what we're talking about but the ideas will actually come from the industry themselves. That's a big change from two or three years ago. I did set up a mink board, it was chaired by myself but most of the time my deputy minister was looking after it because of other commitments I have. We worked very closely with them and we came up with some solutions in some areas, some areas we couldn't get solutions on.

 

            The problem is the Chinese market has dried up some. The Russian market with the Russian dollar really shrinking to almost nothing and with the oil industry in Russia not selling the oil at a higher price, they just don't have the money to buy the furs - not the furs so much but the finished products.

 

            It's a cycle that runs about every 10 years. This is a low. A lot of the industry maybe expanded too much, based on the 2013 numbers, too rapidly. We've had Aleutian disease problems that you are well aware of. We're working on resolving those. The industry has really done well at developing Aleutian-resistant mink and in some areas we have no Aleutian disease and that has become rarer.

 

            The other thing is that the purchasing side of the industry is telling us we need to do better quality. We used to be the best in the world. We've slipped substantially from that rating in just the last few years, the last very few years, mainly because of Aleutian disease, a little bit too much expansion. I think we need to do a correction on the industry - the industry itself, not us, they have to do a correction - re-evaluate the business case. This is an industry you can make a lot of money on very easily when the price is high. When the price is low the really good companies make money and the other ones don't and we're seeing that.

 

            I know we were into some discussions with some of the most successful fur farmers in the world. They typically sell pelts for an average of $10 a pelt higher in the high times and in the low times, and $10 a pelt today would mean that most of our producers would make money this year, those that have a reasonable quality. The guys with the higher quality would do even better.

 

            It's a problem in the province right now. It's well beyond our control, beyond the farmers control right now. We really have to move to better quality. Our quality has slipped, the industry knows that themselves. A lot of farmers went to the brown mink which is really - it's a beautiful product but it doesn't dictate the price, you really have to get the higher price.

 

            We've seen in other parts of the world they mix their fur, too. They don't go all black or all brown, they mix a herd with all different colours so different times, different products, they'd get high price so they can get through a year - maybe the blacks are down and the white is high-price. We haven't had that in Nova Scotia so we've got to really readjust the industry. The industry itself has to do it. We'll be there to support them every way we can.

 

            I'm so pleased this time the industry has come forward themselves and so we hear some of the solutions and some of the ways we think we should do this. Now we'll know within the next couple of weeks whether that will be the whole industry accepting that or not, we don't know. We hope they do. I think we're going to do everything we possibly can to ensure the industry survives and grows in the province. I don't want to see what happened to the hog industry, I don't think that was handled very well in the past. We're getting back to a reasonable hog industry again now in the province, although very quietly, it has been working away and the people are doing a great job on it but I think we could have done that a little bit differently. It's easy to look back and say you should do it differently but I don't want to see the same - I hesitate to say "mistakes" because it's never a mistake if you don't know all the circumstances around it but hopefully we can be more responsive to the industry and help them survive and grow.

 

            Other things we're going to be doing, too, we're going to be offering courses to the growers to try to get some fee deficiencies down, get the costs down in feed, maybe get the costs a little bit down in processing. We've got to tackle this from all sides. We've got to get better quality, less operating costs, all these things. We're going to work with the community college, with the university again with training courses, everything we can do to make that industry grow and prosper and set them up when the drop comes in price again - which it does, it cycles. If you go through the graph on it and I'm sure you have, you go through the cycle, you've got a real high and then it drops to nothing and it slowly climbs, a big high and then it drops again.

 

            The industry in Nova Scotia has never built for a rainy day. They are suggesting now that they do - that's their suggestion. I think it is fantastic and we will do whatever structure we need to put in place to make that happen for them but it will be at their direction, how they want to do it and the way they want to do it.

 

Hopefully we're getting close to the answers on this thing and we have to really move forward and do some more practical research on Aleutian disease. There's some research done by Dalhousie that, to put it bluntly, probably spent a lot of money with very little results. That being said, if they could have conquered what they were trying to do, it would have been a game-changer in the whole industry. They didn't and I think they really have to look again at how they're doing that. We're working with the Agricultural College to increase research all the time, as is the industry.

 

            We know the problem, we know what the solution is but it's not one thing, it's many things. The industry has been really great to work with, considering the financial stress they are under - they are under very serious financial stress and, quite honestly, some of the farms won't survive. There's no possible way they can survive. We wish they all could survive but they won't, it's that simple, and nothing I can do can change that.

 

            MR. LOHR: I believe the implementation date for the new environmental regulations was 2016 and I know it was much talked about in 2013. I think the majority of farms, likely mink farms, have met that date. I'm just wondering if, given the circumstances, the implementation date for the environmental regulations for mink farms has altered any, or are you altering it any?

 

            MR. COLWELL: That's actually under the Department of Environment now but I will answer what we have been told so far. We're very happy with the uptake in the industry. I think we had 83 or 84 per cent totally compliant and we have another - I'm just guessing at the numbers here, I think 6 per cent or 8 per cent that are very close to compliant. When I say very close, they may have to put an eavestrough up or they have been waiting until the fine weather to dig a pond or things like this - all simple stuff. All their plans are in place.

 

            We've had a few of them that have closed and said we're not going to do it. They probably would have closed with the downturn anyway, and decided not to do it. There have been a couple of fines issued by the Department of Environment for people, I would say probably at this point just not being very co-operative rather than not doing things they should be doing. But overall, it's ahead of where I thought it would be.

 

            We've been very strong when we were looking after the regulations, we were very clear to the industry. We sent them notices out that there would be no exceptions. Today we can't tolerate exceptions because if we're going to go to the marketplace - fur is already a difficult sell in places like Europe and a lot of people with animal rights issues and all these other issues, we don't want an environmental issue. An environmental issue just gives somebody an argument to not be able to sell the product. More important than that, or as important as that I should say, we don't want the environment - the lakes and streams and everything - polluted from any kind of agricultural activity.

 

            I'm very proud of the industry, how they stepped up. Although a lot of them said they weren't going to, they did anyway and I think they were secretly working away at their plans. Even in these hard times they are still progressing to get that in place so I would say it's beyond what I anticipated it would be at this point.

 

            MR. LOHR: I know we started this conversation about mink with the Farm Loan Board. I'm just wondering, I know the Farm Loan Board is a lender for capital, not operating money, I know that some of these mink farmers are having difficulty getting operating money, do you see any possibility that the Farm Loan Board would change its focus or become a lender for operating capital?

 

            MR. COLWELL: I'm going to answer your question and I'm not because I can't right at the moment. We want to see the industry grow, we want the industry to survive. We are waiting to hear back from the industry on what they need. Unfortunately I have to leave it at that at this point.

 

            MR. LOHR: I want to address another issue which probably relates only partially to mink with the Farm Loan Board but also to a number of other sectors and that is, for a long time now there has been a $2 million cap on loans from the Farm Loan Board and the cap really applies to the approval of loans. The issue is that if it's a loan over $2 million it needs to go to Cabinet. That means there may be delays in processing that loan and it also means sometimes that effectively the details of the loan get opened up to a lot more eyes. Given the inflation and sort of the way farm numbers are going, that's seen in the industry now as maybe possibly too low a number for that, flipping it to Cabinet for a decision.

 

            I wonder if you would comment on that and, if you agree with me, will you try to see that number raised?

 

            MR. COLWELL: Well since I've become minister I've taken only one of those loans to Cabinet, just one in that time but I do agree with you, the amount is too low at the present time and I'm probably going to have more of these in the very near future go to Cabinet.

 

            As you said, it's very true, a Cabinet document is more open than a loan document is. But again, it's industrial secrecy, I guess, you would have with individual loans. It's not a good system we have now, having to go to Cabinet. It does delay things and it can cause a problem in the industry, there's no question, I'm fully aware of that.

 

            We have been reviewing what an appropriate number would be, still keeping accountability with the Farm Loan Board, which we have great faith in, by the way, there's no issue around that. But what numbers should we do? Some of the loans we're probably going to be seeing in the future are going to be multi-million dollar loans, not $2 million or even $3 million. We're looking at it to see what we can do to change the limit. The loan board has very good success, probably better than the banks, on collecting their money, so it would make sense to move that number up.

 

            MR. LOHR: I would suggest to you that there's a couple of reasons why maybe you've had only one loan in that category. One reason would be actually that because of wanting to avoid that step to Cabinet, in some cases loans might be structured to avoid that by having a multi-part loan with no one part of it being over $2 million.

 

            Another situation might be that in fact they are going to Farm Credit Canada instead of to the Farm Loan Board, which doesn't have these restrictions and, in fact possibly has lower rates, too. I'm wondering, Mr. Minister, if you would be looking at the rates the Farm Loan Board offers vis-a-vis Farm Credit Canada and seeing if the Farm Loan Board could be more competitive with Farm Credit Canada?

 

            MR. COLWELL: We have been looking at all those topics, actually, for some time now. We have to make sure that the loan board doesn't lose money, you know we're going to have some bad debts. But again, there are different avenues for people to get loans, through Farm Credit Canada and regular banks and the loan board, which is really good because it gives the industry a chance to be more competitive.

 

            We've been looking at the structure, we're doing some changes in the board itself. Once those are completed we'll be looking at these in more detail.

 

            MR. LOHR: Another Farm Loan Board issue which I've had at least one farmer raise with me recently was the staffing issue, that there was simply not enough staff. Can you comment on the number of staff in the Farm Loan Board and whether you are where you want to be? Are you going be hiring more staff in the Farm Loan Board?

 

            MR. COLWELL: Right now we have 16 people in the loan board and next year, this year coming, we're looking to go to 18. Above that, we're going to take some of the people who are there now and repurpose or change their jobs, existing staff. We're not going to replace them and take them out of place, we're going to retain them to do other jobs to be more effective and better response time to the industry, as well as adding a couple of people.

 

            MR. LOHR: Okay, I'd like to thank the minister for that on the Farm Loan Board. I'd like to jump to another topic. Recently I was able to get a hold of - just online, actually, your Grants and Contributions list from 2014-15. It's a fairly lengthy list, Mr. Minister. I'm just wondering when we can expect the 2015-16 Grants and Contributions list. This was available online - when will we see this coming year's list online?

 

            MR. COLWELL: That's actually not released by us, it is released by the Department of Finance and Treasury Board on July 30^th every year.

 

            MR. LOHR: I didn't know that.

 

            MR. COLWELL: I learned that, too, just now. That's why it's great to have good staff.

 

            MR. LOHR: I don't plan to drill down through the whole list, there's quite a number. This is eight or 10 pages long, with at least 20 or 30 on each page so it's a significant list.

 

            I just want to ask one question about one company listed here. It was under Programs - Strategic Infrastructure Investment Fund. For 2014-15 it was Fundy Paint Limited, which is in Truro, received $113,000 from your department. I'm wondering if you can enlighten me on what that was about.

 

            MR. COLWELL: The organization that got this is developing a non-toxic paint and it is equipment for them to develop the special product. It's under development with Perennia. It's not something we bought within the department itself.

 

            MR. LOHR: It begs a few questions and I realize that you may or may not be able to answer these right now. One would be, I'm not sure how development of a non-toxic paint specifically fits into the Agriculture Department's mandate, maybe you can explain that to me.

 

            MR. COLWELL: It's actually organic paint and they're going to use the plant material. It's a plant-based, all natural paint, that's why Agriculture is involved in it.

 

            MR. LOHR: I know that's 2014-15, that's already over a year ago, can you let me know how the project is going or if there have been any updates or when we would expect some results?

 

            MR. COLWELL: From the information we have, they are very close to commercialization at this point. Again, it's an R&D product and it's housed at Perennia.

 

            MR. LOHR: When I was trying to figure out who Fundy Paint was, I was looking on their website and really didn't see anything in particular about this project on the company's website. I wonder if it would be possible at some point in the future for you to provide me with a bit more of an update on what that was all about, a bit more detailed report on that.

 

            MR. COLWELL: Yes, we can do that. Actually if you would like to go on a tour of the Perennia facility and have a look at it, you're welcome to do that. Some of the information they are developing is proprietary but if you'd like to go and see the actual facility we can arrange that as well. I think it might be welcome for anybody here who would like to go or anyone else of your caucus colleagues. Pretty exciting things happen at Perennia.

 

            MR. LOHR: I appreciate the invitation and I may take you up on it. In my own business life I have done a fair bit of work with Perennia so I might know them as well as you do, Mr. Minister - probably not. Certainly the name Perennia - that organization is pretty high in my books, I think very highly of Perennia and the work they do.

 

            It actually begs some questions about Perennia. I wasn't planning to talk about Perennia right now but my question is, do you foresee - I don't know if you know the history of this, at one time I lived through a little bit of this history but it's going back a number of years. At one time we had an extension service in the Department of Agriculture and that extension service was essentially let go. Some of the individuals who worked in it and some others were rehired in, I guess, an arm's length or an independent extension service which has had various names over the years and now is called Perennia. However, it does continue to work quite closely - and I mean it's essentially funded by government and the extension work they do is, as you would know as minister, you do have a fairly large input into that as well as industry. Do you foresee a time when Perennia would become folded back into the department and be the department's extension service?

 

            MR. COLWELL: No.

 

            MR. LOHR: Could you provide me with the reasons for your brief answer, or the logic?

 

            MR. COLWELL: Well probably you can answer that question as well I can, with the products that you, before you were in this position, and your wife have developed at Perennia. That's not a function that really would be done well by government, it's better done in a place like Perennia. A lot of the extension services they have keep it a bit of an arm's length away from government.

 

            As you are probably aware, I appointed the first full industry board ever for Perennia. As you will see, the names on that list are very prominent people in the farming and fishing industry in this province.

 

            Perennia is continually evolving and improving. They do great work. Some of the products I have seen them develop over time simply could not be done in the department, there's no way, we're not geared up to do that. It really bridges the gap, as you are well aware, between the university and research and the actual product. They work closely, as you know, with Dalhousie and the Agricultural College and other facilities, as well as industry.

 

            They are a real success story waiting to happen every day. They do great work. They have the ability to do things we can't do in government and that's why I said no. I think the close working relationship they have with the department, although separate, and it's very important that it is separate, is very good. They have the same basic working relationship - except for the funding part - with the universities, community colleges and we're working closely now with the municipality in that area, with some development work that hopefully will really help grow the economy there, so it's exciting.

 

            I'm so pleased we have people on the board who are as excited as I am and I know you are a big supporter of Perennia, and for very good reason for all of us. If we folded it back into the department we couldn't do what we're doing there today, that's why I say no.

 

            MR. LOHR: In this Agriculture budget could you show me where Perennia shows up in the amount of dollars that go into Perennia?

 

            MR. COLWELL: It's covered on Page 3.2, under Grants and Contributions.

 

            MR. LOHR: What is the dollar number there?

 

            MR. COLWELL: It's hard to put an exact number on it because each year it changes. It's fluid through the year because of projects they are working on and what they are doing. I believe it runs somewhere over $2 million but I can't say for sure. We'd have to go back through and dig that information out because it depends again on what they're working with, what time and what project is part-way through and what project isn't part-way through because they don't have to do the same as government does where everything wraps up at the end of March, they can carry projects forward.

 

            MR. LOHR: I'm asking a question I really don't know the answer to. Sometimes I ask a question that I know the answer to. You are saying that Perennia is funded through project agreements? There is no portion of that that is direct payment each year, or a combination of the two?

 

            MR. COLWELL: No, that's not correct. We do some base funding but it changes from year to year, based on some of the projects they're working on. They may have a project that they have to do, a major project, for instance with the department that this year they'll do, next year they don't do, so it changes from year to year a bit, the funding.

 

            MR. LOHR: This is a budget, you must have had to choose a number for this document at a point in time. I'm asking what that number is.

 

            MR. COLWELL: There's a base funding of $2.5 million and the rest of the funding is project-based.

 

            MR. LOHR: How much time do we have left?

 

            MR. CHAIRMAN: You have eight minutes.

 

            MR. LOHR: I know we'll get a second hour anyway so that doesn't really matter.

 

            I'm just wondering, I want to move on from that and again, just looking at this budget, this is just a question about numbers on the page here, what's going on. I notice on Page 3.3 your Senior Management Funded Staff you are showing you are going to have seven funded staff this year at $688,000; you had 6.1 last year in the actual but it was $737,000. I'm just wondering if you can explain to me how 6.1 costs $737,000 but seven - one more person, essentially, will be quite a bit less, or significantly less cost.

 

            MR. COLWELL: I don't get involved in all this stuff. Basically what has happened is under the accounting system previously, this should just be salaries and it's not - there's travel expenses in that $700,000-some and in the 2015-16 budget there's some meeting expenses. They are going to be taken out in 2016-17 to properly reflect what the amount is and put in the proper area. For instance, if we have a wine board meeting at our office, the expenses were put in our office instead of on the wine file where we should have it, and other meetings like that.

 

            MR. LOHR: That wasn't what I expected to hear. So you are saying that the $737,000 includes things like meeting expenses with industry groups like the wine industry.

 

            MR. COLWELL: That's correct and they shouldn't have been in there but they have corrected it for this year coming. That's why this year it should be very constant after that.

 

            MR. LOHR: I don't quite know what to say, I didn't expect that. I thought I would hear something about severance and layoffs, so I thought that would be all wages so I'm surprised to hear that.

 

            I realize this is about individuals, too. Is there any way to provide a breakdown of other costs and pull that out for us? Can you provide that at a later date?

 

            MR. COLWELL: The travel expenses, it's some of my travel that should be charged out to different accounts we're working on, like Fisheries and Aquaculture. The deputies' travel, some of it, and mine are all online and the deputies' are going to be online very shortly, so all the information is already available.

 

            MR. LOHR: Okay, we'll leave that alone. Just looking down that page again, a little further on Page 3.3, I see Policy and Corporate Services. I know this line is exactly the same as last year and I can't remember if I asked you this last year or not. When I read that first line it says, "Provides centralized coordination, management and support for the department and Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture . . ."

 

            Can you just sort of let me understand how the Department of Agriculture, or the Policy and Corporate Services part of your Department of Agriculture, what it does or how it works with the Fisheries and Aquaculture Department?

 

            MR. COLWELL: I'll give you the short, one-minute answer so you can get your answer. The short answer is that we are taking, instead of having two or three managers and directors, we have one director that services a common need in both departments. So we're keeping our costs down doing that, administrative costs and staff costs. We have one person who does our legislative work instead of having two, so that's why it's like that.

 

            It does make a lot of sense but it has taken us quite a while to get it slowly shifted, considering the union contracts and actually getting the mandate of that department, the two departments together. Believe it or not, when you go through this and I was very skeptical when I first became minister because they are two different industries, very separate industries, but there's a lot of commonality between the two of them.

 

The legislative stuff is the same. A lot of the research they would do around statistics and stuff would be the same, the same approach.

 

            MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, time has expired - sorry. We will now rotate to the NDP Party for their one hour.

 

The honourable member for Truro-Bible Hill-Millbrook-Salmon River.

 

            MS. LENORE ZANN:  I thought you were only going to say Truro but you did the whole name.

 

            MR. CHAIRMAN: I think that in future references to your name that I might shorten it a bit, for the sake of time.

 

            MS. ZANN: No problem. Good afternoon, minister. It's nice to see all of you here. I guess this is our third year doing this now but I am always interested in what is going on with the Agriculture Department and living in Truro-Bible Hill-Millbrook-Salmon River obviously we have a very good bond with the agricultural industry and with the university and with Perennia.

 

It was interesting hearing my colleague talk about Perennia since I was there when the idea was first announced. I think they were calling it the Agri-Innovation Centre - Mr. John MacDonell. There was a lot of excitement at the time and then I was there when we did the sod-turning and then to see it go up and as it changed and morphed and grew and then into the Perennia Centre and seeing what happens there with TruLeaf - are they still there?

 

            MR. COLWELL: Actually TruLeaf has moved out of the Perennia Centre to a building on the same site, on the same park. That's very exciting because they have expanded their operation. As you know, that is an innovative company that is going to go a long way.

 

            MS. ZANN: It is, and already they've done some really good things. They were talking about having those trailers full of green things growing and getting them to like the Arctic and places like this. Is that still moving forward, that particular project?

 

            MR. COLWELL: Yes, it's very exciting. I spent a short time in the Arctic in the middle of the winter a few years ago and I remember at that time a head of lettuce that didn't look like a head of lettuce when you actually got your hands on it, it was something like $12 for one head of lettuce. It was all brown and in pretty bad shape. In other words, we'd throw it out here in the grocery store but that's the way they got it when it arrived because by the time it got through all the air freight and probably froze on the plane because it is so cold. It would be fantastic for the north to have that kind of product available fresh, at a substantially less cost, even with the technology that would have to be put in place than it would be to ship it in.

 

            Sometimes in the north, in some of the remote communities in particular, I remember one trip I was in the north and I got the last flight in for a week. The winds stayed at 120 miles an hour - not kilometres an hour but 120 miles an hour - steadily for a week and the temperature, without wind chill, was minus-45 and nothing could take off or land, nothing. So by the end of the week there was virtually no fresh produce available - when I say "fresh", as fresh as they can get it.

 

            This TruLeaf operation in a situation like that would be absolutely perfect, small scale it to the size they'd need for the community based on the market. It would be healthier eating for the people in the community and something they've never ever been able to do in their whole lifetime so I think it's a wonderful idea. Also, all the health benefits from that operation and the way they grow their products and what they do, it's going to change the way agriculture is done.

 

            MS. ZANN: Do you know what their time plan is when they are thinking that might be viable to be able to go up there to the north and places like that?

 

            MR. COLWELL: Well I think they're very close. Indeed, the move out of the space they had in Perennia, they outgrew it. One of the buildings adjacent to Perennia, which is still with Perennia, is a sign that they're getting very close. So they have proven the health value of the product because that's one of the things they are doing. We'll see how that works, see the productivity. They are changing, of course when you're doing research, a lot of things, it's fantastic. I know you've probably sampled some of the product they have, it's absolutely delicious. There's going to be no problem marketing it, it's just a matter of getting the costs down of operating, getting a simple structure in place that you can train somebody to operate it pretty easily - those things and a little bit more research. I think they're pretty close.

 

            MS. ZANN: That's great. It's exciting to hear that they've expanded so much that they've outgrown, so to speak, Perennia. In listening to your opening remarks about agriculture and how well we're doing and up 21 per cent, that's all very good news.

 

            MR. COLWELL: It's excellent news. Actually our mink industry is in a slump.

 

            MS. ZANN: I was going to ask about that actually.

 

            MR. COLWELL: If the mink industry had been where it was two years ago, we would have increased our exports probably by 50 per cent or 60 per cent this last year alone. We're on a really steep curve of productivity improvements, more interest in agriculture. I can't stress enough the fantastic work the industry has been doing themselves. They are the ones that have to make this happen.

 

            When I said to them two days after I became minister that I want you to make money, I thought I was going to get thrown out of the place, to start with, but I didn't. One gentleman came up to me - I think he was 85 years old - he said, in all the years I've been in business he said no one has ever told me that but it's right, we have to make money. If they make money they can do all these things; they can open new markets, they can look at export opportunities.

 

            We're really pushing exports in the province, we're spending a substantial amount of effort in that regard and it is paying off, it's really starting to pay off.

 

            MS. ZANN: One of my questions about that regarding exports, I think it's fantastic that we're doing so well with exports. Does that mean there's going to be less local produce that's going to be available for locals if they are focusing so much on exports?

 

            MR. COLWELL: No, they are two different markets. In order to be successful at exporting you also have to have a good domestic market that you supply. I exported a lot of products that I produced over the years but you always had to look after your local market because those are the people who are there every day, they are there buying your products or your services. You really have to make sure you look after that market.

 

            Exports are two things really, it's really exports when we ship our products out and it's imports, we displacing imports. If we displace an import it's the same economic benefit as if we export it, instead of buying it someplace else. A lot of our industry is doing that and we don't give them credit for it but they are and that's great to see. So we can get the longer period of time, get more greenhouses operating year-round for food supply and other products they produce, that means we don't have to import things in the wintertime when we can't grow things in the fields.

 

            Also, the way they store the products. You look at the Honeycrisp apple, it's one huge success. It's probably - I don't know how you would put it, I would say it's the Bill Gates of the agriculture world, as far as Nova Scotia goes. They have learned how to maintain that product year-round, so they can take that product out of the warehouse and put it on the shelf, it's the same as the day they picked it - well actually it's better than the day they picked it because Honeycrisp you really can't do anything with it for at least 10 days after. It has to be properly refrigerated and looked after, to get the flavour to where it should be. That's a sign of technology that's out there.

 

            If you look at the sweet potatoes that I talked about earlier, they're running out of them now because we didn't have enough this winter. That's a good sign but they can supply sweet potatoes year-round, under a storage system they've developed. It's pretty straightforward but it works beautifully. That's all part of the technological advancements we have to make; we not only have to grow them, we have to grow the right product, at a reasonable price. We have to also be able to hold it at the same quality as it came out of the field with and they have been very successful with that.

 

We can do all kinds of other examples of that. Some of the products are pretty straightforward - blueberries, you freeze them and you store them but freezing isn't just that simple either. They have to be held at a certain temperature, they have to be frozen in a certain way. Again, it's all developing technology.

 

            I know I went through Bragg's Oxford Frozen Foods operation, that is something to see. They wouldn't let us take any photos, for obvious reasons. That process they have for freezing the berries is incredible, just incredible. It goes through a whole system and it keeps the quality of the berry the same as the day they got it out of the field. The time from the time it is picked until the time it is through the whole system is like three hours, so they don't lose any of that freshness which they really need to have.

 

            It needs to be a combination of the farming industry, developing, growing products we need and want to consume in the province and we can export and then develop markets for both. They are two different markets.

 

            MS. ZANN: I have a couple of questions. You know when you said that we are now the biggest producer of sweet potatoes - Nova Scotia is now the biggest producer of sweet potatoes . . .

 

            MR. COLWELL: What's that again?

 

            MS. ZANN: When you were talking about sweet potatoes earlier I was taking notes and I thought you said we are now the biggest producer of sweet potatoes, or is it that that person is the biggest producer of sweet potatoes?

 

            MR. COLWELL: That is true.

 

            MS. ZANN: We are?

 

            MR. COLWELL: We are, in that one farm. We've got one farm producing sweet potatoes. They are expanding every year to meet the market needs. All those potatoes previously were imported, all sweet potatoes were imported before. Now we're still getting some imports because they haven't got the storage facility built big enough and they are expanding that this year. They are expanding the fields but that's a project that Perennia worked on with that farmer.

 

            MS. ZANN: Who is it, if you don't mind me asking?

 

            MR. COLWELL: It's Charlie Keddy, a big guy with a beard. You've probably seen him, a very, very good farmer. They tried different types of sweet potatoes, different growing things, different fertilization, all kinds of different things until they finally got it, again working very closely with Perennia.

 

            Then they had to worry about the storage facility. They built a storage facility and they are expanding it pretty well every year. Now they are almost ready to fill the whole market, or most of the market.

 

            MS. ZANN: Do they only sell in Nova Scotia right now, or are they exporting it, too?

 

            MR. COLWELL: They are basically Nova Scotia at this point. We're hoping that some other farmers will take up growing them. They have more fields, again, as I said, they are going to put in production. I think they started with eight or 10 acres at the start, just to prove it would work.

 

            They are also looking for markets for their small sweet potatoes. There's really no market yet so they are working with Perennia on the marketing for those. As far as export goes - you are probably aware of it anyway - the UN did a study here a couple of years ago and it said within 20 years we're not going to have enough food produced in the world, under present production, to feed the middle class in the world; 65 per cent of the middle class is going to be in Asia, 60 per cent of the population now is in Asia.

 

            When we look at those markets for marketing - I know we did some marketing in China and one of the suppliers from Nova Scotia said to me, if I can get .001 per cent of the market in China, I can't supply it - that's reality. We're trying to equip our farmers and our industries all together to see if we can get some products and we can produce enough product, quality product that we can make good margins on so the farmers would make good money and the processors and supply those markets with those particular items.

 

            We've got some things in mind now and the industry is stepping up to the plate.

 

            MS. ZANN: Let me ask you a question about that then, keeping that in mind that this world, that the population is growing and that we need to provide more protein because there's more of a middle class now growing in the east, as you've said - I was at a presentation, a really interesting one in Truro recently where it was talking about food security and they had three professors from Dal there who were all talking about how we would produce enough food to feed everybody and in a sustainable and affordable fashion. How are we doing on growing our cricket market in Nova Scotia? Do we have anything in that yet?

 

            MR. COLWELL: That's not one I'm familiar with, I can tell you.

 

            MS. ZANN: No cricket farmers yet?

 

            MR. COLWELL: I can ask my staff if they've heard anything but I have not heard anything about it yet. But again, I've travelled to China and I've seen some pretty weird stuff on the plate. It all tasted good.

 

            MS. ZANN: Here's the deal with the crickets; they showed us charts and everything and they said with pigs, pork and beef, they take up so much space, they have to eat so much, the farmers have to feed them so much, it costs so much, blah, blah, whereas crickets will multiply and they don't really take that much feeding and they will multiply very quickly.

 

            When you cook them and grind them into a powder, it's pure protein and you can cook with it and everything. It takes the place of all these other types of protein - chicken, pork, meat - all the things that here in North America we're used to having. They said that part of the problem with keeping food sustainable and sustaining the world itself with this growing middle class, the growing middle class is suddenly demanding chicken, pork, beef, all these things that we've been having and it's really taking a toll and will continue to take a toll on the resources of the world, including our water, which is getting scarcer and we have to be very careful about that.

 

So I thought it was really interesting this presentation where they were saying that in other parts of the world they are seriously looking at this as a way of dealing with the food issue, and I thought, well - they had chocolate chip cookies that they were giving out to people that were made with cricket powder used instead of flour or whatever with chocolate chips - yum, yum. To be honest, I didn't try one. I just couldn't, but I did hear that they tasted a little bit drier maybe, but not too bad.

            I thought that's interesting because we may have to start shifting the way we think as the years go on in order to be able to sustain and maintain things. For instance, our pork industry here in Nova Scotia. It has kind of gone south. Is it growing? For a while there it was really going down. Where are we right now with our pork industry?

 

            MR. COLWELL: I would have tried one of those cookies just to see what they taste like. I might not have a second one, but I would have tried a first one.

 

            MS. ZANN: I'll try to get you some.

 

            MR. COLWELL: You're raising a very good point. To raise one beef cow - if a beef cow weighs 1,000 pounds, you've taken 8,000 pounds of resource to do it. A chicken is about 2.25 pounds - and sometimes a little bit above. The most efficient one, believe it or not, is salmon or trout. A cultivated salmon - which has omega 3, some of the healthiest things you can possibly eat - is between one pound of food for one pound of salmon to 1.25 pounds. If they're 1.25 pounds, the producer is not very happy. They really work to get the one to one ratio or 1.1 to one. Those are real numbers. They've perfected the feeding so well it's incredible.

 

            They're also talking now about using soy to feed the salmon, which is really sustainable. That's one of the reasons we're moving forward. I'm getting into fisheries now with aquaculture because that's a product we can export. It's a high value product and it's a higher value than chicken even, but less operating costs once you get your capital costs in place.

 

            As far as the environment goes with it, there is no e-coli in salmon - there is none, like we would have in a sewage system from a human operation. We're looking at all of those things now as we develop a strategy around that, but we talk about food supply and it's so important. We have to look at different things. I've eaten some weird things in the world. Sometimes I wonder why I ate them at the time, but I did and they were okay, I guess.

 

            Another thing we have too that is pure protein is seal meat. It's 100 per cent protein - no fat. The fat is between the skin and the meat itself. There is no fat in the meat - zero fat. So there are all kinds of food sources that for all different kinds of reasons haven't been looked at. I've eaten seal meat. It's delicious. The only trouble is it turns black when you cook it so that's sort of unusual. I guess like anything - lobster turns a sort of white-red colour when you cook it. So I guess it's just what you get used to, but we really have to look at all these other alternatives for food supply and that's why we have to - like I said earlier in my opening remarks - get our farmers as efficient as we possibly can and that includes the cost of operating the machinery, the cost of doing business otherwise so they can get more efficient in the fields and do that.

 

            It's a race against time. We talk about global warming as being a big crisis and I believe it is. At one time I didn't believe it was, but I believe it is now, but food could be a bigger crisis sooner.

 

            MS. ZANN: They're all tied in together too really with the change of climate. Speaking of which - two things. What is happening with our grass-fed beef? For a while there we were looking at trying to improve with grass-fed beef. Also, what is going on with the fire blight. I notice there is money coming in from the federal government and the provincial government is also putting a bit of money in this coming year. Is that going to continue? How is the fire blight in our orchards? How is that being dealt with? Are they keeping it under control? Can you update me on that?

 

            MR. COLWELL: I'll start with the fire blight and I'm going to ask one of my staff to come and tell me about the grass-fed beef.

 

            The fire blight program is on track. I've seen the approvals come through for many farms already. I was remarking today that some of the claims that are going through are way lower than I thought they would be. I've seen some come through as low as $500, the biggest one I've seen is $25,000. I thought it would be several thousand for each farm and it is not.

 

            They have systems to control the fire blight, now that they know they have it. We've had it for years but only minor; they would see it once in a while and they would just eradicate it and that would be the end of it. But when the hurricane came through it really spread it right across the whole industry. But they've taken the corrective action, the same as we did with the strawberry complex virus they had and thank goodness the federal government agreed to come up with this relief program which will allow them to remove some of the plants and put new ones in. This was totally separate than the orchard enhancement program we have and we've made it very clear that we don't use our orchard enhancement program to replace fire blight trees and that is being audited all the time.

 

            I'm surprised that they are not taking up as much money on this as I thought. That tells me that maybe the problem isn't quite as bad as we thought it would be, or they've taken the precautions early. I can tell you one thing about the fruit growers in this province, they're very aggressive, they really care about their industry and they take precautions and they don't wait for a program to come along to cure the problem. They are onto it immediately and they work at it. All the preliminary stuff was documented, Perennia actually was part of that documentation. They immediately eliminated the problem in any way they could and even organically - there are some organic farms out there where there's a product that's going to be covered under this. That was a question to start and I think that's very important.

 

            As we see this happen I think they caught it in time. I was at the annual meeting of the fruit growers and there was a gentleman there from the U.S. who deals with fire blight every day in orchards. He said at the time it's serious for Nova Scotia but controllable. Now that they see they've got it at the level they have, they can take the measures on a continuous basis to make sure it doesn't get any worse and indeed, he figures they can get it under control. He's an expert in the field of growing trees and apples and all the horticultural products that go along with that.

 

            MS. ZANN: Did they have to get rid of the trees that had been affected? Did they chop them down and dig up the roots, or are they doctoring those trees? I know they had them separated. I went on that tour - were you on it?

 

            MR. COLWELL: I was off to something else.

 

            MS. ZANN: I went on that tour that summer after Arthur had come through and done its devastation, they had them separated out. I was just wondering, did they have to kill those trees off and get rid of them and start all over again?

 

            MR. COLWELL: As far as I'm aware, some trees had to be removed. Some of them had to be seriously pruned back and all kinds of different things on different farms and how bad they were before they discovered it was there. If they get it soon enough there are precautions you can take and treatments you can put on the trees to look after it. All those things were done so some trees had to be removed. I would think those would be the ones with the higher claim levels, where they had to take them out, actually put new trees in and basically start the five-year cycle over again to get them in production.

 

            MS. ZANN: Is there any word about what's going on with the grass-fed beef industry?

 

            MR. COLWELL: Perennia did the research on that. The project is finished and complete. All the research was given to the industry, and the industry now will use it or not use it - whatever they want to do. I know we've got some pasture land that's leased out on the inner dyke areas for grass-raised beef. That's been going on for years and years, before the project. But the project has been done, and all the results are in. We can make that research available just in case there's anyone who's interested in it.

 

            MS. ZANN: Yes, I'd be very interested. The other thing I'm curious about, and I had asked about it at the time when we were on that tour, but I'd like to know what the status is on the mortality rate of bees. As we all know, bees are necessary for any of these things to grow. I've been reading about the mortality rate of bees in the United States, for instance; it's not very good - even in P.E.I., where they didn't ban some of the cosmetic pesticides that we did when we first got in government. I'm just wondering, what is the health of our bees like in Nova Scotia right now? Is it anything we have to be concerned about?

 

            MR. COLWELL: The health of bees in Nova Scotia is very good. The biggest loss of bees is in the wintertime. You can have up to 25 per cent to 30 per cent of the total hives wiped out because of the weather. We're looking at doing some research on overwintering bees. We were looking at putting a project in place to make available through Growing Forward 2 an insulation package or something that would make them overwinter better because we put a substantial amount of money into expanding the hives in the bee industry every year for pollination and for honey. We were getting losses in the mid-20 per cent of those, so 25 per cent of the investment we had was gone - in theory, not necessarily the ones we put in place; it could have been the other ones.

 

I asked the question, what kind of equipment is out there to protect these hives and get them through the winter and survive, so we go down to 1 per cent or 2 per cent loss? We're still exploring that and seeing how we can do the research. We found, though, not this winter, but the winter before - I'm still waiting for the numbers for this winter gone by - when we had all that snow, we had a 12 per cent to 15 per cent loss, and the people who didn't have all the snow had a 25 per cent or 26 per cent loss. It tells us that if that's the case, there's got to be some way to insulate these hives to ensure that they get through the winter. Lo and behold, one entrepreneur in Nova Scotia has developed a beehive that he claims has no winter loss. He started putting those beehives in production; they don't look anything like traditional beehives. We can give you the information of who it is, and you might want to go see them.

 

            It's pretty interesting. I went and saw the facility; it's just in the infancy of developing. They've been doing testing for the last I think two or three years, and they haven't lost a hive, not one. They actually contracted with Acadia University to do independent research on it. I haven't seen the results of that, but it sounds very encouraging. We can give you the person's name and everything. I think it would be worthwhile to go and visit.

 

            MS. ZANN: I'd love to. Whereabouts in the province is it?

 

            MR. COLWELL: They're in Digby.

 

            MS. ZANN: Sure, that sounds like a great project.

 

            MR. COLWELL: It's good to see. These are the things we need to celebrate. Even if they get the losses 20 per cent lower than what we have now, it will be worth it. Evidently, it doesn't work for all types of bees at this point, but the design is very novel, and a real departure from what they were. It allows the air to circulate through. You can stop the air circulating or you can let it circulate. There's all kinds of things you can do. It's insulated on the top to start. It's quite innovative. Even the height, they have it off the ground and it makes a difference. They've really done a lot of research. When you see it, it looks like - how can I put it? - a non-finished product, when you see the product. But they're doing it very well with the manufacturing techniques they have right now, and I'm sure they're going to improve on those rapidly as they see a market for it. They've already got some orders that they're filling now, so that may be a help for us and we really need to do more about the winterkill. Winterkill is the biggest problem we have in bees presently. There is some loss from pesticides and those sorts of things but no comparison to the loss from winterkill.

 

            MS. ZANN: How much did you say it normally is in most years?

 

            MR. COLWELL: It can range anywhere from about a low of 12 per cent to 15 per cent up to over 30 per cent.

 

            MS. ZANN: So, 12 per cent to 15 per cent normally and then on bad years, like the one we had before this winter, 25 per cent?

 

            MR. COLWELL: I don't know what this winter is like because it was up and down and all kinds of weather but the big storms we had and a lot of snow, they survived a lot better.

 

            MS. ZANN: So is it the cold?

 

MR. COLWELL: I don't know if it's the cold or the changing climate, I'm not really sure. When we did some research on it we actually asked the Legislative Library here at the Legislature to give us everything they had on bee overwintering. They came up with almost nothing. There has been very little research done in the past that we could find. They researched in the U.S. and right across the country and everywhere they could. They found booklets that would fit in this binder. A lot of it was old research, where we have technology and better insulating products and stuff now. I believe there is an opportunity there that we are going to pursue, it's just a matter of doing a bit more analysis around it before we decide how we're going to approach it.

 

            MS. ZANN: I'm sorry to stay on this topic but I'm really interested in bees and their health. Do you notice any problems with the pesticide spray of our forests? I've heard there is still a type of pesticide that is used on our forest that kills bees. Is there any kind of problem with that?

 

            MR. COLWELL: Not that I'm aware of, not a very serious problem - very little, I'm not sure. Again, our biggest loss is winterkill, that's the biggest loss of all. Pesticide is an issue for bees. Actually they are doing research at the Agricultural College on using bees to transmit some things that will help the plants that is healthy for the bees. They are getting some success on that now.

 

            Bees are a very important part of our economy and people don't realize how important they are. It all stops with no bees.

 

            MS. ZANN: Exactly. I think there's probably not so much research on it because people didn't put two and two together before about the environment and agriculture. It's an ecosystem, everything is connected so I think that more and more people are becoming aware of the fact that our world is small and that you can't just flush your problems away down a river because it's going to affect the drinking water and pollute things. The fact is  that these little creatures actually are very important and valuable to our whole system and our economy.

 

            I'd like to next ask how about our dairy farmers? They've had challenges in recent years and on the processing side we've seen a number of Nova Scotians lose their jobs as a result of plant closures. So where in this particular budget is the money to support dairy farmers and do processing plants fall under the purview of your department?

 

            MR. COLWELL: I'm going to finish off with bees first. You are absolutely right with bees, the whole ecosystem would stop without them. We fully understand the value of bees and I think we have to talk more and I'm glad to hear what you're saying about bees. We need to talk more and more about it so that people will plant flowers to make sure the bees are fed when they are not being fed through the agricultural products. There's a lot of awareness of that now and I think that's very positive.

 

            On the dairy side, the dairy farmers of Nova Scotia would be extremely insulted and very upset with me if I offered them any money, any program to help them on their farms. They are very adamant about that.

 

            MS. ZANN: To help them what?

 

            MR. COLWELL: To help them with their farm in any way financially, except for Growing Forward programs we have to help them with infrastructure, whatever they want for that, but outright grants, I know went to the TPP negotiations that were happening in Atlanta that was one thing they were adamant about - we do not want a handout. We run our farms efficiently and state-of-the art.

 

            Nova Scotia is going to take a backseat to no one when it comes to dairy farms. They're vertically integrated. They're growing their own crops. They have milking robots and milking parlours - things that are state-of-the-art in the world. They research them very carefully.

 

            I have a picture that my executive assistant took of a dairy barn - 600 feet long and 100-something feet wide. When we walked in the barn - you usually hear the cows mooing and going on like that - not a sound. They're all very happy - all putting their heads up - a sort of "pat me on the head" approach to life. All of them very clean, the place was spotless. That's what our dairy farms are like today.

 

            MS. ZANN: Is that the one between Truro and Halifax on the right hand side? There is a big one there.

 

            MR. COLWELL: Actually, it's Brian Lamb's farm in Somerset - a beautiful operation; a second generation dairy farmer. I was teasing the son, his father was there and his father is 85 and I said, you've got all this technology in your barn; you have this wonderful set-up and they're vertically integrated. They produce their own crops to feed them and they mix the crop. I said, you're letting your father run around in this beat-up old truck. He said, if I mention that to my father he'll say, we don't waste money on vehicles, we put it all back in our dairy farm. When you go in the dairy farm you see what they mean.

 

            They keep productivity records on every animal. They raise their own animals. They have a special barn just for that and one of the family member's total responsibility is to look after the calves and bring them up to a milking state. It's really eye-opening when you go into a dairy farm in Nova Scotia. That's just one example of how the business is running.

 

            I was just really pleased - my deputy minister and I went to the TPP negotiations and I'm so happy we did.

 

            MS. ZANN: Are you concerned about what is going to happen there at all?

 

            MR. COLWELL: I'm concerned about the industry. I've had this discussion with the industry as well - you know, be careful what you ask for. Not from us so much, but be careful how you run your business and what's going on. If supply management stops in Nova Scotia tomorrow, if it were to stop tomorrow, we would see a drop in the price of milk for probably six months or a year. I'm just guessing now. Then the price would be three to four times what it is now - on a go-forward basis.

 

            I was talking to some people in the U.S. and one dairy farm in the U.S. has 8,000 head of milking cows; another 8,000 getting ready to be milked and another 8,000 out in the pasture - over 200 employees on one farm. They grow all their own crops, totally vertically integrated, totally automated. We cannot compete with them.

 

            They can grow four crops to feed their cattle a year. We can grow, in a really good year, maybe two. We can't compete. If we go away from supply management - although a lot of the small guys are out there saying we need to look after the little farms. We have to do that too, but if we didn't have supply management, they would have absolutely no market.

 

            MS. ZANN: Are you satisfied with the TPP as it is or are you hoping that there are going to be some changes to it that will protect our dairy farmers?

 

            MR. COLWELL: The TPP - the dairy industry in the province is telling me that they can live with what's there. Basically over a 10- or 20-year period we're going to drop 3 per cent quota, but what they're not talking about publicly - we don't talk about publicly - is each year the quota is going up. So by the time the quota level is where it should be, they really shouldn't lose very much. It should be pretty well stable where we're at. So that's very positive.

 

            The industry is concerned - I know the previous government made a commitment to offer them a buy-out sort of thing. They don't want it. They don't want a grant. If push comes to shove and they have to change the focus of their farm maybe a bit away from a dairy into something else, they want help to transform from one thing to another. They are very adamant about that.

 

            The chicken farmers are the same, all the supply management people are. When I first started this job I didn't really know about supply management but now, once you understand how it all works, it really is helping Nova Scotia's economy big time - well-paid jobs, automated, very state-of-the-art, top-quality product. Each cow, when they milk the cow - they have the four teats on the cow - you can tell how much milk comes out of each one and what the milk fat is in each one, on every single cow. They have records straight from the first day they milked that cow.

 

            This kind of information is invaluable. They adjust the diet so the animals are as healthy as they can be and also produce premium milk.

 

            MS. ZANN: Sorry to interrupt, my time is running out. Do processing plants actually fall under your department?

 

            MR. COLWELL: Yes, they do, basically for supplying milk and some milk supply. It's sort of an integrated part of the industry. I guess it's like the fishing industry processing fish. It's a very competitive industry out there now, processing products. The problem is the cream from the milk is what the prime product is. Once we get the regular milk, the 2 per cent milk and the 1 per cent and the whole milk, when we have those and we take off the cream to make ice cream and cheese and all the rest of it, there are some products left over that really aren't marketable. So they put it into dried milk, skim milk powder and stuff like that.

 

            This is what the industry is saying, to get the industry to a point they need state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities which we don't have in Nova Scotia. Now Scotsburn ice cream is state-of-the-art. They really invested in a lot of stuff. They are the only independent one left in the province. Agropur and Saputo own all the processing in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and I believe in P.E.I., all in Quebec.

 

            MS. ZANN: So why did they close the one in Scotsburn?

 

            MR. COLWELL: Well Scotsburn sold their milk quota and their milk processing to Agropur but they maintained their ice cream making which is really good, in Truro. They have since expanded into New England as well, they have manufacturing facilities in New England. Their issue is to make sure they get enough quality cream to produce a really great product so they do have some really incredible products.

 

            MS. ZANN: I think we were there one day and tried it together, didn't we?

 

            MR. COLWELL: Yes.

 

            MS. ZANN: My next question actually would be about the harness racing industry, to switch it to harness racing. I'm going to go from ice cream to harness racing, just because my time is coming to an end.

 

            How is the plan working out? I know we need a new general manager, Steve is gone so the plan is to get a new general manager soon. How are you feeling about the whole issue?

 

            MR. COLWELL: We've turned it over to the board, totally. We get reports from the board, we'll get the annual report, I don't know when but soon. It's all laid out in the legislation where they're at. We keep in contact with them but really they are running the facility. From what I understand, there are always issues around that, how everything is done. That's a pretty good size facility with great people working there. I think we've got an incredible board there now, really good. The interim board was great, wonderful people who worked very hard and did a great job while they were there.

 

            It's hard for a facility that size to get it to a point because it was so rundown, as  you are well aware, when we took it over. They are slowly making some improvements and we're hopeful that over the next three or four years they will do a lot better than they had ever done in the past. I think it's a long process.

 

            The one thing we absolutely want to make sure of is that the facility stays there. The board may change how they do it, or what they do, that sort of thing, but we need that facility in the province for agriculture and for the community there. We're committed to working with them any way we can, but again, the board is totally in control of what's going on there now.

 

            MS. ZANN: So you've kind of backed off, then?

 

            MR. COLWELL: We've backed off. Under legislation I put in the Legislature, the only thing I can do now is prevent them selling land, so they won't give the property away to somebody; they have to get approval to do that. If it makes sense and is good for the community and for the facility, we would agree with that, if that ever happened. And if the board gets dysfunctional, I can appoint a new board. Outside of that, it's totally up to the board to run it.

 

            MS. ZANN: At this point, the $1 million a year to harness racing is still going forward?

 

            MR. COLWELL: That's correct.

 

            MS. ZANN: Is there any talk at all about giving them any more money to fix up the buildings or anything like that? The buildings are still in pretty rough shape.

 

            MR. COLWELL: I can't answer that at this point because we're trying to work out a new agreement with the provincial exhibitions that they've agreed to in principle that would address that issue. We're very happy with the approach that they and the whole province have taken on it to address some of the issues around infrastructure because every facility has the same thing. I can't stress enough that these facilities are so important to the culture in the province - and the fantastic volunteers who spend their time maintaining the buildings and doing things. I think we've come up with something that will work very well. I can't discuss it in detail yet, but I'm very hopeful that we'll have a long-term MOU signed very shortly.

 

            MS. ZANN: That's for all of the exhibition grounds across the province, not just that one?

 

            MR. COLWELL: Yes.

 

            MS. ZANN: Much of the decrease in expenses I found in the department seems to be the result of transferring food protection to the Department of Environment, so overall the department seems to be experiencing a net loss of about 45 employees. I'm just wondering, how many of these employees were transferred to the Department of Environment? If not, what happened to the others? Did they retire? Are they laid off? Have there been job cuts, basically?

 

            MR. COLWELL: As far as I know, and I'll double check that with my deputy here in a second, all those positions were transferred to the Department of Environment with their salaries and benefits and everything else in the department. We have not made any cuts in our department. We have moved some staff from our department into other departments. Some departments have put staff in our department. But as a general principle, we have not reduced staff. The only way we would reduce staff would be if somebody retired and we haven't got the position filled yet, or they've taken another job in another department or outside of government. We have not laid anybody off.

 

            MS. ZANN: Now that this relationship between food inspection and the Department of Agriculture has changed because it's transferred, has this relationship changed? Is the budget still the same for food protection after the transfer?

 

            MR. COLWELL: That's a question you'd have to ask Environment. The one thing I will say is that I didn't know how this was going to work when it first started, but actually, it has been a relief for us because we were in a weird situation where we were producing products and inspecting them. Overall, it has been a little bit of a bumpy road getting where it is now, but it seems to be working quite well. I know in my other department, the Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture, we were actually in the process of removing all our fisheries inspectors out of the department to another department when this new program came along because we couldn't do some of the things in aquaculture that we planned to do and inspect ourselves. There was no way we could do it.

 

            So it was very positive, this change, and again, like any time anything is changed, there are always some hiccups on the way. It's a learning a curve and stuff, but we seem to be working pretty well now.

            As I already said, it's great to see the production and the compliance are two different things separately. One thing I will say personally - and I shared it with some of the staff - we do miss those staff. They were incredible, great people to work with, did an incredible job and they will do an incredible job in the Department of Environment, but we do miss them from the standpoint of they're great people to work with.

 

            MS. ZANN: Is the turkey processing gone over there too?

 

            MR. COLWELL: Well, the turkey processing is still under our responsibility. The inspection of facilities is where it always was - to be up to standard with the turkey board and the chicken board. They have rules that they have to operate under, but the inspection of those facilities has gone to the Department of Environment.

 

            If they have a problem or the turkey board or chicken board sees an issue - and typically as we talk many times in the Legislature about this, the only thing about the chicken or turkey boards is to be sure that it's provincially inspected. We don't do that provincial inspection anymore - the Department of Environment does, which is good because then we can work with upgrades to facilities to help somebody get inspected if they're interested. We really want to do that.

 

            MS. ZANN: I have two more questions so maybe if we can give a quick answer for both it would be great because I would love to know. First of all, the budget for agriculture protection has been cut by $500,000. Can you explain that decrease?

 

            MR. COLWELL: That goes back to the animal inspection. That has gone to the Department of Environment as well.

 

            MS. ZANN: One other thing is GMOs. Do you have any kind of position on that at all? Have you been reading and researching about GMOs? I know there was some talk about it with the salmon with the Ecology Action Centre. I know there was some talk back and forth there, but what about for corn and things like this? Do we have GMO products in Nova Scotia?

 

            MR. COLWELL: There are no GMOs in salmon in Nova Scotia, I can tell you that right now. Number one, the GMO issue is a federal issue. As far as I know at the present time - and I know the Federation of Agriculture supports this because we've been talking to them on several occasions about it - no GMOs in Nova Scotia. But there is a federal ruling on some of these things that could overrule what we're doing.

 

            MS. ZANN: Really?

 

            MR. COLWELL: We'll have to just wait and see - on alfalfa, to be quite honest. That will become a topic.

 

            MS. ZANN: So the federal government is talking about possibly doing some kind of legislation? What would it be?

 

            MR. COLWELL: There has been approval - just one second, I'll check here. We have no GMOs in Nova Scotia, as of to date.

 

            MS. ZANN: No GMOs?

 

            MR. COLWELL: Nothing now, nothing yet.

 

            MS. ZANN: But what, though?

 

            MR. COLWELL: There's a product called elite alfalfa that they are considering, the federal government is considering allowing to be grown in Canada. Other than that, we have no GMOs in Nova Scotia and I don't think that any of that is here yet.

 

            There's nothing here yet. We have a position of no GMOs in Nova Scotia and we've made that very clear a long time ago. Unfortunately, if the federal government approves it, we have no choice.

 

            MR. CHAIRMAN: Honourable member for Truro, you have about two minutes.

 

            MS. ZANN: I just want to make sure I've got that spelling, is it elite alfalfa, is that what you said?

 

            MR. COLWELL: Yes.

 

            MS. ZANN: So it's just an alfalfa product?

 

            MR. COLWELL: We have an expert in GMOs at Perennia and we'd be only too glad to make him available to talk to you about that.

 

            MS. ZANN: I would love that. What is his or her name?

 

            MR. COLWELL: It's Bill Thomas.

 

            MS. ZANN: Okay, if you wouldn't mind, can I leave that with you and you let me know?

 

            MR. COLWELL: Definitely. We're concerned about this, too.

 

            MS. ZANN: Maybe we could go together sometime. My time is pretty well up so I'll leave you alone for now.

 

            MR. CHAIRMAN: Actually you have 30 seconds.

 

            MS. ZANN: I'll say thank you very much, it has been great speaking with you, I am always interested in hearing what you've got to say and what is going on around the province. I'm glad to hear our blueberry industry is doing very well, as I figured it would.

 

            I hear there's this new dulse liquid that you can buy that is very healthy for you. If you want to go running it gives you lots of energy. They sell it down the street, Argyle and Blowers, there's a place called Blue something or other. It is pure dulse liquid mixed with different fresh fruit, in a liquid form, it is supposed to be really good.

 

            I think these kinds of products are great for Nova Scotia and we could definitely export them and get an even better name for ourselves. Is that 30 seconds?

 

            MR. CHAIRMAN: You just about hit it perfectly. We'll now rotate to the PC caucus. I'd ask the minister if he wants to take a break?

 

            MR. COLWELL: No.

 

            MR. CHAIRMAN: Great, proceed.

 

The honourable member for Kings North.

 

            MR. JOHN LOHR: I was planning to offer you a break, too, Mr. Minister, but I know from past experience that you always say no. I really don't mind if you take a five-minute break or a 10-minute break.

 

            MR. COLWELL: If I need a break, I'll let you know.

 

            MR. LOHR: If you do need a break, you can let me know and you can take a break any time you want because I know you are into your third hour now, the start of your third hour. I'm not sure if we'll get back to what we ended off on the second hour. I was interested in just asking you a question about - I know one of the responsibilities of the Department of Agriculture is the maintenance of the dykes in the province. I'm just wondering if you could comment on your department's policies on that or where you are on that issue.

 

            MR. COLWELL: We have 234 kilometres of dykes in the province and several aboiteau and the gentleman who is sitting beside me, Kevin Bekkers, he's the expert in that field for the province. He is responsible for all the dykes in the province. We just spent and completed now, I believe, the LaPlanche aboiteau was $5 million on that one. That actually came in on budget and a little bit behind schedule because of weather and getting some parts from the U.S. but that is fully operational now.

 

            We have a long-term plan to raise the dyke levels up to the standards for the requirements of climate change and that work is ongoing every year.

 

            MR. LOHR: I would like to ask, what is the current standard for the dykes, above the average high water mark or whatever? How do you measure that? How do you determine what is adequate right now for the dyke system?

 

            MR. COLWELL: They're using the data from the United Nations Climate Change Study, and they're developing new engineering standards and raising the dykes up to the minimum level for climate change at this point until we see exactly what the further recommendations are. We may have to raise them higher, but at this point, we're getting them up to the standards that would meet the United Nations requirements.

 

            MR. LOHR: From my visual observations, I would say that right now they are just above the highest tides we can get. There are places where they're within a foot or two of our very highest tides at the moment. What would the standard be that you plan to build them up to, and when do we expect to see that money invested?

 

            MR. COLWELL: The requirement now is to raise them up two feet at the present time. We have to get all our dykes up to that standard by 2050. By year 2100, we have to have them up three feet. We're doing them on a priority basis each year in areas where they may have sunk a little bit, and we have to bring them up to the new standard.

 

            MR. LOHR: It's interesting that the dykes do sink. They sag, we know that. I have a couple of comments about that. It's hard to accept, given the history of the province and what happened 150 years ago with the Saxby Gale, that two or three feet is really adequate.

 

            The other thing is I know that there are organizations called marsh bodies. Is there funding available if a marsh body wanted to apply to have their own dyke built higher?

 

            MR. COLWELL: The department does all the dyke maintenance. The marshland committees strictly do the management of the land inside the dyke. There is some money available for drainage that would help the marshes that they can access to do that kind of work.

 

            MR. LOHR: I guess I just want to make a comment on it, and hear your comments on it. In Kings County, I know this to be true in other parts of the province, these dyke systems protect agricultural land, but they really do a lot more than that. They protect quite a few homes and constructions. Most of our towns in Kings County have been built near the ocean, and the dyke system is protecting Wolfville, Port Williams, and Canning - parts of these communities. It's really a bigger issue than just agricultural land. I'm wondering where you see the government going to deal with this issue in terms of the adequacy of the dykes, not just for protecting grassland but also for protecting homes and businesses and infrastructure.

 

            MR. COLWELL: Most of these places were for agricultural land to start, and municipalities saw fit to build sewage systems on them and do other things that we didn't recommend, didn't support. Now they've got infrastructure they put there without really being approved to do so, they did it on their own. We've seen some areas that they are responsible for part of the dyke. The dykes come up to their property and they've done nothing.

 

            I know there's one in an area - Wolfville is one example. You go along the dykes and there's the dyke, it stops and there are playgrounds and all kinds of buildings inside it. The dyke is where the department's responsibility ends and the municipality has done nothing to build a dyke on their section of it.

 

            They are working on a new standard to work with communities to bring these things up to scratch but it's really not our responsibility. Again, the municipalities have taken it on themselves and put things in harm's way that could potentially be in harm that aren't authorized by us - they found a cheap piece of land or whatever the case might be.

 

I know one area in the Tantramar marsh they have a sewage treatment system that is not supposed to be there but we can't stop them building them there and we can't stop them zoning the land that way but at the end of the day it's going to be questionable who is responsible for it, if there are some problems because they didn't get permission to put them there to start with and we can't guarantee - of course we can't guarantee anything in today's world. Protecting farm land if it floods is one thing, you can drain it and rebuild the dyke and away you go but if you've got some houses there or maybe it's people's lives at risk it's another thing.

 

It's not a good situation and some of these things that have happened over the years before I ever became minister - not that any of my predecessors condoned it either but the municipalities seemed to go off and do some of these things that when the time comes, they will be pointing fingers all over the place but they are responsible for this stuff and Wolfville is one.

 

            I remember one of the first dykes I went to see and the first question I asked, who is liable for this? That liability is there and as you know, with the big storms we're having, the high tides and ever-increasing ocean heights, that community is going to be at risk and it's going to cost a substantial amount of money to put a dyke in there to protect what they've got there. That has nothing to do with farm land. Our dyke protects the area around it but it's not a good situation.

 

            MR. LOHR: I'm well aware of what happened in Wolfville and I think that one way or another, and maybe you had a hand in that, the development below sea level was stopped. In fact, you are right about municipal sewage treatment systems, if you want to see them on dykelands, there's quite a few of them in Kings County.

 

            What I hear you saying is that the Department of Agriculture is responsible for the dykes as they relate to agricultural land and the municipalities are responsible for the dykes as it relates to municipal infrastructure - is that what I hear you saying?

 

            MR. COLWELL: Yes, that's correct.

 

            MR. LOHR: I guess I wasn't really aware of that because I was under the impression that the Department of Agriculture was responsible for the dykes, period. I am kind of disappointed to hear you say that, Mr. Minister. I guess you know that my family comes from Holland, as many people in the agriculture community have Dutch connections. I can tell you that even to talk about two or three feet above the high water mark would not be acceptable in Holland. Most of the dykes would be as high as this room above high water mark or nearly so, the important ones. The less important ones would be half the height of this room above the high water mark - in other words, 15, 20 feet above the high water mark.

 

            I'm just wondering if you see that someday we're going to have to get there ourselves at that standard or go through the scenario that they went through in 1953 that some of my relatives fortunately lived through that caused them to sort of build to that standard. I wonder if you could comment on that.

 

            MR. COLWELL: That's pretty hard to comment on something that might happen in the future. The history here I believe is 300 or 400 years of the dykes basically where they are now. The plan that is being put forward is a recommendation of the UN on the climate change and that's all we can really go by. To raise these dykes by this amount is extremely expensive even just two feet at this point. That's no reason not to make sure the land is protected but our Act only says we protect agricultural land, that's it.

 

            MR. LOHR: I asked you to comment on too many different things. So you are saying that yes, you are responsible for agricultural land and the municipalities are responsible for their infrastructure below sea level.

 

            MR. COLWELL: They have the responsibility and they have requirements to make sure they don't build on a flood plain that is behind a dyke. They seem to ignore that sometimes and build it anyway. Our responsibility under legislation is strictly for agricultural land.

 

            MR. LOHR: I do want to move on, I'll make just one more comment. I believe that some of these dykes that we have were built in the 1750s because it staggers the imagination nowadays if you look at them and think how could they have been built by hand, given what they do but they did it.

 

            One answer is that in the 1750s the ocean was about a metre lower than it is today so there's a metre of land there. One metre of water represents a fair bit of territory that could be flooded so who is responsible for that section? Is that the municipality or the Department of Agriculture, that's my question? Since they were built in the 1750s, do you understand what I'm saying?

 

            MR. COLWELL: We're doing studies, in a lot of the areas of the province that we feel are at risk, of flood mitigation and then, once those are done, municipalities are going to have to work with their stakeholders to make sure they are protected as well. It's a pretty complex issue but we are working on the problem that you are talking about exactly and the problem you are talking about we have to do with the municipalities. They have a requirement that they are not supposed to be building on flood plains number one, but they have done it anyway, so it's a problem we're fully aware of, we're concerned about and we are working to do what we can. 

 

Any area, from what I understand and correct me if I'm wrong here, that we do have agricultural land there, we'll build the dykes up and look after the agricultural land. It just so happens there is a sewage treatment system there or something else. But again, that's not our construction, not our property and they've decided to do that in their own planning strategy.

 

            MR. LOHR: I know there was - and I haven't looked at this in about a year, I wasn't planning to drill down into this subject this deeply - but there was a national program available and I assume it would still be available with this new federal government, it was available about a year ago. There are big areas of southern New Brunswick that availed themselves of the program to do flood mitigation studies to study where they are most vulnerable. If we have 234 kilometres of dykes obviously we want to spend the money in the best area if we do anything. Would you avail yourself of that federal money to study these dykes and are you aware of the program?

 

            MR. COLWELL: Yes, there is a program we're accessing to do just exactly what you're talking about. There is $400,000 in the program and it's to work with New Brunswick and ourselves - the two of us - on this flood mitigation study, choosing the most vulnerable places. One of the areas that has gotten a lot of media in the last several years is the flood plain in Truro. That study is underway and the municipality is going to have to make some corrections.

 

            MR. LOHR: It is clear that all of the communities along the Bay of Fundy and Minas Basin are all - I know Truro has been a flashpoint because of the Salmon River and issues there, but it is clear there are all the areas.

 

            I do want to move on to other topics. I will say that I feel - and I realize that we haven't had any disasters and heaven forbid that we do - but ultimately I do believe that we're going to have to, as a society or as a government, a province, deal with this issue more aggressively than two or three feet. Even that is a major undertaking, I realize, but I don't think we're going to be able to ignore it forever. Hopefully it will be long after your term is over and my term - whenever that ends up being over.

 

            Anyway, I'm just saying I think it's a very big issue and I'm not really wholly satisfied with your answers, is what I'm saying. I think there is going to have to be more done. Maybe you aren't either. We'll just let that go.

 

            What I do want to turn to now is the farmers wonder - and it's not really clear to me in this budget - how much money is there in this budget that is actually for farm programs that farmers can access? Can you tell me that? It's clearly not the Grants and Contributions number of $40.270 million, which I see in your estimate. It's something less than that so how much is it?

 

            MR. COLWELL: The Growing Forward program and the provincial programs on that last year was just under $17 million and we're projecting $19.5 million this year.

 

            MR. LOHR: So what you're saying is there will be $19.5 million that will go out in program money to farmers in the province?

 

            MR. COLWELL: Yes.

 

            MR. LOHR: How much of that is administration?

 

            MR. COLWELL: About $2 million of the total amount is for administrative costs.

 

            MR. LOHR: So, Mr. Minister, what we're talking about is Growing Forward 2, the program. That represents all of that $17.5 million? Is that all Growing Forward 2?

 

            MR. COLWELL: I'll just be a minute getting the answer, because it's pretty complex.

 

            MR. LOHR: I'd better not ask another question about the same topic in the meantime, should I? I'd better wait for the answer because I'll forget what I asked.

 

            MR. COLWELL: I can just give you an idea of some of the programs while they're looking through it for you because they're all in different places in the Estimates Book. We put the program in place for the apple tree enhancement, that's included in that number. We give a grant to the SPCA every year, about $240,000 for animal enforcement stuff we do. There's the allowance for the wine industry. The one for the wine industry is in that new one.

 

            MR. LOHR: So if I can ask - Growing Forward 2, though, wouldn't include the grant to the SPCA?

 

            MR. COLWELL: No.

 

            MR. LOHR: So let me ask this - let's leave that alone for a minute. I want to ask questions about Growing Forward 2. We're about halfway through Growing Forward 2, right? That begs a few questions. I know, from the information I have here, that it's a $34,522,000 program. Are we on track? Where are we in Growing Forward 2 in spending our share, the government's share, of that? Are we halfway through spending that $34 million, or are we three-quarters of the way through, or are we one-quarter of the way through? I just want to know where we are in that program.

 

            MR. COLWELL: The allowance is $7.4 million every year, so every year you get that. We're $27,000 underspent this year.

 

            MR. LOHR: How much?

 

            MR. COLWELL: It's $27,000, almost dead on.

 

            MR. LOHR: If you're $27,000 underspent this year . . .

 

            MR. COLWELL: The whole program.

 

            MR. LOHR: The whole program, that's remarkably close on those kinds of dollars I will say, yes. So it will not end up being not spent then, everything will be spent. Is that money carried forward if it's not spent?

 

            MR. COLWELL: Yes it is. So as of now, that's at last year's end, we were $27,000 underspent that will move forward in this year to the $7.4 million for this year.

 

            MR. LOHR: There's a few questions still about that. What replaces that? Are there discussions for Growing Forward 3 - when do those start?

 

            MR. COLWELL: We've already started the negotiations on Growing Forward through the federal government now and the other provinces. It's already underway and we've had that underway for - it has been about a year the negotiations have been started and it's a topic on the Federal-Provincial Ministers Conference this coming year.

 

            MR. LOHR: I know that sometimes it seems that it's federal sort of goals that get written into these Grow Forward programs. How much influence do you have over what actually gets put into the next Grow Forward program in terms of the details of the programs?

 

            MR. COLWELL: We have significant input. Our staff have been meeting with the federal Agriculture staff and our other colleagues in the other provinces. They are working on a plan now that would suit a new program because the program that was there was a very good program, it served a lot of purposes but some of the things have changed as well so they are negotiating a whole new process. We have significant input into it.

 

            MR. LOHR: Will you consult with the Federation of Agriculture, in terms of what types of priorities you put into the agreement?

 

            MR. COLWELL: Actually we have an Industry Advisory Committee and communicate with the federation on a regular basis on this topic. It's very important to us that we get the right program and help the industry grow and make the industry more profitable.

 

            MR. LOHR: So I know there's a number of programs in the envelope right now. I'm just wondering about the Pollination Expansion Program, if you could tell me where that's at and where do you see that heading?

 

            MR. COLWELL: Last year we started out with the same program we always did, with about $125,000. Sorry about that, I'm off by $25,000 - $150,000 we started in the Pollination Expansion Program last year and that was taken up very quickly by the large producers at $25,000 apiece, so very few people outside the large producers had an opportunity. That had been the case for years and years.

 

Last year we decided we were going to expand it to allow the smaller beekeepers to also avail that program so we doubled it to $300,000. We put some criteria on it that if you had I believe two hives that you could get one more hive but you had to take training on how to look after it and how to look after the bees, the idea being they were trying to get more people in the beekeeping business but educate them at the same time. If you had 10 hives, I believe you could put two more hives in or three, it was very prescriptive.

 

I believe the total take-up on that whole program was $284,000 or $285,000, if my memory is right - very successful. We had a lot of beekeepers who couldn't have moved forward without this change in the program and we hope to do that this year. Our goal at the end of the day, and it's the goal since I became minister, is to make us self-sufficient in bees in the province, maybe to the point that we can export some bees for pollination. That's where we're headed.

 

            Last year we were 11,000 hives short, this year we're about 5,000 hives short so we've made tremendous progress and we need to make more. It brings all kinds of other issues because we have to make sure that we have feed for the bees when the crops are all pollinated so we're going to try to encourage planting some wildflowers and different things, in association with the beekeepers association. They've come up with some very good ideas and we plan to work with them. They've come up with ideas - for instance, working with the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal to plant some wildflowers along the side of the road. That's sort of jeopardy for the bees to get run over by the cars, but at least that's another option we have. Those discussions are in the preliminary stages.

 

            Also looking at encouraging people to plant more wildflowers in their gardens than they had before, which is really good, and there seems to be a lot of interest in bees now so I think that's going to be achievable. We want to make sure we don't overpopulate without the food to feed them because that would be defeating the whole purpose.

 

            We're pretty excited and there was a lot of excitement last year when we changed the program to include the small beekeepers. Honestly, my opinion being an entrepreneur, is the small guy may be the biggest guy in the province in 20 years, but if you don't help him get started - with training. The training is a key part of this. No training, no help - and ongoing training. That can help grow our industry. As we grow more and more crops and hopefully expand our farming industry in the province, which we hope we really can do over time, then we have the bee population there to make that possible.

 

            That's what we're on track for. It looks like we'll get there in a few years. It's going to take us a few years. There is now some propagation happening with the beehives in the province, which is good. So it's starting to come into a bigger and bigger business all the time.

 

            MR. LOHR: I'm well aware. I have three beehives myself. I have a good friend who has availed himself of your small beehive program and I think it's great. I know you have a number of other programs.

 

            The program that in the past, I would say, if I think about my career in farming, the most significant program to agriculture in the past has been land drainage and land clearing programs. It doesn't seem like we've had a lot of that lately. Maybe 15, 20 years ago it was almost an annual event and there was a small industry of service providers who provided land drainage and land clearing service. It really did contribute to the productive acres of the province, and drainage has an immense impact on our land.

 

            I know it was in your government's campaign platform to have a land drainage program. I'm just wondering what you can say about land drainage and clearing.

 

            MR. COLWELL: We've expanded the tile drainage program up to $600,000 a year for soil improvements and for tile drainage. That is underway now and we enlarged that program last year. I believe we were around $200,000 before that, if I remember right. So we substantially improved that last year because the critical part, like you say, is levelling the land putting drainage in. I know the industry, when we talked to them about it, were very happy about the program we put in place.

 

            MR. LOHR: What about land clearing? Do you foresee that you're going to do a land clearing program?

 

            MR. COLWELL: The land forming is part of this drainage process. We've also made it available for blueberry producers that are leasing property now on Crown land and on their own land. They're very pleased with this program.

 

            MR. LOHR: I know that in the Valley, I know you've done a fair bit with the wine industry. The grain producers have also - and soybeans and corn - have increased their acreage over the last number of years quite a bit in the Valley. I know there is a demand for land clearing for field crops. I think you just mentioned land clearing for blueberries. Do you anticipate anything to support the grain industry? As you may realize, one of the significant imports into the province is grains to support the chicken industry. We're not self-sufficient in grain. We could be, but it takes a lot of acres. In the overall scheme of things, it's a relatively low-value crop. Just enabling assistance with land clearing when prices - and grain prices in the last few years have justified expanding; the acreage has expanded. I'm just wondering what you would say to the grain farmers in the province who would be interested in support, would be interested in land clearing and expanding their acreage.

 

            MR. COLWELL: We support the Atlantic Grain Council and some productivity improvements they're looking at with some of the other provinces to do some research around drainage and other enhancement of soil. They can presently avail themselves of tile drainage but not land forming, because they haven't approached us on it, basically. The wine industry did. The blueberry industry did. We put programs together for both of those.

 

            MR. LOHR: Land forming and land clearing in my world would be two different things. The land forming would relate to drainage on dyke lands. Land clearing would be primarily on what we would call uplands where it would have forest and we want to turn that - and in the Valley. In reality, I know there's a lot of land clearing to be done in the province. There's an immense amount of land that was farmed in this province 100 years ago that isn't farmed today, the Margaree Valley, the Musquodoboit Valley. There are big sections of the Annapolis Valley that are treed over that could be farmed again, could be productive land, and I'm sure on the South Shore likewise. Quite a bit of that land has gone to forest when there was an exodus from farming in the 1940s and 1950s. That's what I'm asking about: land clearing on uplands.

 

I'm sure that my grain farmer friends who presumably will hear this conversation at some point or listen to it would be interested to know that they need to come and talk to you about it. I'm sure they would do that for increased land-clearing programs. I'm just wondering if you could comment on land clearing.

 

            MR. COLWELL: Again, the Atlantic Grain Council is looking at ways they can most efficiently change the soil or work with the soil including drainage and other things. They have not come back to us yet with a concrete proposal to do that. At that time, when they come back with that, we will look at it like we do with every other one we have.

 

            MR. LOHR: I'm in an awkward position here, Mr. Minister. My apologies. My colleague came and started filling my ear. Could you repeat the answer to my question?

 

            MR. COLWELL: He's probably filling your head with fisheries issues. The Atlantic Grain Council is doing a research project now to see what the most efficient way is to grow grain in Atlantic Canada. They have not approached us for a drainage program yet or any other program they might be interested in to help them achieve that. I don't think the research is finished. Until that research is finished, if someone has a piece of property and they simply need to put drainage on it for any kind of crop, including wheat, we have a program to cover it for that part as a regular program. Once they come back to us with recommendations, we'll review the recommendations and see if we can make a program fit what they need to do to accomplish more grain growth in the province. As far as I'm concerned, any land clearing we can do to put those fields back into production, even if it's grain, which is a relatively low-value product, it is worth it because it displaces imports into the province and again, has the same seven to one ratio, plus it's here, it reduces all the carbon footprint for trucking or rail or however you're going to bring your grain in. So all those things are very positive.

 

            Again, we're not going to react until they ask us, and when they ask us we'll be there to work with them and see what we can put in place. It's important, every acre we get in production we want production.

 

            MR. LOHR: I'm certain that they will hear that message and I hope that your goal and my goal and the department's goal is to see some of those lands that were not farmed in the past to be farmed again. I think it is.

 

            My next question - I would just grind into another topic or just switch gears, but not really, is to talk about 4-H. Certainly our future farmers in the province come from 4-H so hopefully some of that land that we can make available to them they'll be able to farm. Can you offer me a comment on 4-H?

 

            MR. COLWELL: Well 4-H - before I ask my staff here - I can tell you that people at this table and people behind me here in the department, if I didn't support 4-H I would soon have to change my mind. I fully support 4-H. I think it's one of the best programs that has ever existed or ever will exist. I go around the fairs and I know - I was never personally involved in 4-H but my cousins were on the farm. I can remember one year my cousin sending me this monstrous potato he won first prize with at the local fair, and thinking how wonderful that was.

 

            You go down and you see the pride in the young people's faces when they show the chicken they've produced or the trailer they welded or the crop they've grown or the crocheting they've done or the quilt they've made. It's just marvelous to see that and so important. I've been trying to encourage that 4-H in my riding, we have no farms but there is a lot of interest in it, and my area has a lot of crime. I think it would help prevent that.

 

            Not only that, it would give young people a really strong start in life. We have full-time staff that work with 4-H. We have a total commitment to it and I can tell you I have a real soft spot in my heart for 4-H. Usually anytime 4-H approaches us for some kind of help we're there to help them - every time.

 

            I really appreciate all the work the volunteers do, the families do, because it really shapes the way our economy is growing and should be growing. It's not necessarily some of the awful things that we see with the murders and everything that's happening today.

 

            I've talked to so many people successful in the farming business and other businesses who have been 4-H members and they credit 4-H for starting them off in life. So you're talking to a huge supporter of 4-H.

 

            MR. LOHR: I know that 4-H has enjoyed probably almost - if you were to go across the nation - some of the strongest support from the Department of Agriculture in Nova Scotia than any department of agriculture in the country, probably where you have literally, I believe, staff in your department where part of their mandate or all of it maybe is to support 4-H.

 

            I know too that you - I believe I've heard, and I'm not sure whether it has been signed - but there is an MOU that will see 4-H shift somewhat to maybe more demand on them to do fundraising for their programs. I wonder if you would comment on that. Am I correct in that?

 

            MR. COLWELL: Yes, you are absolutely correct in that. We're near four of five years on the MOU with the 4-H. We've put substantial funding into that. This year they're going to receive $41,000. Let me see here. We gave them $40,000 this year, their total expenses were $163,000 of their operating budget.

 

            MR. LOHR: So am I correct to guess that the MOU you've signed with them sees them receiving a declining amount of support over time from the provincial government, from the Department of Agriculture?

 

            MR. COLWELL: That's correct, that was negotiated with the 4-H at the time it was put in place.

 

            MR. LOHR: It doesn't totally line up with your previous comments to me and maybe you can explain if that's a contradiction. I know you strongly have endorsed 4-H and I agree with you, it would probably be in urban areas you probably could do more and maybe a very positive effect but how does that line up? I know you are very positive about 4-H but at the same time we're seeing declining support for 4-H. It doesn't add up to me.

 

            MR. COLWELL: The MOU was done under the understanding of trying to get them to a point that they could be self-sustaining for their own internal operations. This was agreed to by them so they could get a model where they could have an executive director and over time work that into the system.

 

            Now this is something they requested. We followed through with funding in a five-year agreement and it seems to be working very well so far.

 

            On the other side of that is we have full-time staff that 100 per cent of the staff time works for 4-H, we have a full-time coordinator in the department, that has not been cut and will not be cut. Those people help give support to the 4-H organization and do a tremendous amount of other work. We also put other monies in that we don't necessarily record in our system.

 

            MR. LOHR: How much time do I have left, Mr. Chairman?

 

            MR. CHAIRMAN: Roughly 10 minutes.

 

            MR. LOHR: I don't want to disappoint Bill and not get the Crop and Livestock Insurance Commission on the questioning here but maybe we'll have to.

 

            I would like to ask about WI - Women's Institute - again another organization which has had an immense impact in our province for positives. The list of things they've accomplished is very long and I know the department has been very supportive of WI and in fact I believe in the beginning the reason WI came to Nova Scotia was because of the Department of Agriculture. I wonder if you could comment on the role of WI.

 

            MR. COLWELL: We are also very supportive of the Women's Institute. They are the backbone of the industry in the province. I want to thank my colleague next to me here, Loretta, who actually worked with the Women's Institute. We do have an MOU with them. We actually increased their funding higher than it has ever been and on a declining balance over five years. That agreement was just signed last year so we have four years of that program left. They are very happy with how it's working.

 

Again, it was a negotiated agreement and not something that we said this is all the money we've got. We didn't approach it that way; we said what do you need, how can we work with you? A wonderful group of ladies. I was hoping to get them to do some other stuff that we could possibly make contributions to the organization for but we never managed to get to that point yet but we're still working with them on that and they are working on a work plan.

 

            I would have liked to have seen them promoting Nova Scotia farm products and thus provide the funding for everything they did. Who better to talk to someone in a grocery store than a wife or a mother of a farmer in the province? Who would be better believed than someone like that, even more so than the farmer when they talk about it? We're working on a work plan with that now. We have link-ins with the Select Nova Scotia and buy local. So we're pretty optimistic we can do something there. They seem very receptive to that, it's just how we have to structure it. We have to be pretty flexible around people's interest, what they would be interested in doing because we don't want to ask them to do something they're not interested in, and support something they really have in their heart that they love doing. We're still working on that, and we're very optimistic that will happen. I think it's going to be a tremendous marketing tool for the province and indeed the farming industry when they come along. They invited me to a couple of ice cream socials, and not that I need to eat any more ice cream, I'm looking forward to going to one of those, too, and talking with them. We met with them several times, and they're a great group of people.

 

            MR. LOHR: I believe in the past you were also providing them with office space in Truro without any rent. Will you continue to do that?

 

            MR. COLWELL: The answer to your question is yes, but we're doing it in a different way. We give them a really low rent rate. We're renting the property to them now. We're also supplying the funding to pay the rent. The answer is yes, we're giving them free rent in a roundabout way.

 

            MR. CHAIRMAN: I ask if the chatter could be kept down just a little bit in the room, please.

 

            The honourable member for Kings North.

 

            MR. LOHR: I'd like to shift gears. Recently I went up to Cape Breton and met with some farmers up there. I think it would be fair to say that sometimes those farmers in Cape Breton feel like they're a backwater compared to what's happening in the Valley and in the Truro area. What would you say, Mr. Minister, your department is doing to improve agriculture in Cape Breton?

 

            MR. COLWELL: To start with, we treat all the farmers in the province the same. But we have a really strong team in Cape Breton working with the farming industry there. We do work around farmers' markets, which we help fund and work with them, and several other initiatives, and we're working on more right now.

 

            MR. LOHR: I know my colleague, the member for Truro-Bible Hill-Millbrook- Salmon River talked about loss of processing plants. We lost the Saputo plant in Cape Breton recently. In my area, we're losing three plants; I think two have been lost, and a third. I know that in the agricultural community, there's a worry about the loss of the processing industry. I wonder if you could tell me what your department is doing to try to address that.

 

            MR. COLWELL: The problem with processing is they've got to be able to make a profit where they're at. A lot of the processing facilities in Nova Scotia needed upgrading. That's true in the dairy industry and also in some of the others. And the markets have changed in some areas. The pie plant that's going to close down this year, it's a market condition. That particular product is not selling well anymore, and they can't continue to make it under their business plan.

 

It's a serious concern for us, too. Every time a processing facility is closed, it means we lose added value. We're all about added value in the province. It's no good adding value if you can't sell the product. It's no good adding value if you lose money when you're adding value. They have to be profitable. We're no longer in the business of propping up businesses that aren't profitable; all that does is just prolong the date when they're going to close. Usually, there's always an opportunity, when one facility closes, that hopefully something backfills for it and does add value.

 

We have a lot of good processing facilities. We're doing a lot of work around value added in products and trying to develop new markets for value-added products. We've had really good success in the fishing industry around that, and the processing. But there are some major issues that have to be addressed. As you're well aware, costs get out of control and markets change, as we've seen in the mink industry. We just can't prop a business up that's not making money. It's that simple. We want them, but they have got to be making money. A lot of these companies have to make huge investments to be able to compete in the future. It's not a good situation, but we would only make it worse by funding something that they're going to close anyway.

 

            MR. CHAIRMAN: The honourable member for Argyle-Barrington with two minutes left.

 

            HON. CHRISTOPHER D'ENTREMONT: I should be able to do that in two minutes.

 

Thank you, minister, for the comments. I missed the issues on mink farming. I only have mink as an agricultural product in my area. Basically a two-part question: I have a mink farm in Clyde River run by Larry Nickerson. He got fined the other day because he had to change how he was using his settling pond. He was instructed by the department when he built it to have a settling pond and the new rules, I think, stop him from using the settling pond, yet because of the price of mink he doesn't really have the money to go and make the changes that he needs to. So I'm just wondering, is there some money for mink farming? How is that going to be working, and can you help a guy like Larry Nickerson, who's trying to keep a clean farm going and pay for those things?

 

            MR. CHAIRMAN: The honourable Minister of Agriculture, with approximately a minute left.

 

            MR. COLWELL: I can't answer that question in one minute.

 

            MR. D'ENTREMONT: We'll talk after.

 

            MR. COLWELL: We're working with the industry now on a plan that they've brought forward, their idea, how they want to approach the industry and it survive in the future. I will tell you with the environmental stuff that's going on, there's over 80 per cent compliance now, and probably another 6 per cent or 7 per cent who just need to dig a hole somewhere or put up a piece of eavestrough - minor stuff they've got to do. I can't comment on any particular farm, you realize that. We had money available in Growing Forward to help get those plans in place. That should have been accessed by that individual you talked about. I don't know if he had and, if he did, I couldn't tell you.

 

            MR. D'ENTREMONT: Maybe you could get the department to look into it for me.

 

            MR. COLWELL: Yes, if you want to put an inquiry through, we'll gladly look at it for you.

 

            MR. D'ENTREMONT: Thank you.

 

            MR. CHAIRMAN: Time. Thank you. We've completed another hour. We'll do a rotation now to the Liberal Party.

 

The honourable Minister of Internal Services.

 

            HON. LABI KOUSOULIS: Good afternoon, minister. I'm wondering if you could give us some information in regard to our wine industry here. My understanding is over the last couple of decades it has prospered into one of the three largest in Canada. Perhaps you could give us, and those who will be looking at this transcript, some background into how we got there and how the nature of Nova Scotia makes it ideal, and where we are today with our wine industry.

 

            MR. COLWELL: I'd be very pleased to. The wine industry is probably one of the areas in Agriculture where we have the most immediate opportunity to grow the economy. The industry up to about a year ago, I would say - maybe even now - has been part hobby, part industry. Now, even a lot of the farmers who started out probably as a potential retirement project, or whatever you want to call it, have realized that they're producing extremely good wine. That's no accident as the people in the industry really worked hard to get it to that point.

 

            To the point, and I talked earlier that they've won international awards. In France they won an award a few years ago that no one outside France had ever won a medal. They even tried to change the outcome by putting the bottles of wine in a paper bag and doing them again. The Nova Scotia company won a gold medal - never mind a bronze medal or anything else, they won a gold medal. When they put it in a paper bag and did it again, they got the silver medal. They had no choice, they had to give it to them. That was in Champagne, France, where they've never, ever had anyone in the world beat them at their own game. We can't call our bubbly wine champagne but we competed in the champagne market and beat them. That's just one example of many things to come.

 

            We've seen Benjamin Bridge as the number one seller of wine in the Nova Scotia liquor stores with their Nova 7, against all competition, but not enough grapes to produce enough wine to fill the whole market.

 

            We've come up with an expansion program to have more vineyards developed because our problem is we have about 600 acres - it depends on who you talk to - somewhere between 500 and 700 acres. Last year we started that program and we managed to get 139 new acres planted this year so it was more than we hoped for. That's a very good sign. According to the industry, they tell us that for every acre of vineyard planted, it creates 1.1 full-time jobs, so it's the best job creation you could ever imagine and they'll go on for 30, 50, 100 years, so that's very positive.

 

            We've also taken steps to hire a viticulturist at Perennia. There has been an offer extended to a viticulturist in Chile. We hope to have that individual in Nova Scotia very shortly to start work. It took us over a year to find a viticulturist. We're very excited about that because we need that to really look after the plant health and someone who has a vast experience in viticulture. We really are changing from a hobby to an exciting industry or exciting hobby to an industry now. We are where Ontario was probably 15 years ago. They started with very few wineries and they have 200-some wineries now. We have 24, I believe, in the province and more opening as we speak.

 

            It's a huge investment up front. An acre of vineyard is somewhere between $15,000 and $30,000 an acre to put in so it's quite an expensive proposition. It's five years before you get the first full crop off it, if you look after the plants properly, so it's a big investment. Once you get the crop going and the product there, then you have an opportunity to make some very good wine.

 

            When you look at the investment, the short-term investment, we've offered $6,550 I think is the amount, for land clearing, drainage, plant stock, trellis systems, all the labour that goes with that and everything altogether and also an initial site evaluation to make sure the site is going to be suitable. Once the site is suitable, then we'll decide whether or not we can give them assistance to help put the vineyard in. Then they can spend that $6,500 any way they want. They can spend a lot of it on drainage, they can spend a lot of it on plants or whatever it could be but at the end of the day they have to have a full acre in, fully planted with everything done, to make sure that crop is going to come off.

 

            It's very exciting, we're seeing a great take-up. I remember the first wine board meeting I had - and the board I set up is the only one like it in North America, the only one that has ever been like it in North America - I challenged them. I was mentioning earlier that I challenged them to be five times bigger in five years and they almost all fell off their chairs to start. Then they said well we need the market first and we don't have any grapes so how are you going to market what you don't have? We're almost on track to five times bigger in five years. With the program we put in the budget this year we could very easily make that. So that's going to make a huge economic impact on the province.

 

            The industry tells us some studies they've done - numerous studies - that economic value of a bottle of Nova Scotia wine compared to an imported wine of any kind is between $16.85 to $18.50 a bottle of economic benefit, even if the bottle of wine sells for, say, $15. An imported bottle of wine - it doesn't matter what kind it is or how expensive or cheap it is, is about 65 cents. So it just makes no sense not to grow our industry every bit we can.

 

            So that has been very positive, and as we see the industry blossom and grow we will see a lot more interest. The highest price ever paid for a bottle of Canadian wine was a bottle of wine from Nova Scotia, and there were 500 bottles sold for $288 a bottle. To give you an idea of the quality of our wine, here is small Nova Scotia, third largest in the country in size, we pale in size compared to Ontario or British Columbia, we still have a better quality in many cases. They also have very good quality wine.

 

            So the industry is here. We're evolving from a hobby sort of retirement project into a full-blown industry. That is really exciting to see. I can easily see within the next 20 years probably 200 wineries in Nova Scotia making top quality product that has an international market. That's very exciting.

 

            MR. KOUSOULIS: That is very encouraging. When I hear the story about our wine industry what comes to my mind is that it is an industry of wealth creation for the province. I'll explain that for a minute.

 

            There are two types of industries or two types of companies that we can have in the province and one would be a wealth creator, and the other would be a wealth spinner. An industry or a company that takes dollars that are already in the province and just recirculates them would be a wealth spinner. When I look at the wine industry, I would think that it's all wealth creation because whether we consume the wine here in Nova Scotia or whether we export it to bring dollars into Nova Scotia, the benefit is the same as wealth creation because even if a Nova Scotian consumes that bottle of wine, we're not sending dollars out of the province to buy an imported bottle of wine so it's keeping our dollars here at home.

 

            Very encouraging to hear that an acre of land is providing a single job for an individual and also very encouraging that we can do so with a minimal investment of $6,500 per acre. I think that's one to share with Nova Scotians of the potential of this industry and the potential for Nova Scotia as well and especially to boost rural employment and the out-migration in rural Nova Scotia, which is very important to everyone.

 

            When I think about our Nova Scotia wine - and I must say I agree with your sentiment - the whites we have are absolutely incredible - Nova 7. I never really had a palate for white wine until tasting quite a few Nova Scotia wines and they are a very excellent quality and very enjoyable. When I think of the potential I wonder - I've heard different estimates that we have approximately 2,000 to 3,000 jobs in the wine industry.

 

            The current investment made in the budget - what would that look like if we keep making it every year and is there capacity to make a larger investment and how soon could we double this industry? I think there is enormous potential and perhaps you could also - I know I heard a story and I'm not sure if you're aware of it - the Jost winery had a large opportunity out of China and I know that market is growing. Is that opportunity still there and do we see it being there for the foreseeable future?

 

            MR. COLWELL: The market is still there in China. Our problem is we can't supply the market. That's our problem. We just don't have enough quantity. One of the wineries in Nova Scotia a couple of years ago went to China and took some wine with them that they couldn't sell here. The palate wasn't for that kind of wine so they took it to China. They thought they would try it, see what they could do with it, so they went there and they took a couple of cases. They had tastings at different places, and they came home and never thought anything more about it. They figured, well, there's two more cases we got out of our warehouse.

 

They got a phone call from a company in China that said, "Have you got more of that wine?" They said, "How much wine do you want?" They said they wanted 10 container loads. They said, "We don't have 10 container loads. We haven't made the wine in two or three years, but let me see what we've got." They went and checked, and they had two container loads. They put the two container loads together. They got paid in advance for the shipment, and they shipped it. After they shipped it, they got another call from the same customer asking what kind of grapes they used to make this wine. They told them. "How many acres do you have? What's the production on the acreage?" They made a deal to buy the grapes before they were made into wine so they would have it made into wine. That happened. They sent a cheque for the full value of the grapes. They turned around and turned all of that into wine that next year and got paid for the difference between the grapes and the wine and shipped all of that. I assume that's still going on today.

 

            We're looking at other products we could maybe get in more volume because our problem is a shortage of grapes. Once we get the grapes, it's a five-year process, as I've already mentioned, to get the grapes into full production. I believe, based on what we did last year and based on the industry turning from sort of a retirement hobby thing for most wineries into a business, that once we get to a certain size - and we've done some economic analysis on it. If you plant 20 acres of grapes, it's economically feasible to do it. If you plant 30, of course, it gets more economical as you get a larger volume because your equipment is all the same cost, and there's a lot of fixed costs. As these wineries get above 30 acres, they're going to be able to afford to expand even more on their own, besides what we're doing. I think you're going to see some pretty rapid growth in the industry now.

 

            Our program also has a system in it that encourages them to really look at new products as well, but we will not support any grape production or any grape being grown in Nova Scotia that doesn't have a market now as a wine. There's a lot of interest, and people want to experiment. We're not in the experimenting business; we're in the production business. We've come under some fire for that - small guys who want to grow an acre of grapes. We're not interested in that. If they want to do that, they can do it on their own, and away they go. If someone's going to grow five acres of grapes - and we're hoping that the farming industry will get involved in this more and more because that will be an exponential change in what we're doing. They have the land. They have the equipment. They have the knowledge. If we can get that in place, we'll see huge growth.

 

            I'd like to see at least 2,000 to 3,000 acres of vineyard in Nova Scotia in the immediate future if we can possibly do it. I think with the next three-year program, we could accomplish that. If we accomplish that, all of a sudden, it's a total game-changer again. We're making the steps to grow.

 

            Part of the program the Premier announced a while ago was the wine lab. That's key to this whole thing, too. That wasn't available before. All the tests were done outside of the province, and that slowed things down and really couldn't service the industry as well as it should. So with all those things combined, I really think we can get up another couple of thousand acres within the next three years or maybe less.

 

            Again, the key to this all working is a program we put together. If you have property and you want to lease it to a vineyard over a long-term lease, they'll come in and put the vineyard in place, look after it, and pay a mutually agreeable lease fee for the land. That has a huge impact because if you have a piece of land that's good for a vineyard - typically land in Nova Scotia ranges in price from a few hundred dollars an acre to probably, I don't know, $5,000 an acre at the high end for really prime agricultural land, maybe more. My colleague, Mr. Lohr, can probably tell me more about that because he has some agricultural land, but somewhere around $400 or $500 to $5,000 an acre.

 

            Land suitable to grow grapes in Ontario, $34,000 to $35,000 an acre, with trees on it. In B.C. it's somewhere between $130,000 and $140,000 an acre with trees on it. In B.C. you go along in the vineyard area where there are houses and there's a driveway, a house and a vineyard. They have no front yard, no back yard, no side yard, all vineyard, right up to touching on the houses. The land is that valuable. In most cases a couple of acres of land is worth more than the house that is sitting on it. I think we can get to that same scenario in Nova Scotia.

 

            The other thing they can do, if someone has property and they don't want to lease their land, they can do a grape supply contract with a winery. They have to have one of the two. We want to make sure those grapes go to the wineries that need them to produce product. In that case they put the vineyard in themselves. A lot of the apple farmers in the province have almost identical setups with the modern apple orchard as you do with a vineyard. They have all the equipment, they understand all the drainage, they understand the plants, they understand everything, so they could probably put the vineyard in for $15,000 an acre where someone else who doesn't have the equipment and the expertise it would probably get close to $30,000.

 

            They take that land and make a contract to sell the grapes for a fixed price, for a given length of time. Either way, the landowner still owns the vineyard at the end of the day. We have really high hopes that the farming industry will be interested. I've talked to a number of farmers who have suitable land who are pretty interested. They are just waiting to see what the results are. We have at least a couple of farmers who have leased out their vineyards to wineries and it has worked out very well. We're looking at all possible avenues to grow this in the most economical way and with the maximum impact on the economy.

 

            MR. KOUSOULIS: Minister, when I think about investments government makes into industries, whether it be over the years, funding private organizations, on occasion bailouts, on occasion other forms of funding, payroll rebates, one thing that sticks in my mind and we've seen it in the news lately from investments from a few years back and sometimes many years back, is that those investments falter to nothing. In the news recently we saw one organization, over $50 million and we never got over, I believe it was 40 jobs for a two-year period - in fact I believe a three-year period.

 

            As we make these investments in the wine industry, I understand the vines aren't going to move anywhere, is there any aspect of the industry that could move out of Nova Scotia? Or is this the type of investment that when we make it - unlike making an investment into a private organization or into another industry that can pack up and leave once the funds stop flowing to it - is there a downside or a risk that has been identified in terms of if we subsidize $6,500 an acre to start producing, is there any risk in terms of that 1.1 FTE that you mentioned earlier, not being part of that acre for the foreseeable future?

 

            MR. COLWELL: No, it's a pretty safe investment for the province. You can't dig up a vineyard and move it to New Brunswick or P.E.I. or somewhere else, dear knows where, that you can move equipment to if you finance equipment. We have such a shortage of grapes in the province now for vineyard that if a winery did go broke, the other ones would buy it instantaneously because of the availability of grapes and the need for grapes in the province. They basically sell everything they can produce.

 

Indeed, as we look at other markets and we're looking at other products that they may be able to make with the existing equipment in the wineries that we can look at other markets such as Asia and other areas. We've got one idea on the table now and we'll see if the industry takes us up on that, which we don't have to basically grow grapes for, which would give them some cash flow in between the times when they run out of grapes.

 

            It's a solid investment. It's one that should be around from 30 to 500 years from the time it's planted and it grows expertise in the province.

 

            I'll give you an idea of how much excitement there is in the province. One of the biggest wineries in the province advertised a couple of years ago for a master wine maker. They thought, for the level of person they were looking for, there might be 50 or 100 of them in the world. They went over the very attractive compensation package and relocation package because the person they were looking for they didn't think was in Canada.

 

            So they put the ad out and came to find out there were 100 of these people in the world and 50 of them applied to come to Nova Scotia. That's the excitement with the wine industry in Nova Scotia today. They brought the wine maker in. He's internationally renowned. They're actually even changing the policy of how they plant the grapevines. They've made major changes and some of the wines that they're doing are winning international competitions.

 

            Not only are they doing that, but they also have junior wine makers who are working under this gentleman that they send all over the world for a year or two years at a time to get training in places like Chile, France, Germany and other parts of Canada. The winery is paying 100 per cent of their salaries and costs - that kind of investment. People who are making that kind of investment are not going to haul up and leave. The infrastructure is here to stay.

 

            MR. CHAIRMAN: The honourable member for Hants West.

 

            MR. CHUCK PORTER: It's good to have an opportunity this evening to ask a few questions. I want to stay with the wine industry for a few minutes and if we get a little time, I'm going to move on to a couple of other things.

 

            We were fortunate enough back a few months ago to have a great announcement - the Avondale Sky Winery on this very investment, which is in my constituency. We're very pleased to have it there.

 

            I'm kind of curious about the projected uptake of the investment. It was $1 million that was invested and I believe that is the right figure - correct me if I'm wrong on the numbers. What is the projected uptake? Do we see all of that being used up? Given it's an exciting time in the wine industry right now. There are a lot of people very interested in this thing. I'm kind of curious about the opportunities here.

 

            MR. COLWELL: Our first program - the first $1 million we put into this project last year was totally accessed. We put 139 acres of new vineyards in. It's the biggest expansion we've seen in the province ever, and a lot of excitement.

 

            I was talking to three doctors actually that worked at the Mayo Clinic from the U.S. and they moved to Nova Scotia without us helping them. They put 40 acres in and another one outside of what we were talking about here. That's the kind of excitement we're seeing here in Nova Scotia. They're going to retire. One of the doctors - they're specialists - they came here to retire. They're retiring pretty young, I thought when I looked at them and talked to them. They're very interested - they're hobby wine makers, but they will put the investment in it to really move it forward. They'll be here and their winery will be here.

 

            So the program is a total success. This year we have more money in it. We have three times as much money so we're hoping that we'll get another 300 acres or so in the ground. We'll address some of the other issues. We're going to start looking at some marketing now to make sure when this comes on stream that we have markets lined up for it and some research on improvements in the fields and a whole range of things that we can use that for to make the industry more viable.

 

            MR. PORTER: Back a number of years ago there was a land use report. I don't know what the right terminology was. It talked about available land, what land use was for, where we should go - some direction. I'm more interested out of that, do we know how much available land there is that could potentially be used for wine growth in the province?

 

            MR. COLWELL: I can't give you an exact number. We're still trying to determine that, but there is a vast amount of land available that looks like it's acceptable. The community college has been doing some weather temperature studies over the last few years and there are areas down as far as Digby even that have identified as really high quality areas to grow.

 

            Part of the vineyard expansion program is land evaluation, so if you have a piece of land or somebody has a piece of land that has a southern slope that they think may work, they'll come to evaluate the land and say, yes the soil conditions are right, the land has got the right situation, check that the temperature monitoring has been done on the area and say, okay, this is suitable land. That's mandatory under this program.

 

            If you don't do this study, we won't even entertain an application. We pay 75 per cent of that evaluation up to $2,500 on that for the evaluation and that is separate from what we put into the acreage because they can evaluate several acres at one time. That has been going very well and we've had some uptake on that actually - people who are evaluating their land now with plans for this year coming and the next year and the next year to put the vineyards in.

 

            We have a lot of forested area with a southern slope through the Valley and other areas that look like prime land. I know that every time one of the winery owners goes through there he calls me up and says, I was just down in the Valley again - what a crime, all those growing up in alders and all this other stuff. He says, I could have vineyards there or someone else could.

 

            So there is a lot of land available now, but as the land gets used up and into the vineyards, the value of the land is going to go right through the roof. When that happens, not only will it be great for the wine industry, but it's going to be great for the property owners of that property. So they'll have something, as we move forward.

 

            The farming industry, I've been talking to them about succession planning. It's hard work running a farm, as everybody knows. It's rewarding work, but if you have a vineyard that is worth a lot of money on your property, it makes it a lot more attractive for someone to come and take over a vineyard and other farming practices than maybe somebody who is growing cabbage that my honourable member has brought up so elegantly - that they know that value is going to be there on that property.

 

            So somebody who would decide to do that - and I've actually got friends whose father started a small vineyard and their retirement plan is to move to the farm and expand the vineyard. They were going to do that with a programmer - not in their case, they're just hobby.

 

            It's a really attractive lifestyle. It's probably one of the best ways you could make a living in the province or any province, if you really went at it. People are starting to realize that and they're realizing they're sitting on a gold mine with this land. This land is going to be worth so much money. It's probably one of the best investments you can make in Nova Scotia right now. If you have a piece of property that could be turned into a vineyard, you want to buy it or you want to hold onto it.

 

            MR. PORTER: There are a few other things I want to cover so I'm going to shift gears a bit. Our winters have not been all that consistent in recent years. The weather was different again this winter - not as much snow. The temperatures probably didn't stay cold as long and things like that. I want to talk about our blueberry industry for a few minutes and the bees required.

 

            I saw - I don't know if it was last week or early this week - a release that we're bringing bees into Nova Scotia because we need them. What are we talking about here? Are we different this year than past years more or less? Maybe you can talk a bit about the bee population in Nova Scotia, if you want, as well. Are we staying consistent with our own population in what we're providing or not?

 

            MR. COLWELL: Two years ago we were 11,000 hives short in the province. We put in a bee enhancement program, which I talked about a little earlier. We're now over 5,000 hives short. So last year we made significant improvement in the bee industry.

 

            There are a lot of issues around the bees. Winter survival is one of the biggest problems in the bee industry. Believe it or not, the year before last we had so much snow and it stayed on the ground for so long, we had the best survival rate in bees in the whole country and one of the best survivals we've ever seen - even here.

 

            We typically have a better survival rate through the winter, but some areas have losses getting close to 30 per cent, hives totally wiped out. If you have 30 hives out of 100, it's a pretty big hit. We did a real quick check on what literature was out there on hive protection in the wintertime. There's almost nothing - almost nothing. It's really unbelievable that that's the case with so many losses in the wintertime.

 

            I see there has been some work done, so we're going to pursue that further and see if we can't find better ways to do it. But there is a new hive that has been developed in Nova Scotia that has some real promise. It's a totally different-looking hive. I went and visited the place where they designed it and built it and all that stuff. They're just in the beginning part of it. They're doing tests right now with Acadia University to see if they overwinter. They did them all last winter, and I haven't got the results of that yet, but according to the people who have developed it, they had several hives out and never lost a single hive. That's very positive. But again, it could have been just the previous winter. This winter is going to be quite a bit different with up and down temperatures and everything.

 

            But we need the bees to pollinate. We have to have them, even if it's just for blueberries. The production of blueberry fields now is five times what it ever was in the province. That's because of the research that has been done by the Agricultural College and in partnership with the industry. I've got a picture in my office of a blueberry field. When the blueberries are on the bushes, you don't see green anymore; you just see blue. At one time you would barely see any blue; the berries would be down under the bushes. There are just so many blueberries on each bush. That is fantastic.

 

            There have also been other very exciting things that happened that we have never talked about publicly very much. There's a spraying machine that they developed at the Agricultural College with one of the big blueberry producers in the province. I told my deputy minister about it, and he went and saw it and came back all excited, and rightfully so. If this is a bunch of weeds and this is blueberries, this tractor goes over 20 kilometres an hour, has high-speed cameras on it, will pick the weed out, spray the weed, and stop spraying - and only spray the weeds. There's no herbicides on the blueberries whatsoever, and production cost per 100 acres has gone down by $54,000 a year on average.

 

            This is technology that has been developed here in Nova Scotia. These are the kind of things we have to invest in and we have to move forward. This was a partnership between the university and a major producer of equipment in Nova Scotia. That's going to be commercialized, that product. They're in the final stages of commercializing that now. The computer had to be so fast, they couldn't even buy one, so they built one; they built a computer to do it. It sets up on a regular tractor, they put the materials in it. There's several spray heads across it, and it just goes through the field. It's just incredible to see it work. It has affected the environment very positively. It has cut costs in the fields and done everything you want it to do.

 

            These are pretty exciting things that are happening here in Nova Scotia. I get sick and tired of going to other places and people saying you can only do it somewhere else. We're doing so many of these great things here in the province. We spend too much time complaining about what we can't do instead of just doing these things. This is one of those prime examples that has been done.

 

            In addition to that, they've also made major improvements in the mechanical harvesters. The first improvement, they did an 8-per cent improvement in productivity. Eight per cent doesn't sound like much, but if you're growing thousands of tons of blueberries each year, that's a huge economic benefit. They're again looking at the machine to get another 2 per cent out of it. These things are all adding to the biggest crops we've ever had in the province. It's exciting to see.

 

            It looks like if we keep on the same track we are now - and we've never been in this state before, with the programs they've got in place with bees, in particular, we hope to be self-sufficient in bees in the next two to three years. It's very possible. We're very, very close to achieving that goal right now and that's a goal I set with the department when I was first appointed minister because I realized how important bees are to the economy of the province - not just for blueberries but for every crop we have and also for the flowers in the province and everything else, so it's pretty exciting what is happening.

 

            MR. PORTER: I'll shift again just for the last few minutes. The apple industry is big in my area of course throughout the Valley in different parts of Nova Scotia. I know Mason Apples is something you would be familiar with after the trouble they went through but they are doing very well, they seem like they had a great crop last Fall. My daughter was out picking drops to raise a few bucks last year to go to school or to go away, whatever she was doing. There were a lot of people working. Again, a great crop of apples and I just really saw first-hand on that one property what kind of crop we had. Is that consistent across the apple industry in the province all over and were we up or down or pretty well level in that?

 

            MR. COLWELL: Well I need more than five minutes to talk about this success story. It's very exciting. It started with the hybrid apple called Honeycrisp, which you are well aware of and everybody is in Nova Scotia. It is probably - I use the analogy it is the Bill Gates of the agriculture industry, this apple. There are many more coming - the Sweet Tango, the Gala. I tasted one that they are going to bring in from Australia that is the best apple I have ever tasted, it's just incredible. It's not on the market yet, it won't be for a while. It's another patented apple like the Honeycrisp.

 

            That industry - to give you an example, the Honeycrisp apple I believe right now in Florida is selling for U.S. $5 a pound; in Washington state, organically-grown, Honeycrisp apple, the same apple is selling for $3.99 instead of $4.99, a $1.00 a pound difference. In Texas where the Americans will pay more money for something grown in the U.S. no matter if it's good or not, typically, that's because our apple is so much superior and ours aren't organically grown. That's the success story we're seeing with this.

 

            I was at the Loblaw event they had this morning and they said they were disappointed they couldn't have any Honeycrisps yet because they are all sold out. They sold them all to the U.S., every Honeycrisp apple is sold in the province right now. A total success story.

 

            We did put a program together, two years ago I believe it was. The first year we put up just over $100,000 because they couldn't get the small trees. They planted in the first year 54,000 new trees. This year I believe they are going to be planting around 200,000, 300,000, under a $0.5 million program we have and that's a six-year program. The only things they can plant under this program is the high-value ones - the Honeycrisp, Sweet Tango, Gala and a few other ones. It is an extremely successful program.

 

            They are using a trellis system. We talked about the wine industry, the exact same trellis system - a little bit different structure to it - as they do for the wine industry. We've got tremendous expertise in the province in that.

 

            You've seen a modern apple orchard, it doesn't look like an apple orchard, little short branches on the trees and a wire but the production is right through the roof. They've told me that some of the Honeycrisps sell for about $1,400 a crate. The same MacIntosh sells for $75 a crate, so it doesn't take much math to figure out that you want to be growing Honeycrisp.

 

            The other apple thing that is very interesting is that Peller Estates have decided to make an apple cider using Nova Scotia apples. They are using an organically-grown one in the Valley now that they made last year, 40,000 litres of this. They call it apple cider, I call it apple wine. I tasted it, it's a really high-quality, white wine that tastes like apples. I have never tasted anything like it. It has been so successful that they introduced it in the market here and in Ontario. I was talking to the executives of Peller a few months ago and they are going to expand their production in Nova Scotia and they're going to expand their production - because they can't make enough of it here - into Ontario as well.

 

            MR. CHAIRMAN: The time has elapsed for today's sitting of the Subcommittee of the Whole on Supply.

 

I will now adjourn the meeting and report back to the House.

 

[The subcommittee adjourned at 7:00 p.m.]