HALIFAX, MONDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2017

SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE ON SUPPLY

4:50 P.M.

CHAIRMAN

Ms. Suzanne Lohnes-Croft

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: I will call the Subcommittee of the Whole on Supply to order. We will resume the Estimates of Fisheries and Aquaculture, with two minutes from the NDP.

The honourable member for Halifax Needham.

            MS. LISA ROBERTS: In March, the Nova Scotia Seafood Alliance said they would like to see a limited entry system for lobster buyers and processors and, Mr. Colwell, you are quoted at the time as saying, "I think that they have an argument in that case. At the end of the day I don't know what will happen."

            Can you tell me why you would entertain putting a moratorium on new buyers and processors entering the system and give an update of the status of that request.

            HON. KEITH COLWELL: On that topic, we have not made a decision yet on what we’re going to do. It’s an ongoing topic. We’re reviewing the licences and buyers’ licences in the province. It’s an issue that hopefully we’ll come to some conclusion on, that makes as many people as possible happy and still grow the industry.

            MS. ROBERTS: I’m just wondering what the rationale would be. How would putting a moratorium perhaps grow the industry?

            MR. COLWELL: We haven’t put a moratorium on, but there is a moratorium on processing ground licenses.

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: Order, time has elapsed. We will now go to the PC caucus. Ms. MacFarlane.

            MS. KARLA MACFARLANE: Good afternoon. I want to just take a few moments before my colleague takes over. I really wanted to focus in on the Pictou area. One of my first questions is with regard to the potential effluent treatment facility that is going to be built at Northern Pulp. That will be provincial environmental assessment Level 1, 30 days. Just to put everything into perspective, the effluent that will be running out of there is probably about 90 million litres of water. If you think about the amount of water that HRM uses in a day, that’s what Northern Pulp puts out in a day - actually a little bit more than HRM.

            There are discussions - no final discussions yet - but I’m hoping you could give me an update on what discussions you have had with the Department of Environment, as well as potentially maybe some fishers or maybe you’ve had a meeting with Northern Pulp because the pipe will be running into our fishing grounds. We all know that our fishing industry is $1.3 billion and this is a huge concern. My office is currently inundated with fishers. They are very concerned about their livelihood and I would like you to give us an update on what precautions your department is taking to ensure that their livelihood is not going to be at risk.

            MR. COLWELL: Well, a couple of things. Number one, no decision has been made where an effluent pipe may go at the end of the day. Also, this is a federal issue under DFO habitat, not under our department, so it’s suggested to get hold of your MP and see what the federal government has planned for that.

            We will be keeping an eye on it, guaranteed. We’d be only too glad to hear the concerns from your fishers. Anything that you hear that you can send forward to us, we would be pleased to look at. Any way we can help them, we will.

            MS. MACFARLANE: There are a lot of ways that you can help. The first thing you can do is come to Pictou and have a meeting with the fishers and coordinate a meeting with your federal cousin Sean Fraser as the MP. I’m surprised that there have been no meetings about this yet.

            This is a huge, huge problem. We can’t underestimate the value of the fishing industry in Pictou West or all of Nova Scotia, of course. These individuals are deeply concerned, and I would ask that you follow up, and let’s arrange a meeting. I will do whatever you wish to help you organize that and ensure that Sean will be there. But I would ask that you kindly reach out to him as well and have him there.

            Yes, it is a federal issue, where it is concerning water. However, at the end of the day, it is going to affect us provincially.

            One of the other concerns I have in that area is, I’m wondering if you are aware that there are signs up saying that you shouldn’t dig for clams or any type of shellfish in our area. I would assume, and perhaps you can clarify, that that has probably been put up by the federal Department of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard or Environment Canada. I’m wondering if you can help me understand what these signs are and how dangerous they are.

            Perhaps if we don’t have an answer on that or where these signs are coming from, could you follow through and find out where they come from?

            MR. COLWELL: I’m not familiar with those signs, but typically what has happened is, Environment Canada has stopped doing the testing on the clam flats province-wide. That has caused us a great deal of grief because there are areas where we probably could be harvesting clams, but we’re not. It’s causing a shortage in the market, and it’s also causing some problems for clam harvesters. They work really hard. I know a riding that I used to represent had a lot of clam harvesters in it. It’s a serious issue for them.

            We’re doing a study right now on the areas that are closed in depuration. You can dig in a closed area as long as it’s closed just for typical fecal chloroform or e coli. In those areas, you can depurate the clams, but it’s expensive for the small producer to buy a depuration system. Then you have to run a lab as well to check the water on an ongoing basis. It’s an expensive proposition.

            We are reviewing that now. We want to get those clam flats in particular back in production as soon as we can, but it has got to be done properly for health and safety. Shellfish problems are a serious problem. If you get ill from it, you can die from it. So we want to make sure it’s done properly over time.

            That’s probably part of the problem there, or maybe the whole problem. I would be only too glad to talk to the harbour system. We will investigate that to see exactly why they have them closed. Even just down here in Chezzetcook, there’s all kinds of areas closed simply because they have not been tested, they’ve stopped the testing program.

[5:00 p.m.]

            MS. MACFARLANE: Thank you very much for answering that question. In Pictou West, we have two fish factories. We have North Nova Seafoods, employing well over 100 or 150 people, and we have a new one, Cape John Crabs and Seafoods. We’re very excited about that. They came to our area approximately two years ago and have been up and running. But they’re finding some challenges, of course, in the industry. I’m just wondering, are you aware if they are able to harvest sea cucumbers anywhere within the Northumberland Strait?

            MR. COLWELL: First of all, I’m not familiar if they have a quota for sea cucumbers or not. If they don’t, they can’t harvest them anywhere. If they do have a quota, there are very specific areas they are allowed to harvest them. If there are sea cucumbers in the area, they should be approaching the federal government if they don’t have a licence - nobody is harvesting in the area - to see if they can get a quota.

            It is very difficult to get a quota, extremely difficult, but it is one product that we have been very successful within Asia. It is a very sought-after product, sea cucumbers. It has a lot of medicinal values according to the Chinese and Koreans and some of the other countries. There is a huge market for them.

Our sea cucumbers of Nova Scotia and Atlantic Canada are not high-value ones - there are different ones that are high value ones - but they are still in proportion high value. They would be as high value or higher value than a codfish. So it is something that every time we can get more quota process more in Nova Scotia better off our economy is so.

            There is not a lot we can do to help with quota. We can support the companies it is totally a DFO issue and decision. I can tell you from working with different organization to get quota it is an uphill battle to say the least.

            MS. MACFARLANE: Yes, I’m curious as well - I understand that there was some federal funding being brought down into the province to help possibly different factories or the fishing industry. I have a group that has bought a building and are looking to potentially open up a factory. Is there funding for them through this new initiative that came down federally?

            MR. COLWELL: The new imitative, the Atlantic Fisheries Fund, is a $400 million fund for Atlantic Canada except for some of that money that will be used for marketing right across the country for fish products. There is no decision made on exactly what it could be.

            But typically it would be to improve productivity in existing facilities. I am not sure if we will cover a new one yet. Again this is still in the early stages - we just recently signed the agreement with the federal government.

            The province is putting $2.5 million in that program this year, the first year of it, because it won’t be fully operating this year. So the total this year will be about $8.25 million that will be used for a lot of different things.

            Again they are still setting the criteria the federal government has really control over this fund. I have to sign off on any projects brought forward and we put our share in.

It is an exciting opportunity for Nova Scotia. We have got over $38 million total from the feds combined to this. It has been long, long overdue.  

            MS. MACFARLANE: So, in closing, with regard to Cape John Crabs and Seafoods - the fish factory there - I believe they are working with your department and trying to secure some funding. They have put an awful lot of money themselves into this - definitely I would say millions.

Just before I leave, I would like to have confirmation that you and myself will hold a meeting for the fishers in my area with Sean Fraser perhaps when we arrange that meeting, you will also commit to meeting the owners of the Cape John factory as well.

            MR. COLWELL: Yes, I would be only too pleased to meet with the fishers. We have missed on a couple of times. We tried before, but we will do it this time for sure. And I think that it would be great to meet with MP and yourself and the community - the fishing industry that is. We are pleased to meet with the company - I can’t comment on what’s happened with the company, an individual company. It’s positive. We’ve got new investors coming to the province and very, very positive.

            MS. MACFARLANE: Great, thank you.

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: Mr. Lohr.

            MR. JOHN LOHR: I guess the first thing I would like to ask about is the Fish Harvester Organization Support Act which I think we call FHOSA. I know that’s to support fish harvester organizations. I’m wondering if the minister could tell me what his department is doing to foster the support for these organizations.

            MR. COLWELL: We wish every fisherman in the province would belong to FHOSA, but unfortunately they don’t and we’ve been really trying to get it in place. We did some consultation about two or three years ago around FHOSA and some other issues. There is a lot of mistrust within the industry itself, internally with organizations, so we’re trying to work with them to eliminate that mistrust.

We’re doing a pilot project with one of the organizations to develop a new internet site which should be an accountability site so they can go on and work that out. That project is going very well - not a lot of details on it yet because we’re still putting it all together. I think it will change a lot of it when we get that in place; it gives them a chance to be accountable. The idea of the website would be accessibility to all information that the association would have. They could go online and have secure logins - only members of the association could log in to the backside of it and get all the information and everything that’s happened - what their executive is doing, where they’re spending money, all those sorts of things. That’s one reason I think a lot of people won’t join because they were afraid there wasn’t enough accountability. We’ve seen no proof of that but I think it’s just more long-term mistrust with everything. I think that will help with some.

We’ll probably look at the Act again once we get some more feedback from industry. There’s some things in the Act that really don’t make a lot of sense. I’d like to have more things in regulation so we could tweak it a little bit to get more people involved because the name of the game is to get as many fishers as possible engaged in it so they can get the benefit from an organization.

From our standpoint, it’s critical because who do we talk to; that’s our problem. We’ve got so many fishers in the province - they say if you get four fishermen, you get five different ideas and I don’t blame them. I mean, they’re really good, hardworking people but it’s really a difficult sell and it’s not up to us to sell it. It’s the organizations themselves to do it.

So we’re going to look at the organizations. We’ve offered help with organizational structure in the facilities - whatever they need there - because some of the organizations really don’t understand how to run meetings and things like that, just simple stuff that they never had to do and some more accountability things, a lot of things.

So it’s a good bill but at the same time, it’s really not effective. We’re going to have to tweak it. We’ve been looking at it now for three years and consulting with the organizations that are already there. It’s hard to change it to really get to where we need to be but I think - it doesn’t sound like it makes much sense that you’re going to put a website up to help this but it will if we can get faith in people that are in the existing organizations.

One thing about the fishery industry is, if something happens in Yarmouth then someone in Cape Breton knows ten minutes later, literally. So if they’ve got faith in it and they say, well, this is really working well for us to put more accountability in place and you guys should look at it and maybe something you can do to help. If I had one voice from the fishing industry like with agriculture - the Nova Scotia Federation of Agriculture does a fantastic job. If we had a voice like that, we could really dramatically change how we do business in the fishing industry to the betterment of the fishermen, to the province, and to the whole industry.

It’s hard to change things if you don’t have everybody’s buy in and understand why things need to be changed. Now sometimes things don’t need to be changed.

            MR. LOHR: I do know - and correct me if I’m wrong - the minimum amount an organization can charge is $100 for a member. If you think about $100 members, you don’t end up with a particularly healthy budget for an organization unless you have a real whole lot of members. So if you are talking in that range, the issue is that these organizations aren’t necessarily adequately funded.

I know that in the beginning there was the idea that there would be training provided by these organizations and the province would support the organizations, helping them to do training and some of this stuff. How do you see the province helping make these fish harvester organizations stronger and healthier and maybe more financially self-sufficient or providing them with some of the work necessary for that money to flow through them, so they can provide services to members?

            MR. COLWELL: They have not asked to increase the minimum $100 that they pay now. It was always felt that if you are going to get people to join, $100 is a good place to start. If you ask too much - really if you ask $500 or $1,000 as a number, they may not get as many members, for whatever reason. I think if we can build a trust in the industry itself within their own organizations, that’s something they can address themselves and get more money into their organization that they can do more effective lobbying.

            We can do a lot of things within an association to help them along, if they want to do some kind of pilot project or something like that, we’d look at funding for those particular items. We already talked about some administrative stuff, some funding for that, but there may be some projects they want to take on and we’ve done a few of them over the last few years when the association has come forward.

            MR. LOHR: I know that Recommendation No. 9 from the 2013 Lobster Panel Report said, the province should, “. . . work with local educational institutions and fishermen’s organizations to develop, promote and implement a training course for executive members of provincially accredited fishermen’s organizations.” Have you done that?

            MR. COLWELL: We put in place about a year ago a lobster-handing course and it’s free of charge for all fishermen and fish processors. I mentioned the other day it might be a good idea for everyone to take it to understand the lobsters a bit more because they’re a pretty fragile creature, more like an egg than anything else. Even though they look tough and they can bite you really badly, they’re pretty fragile.

We’ve done things like that and we’ve done different project with different FHOSA organizations. We won’t do anything for a non-organization; anyone that is not organized, we won’t fund them for anything. That’s one carrot we hold to say we continually have people come in and say we want to do this and this. They are good ideas in a lot of cases, but we just plain say that if you are not organized, don’t have an organization, we can’t fund you. That’s one way to try and encourage them to get membership and grow their organization.

            MR. LOHR: So I hear you saying the lobsters are fragile. I’m saying the organizations themselves are fragile so I guess - I think you said that if organizations applied to you there was - so what’s that process? How does an organization - how are you trying to help strengthen these organizations? What’s the process to do that?

            MR. COLWELL: These are organizations that are run by people who typically are full-time employed in their efficient enterprise and it’s very difficult for them to do some things. But if they come to us with a request for a particular thing that they need to do to strengthen their organization, simply all they have to do is send us a letter and we will look at it, meet with them, see what the benefit for the organization would be and indeed, for the other organizations in the province.

Depending on what it is and if it’s something that makes a lot of sense and would definitely help the province and where we need to get with organization in the province, we would probably fund it. But again, it has to be driven by the organizations. It’s no good putting in a program without the need for it and them requesting it because that’s all part of the benefit of being in an organization. If you do the request, then we will evaluate it, and we’ll go from there.

[5:15 p.m.]

            MR. LOHR: I would like to change the topic to aquaculture leases and licences, new ones. First of all, I would like to ask the minister, when will fin fish sites be considered for aquaculture?

            MR. COLWELL: There’s a whole process that they have to go through for that. What they need to is, first of all, they have to get an option to lease, and I’m the one in the province who would issue an option. That would give them six months and could be renewed for another six months if they don’t get all the research done in that time. Once the research is done, then we would give them permission to move forward towards licensing and leasing.

            Once that happens, it’s totally out of my hands. It goes to the independent review panel and our administrators who look after the lease and licence. We did it like this so that there would be no political interference in it, no perceived interference.

            Also, it’s a very clear and concise process. When someone comes forward or a company comes forward, they know exactly what they have to do to get a lease and licence. It’s very clearly laid out. Everybody knows it, and everybody is on the same playing field. There are no surprises, no all of a sudden someone signing off on a lease on an area that nobody even knew was there.

            Actually one of the few things you could do when I first became minister is, I could have issued leases anywhere - just signed them off and done, with no review, basically nothing. The Act and the regulations were so weak. I didn’t do any of that and wouldn’t do any of that.

            But I couldn’t take that same one back. I didn’t have the ability to take it back if somebody was misbehaving or not using it. That has changed under our current regulations. I talked before about how we’re taking about 145 leases back because they’re not in production. People are getting them and figure they’ve got a gold mine on their hands and just sit on it until they can sell it. That’s not happening anymore because we want those in production in areas where it makes sense to put them in production. Some may not be the case. Maybe some of these we don’t want in production for scientific reasons. We’re sort of cleaning up the whole thing all at once.

            Again, the process in leases is pretty straightforward but pretty complicated. We want a complete business plan. Say if you came in and represented a company - we want a complete business plan, what you propose to do, how you propose to do it, what your production numbers will be, what your cash flow will be on that, what you’re expected start and stop dates are on getting things done. A complete business plan. I’m not talking about a two-page business plan. We want to be sure that someone comes forward and is interested in investing in Nova Scotia, investing in a business, that they have the wherewithal to do it both financially and also the ability to do it. We don’t need any failures.

            These have to be really solid businesses. This is big business. Compared to farming, you can buy a few acres of land and start farming and expand and do all that over time. You can do that a little bit in maybe oysters or shellfish. But when it comes to fin fish, that’s not the case. If you’re going to do it properly, it’s hundreds of millions of dollars worth of investment, hundreds of millions of dollars you have to spend on shore facilities to support the on-water facilities. It’s anywhere from three to five years before you start getting a return on your investments, so you need cash flow for all that. It’s hundreds of millions. We have to make sure we have good solid companies. There’s lots of good solid companies in the world that would be interested in Nova Scotia.

            With the structure we have now, they know exactly what they have to do. There’s no guesswork. There’s no rules changing, none of those things. This is what they have to do and how it has to work. It’s a really good system we have in place now, and we’re anxiously waiting for someone to come forward and say, we’re really interested. That could be next week, or it could be next year.

            In the mean time, we have to make some correction on some sites. Some of the fin fish sites are not onsite, which has been a complaint from the community, so we’re going to do those first, through the process. I have nothing to do with any of that. That all goes through internally, and it goes through the independent review committee we’ve struck. They’ll make a decision - yes, let’s maybe move the site here, because it makes more sense, or no, you’ve got to move it back where it’s supposed to be, or whatever the case may be. That’s totally their choice. But there’s all kinds of scientific background that has to go into that - navigation, a lot of things they have to look at.

            MR. LOHR: There are a number of questions that come out of that. I understand from looking at the website that there’s an eight-step process: one, apply for the option; two, decision by the minister; and steps three to eight are a process, which you kind of alluded to.

            I’m just wondering why the decision by the minister of whether to go ahead, yes or no, right off the get-go, before any of the other things have been done, before you know the site has been scoped, because the application has really been given - how is it that the minister is in a position to make a decision of yes or no without knowing all of the other information that would come out of the other steps? That’s what I’m curious about.

            MR. COLWELL: The process for that is very intentional. The idea is that we’ve got to make sure that, number one, we’ve got a credible company. We’ve been approached by several people who have no money, who could never make this happen. We want to weed them out up front. So we’ve got a proper business plan in place, and ideally the option is that you get six months to add to any scientific information that may be needed.

            Now, there are some areas we’re gathering information on right now. Then they have to consult with the community as well, to get a feeling from the community that the community is in favour. We have to do all of those things. If that option period may take longer than six months, then they can come back and ask for another six months’ extension. At the end of the year, if they don’t do anything, it’s off the table. It’s done. They would have to reapply for an option again, the idea being that we don’t want to waste the time of all our staff and everyone else with applications that are useless. There have been lots of those presented over the years.

            We want to make sure we’ve got a credible company with the ability to do this work. It’s not convoluted; it’s very, very straightforward. Once you get in the stream, it’s really good.

            I’ve talked to several large aquaculture companies in the world. They’re very excited about what we’ve done. They know what they’ve got to do and know exactly how they’ve got to do it. It’s not an issue for them.

            I’ve also talked to a company - my counterparts in Australia and New Zealand and other parts of the world - we probably have some of the best regulations in the world today. They’re very interested. I think you’re going to see some of the other countries put in some of the regulations we have. They’re very, very interested in it.

            Our regulations didn’t come by accident. It’s not something we all of a sudden pulled out of the sky. The really fantastic aquaculture staff I have did research everywhere in the world - how this is regulated, what difficulties are there, what kind of complaints people were seeing, what kind of problems governments had with administering all this stuff. From all that information, we put these regulations together.

            We use Maine as one of the best models, but we even enhance that further. Some people say we’re a little bit too tough, but I’d rather be a little bit too tough than not doing this properly. At the end of the day, we’ve got to make sure we’ve got solid businesses coming into Nova Scotia - or business in Nova Scotia expanding, which we’d like to see - local ones, or Atlantic Canadian ones, or whatever it may be - expand and come here, but solid.

            Especially if you’re putting the fin-fish site in, this is hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of investment. You really have to know what you’re doing. I don’t want to see anyone get an option on something who doesn’t have that expertise or the resources. If that happens, we’re in for a disaster. We don’t want a disaster. We want solid businesses.

            There are some companies interested presently. We’ll see if they come forward and request an option. But it’s pretty well clear and laid-out, and the companies that are interested are very capable. They have the resources. They have the expertise and hopefully they’ll come and we’re not going to force them to come or push them to come. There are going to be no incentives. They’re going to come because a good place to do business and that’s the structure of these regulations.

            MR. LOHR: So I understand you’re very high on this. I guess I’m just questioning the logic of having the minister make a decision at step two when there are eight steps, when all of the other work hasn’t been done yet, and you’ve placed yourself as the gatekeeper on these applications.

I guess I’m just questioning your judgment on having put yourself in that role at the very beginning of the process and I can understand that as the minister, you might want to have a aye or nay on each application ultimately. But to have put yourself in that role at the very beginning of whether things proceed or don’t proceed, I question the fairness of that when the applicants who would be said no to would not have had the opportunity to do all of the other work that would go along with that and would presumably support their application. You’ve placed yourself as judge and jury before these ever move ahead.

            MR. COLWELL: That’s not accurate. Actually, what it does it allows us to look at applications for real people that can really do this job, and then this only gives them the option to look. That’s all it does. The big expense is doing all these tests which we’re talking about if we haven’t already gotten them and a lot of the province we don’t have them done.

We’re doing testing continuously. It gives them the option to look to see if it does make sense for the company to do that. It just gives us one filter to take out the tire kickers because all kinds of people want to kick the tires and they can come back and say, well, no, we’re not really interested and it just doesn’t fit us. In the meantime, we’re tied up with a piece of area in the province that could be a huge economic benefit to that local community.

            The idea of it is just to allow the companies to get a very, very standard process. Once you get that option - let’s say they get up to a year to do all that testing, to do the consultation in the community and that’s totally up to them. At the end of the year, their answer comes back - yes we’re interested, or no we’re not or maybe even before the end of the year. If they are interested, then it goes through a whole different process and I have nothing to do with that. It’s just the beginning of the process to make sure we don’t have people that just simply can’t do it.

            MR. LOHR: I notice that on the land-based site application process, it indicates a five-step process without any decision by the minister at step two. I’m just wondering why the difference between land based and ocean based? If you have this process and you say this is a great process for ocean based, why didn’t you put that process in place for land based. The land-base process is different.

            MR. COLWELL: Land based is a whole different structure than the ocean based. For a start with, you don’t have to do the extensive research on the conditions. It’s on private property and it’s a whole different avenue. If you can find the land-based organization that makes money, I’d like to know who they are.

            MR. LOHR: I would like to ask about the renewal process. I noticed when I looked through the website, there are 10-year and 20-year licences. Maybe we should just start there. Explain to me why the act seems to indicate both and when you would make a decision for a 10-year licence and when you would make a decision for a 20-year licence.

            MR. COLWELL: A licence is for 10 years and a lease is for 20 years. So initial approval would be for a lease for 20 years and, at the 10-year mark on that lease, you have to reapply for your licence renewal and the idea of that is to reasons. The industry needs to know that they’ve got a long enough period of time. They can go to financial institutions and raise money for this very expensive venture, because it is a very expensive venture.

[5:30 p.m.]

            I know when I was in Norway, some of the companies were there and the federal government was there a few years ago. They have a one-year or two-year license renewal. They were bitterly complaining about it because it costs them a lot of money to do the process. When we looked at all over the world, we figured that 10 and 20 years really makes sense because you get stability to the companies, as I already said.

            But it also gives us an opportunity at the 10-year mark for an administrative review at the end. It’s all public, the review of the licence. We have done several of them already, and they’re all online, when they’re coming up. There’s a 30-day input period. We go through that before it’s reviewed, and I have no part in that whatsoever.

            One thing that I can do now that I couldn’t do before, based on the recommendations - if somebody is not really doing the job they should be doing and causing all kinds of grief either environmentally or whatever the case may be, we can lift the licence now. We can take it. That can be anytime during the 20 years. But they would have to do something that would be against - probably something environmentally bad or continuous bad habits, all those sort of things. The companies sort of take notice when we can take it, but before, we had no opportunity to do any of that sort of stuff. It’s a trade-off.

            You get good companies, and all this stuff is immaterial. They’re doing their job properly, looking after their products. They’re the last ones that want anything to happen to a single salmon, just one salmon. If it’s a salmon farmer or trout, they’re losing a lot of money on every one of those fish, when they get them close to market size or market size. They hurt worse than anybody else does. The market for these products now, salmon and trout in particular, and there’s other ones as well, is just unlimited, absolutely unlimited. There’s a lot of interest in growing these and doing them properly.

            MR. LOHR: A 20-year lease would be the actual lease to work on that physical site, and the 10-year licence would refer to the actual activity that they’re doing. That would be correct?

            MR. COLWELL: Yes.

            MR. LOHR: I guess I’m wondering, and I didn’t see it when I looked online when I looked, about the process of that 10-year licence renewal. You said you have done a couple of them, and that’s available online. Maybe I missed that. How onerous a process would that be?

            MR. COLWELL: We have done 86 renewals since the new regulations came in place. Basically if I remember right, and my director of aquaculture here will tap me on the arm if I say it wrong, it’s a 30-day process. The licensing and leasing director or manager - as is the standard process - goes out and puts it on our website. I’ve got to make sure I have it right here, the right information. They have to put a development or renewal plan together for that site. Then after we get all that information, all that is then posted on the website for 30 days.

            Anyone in the community can comment on that. I think one site we had to people who came up and made any comments. Typically any time you would get comments would be in an area maybe where the company wasn’t doing the things they should be doing. With our new regulations and the ability to enforce this, which we never had before, that’s going to be slim. Hopefully we will get to that long before it gets to a renewal so that those things are all straightened out or that operator isn’t there anymore.

            MR. LOHR: But as you mentioned earlier, you as the minister have the power to take that licence at any time in any case. You could deny that renewal if you weren’t happy with the way that company was operating. You as the minister have the power to accept or deny that renewal.

            MR. COLWELL: I don’t. That’s left to the administrator. There’s no interference from me whatsoever. The only thing I can do is if the administrator comes and says, this company is not adhering to our regulations, or the enforcement people do that, I have the ability now to take the lease away.

            MR. LOHR: I would like to change the subject. I would like to ask a few questions about marine invasive. I know there are some issues in fresh water with smallmouth bass and pickerel; I believe that’s the responsibility of your department. Can you tell me what is happening there, and what you are doing in that area?

            MR. COLWELL: That’s quite an interesting topic. the chain pickerel will get in a lake and kill everything else in it. They’ve been introduced illegally into the province, and people keep moving them, which is illegal to do; the trouble is, you have to catch them doing it. They will actually eat every trout, every perch, everything in the lake; they’d be the only thing left. More and more of the lakes are getting infested with these fish. Unfortunately, with people that don’t understand what they’re doing, it really does causes a big problem. The bass is the same situation.

To prevent some of this, you’re not allowed to keep live fish anymore after you catch them - they have to release them or kill them. That prevents people from moving them illegally. If the enforcement officers now find someone with a live fish, they can be charged with it and it’s a pretty serious offence. We also work with DFO removing some of these species of chain pickerel and bass from sensitive fish areas and sport fishing areas that we would have traditionally used. It’s a problem, it’s a major problem.           

MR. LOHR: I notice when I looked at the website, I believe there were some areas where smallmouth bass was legally introduced. Can you let me know why that decision was made, and what is happening with smallmouth bass? Are they spreading now? Why was that decision made? Maybe that was made before your time too; I don’t know.

MR. COLWELL: The last time any smallmouth bass was introduced in the province was in 1968. That doesn’t happen anymore now. At the time, they probably didn’t realize what kind of negative effect it would have on the area. The chain pickerel were never legally introduced to the waters. I guess over time we learn about things we shouldn’t have done in the past. Either one of those will take over the whole water system that’s there. And again, some people like fishing them, the way it is now. But it really destroys the natural habitat for the trout and in some cases salmon.

MR. LOHR: So specifically with the chain pickerel, I’d like to ask what steps are the department taking to reduce the population, or are you doing anything with that?                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

            MR. COLWELL: We do electrofishing, work with DFO, and remove some of the fish in that manner, in areas that are a problem. We do other things too.

Yes, well actually, on chain pickerel in particular they’re open year-round. They can fish them year-round. We also have a bag limit of 25 which is going to be eliminated this year coming, so you can catch as many as you want. We don’t encourage catch and release for those species in the hope that they will be fished out in areas that they’re there and causing all kinds of grief. So it’s an ongoing battle and hopefully some of these things change and get the system back to where it was.

            MR. LOHR: So I guess the question is, a fishing licence is required to fish for chain pickerel, a recreation fishing licence?

            MR. COLWELL: Yes.

            MR. LOHR: So are the number of fishing licences up or down in the province? Where is the state of recreation fishing in the province?

            MR. COLWELL: Our licence sales last year were up about 15,000 licences which is very positive and has been steadily increasing over the last five years, which is very, very positive. This invasive species problem is not just here; it’s all over the country and it’s causing a lot of problems. I just wish that people would realize what damage they’re doing to the regular brooks and lakes that we have, and have been like that forever.

            MR. LOHR: I think you may have mentioned the restocking of lakes last week. Can you just tell me what the program is for restocking lakes, what species you’re restocking, and where this program is going? Is it going up or down or being cut or being increased?

            MR. COLWELL: Well, for the trout and salmon stocking program, we have three hatcheries in the province. We’ve stocked over 1 million fish this year gone by and representing 375 lakes and streams in the province, so it’s pretty active. It’s one of the most popular things we do and it’s pretty easy to get a lake stocked, from what I understand if my memory is right. As long as there is no chain pickerel or bass in it, they’ll stock trout back in it again. They check for those.

We do a lot of stuff around, again, the salmon in Cape Breton. We’ve released a quarter of a million Atlantic salmon last year in the rivers and areas where the rivers are suitable for that, and it’s allowed a few of the rivers in the province to stay open. If we didn’t have this restocking program, that wouldn’t have happened and it’s a big revenue generator. Someone that’s sport fishing salmon in a good river will pay up to $2,000 to $5,000 a day to fish, never mind the spinoff to the local community.

            MR. LOHR: I know there was in the Margaree River an active fish hatchery, I believe. So restocking that - that’s still continuing, and it’s going to keep going?

            MR. COLWELL: Yes, it is. We’ll continue that program. It’s a very good program. We have great staff there and over the years, they’ve really established a really good system for that river, working closely with the local salmon association which makes it even better.

            MR. LOHR: I think that I saw somewhere about a fishing in schools program and maybe you could tell me what that is about if that exists or was that my imagination. The fishing in school program?

[5:45 p.m.]

            MR. COLWELL: We have a program that hasn’t had much uptake in the last few years. We supply an aquarium, fish eggs and all the materials to hatch the eggs and grow the fish to a size that could release them usually over the winter and release them in a brook or a stream - a designated one - in the Spring. That’s quite successful; it depends really on the school, if the teachers are interested in doing it. It was a good program. It did help a bit more to educate the kids than anything else.

MR. LOHR: That’s not what I thought I was going to hear. I hadn’t really researched this. I was just asking, curious. How does the school apply to do that program and are applications still being taken? Can schools do that program?

MR. COLWELL: We also have the Learn to Fish program that takes Grades 3 to 6 and puts them in a situation where they can learn to fish. We’ve reached over 15,000 children in the last 10 years. It’s a very positive program.

Basically, how the program works is our staff would go into a school that requested it and they would have a classroom session about fishing and all the things that go with that. Then when that was done, they would take them out to a stocked lake and let them fish for two or three hours. So it gets them experience in a classroom and then experience, hopefully, catching a fish that day or some of them catching a fish that day.

MR. LOHR: How does a school apply for that program or where is that available? Does it show up on the website?

MR. COLWELL: You just have to get a hold of our sports-fishing staff in Pictou and they’ll arrange it.

MR. LOHR: Whereabouts - in Pictou, did you say?

MR. COLWELL: We have an Inland Fisheries office in Pictou. We can provide that contact information.

MR. LOHR: I would appreciate that. I think I have some schools that would be interested in that.

MR. COLWELL: That would be good.

MR. LOHR: I would like to ask about the Gaspereau River. I know the minister would be aware that there is an active group of fishers on the Gaspereau River - the Gaspereau River Square Net Fishermen's Association. They’ve been doing that for the farmers on that river - fishing there for more than 100 years and selling their salt gaspereaus to the Caribbean. I’m just wondering what the minister can tell me about the state of the Gaspereau River fishing industry and what’s happening with it.

MR. COLWELL: Unfortunately, I can’t tell you very much about it because it’s DFO. It’s under the commercial fishing regulations - the gaspereau, the same as smelts and salmon and some other species. They migrate from the saltwater into the fresh - those are the responsibility of the federal government under DFO, so you’d have to check with them. Once they land the fish, then it’s our responsibility in provincial fisheries to issue licence or buyers and processors.

MR. LOHR: I know there was a fish kill, I believe, on that river this summer maybe due to hot water or lower levels of water. I was just assuming because that was inland that was your department, but that wouldn’t be anything to do with your department.

MR. COLWELL: Yes, that was DFO. But we did our lab - we have a pretty sophisticated lab and some very highly-skilled people in our fish lab fish vats. They helped to do some testing and stuff for DFO to help determine what happened there. But again, we turned the information over to DFO, and it’s totally their responsibility. We assisted like they would assist us if we had some issues and they had expertise.

            MR. LOHR: I’m just curious about this. I know that you spoke extensively late last week about your relationship with the salmon groups that were wanting to have rivers, and the liming program. How many different associations did you work with? Who are they?

            MR. COLWELL: There is one Nova Scotia Salmon Association in the province, and there are 25 or 30 smaller ones all over the province that are under the one umbrella. We would deal with all of them, but mainly under the umbrella of the Nova Scotia Salmon Association. They’re very, very active. They’re great people to work with. They really have a dedicated interest to restoring the Atlantic salmon in our rivers, as we do.

            They’re great people to work with. Sometimes we don’t see eye to eye, but most of the time we do. It’s a pleasure working with them. I don’t think they’ve had this kind of co-operation from the Fisheries and Aquaculture Department in probably, what, 50 years. It’s good relations . . .

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: Order. Time has elapsed for the PC caucus. We’ll turn to the NDP. Mr. Burrill.

            MR. GARY BURRILL: Thank you, Madam Chairman. I was wondering if we could switch gears a little bit, but before we do, would you like to have a little break? Okay, good to go.

            I wonder if we could think some about the issue of oil and gas exploration and its potential impact on the fishery. It’s a question that, as you know, has been very much in the public mind in the South Shore over the last period. I’m thinking, first, about this federal review, the Frontier and Offshore Regulatory Renewal Initiative that’s been taking place. I wanted to ask you first, our provincial Fisheries and Aquaculture Department - have we been involved or consulted or intersected with in any way with that federal review to this point?

            MR. COLWELL: We’re not the lead department on that, but we have representatives on all of the committees, and we make sure we have representatives on the committees to make sure that we let the industry and all the other sections know that fisheries are very important. We consult with the fishermen - organizations come in often and make presentations to us, which we then put out through the whole system, to make sure it’s on the record, as they themselves do independently, as they should do.

            MR. BURRILL: I’m thinking about one organization that’s been very vocal and organizing public meetings about this over the last long bunch of months: the Clean Ocean Action Committee. On the South Shore, they’ve expressed their dismay that the federal review hadn’t invited their input, or they hadn’t been given any opportunity to talk about their concerns about protection of the fisheries resource, relative to the federal review.

            I wonder, do you think their concern is misplaced? I mean, their concern is that the interests of the Nova Scotia fishery resource are not being adequately taken into account in the federal oil and gas review. Is this a reasonable view from your point of view?

            MR. COLWELL: We did meet with that organization twice and took their information and passed it on through the system. Also, I initiated in 1998, a minister’s forum on the fishery - and which is still going today - and we circulated the information on this whole topic to all the people present and that was fishermen, processors, and other people who are related to the industry. It’s the biggest turnout we’ve ever had and everyone was given information on this and how to contact the right place to make their points.

So we’ve been lobbying the best we can. Again, it’s a federal initiative and we’re a little bit more connected than some of the organizations are, but still they have criteria they follow. As far as I can tell, they’re following that criteria to the letter. So we’ll have to see and, again, I say I’ve met with the organization and, each time, we did send the information forward.

            MR. BURRILL: Thank you. My sense of that organization is that it is a broad coalition that represents a range of interests particularly on the South Shore processors, certainly fishers and others. Their singular point has been that the federal review - in leaving their coalition out of its consultation - is showing that it is taking inadequate regard for the protection of our resource. They’ve said this at a number of different forums, in a number of different ways, but your sense is that this concern is not founded.

            MR. COLWELL: You know, we met with that organization twice - a very credible group of people in that organization without question. Not all the fisheries organizations belong to that group and that’s typical in the fishing industry. Not that that’s a negative thing; it’s just they just don’t all belong. We make sure that we’ve got all the information we have out to the industry broad based as we can as we did with the fishermen for the minister’s forum and that forum represents well every fishing area in the province.

[6:00 p.m.]

We’ve done a lot of other things trying to get them to be informed, but one thing that we’ve done very successfully is that we’ve got a lot better working relationship with the federal government since it’s been there in a number of years, especially with DFO. It’s been a difficult situation in the past and I can tell you, even when I was minister in 1998-1999, we had a really good working relationship but it’s even better now. We go to the federal-provincial ministers conferences and a lot of the suggestions we’ve put on the table have been accepted nationally which we’re very happy about. Also, when we bring issues up that nobody would ever look at before, they’re being addressed now.

So as we move these things forward, it’s important that the industry is heard. We recommend that they go to the panel that’s there. That panel has a lot of fishermen on it and fishing representatives that were chosen by the federal government. So they have a vehicle, they’re very friendly with the vehicle and I think that’s the best process because then they’re talking directly to the people that make decisions and recommendations to the federal government, and we have strong feelings to make sure that industry maintains. It’s the biggest export industry in the province and it’s $1.8 billion now. We now represent right around 38 per cent of the total exports in Canada. So we’re number one in Canada in fisheries exports and we’ve managed to do that with increasing markets in the last two years, and we’ll build up to that over that time.

            So we’re very interested - we don’t want anything to happen to any of the resource. If anything, we want to protect it even further and we want to see it grow even more. I think over time, if we get aquaculture developed to where we should get it and we add value to products, we should be easily be able to ship $3 billion a year. We’re a ways away from that, needless to say, but we’ve got to set that kind of goal and if we don’t listen to the industry and work with the industry very closely - all levels of it - that won’t happen.

We’ve built exceptionally good rapport with the industry over the last three years. That hasn’t always been the case and that sort of puts things backwards when it isn’t the case and it’s a battle. It’s a battle everyday but they’ve got a really good group of people in the industry right who passionately care about what they do. Sometimes misinformation gets in their hands, it doesn’t help anything, and sometimes people just don’t know until once we find out, then we have a very straightforward approach and we tell them the way it is. We may not like the way it is anymore than they do, but we find that works very well. We’re doing more and more work to consult with the industries.

            It’s exciting what’s happening in the fishing industry in the province, I mean, the biggest exports ever. When I took the job as the minister, I had three goals to grow the economy - it’s all the same goal, all three, and we’re doing that. I believe we were in the number three place in exports. We’re number one now and substantially into number one ahead and we can really grow that. It’s been great working with the industry and a good group of people. Sometimes our opinions are a little bit different but that’s fine too. That’s how we learn. That’s how we grow.

            MR. BURRILL: Thank you, minister. I want to keep thinking along the lines of this issue which is such an alive issue on the South Shore of the interface between oil and gas and our fisheries resource. I was moved, and I’m sure you were, by the number of municipalities in the last year that have passed resolutions and sent letters to government and so on of expressing concern about this issue and by the number of very well-attended public meetings.

I began by asking you about the concern that we hear expressed that the current federal review is inadequately taking account of Nova Scotia’s fisheries resource but let’s leave aside for the moment the current federal review and just think about the present regulatory regime we have for oil and gas drilling in the province.

I would say that the number one thought being expressed in all those municipalities’ letters of concern and at all those public meetings that are being held is that our current oil and gas drilling regulatory regime is not adequate to provide us with sufficient protection for our fishery resource. I think that’s the thought that is being expressed. I wonder if you share that thought, or do you think that the present oil and gas regulatory regime as we have it is in fact sufficient to provide us the protections we need for the resource?

            MR. COLWELL: That’s probably a question you’re going to have to ask the regulatory minister when they come in for these sessions and talk to them because they’re the ones who really lead this whole file. All I can tell you is we work very closely with them. We walk step in step with them to make sure that the interests of the fishing industry are well represented, as the industry does itself. We co-operate with them on the concerns that they bring forward, and we help them lobby in that regard. I would say that’s a question you should ask them because only they can answer that question. We do everything we can and make it very, very clear all the time to our federal and provincial counterparts that the industry is critical.

            You’ll see every Throne Speech we have had since we were elected in 2013 has highlighted the fishing and agriculture industries as the prime force to drive Nova Scotia’s economy. It’s the first time that we can find in history that that has ever happened. Throne Speech after Throne Speech, our budgets have been increased in the departments, and the programs we have have been increased. We have taken a whole new approach to how we do these things, and it has been a really co-operative effort between our staff and the industry.

            It’s very interesting to sit down and talk to the industry and see how the attitudes have changed even over the last year and a half or two years. It’s really been more working together co-operatively, talking about ideas, and then working together to make sure they happen. That really wasn’t the case before. I have always got along very well with the industry, but it’s exceptionally well now.

            They have great ideas. You get a company that if you went and saw the company, you thought well, they’re really not in the 21^st Century, and then you talk to them about the stuff they’re doing. They’re using virtual reality for training, doing some computer programs and simulations. It’s unbelievable. This is stuff that you would think would only come out of Silicon Valley. You look at the processing plants and stuff, and they’re modern, but they’re not what we would call cutting edge at this point. But behind that, the management is cutting edge. Eventually as it just flows out, the rest of the business will be the same.

            If you talk to some of the owners of these facilities, you would be wondering how they ever got to this point because they’re just really good business people with very simple straightforward business approaches, which has made Nova Scotia so strong in fisheries. They have gone to the next step, and it’s exciting, really exciting, to see. They’re challenging the young people in the community to come up with new innovative ideas that were never related to the fishing industry before, and it is working. It’s working very, very well. That’s one of the reasons we got up to $1.8 billion in seafood exports, the highest we have ever been in history.

            MR. BURRILL: I wasn’t meaning to place a question mark around any of that. But I’m only trying to articulate the concern that we hear expressed in so many communities. I do think that it is a fair concern to direct to your department. The widely-held view is that our fishery in Nova Scotia is not adequately protected, that our resource is exposed to danger by an inadequate oil and gas exploratory regime. I think it is a fair question to direct not just to the authorities responsible for oil and gas regulations but also to yourself. Can you say anything to the people who have that feeling to quiet their concerns? Do you think these are reasonable concerns?

            MR. COLWELL: We’re very dedicated to helping the fishing industry and working with the fishing industry. If we’re going to grow the economy, we have to work together, period. It’s that simple.

            There’s a whole structure for making the industry’s concerns known to the Oil and Gas Committee. We have done that. We’ve met with them. We’ll continue to do that, and we’ll continue lobbying on their behalf. Anything past that, unfortunately, is out of my control. I would suggest you bring this up with the minister responsible for oil and gas.

            MR. BURRILL: As you’re probably aware, in the recent election, our Party took the position that the buffer zone around Georges and Browns, in terms of drilling exploration, is one that should be expanded in order to protect those spawning grounds. As you know, that is a widely-held view on the South Shore, that that’s something the government should do. Is that something that you think would be wise?

            MR. COLWELL: This is an issue I’m well aware of. The organization we met with about this a couple of times - we’ve passed that information on to the board that will make the decision. We feel that it’s important that we supply them with all the information we possibly can. We are not the decision makers. We are always protecting the fishery every way we possibly can. Again, you should ask the appropriate minister these questions.

            MR. BURRILL: Thank you, minister. One other question along these lines: another issue that almost always comes up at the Fisheries Protection meetings of the last year or so on the South Shore, on this front, is the question of chemical dispersants. The concern, of course - a lot of this comes from the experience in the gulf, the blows there - that the present regulations around the kind of chemical dispersants that are acceptable in Nova Scotia are not adequate to protect our fishery in the event of oil- and gas-exploration-related disaster.

            Does our Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture have any concerns about the adequacy of present dispersant regulations, or do we feel that we are in the place we’d wish to be about them?

            MR. COLWELL: This is totally the responsibility of the federal government. You’re going to have to approach them with that.

            MR. BURRILL: Just switching gears a little bit to think for half a second about the work taking place with FORCE - we know that there have been concerns expressed there about adverse fishery effects from tidal energy infrastructure. Are there any such concerns within the department? This has been an ongoing debate. I wonder what your developing position about it has been.

MR. COLWELL: That’s a question really you should put to the Department of Environment. They regulate it and they would do the testing and everything around that.

            MR. BURRILL: Thank you, minister.

            MR. CHAIRMAN: Ms. Roberts.

[6:15 p.m.]

            MS. LISA ROBERTS: I have a few questions related to the budget. The marine and coastal division you’ve committed roughly $2.6 million more for that division this year. Can you talk about the work that the division does and why it has a larger budget allocation this year?

            MR. COLWELL: That’s actually the Atlantic Fisheries Fund.

            MS. ROBERTS: Okay.

            MR. COLWELL: That’s our share of that process and I’ll spend $2.5 million any time I can get it. If I get more, 70 per cent of that paid for by the federal government and then some.

            MS. ROBERTS: Right and just remind me - the goal of the Atlantic Fisheries Fund is related to research, is that right?

            MR. COLWELL: There are several goals there. It’s innovation, inner structure development, and science partnerships. Those are the overriding things, and there would be probably smaller things within that envelope that would be covered.

            MS. ROBERTS: Okay. I believe you spoke about that at some length earlier when my colleagues from the Progressive Conservatives were asking you questions.

            Operating costs this past year came in $1.4 million under budget. Can you tell me where you found savings or was that unintentional, that you were under budget last year?

            MR. COLWELL: What page are you on?

            MS. ROBERTS: I’m at 12.2, Departmental Expenses Summary - does that make sense? I’m on the line under Departmental Expenses by Object, called Operating Costs. There was an allocation of $3,675,000 and, according to this page that I have in front of me, only $2,286,000 was spent.

            MR. COLWELL: Yeah, it was primarily it was money reallocated. It would have been mostly research projects that we put through aquaculture as part of the process we have in the aquaculture fund.

            MS. ROBERTS: Just so I understand correctly, you’re saying that that money was spent elsewhere.

            MR. COLWELL: Yes, it came out of Operating Costs and went under Grants and Contributions which was actually research projects.

MS. ROBERTS: Okay. So then I’m looking forward to this year and the operating costs are back up to and a little bit more than what was budgeted but not spent and there’s also an increase in the Grants and Contributions line. So you’re planning to spend more in both budget lines this year?

            MR. COLWELL: The operating costs have increased because we’ve staffed up for the aquaculture expansion we’re working on now. Some of those positions weren’t filled before. We’ve been having some problems getting marine biologists. At one time you could find all kinds of them, but difficult today. That’s why there is an increase in the budget there and that was all planned for a couple of years ago.

            If you look at Grants and Contributions, again what’s gone up from the $2.9, I guess it is, up to $5.6 - again that’s where the Atlantic Fish Fund money is shown there - $2.4 million.

            MS. ROBERTS: Maybe my math is bad or else my accounting practices - so you’re accounting for that money in two different budget lines because that was also the explanation for the increase to marine and coastal division. Does that make sense that it’s on two different budget lines?

            MR. COLWELL: There are actually two different ways of reporting it. If you look at Programs and Services, the total number - they’re the same thing.

            MS. ROBERTS: Yes, thank you. That makes sense to me now. Last year you budgeted for 23 full time equivalent in the aquaculture division, but only funded 20.8 - that’s what you just referred to that you’re staffing up for expansion this year?

            MR. COLWELL: Yes, and we filled some positions we couldn’t fill before. We were down on staff so it’s all process moving the whole file forward.

            MS. ROBERTS: I have an overall question. You’ve referred a number of times to the increase in the value of exports. Can you remind me of the numbers that you’ve mentioned out loud a couple of times in terms of how much we’ve expanded seafood exports?

            MR. COLWELL: We’re presently up to $1.8 billion. That’s the highest in history. As I say, when I first became minister three and a half years ago, I believe we were number three in the country - we’re number one now and have been for two years - represent roughly 38 per cent of the total exports of all the seafoods in Canada.

            MS. ROBERTS: So in 2013, the value of seafood exports would have been what?

            MR. COLWELL: We’ve gone up since 2013, $800 million roughly.

            MS. ROBERTS: Can you tell me what amount of that increase is based on - finding better prices, finding new markets at higher value per pound? You mentioned the price per pound of some things versus fillets when you talked the other day. How much of it is based on higher prices that you’re helping Nova Scotian suppliers to find in different markets and how much of it is based on actual higher volume of seafood exports?

            MR. COLWELL: It’s several things. Some is higher prices because the marketing has been more effective. It’s added value on the products. You might have seen in the news lately that new packaging and online marketing by Clearwater seafoods has increased their offshore clam sales by 500 per cent. It’s these sorts of things: better marketing, better packaging, and landings have gone up some. It’s a whole combination of many, many things that have contributed to the $1.8 billion and we need to move towards higher - well, I shouldn’t say higher, but more added value products because that’s where the actual money is. We can increase our exports even higher by adding value to the products - packaging, proper marketing, a whole series of things which we’re working on all across the board. It’s a lot better to sell a packaged smoked fillet than it is to sell the fillet.

            MS. ROBERTS: Okay, thank you. Maybe a last question on do you within the department have a vision for how much further down that path we can go?

            MR. COLWELL: Well, I know where I’d like to get but I think we’re a long way away from that. I’d like to get this to $3 billion in export sales, and actually it’s possible. We have to see the expansion in the aquaculture industry particularly in finfish and the shellfish to help us along the way because that industry is way below where it should be, around $60 million. We should be up around $500 million over a period of time but it has to be over the period of time because it takes a long time to put oysters in the water and you get them to market size in three to four years. Trout is a bit shorter, about two or three years and if you do salmon, it would be three to four years depending on what process you use.

We have the fish fund is going to help us with that, researching new products and how we can take those products. We’ve got a lot of interest now from products we never even thought we’d ever be able to sell in the province and don’t even harvest now - that will add to that value. So that fish fund will be to help develop new products, new species we can work with. We have got to work with DFO on that as well.

            I’ll give you an example of how effective rethinking how you sell a product can be. The average size codfish in Nova Scotia is about $7.70. That’s what we get out of a codfish  - we might get a little bit extra for the waste products that you grind up and may be for mink food or whatever. So you might get $7 or $8 out of it; that would be it. In Iceland, a codfish is worth $45.50 CAD and that’s because they’ve done a lot of research.

They found enzymes in the backbone of the codfish that sell for $1,600 an ounce. They’ve taken the skin off a codfish and made bandages that you put on your cut or on an operation afterwards and that healing is incredibly faster and the cod skin just dissolves over time. The US military is actually in Iceland putting huge funding into this process, so if they have injuries in the field or in anything they’re working on, it helps recovery time very rapidly. All extremely good advancements.

They made leather coats out of cod skins. They dry and sell all the cod heads - that’s big business. I was in one facility they had there and they even had robots working on the lines. The list goes on and on - it all puts science and a product together. They have actually reduced their catch by 30 per cent and have over doubled their market value. All of these things can be done, but the day of catching a fish just for its filet or anything else is gone.

[6:30 p.m.]

            We want to make sure we get full utilization of that product and make sure we get full value out of it. We’re moving in that direction, but it’s a slow process. First we have to get the industries convinced that it’s good, and then we have to find solutions for products that typically weren’t used as products, that might have gone to waste. We want to eliminate that totally.

            Iceland achieved it federally by passing a law that says you’re not allowed to dump anything at sea and not allowed to dump anything on land. From that basis, then they cut the quotas, and their quality is second to none in the world, particularly for cod fish. They did research around simple things like the Styrofoam container that the filets come in. They rounded the corners on the containers, and that made for two to three days longer life on that cod fish filet with the same freshness as it came off the boat.

            I remember one day I was in the processing facility. It was just like a lab, with everybody dressed in white at work stations. He was just checking some cod fish that had just come in, looking at them for their quality. I said to him, what happens if they deliver a load of cod fish that are no good? Without hesitation, the first thing they do is fire the captain immediately because they expect very high quality to come ashore, and they mean that.

There has been a whole attitude change. There has been a process change. There’s science mixed with it. Those are things we have to do, and we have to get the absolute maximum value out of everything we catch. When we get that value, all of a sudden, your numbers go up, the exports go up, and the long-term economic benefit to the local community goes up and stays constant. That’s where we have to go.

            MS. ROBERTS: I want to return to a question I asked earlier, but we were short on time for your answer, around the potential limited entry system for lobster buyers and processors. When my time elapsed, I had asked you to explain how having a limited entry system could result in higher export values, higher value.

            MR. COLWELL: To make sure I understand your question, you’re talking about the processing licences and things we talked about earlier?

            MS. ROBERTS: Yes. There was a story on CBC where the Nova Scotia Seafood Alliance was saying that they would like to see a limited entry system for lobster buyers and processors. I read back a quote from you in that article, and you had started talking about how you didn’t know what was going to happen with that. As I understood it, you were suggesting that while you didn’t know how it would happen, it might be a way forward towards higher value.

            MR. COLWELL: I just wanted to make sure I had the question clear. We were talking about that earlier, and I ran out of time or you ran out of time, one of us.

            There’s some discussion in the industry about putting a moratorium on processing licences, buyers’ licences. The licensing regime in the province is - I don’t know the best way to put it. It’s an unusual situation. There are all kinds of grandfathered licences, all kinds of grandfathered policies, a mix of different types of things you could ever imagine that were made. Policies for some particular industry at some time for some reason that weren’t applied right across the board for the whole province which has caused some grief over the processing industry and for the province. Every time you look at it or try to change anything, there’s always an outcry that someone is going to be left out of the process.

When we look at this, we really have to look at everything which we’ve been doing. We started that process a while ago and trying to get a consensus with the industry is very difficult, but some things have to change. The moratorium on buyer licences and processor licences may be an outcome someday, I don’t know. We don’t know that until we finish the consultation and see where we go from there. There could be a reduction in the number of licences issued. There could be more depending upon what industry it is and what the stocks look like in that industry. It’s always a moving target in the fishing industry because all of a sudden you might come across a product that may be a new product and you have to change the rules or make available processing licences or buying licences to really respond to the marketplace.

            So it’s under review; no decisions have been made whatsoever. There’s not even really a consensus among the industry or any path forward that we have planned to this point. We really are still consulting. We will continue to consult until we can get to some point that we can see the best thing to do to help stability in the industry and help grow the economy. Those are the two things we need, but we need stability in the industry to grow the economy. We have to work hand in hand with those two things.

            MS. ROBERTS: In the supplements, under the description of the expenditures under Aquaculture, one of the phrases is, “Provides fish health services to the aquaculture industry . . .” Can you talk to me a little about that? For example, farmers provide veterinarian services for their animals at their cost - am I correct in understanding that the government is providing kind of the equivalent of veterinarian services for fish farmers?

            MR. COLWELL: That used to be the case for a long time. Under the new regulation now, the new policy, we’re regulators now. We’ve changed our process totally and, at one time, that was the case. Now, under the Environmental Farm Plans that all the aquaculture people have to have, they have to have their own vets and we will spot check and review the plans they have through our health lab. We will provide testing services - we’ve got some pretty sophisticated equipment we bought in the last three or four years to do tests. The services really have changed because we’re a small industry and we’re moving now to what will hopefully be a lot bigger industry and we will not be providing those services anymore.

That was a way when the last government was in place vet services were there. Since then, we’ve changed it. We have three vets on staff now and one of them is one of the most renowned fish vets in the world, so we’re very happy to have him on our staff. It’s a transition we’re going through to really start growing the industry.

            MS. ROBERTS: I think I’m going to pass over to Gary Burrill for another question.

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: Mr. Burrill.

            MR. BURRILL: I wanted to just ask you, minister, about this question that’s taking up so much of the oxygen of public conversation here in the last few weeks, about the federal tax changes. There is lots of discussion, of course, about their impacts in agriculture, lots of discussion about their impacts in some professional sectors. I wonder, do you have any concerns about potential impacts of the proposed federal tax changes in terms of the Nova Scotia fishery?

            MR. COLWELL: You know, we’ve heard from a lot of people on this topic. Again, it’s a federal issue but it’s going to be interesting to see what the federal government finally does. We are concerned about it. I think everybody in the whole country is concerned about it.

            MR. BURRILL: Thank you. Are there any particular issues in the fishery, any particular places where we see possible negative impacts that you might be thinking about?

            MR. COLWELL: I think, from a business standpoint, that the industry’s making their views very clearly known to the federal government. The federal government is the one that’s going to make a decision on this, and hopefully they make one that’s wise for the country.

            I can’t really comment on it past that. It’s going to affect pretty nearly every small business that exists in the province and in the country. I would think you’re probably better off directing that question to the federal government. They’re the ones who’re going to make that decision.

            MR. BURRILL: Just a couple of closing questions. I can’t imagine that you’d be able to simply produce an answer for them, but we would be interested if maybe, over time, they could be provided to our caucus.

            We’re interesting in knowing, within your department, at what level is the lowest-paid employee, or the lowest-paid employee that the department funds? I’m wondering if that’s a question I could leave with you and your staff, and perhaps have the information forwarded to us? I can’t imagine that you would have it right on hand.

            MR. COLWELL: I think pretty well all of our staff are very well paid - I hope they are . . .

            MR. BURRILL: No, I mean to say, in the whole range of salaries of people who are funded through our provincial department, I would like to know what the lowest-paid person is in that range.

            MR. COLWELL: Quite honestly, I have no idea. It’s something we will look for. I wouldn’t want to identify an individual, for sure. There are probably some entry-level positions someplace for people to start off. Typically, we have very highly-skilled people in the department. They’re usually very well paid. We can look and see what we can find.

            MR. BURRILL: If it would be possible to have that information forwarded to our caucus, when you’re able to find it? Would that be acceptable?

            MR. COLWELL: We’ll get it to you as quickly as possible.

            MR. BURRILL: That’s wonderful, and a related question. In the department’s present operations, do you employ any temporary services at all - temp agencies, contracting-out agencies, labour agencies - anything of that sort?

            MR. COLWELL: We do from time to time, on a very short basis. Maybe for a very specific task, but it’s very seldom.

            MR. BURRILL: Would it be possible to ask you and your staff to provide an approximate number? Not necessarily now, but an approximate sense of what that spending might be in the range of a year?

            MR. COLWELL: We can look it up. I can tell you it’s not very much; I sign off on all expenditures, and this is something that very seldom comes across the desk. When they come across the desk, I always ask why we’re hiring someone on a temporary basis. Is this a position that should be filled full-time? When I get the answer, it usually makes a lot of sense, because it’s not a position you would fill. It’s not a position that you’d even want to backfill somebody with, who has a position already in the department or from another department. It’s usually a very short-term project that we work on, almost like a contract basis rather than a salary. Very, very few of them - and I remember some of the numbers. They’re very low numbers in dollar value, so a short time.

            MR. BURRILL: Well, minister, I just want to say thank you to you and your staff. That completes the list of questions of your budget that Ms. Roberts and I have.

[6:45 p.m.]

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: We’ll turn it over to the PC caucus. Ms. Smith-McCrossin.

            MS. ELIZABETH SMITH-MCCROSSIN: Madam Chairman, I would like to ask a few questions to the minister, and many of my questions are broad; I don’t have a lot of specific questions. I did get a chance to speak with the minister last week, and one of my goals for Cumberland North - so a lot of my questions are specific to my region of the province. One of our specific goals is to increase the GDP for our area, and fisheries is an important part of that. As you know, we have a strong lobster industry right now.

            One of the areas that I’ve been told that there is a lot of potential is in the oyster fisheries - particularly around the Malagash, Tatamagouche area. I was curious if the department had any specific plans to grow that industry.

            MR. COLWELL: We’re very interested in growing that industry, but the industry has got to be grown on the basis of actual aquaculture. There was a lot of interest in that area and some other areas in the province of protecting fishing grounds; that’s not aquaculture. So if there is someone in your area, we’d love to see them come forward with a really good, solid plan for an option that we talked about earlier - I don’t think you were here for that discussion - to set up an oyster farm or multiple oyster farms. We’d be very receptive.

            Unfortunately, there seemed to be an opinion that set up some private fishing grounds, and that’s not aquaculture. They can do that regardless, through licensing with DFO. We really need to grow that industry. There is a tremendous opportunity in oysters. Everything that’s produced in the province is sold almost before it’s ready to be sold. It’s a great opportunity for people, but it does take time and effort and some resources. It’s probably the lowest cost investment to get into aquaculture there is in the province, and a great return on it as well.

            The process is pretty straightforward, and if someone wants to - I’ll give you a typical scenario with the new change in our aquaculture regulations. You have to come to the department and request an option on an area from myself. That’s about all I do with the whole thing once it’s started. Our department would want to see a proper business plan with financials, a marketing strategy - all the things that you would need to do to set up a regular business.

            Also, how you’re going to finance all this. We will make loans for a fish loan board for aquaculture sites, particularly shellfish. It doesn’t need to be a big operation. It can be a small one to start, and then gradually grow. We have several leases now that we’ve taken back because people didn’t use them, and that’s going to be a policy from now on. You either use it or lose it - and we’re going to enforce that. Once you lose it, don’t come back looking for another site anywhere else, because you’re not going to get it.

            We want to grow the economy and it’s a great opportunity in your community to put a lot of people to work, put a lot of cash in the community over time as these things grow. Barring any unforeseen difficulties - it could be generations that could happen. Oysters are beautiful because they clean up the environment and they do a lot of things, and the Nova Scotia oyster is in high demand. A couple of the places only sell to a few restaurants - they sell out all the time. They’re expanding site as much as they can, under the present rules.

            It’s a good news story, so if you’ve got anyone who is really interested - but I stress they’ve got to be really interested and come up with a proper business plan, how they’re going to do it and it doesn’t have to be a big operation - we would be very interested in seeing those applications. As long as they meet all the criteria, we would want to move ahead with them right away.

            MS. SMITH-MCCROSSIN: Thank you for that answer. Maybe I can get in touch, so if I do have someone interested to know who the proper person would be to refer them to.

            I do have a couple of specific questions that came from some fishermen, if it’s okay to ask. I don’t know all the details around them. One of the concerns or questions was, is it possible to add floating docks in the Pugwash Wharf? They’re full, and I’m not sure why, but they have fishermen coming from Northport. I know there was some talk about closing the Northport Wharf, but I don’t think that has happened yet. The question was posed to me, would there be any consideration to adding floating docks in the Pugwash Wharf?

            MR. COLWELL: The really simple answer to this, unfortunately and fortunately, is that we don’t get involved in wharves or docks. I would have to have 10 times the budget I have even just to scratch the surface there. That’s something the local harbour authority would look after. I think the floating docks are something new to the fishing industry, but they make a lot of sense. That’s just my personal opinion. But again, that’s something you have fund through DFO or some other source.

            MS. SMITH-MCCROSSIN: I have two other similar questions, and the answer may also be that it’s federal, but I just wanted a chance to confirm that. One is implementing a camera system. The Wallace Wharf has a very good camera system, and they don’t have one in Pugwash. Also, they’re looking to have the fuel system replaced with a card system like they have also in the Wallace Wharf.

            MR. COLWELL: Again, fortunately and unfortunately, we’re not involved in that. That would be under the harbour authority. They have access to funds through the federal government under small crafts and harbours, through DFO. I would suggest they do that. Usually they have to make a proposal and work with DFO. Most of them are relatively easy to get, as long as they put their paperwork together properly and put a good case.

            MS. SMITH-MCCROSSIN: The next question is also from our fishermen. Would it be possible to have safety training in northern Nova Scotia? They’re having to travel to Shelburne and the South Shore for this, and that was a request that they have put forth.

            MR. COLWELL: Unfortunately, we don’t do the training. It’s a fishermen’s organization group that does that. We will definitely put the request in for that to happen. We do fund them some for that process. They have been very successful and the work the safety system has done has really dropped the workers’ compensation rates. They’re down 32 per cent since 2015, and claims are down 20 per cent since 2013. They have really done a great job, and we fully support them going to your community to do that, and we will put that request in.

            MS. SMITH-MCCROSSIN: Thank you very much. I was curious - I like numbers. Would there be any way of finding out what the current financials are for my region and other regions of the province, looking at what kind of revenues are coming in from our fisheries specifically? Then can we break it down looking at oysters, lobster, and other seafood?

            MR. COLWELL: The only data we would have would be data we could get from DFO. It would go into what port the fish product - whatever it is - has landed by species. We don’t have any information ourselves, specifically around that, so DFO. That’s a good question because we can see where the landings are and what processing capabilities are there. We want to make sure we get maximum processing capability in Nova Scotia, so it’s not just shipped somewhere else for processing and then sold. That really hurts our numbers. It really hurts our communities.

            MS. SMITH-MCCROSSIN: Thank you for that response, and that leads me to my next point. I see in your mandate that one of your areas is to add value to our current products. I’m wondering if you can share with me - and then hopefully we can expand that into Cumberland North - what current efforts are being done by the department in adding value along the food chain, rather than just exporting the whole product?

            MR. COLWELL: We do a lot of things with the industry to look at particular projects or a particular product that would have - and in some cases, we will fund the added value of research on that.

            Also, Perennia has been expanded to work not only in agriculture, but also in fisheries. Their prime goal is to add value to products. There are a lot of things they do that really have made a difference in the economy overall. Most of the examples are in agriculture, which I don’t want to get into today, but just recently I expanded them into the fisheries realm and that’s starting to pay off. It’s going to take us a while to get staffed up and everything done, but we work with them in the lobster quality grading program that has been put in place.

            Also, we’ve been working with the North Bay Co-op on the Catch to Plate program that I started about two and a half years ago, which has been quite successful. I remember meeting with the people from the co-op and they told me this story about getting the price for market sized lobsters with canner prices. I said, why is that - that doesn’t make any sense - $3 a pound when everyone else is getting $6, $7, $8 a pound for their market-sized lobsters, and they said they were told that they don’t ship well. I said, I don’t believe that’s true. Sure as old heck, when we went to the Catch to Plate program, someone was not accurately reflecting the true price of those lobsters. Since then, the price in those lobsters has gone up to the regular price that everyone else is getting. So someone was taking advantage of them, unfortunately.

            It’s all these sorts of things that we work on, and as a little bit at a time, we get some organization that has a great idea and they take that idea and they can’t get any further with it. So we’ll fund research on it - if it makes sense, it looks like it makes sense.

            I’m going to use an example I used a while ago about Iceland, and I keep using this example. What they’ve done with their cod fishery is unbelievable. They went from so-so quality on their cod products to top in the world, no question. I’m going to use an example earlier where they’ve done a lot of research with an organization called Matis, which is equivalent to what we have with Perennia. They wanted to keep their fillets longer and they were trying to figure out packaging for it. So they found if they rounded the corners on a Styrofoam box - instead of being square, they rounded the corners - it would add two to three days to the quality of that fish to make it exactly the same as it came off the boat more than they could before, a simple change. Simply change the dye that the box is made in - it costs almost nothing. All of a sudden, they’ve got another market opportunity and added value to that product. It keeps fresher longer - a longer shelf life. That’s just one example.

            They also looked at the backbones and they extracted an enzyme from the backbone that sells for $1,600 an ounce, and there’s a big demand for that. They’ve made bandages from the skin that you put on your skin. It goes on your skin - just sort of goes right in your skin. You never take it off - for cuts, operations, all those sorts of things. I don’t know what that’s worth, but it’s worth a lot of money.

[7:00 p.m.]

            In Nova Scotia, we would get about $7.70 for a cod fillet. An exact same sized codfish in Iceland sells $45. So that’s what science does. That’s what working with industry does. They passed a law a while ago that you’re not allowed to dump anything at sea and nothing on land, and all about top-quality product. They reduced their catch by 30 per cent and doubled their value. Just unbelievable what they’ve done.

So we’re really looking at projects like that in Nova Scotia. They’ve got a model with Matis that’s we’re going to replicate in Nova Scotia with universities. We’re in the process of doing that.

            One thing we’re working on here right now is there’s tons of shellfish shells that are discarded every year. We’ve got three companies involved with Perennia, and actually two that my Fisheries and Aquaculture staff don’t know about, also with Dalhousie Agricultural College around grinding up to a fine powder the lobster shells and feed them to chickens, because they’re really high in calcium. They’re finding that the chickens perform better, there are better eggs that come out of them.

            One side effect is they can create a pink yolk, so that would be quite interesting. I don’t think that would be marketable too quick. They’re starting to use more and more science and working more closely together with industry. We really need to find a solution for the - we don’t want any waste dumped. We want to make sure we get every dollar we can get from every product and we’re moving in that direction. This project with Perennia and the three companies is pretty exciting, they’ve got some great ideas. We’ve had some success so far but again, it takes a long time. You’ve got to really try everything you can.

            There might be some very valuable chemicals they can get out of a lobster shell that makes sense. There’s some that we know are in there but it doesn’t make sense to process them for that.

            So there’s a lot of opportunities, and as we move these opportunities forward, other ones will open up, and that’s what we need to do. We really need to look at it totally differently. Before, it was catch the fish, sell it as quick as you can, get it on a truck and ship it to Boston. Now we want to get the fish as quickly as we can to Boston, but only part of it, the rest of it we want to make some money off it.

            MS. SMITH-MCCROSSIN: I have a question around - I hope I’m not taking too much time.

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: You have an hour.

            MS. SMITH-MCCROSSIN: I won’t take the whole hour.

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: Not quite an hour yet.

            MS. SMITH-MCCROSSIN: I’m just curious around any marketing initiatives for Nova Scotia local fish. It’s hard to find local fish and people are looking for that. Sometimes the labelling is not always clear. I have a small, local market and it’s near impossible for me to find local fish from Atlantic Canada. One of the things we were looking for was wild salmon. We have a health food nutrition company and that’s one of the things that’s required on their menus, wild salmon.

            We had a fish retailer from Moncton come and see my manager and said, I have local wild salmon. He called it local because he sold it from Moncton. So my manager knew enough to ask the question, what is the source? Where is this fish actually from? It was from China.

            I’m curious about laws or regulations of when people call a product local - and we’re talking about fish so we’ll address it with fish - what are the regulations to ensure to Nova Scotians that they are getting a local product, not that it was imported and maybe packaged at a local facility?

            MR. COLWELL: That’s a serious concern for us. If you bought wild, local salmon, they are definitely not local, and they are probably not wild. The only place that I know of in Canada that you can fish - and I could be wrong with this - is Labrador, wild Atlantic salmon. There’s still a small harvest there. You might get some out of Saint-Pierre et Miquelon, is they’ll ship them here but I doubt it. Other than that, it’s all sports fishery. It’s pretty well endangered in Nova Scotia, the salmon.

            If you get local, wild salmon, it probably comes out of a salmon pen in New Brunswick or Nova Scotia, and there’s all kinds of implications of that. You are one of the markets that really pays attention to what you get - some of them don’t - which is good news. But Select Nova Scotia and Taste of Nova Scotia are two good - you’ve probably worked with both of them. You know how well they’ve done and doing more and more to promote local.

            Labelling is a problem. It is a serious problem and that’s one thing that Perennia helps with, to meet all the requirements of labelling, so that works very well. It is an issue, we need to talk about the food security again. We talked about it in Agriculture but also in Fisheries and Aquaculture. We’ve got to start factoring the fisheries food supply in Nova Scotia into the local one. We haven’t done that in the past.

            The other thing is on the fish products, under the federal regulations, there’s a traceability for these products. We can explain to you in the future exactly how all that works. I think that’s something that all the markets like you have, or anyone else buying fish should be privileged to that, and should have that information so you can make an informed choice when you’re buying something.

            A lot of Nova Scotia products are caught locally - some exceptions. Chances are if you are buying something pink, it’s farmed, almost guaranteed - 55-plus per cent of all the seafood we consume now is farm fish, so that’s changed. If you buy tilapia, it’s almost 100 per cent guaranteed that it’s farmed. Some of these products are pretty straightforward, to trace them. But if you have any particular issues like that, any time feel free to have your managers - I know you’ve got to divorce yourself from your business, now that you are an MLA - but have your managers call our department and we will track it down for you and tell you how to find it. Now that’s very important.

            There are pretty strict rules around marketing local products in your market, as you are well aware. Those are enforceable by the Department of Environment.

            MS. SMITH-MCCROSSIN: I appreciate your comments on that. I think we need to make it easier for the consumer so that it’s very clear. I know this is Fisheries and Aquaculture, but along the agricultural lines, like The Pork Shop that in the Pictou area - because it was a pork shop in Nova Scotia everyone assumed that pork came from Nova Scotia, but it came from Québec. I think we could be doing more so that it’s very clear to Nova Scotians what is local and what isn’t.

            I will finish off with a question regarding your budget, and someone else has probably already asked the question. I notice you’ve got a nice little increase in your Fisheries and Aquaculture budget. I tried to pare down where the increase is at, and it looks like for Grants and Contributions, operating costs have both gone up. I’m not sure what that is for, but I wanted to put in a little plug for Cumberland. If you are expanding and have any employers looking for a place for people to work, we’ve love to have growth up in our area. As I said, I will do some research from DFO to look. I’d like to know what our specific numbers are now so we can set targets for growth, but first we need to know what is our starting point to do that.

            MR. COLWELL: I’m going to back up to the first question and then I’ll answer your last one, if you don’t mind. Labelling is an issue, that’s why Perennia is doing the work they do. With Select Nova Scotia and Taste of Nova Scotia, we’re working very hard on that.

            We’ve done a lot of work with Sobeys, they want to buy a lot of local. Their purchases now are up about $45 million from Nova Scotia. That’s a $20 million increase in almost two years, and we’re going to try to do more and more, and they want it labelled.

            As far as The Pork Shop is concerned, it actually might have been a Nova Scotia pork chop because we don’t have any place to process pork. A lot of it is shipped to Québec, processed and shipped back to us at a higher price - added value again. All these things that we do we’ve got to try to add that value.

            The quick answer to the increase in our budget is the Atlantic Fish Fund with $2.4 million that has been added to our budget - $2.5 million to be exact, on the first year. We’re going to be investing $38 million over the next seven years. The federal funding is going to be $88 million in Nova Scotia alone, which gives a total of $126 million. It’s going to have a significant impact on Nova Scotia’s economy if we spend the money properly. I have to sign off on that after our staff are happy and the industry here is happy before the federal government makes the final deliberation on what’s going to happen with it. So we’re very happy about that.

We’ve got an MOU with the federal government; that’s complete. There is one part of it that’s yet to come - that will be for seafoods across the country. We’re still negotiating that part of it, so it will be in addition to the $100 million-plus we’re talking about now. That’s very positive for us.

            I can tell you one thing about Nova Scotia seafood: we’re leading the country in marketing and development of new products. I want to give the industry from your area and all over the province tremendous credit for the work they’re doing. We’re the catalyst to make it happen. I spent a lot of time marketing, with way too much time away from home, but it’s paying off big time.

            The other day we were talking about the exports to the U.S. and they said Michelin Tire is $1.1 billion from Nova Scotia, so a very important contributor to the economy. I said, just a minute now, fisheries is $1.08 billion; we’re $200 million short of Michelin Tire.

            More importantly than that, we’re also developing new markets in Asia. Asia now is our second biggest trading partner. It’s somewhere between $200-$400 million we do in Asia every year now. When we started in 2012 we were about $80 million. At that time, the EU was second place around $100 million-plus, and that has gone up to $200 million-plus. We’re increasing substantially, especially in Asia. They have an insatiable appetite for high value food, and they want to buy it packaged. They’ll process it if they can get away with it, but they would rather buy it - to the point that, even in some of this packaging, they don’t want any Chinese on it because they want to make it authentic from Nova Scotia.

            Do you have your tie on there? This is our brand. I don’t know where he got the tie; I don’t have one yet - something wrong with this picture. It’s 45 North, 63 West. This is a location in the centre of Nova Scotia. I can imagine the trouble I would have been in, and the province would have been in, if we had identified your community or outside of Halifax or southwestern Nova Scotia as the brand for Nova Scotia.

That spot - by accident, it was not planned - is one of the most historic places in North America. That spot is Murchyville. In 1934 or 1935, Murchyville had a mine disaster; there was a gold mine there. It was the first time in history there was a live broadcast of a disaster. It was on CBC radio. That place made history. They still have the tapes of it. It’s crackly because the radio at that time wasn’t very good, but you can clearly hear the story. Very near there, within probably less than a kilometre, is this spot. We picked it out to be the centre of the province so we wouldn’t be in trouble with anybody.

We found that immediately - anyone who is in the fishing industry, anyone who is in the diving industry, anyone who flies - anyone who knows anything about navigation will immediately look to see where it is. You can tell them about Nova Scotia until you’re blue in the face, and they don’t care. But, they’ll look at the map, that’s Nova Scotia! Ah, that’s where it is!

So we have the brand, and the brand is going to be used to help increase the value of our seafood. You’re not going to be allowed to use it unless you meet some very stringent requirements. You have to have a complete quality control system in your facility. You have to be export-ready. There a whole series of other things you have to do.

This is all about bringing the Nova Scotia brand up. We are leading the country in export development, we really are. All the time and effort we spend in Asia, Europe, all those places, it’s all about building relationships. Once you build the relationships, it’s really easy to do business.

[7:15 p.m.]

            I’ve been on more trips than I want to think about, doing this. I remember when I first went, if we did $5 million or $6 million at a show and then had follow-up income after that, we were extremely excited. The numbers have gone right through the roof now. I’m working on three deals right now and, if we can get them to come through, they will be the biggest in the history of the province - with no money from Nova Scotia.

            The brand that was just noted here - it’s Nova Scotia seafood pure Canada on it - it’s not on the tie but it’s typically there all the time. The Canadian brand is well-known and well-respected for quality. As we move all this forward, you’ll see a big shift in how our industry is moving. I use the codfish fillet as an example: cut the fillet, get rid of it as quickly as you can. That’s fresh market; it’s a good market, well established, almost $1 billion we do a year. But we could add other factors into it. Maybe we take the fillet and we smoke it so, instead of $7, it’s probably worth $15 - or you do some other things to it.

            Here’s a prime example. One of the companies in Nova Scotia buys the farmed salmon; they smoke it, process it, put it on a cedar plank, vacuum pack it. You put it in your oven and you have this beautiful planked salmon for supper any time. That sells for four or five times what just the fillet would sell for. You can keep it in your freezer for a long time, so that means it’s easy to ship all over the world.

            We have so many opportunities. The more I see and the more I do in the department - we’ve got great staff, great ideas. The opportunities are limitless. I remember Scott Hoskins - he’s with us here tonight, he looks after marketing - he came to me one day and said, we should go on Alibaba and sell some lobsters. It was a pretty hefty price tag, I think it was $60,000 to do this promotion. I said okay, let’s try it and see how we make out. Well we sold $3.2 million worth of lobsters in 24 hours, and we ran out of lobsters. Then Alibaba came back to us the next year and said, we’ll do the same promotion and we’re going to charge you $6,000. They did that well on it.

            We’re leading the country on this. We’re the first ones to use online marketing for seafoods in the country, and our numbers show it. We’ve got a great reputation all over the world for really good products, and that goes back to the companies that are doing the great work. It’s exciting to see where we are, where we’re going and where we need to be.

            I totally agree with you: anything you get in your rural community is going to make a significant difference in that community, and we need to do that. If you can get a small plant there that employs 20 people, adding value to some kind of a product, that will be there for a long time. It will add real value to the community and real value to our exports and the whole economy of the province. That’s how we have to change it.

            We have to mix science, marketing and then the community. All that we do in the departments I represent, which is really special to me, is to support rural Nova Scotia. Where there are people moving away, they are starting to move back in. That’s what we need to have happen. Get those oyster applications in, and we will look at them right away. We’re tough on what we do because we want people to succeed. We want them to make money and succeed.

            It’s a long approach to what we do and how we do things. We just got a note here - I didn’t mention this before - our brand, our 45˚ North 63˚ West, was launched in China. We have it trademarked in China. We have it trademarked in the U.S., Canada, and some other countries. We’re working on that all the time. We’ve used it now in China, we’ve used it in Brussels and Boston. We did a major launch at the Halifax airport here a while ago where they hold the lobsters for shipping. These things are all adding up to get us moving forward in recognition of Nova Scotia and quality Canadian products. It’s exciting. What we see every day, it’s fun.

            I’ve got to tell you another story about the aquaculture industry and, again, it goes with your oysters. Shortly after I was first elected, we decided we were going to move forward with aquaculture and submit it in the budget and the Throne Speech. We had the bill passed and we had unanimous support by all Parties in the House for our aquaculture bill. I got criticized a bit for making it too vague, but that was intentional so we could be very fluid with it to make regulations around it.

            We started working on the regulations. The bill was easy; that took a short time to write it, get through the Legislature - done. Now we had to write regulations. We worked on it for over a year and a half, and that’s fast for regulations.

            One day Bruce Hancock, our director of aquaculture - who is here - came to me and said, we’ve got to nail me down long enough to really discuss it and see where we’re going to go. I said - just joking - the only time I can come in is Sunday. He asked, what time? Well I was committed then, whether I wanted to come in Sunday or not, but I did want to come in. So we sat down and went through it on Sunday all day. We didn’t quite finish so he said, when is the next Sunday? That was a request.

Monday morning, everybody was at work again - everybody. That’s the dedication that we have from our staff. It doesn’t matter if it’s Fisheries and Aquaculture, or Agriculture. They see the opportunities in Nova Scotia and see where we can go. If it wasn’t for their dedicated hard work and the industry’s hard work and dedication, and the risks they take, we would not be where we are today.

            I’ll put in context the exports we have and the fishing industry in Nova Scotia. A few years ago, there was a bunch of hype about the ships contract and all - it’s too bad the NDP wasn’t still here to hear this story. All kinds of people lost money because it really wasn’t what they said it was going to be, although it’s great for Nova Scotia. Over a 35-year period there is going to be roughly $35 billion invested in work here in Nova Scotia and other parts of the world, which is fantastic. Our fishing industry is going to be $70 billion in the same amount of time.

            You look at the opportunities here; we’ve got to take advantage of them. It’s an exciting time to be here in Nova Scotia for the resource industries. There are going to be more and more opportunities over the next several years to grow the economy. We’ve got to get smarter. We’ve got to get more conditioned to look at added value.

            I’ll give you an example. We can’t ship our soft-shelled lobsters live; they just don’t survive. We were in China, and one of the companies told me they were going to buy one of those high-pressure extraction machines. It’s a big investment for a small company. When I refer to a small company in the lobster business I’m talking several million dollars in sales. Just to be correct here, they’re not a real small company. They said that they wanted to try this new process because it was costing them anywhere from 0.25 cents to 0.50 cents a pound because they were losing money on these soft-shelled lobsters. They’d have to ship them off to New Brunswick or somewhere else to have them processed.

            They bought the machine. I visited the facility a few months ago, and here they are - 35 or 40 people - processing the lobster meat. Their margin on it is at lest $2.50 a pound more than it was, plus they’ve got added value. They’ve developed products that weren’t even on the market before. Now that business and its ability to make money and to employ local people - it’s a beautifully clean facility - has really improved. That will add again to our $1.8 billion that we were losing out on before. Then, if we can get the shells of that back into another product, that will help us too.

If we add all this together, it’s really starting to come, but it’s a long, hard, slow process. You’ve run a business, you fully understand that - you get five products in and then you need six, you get to 20. It takes a long time and then you get people to buy them and see what they like best. It’s the same sort of thing, but on a lot bigger scale.

            The industry really is stepping up. I know first when we talked about the lobster handling course, I did no consultation on it intentionally, got a pretty riotous response to it initially and now everybody is taking it. So we’re going in the right direction.

            We’ve got to maintain quality or improve - you can’t improve quality but you’ve got to maintain quality, the same as it was when it was in the water. If we can do that, that puts more money in the fishermen’s pockets.

            Another thing - I used the blueberry industry and I don’t want to get sidetracked in agriculture, but the lobster industry is the exact same thing. The more we talk about the shore price of lobsters, the more trouble we are in with the market. If the price of lobsters drop to, say, $5.00 a pound - and just shortly after I took office, before that it was only $3.00 a pound, the fishermen were not fishing, they were demonstrating on all that. But every since I became minister - not because I became minister but because we developed new markets - it is just the opposite. It’s double and triple, sometimes even quadruple the price of lobster of that time.

            When you look at all these things that make a difference, we have to really keep those times in mind. If the people start talking about the lobster price, or whatever the price is of a commodity - lobster is a commodity so far, we’re going to change that to make it a real value added product - there’s people all over the world who continuously watch our news, continuously watch the price of everything. If we’re trying to sell lobster in China for $35 a pound and some fisherman is on the wharf yelling and screaming that he’s getting only $5.00 a pound, the customer in China calls up and says, well we’re only going to pay you $7.00 a pound because that’s what you’re paying at the wharf as live. They are shooting themselves in the foot very badly and they really don’t understand it because if we can get $25 a pound, that puts the price of lobster up at the wharf.

            I use that in the blueberry industry, they’re talking about a low price of blueberries and then the customer said, well I’m not paying the regular price, I want a lot lower price. So those are attitudes we have to change and people have to be aware that it’s a global market now, information technology is there all over the place. One little slip and then all of a sudden the whole price changes for everybody because one person likes to get their name in the paper. I keep telling them all the time that it’s not a good idea.

            I was at one meeting around the lobster handling course and one of the guys was really, really upset. He was going on saying, nobody is going to tell him who is going to train, and all this kind of stuff. He finally said to me, pointed at me and said you’ve got to stop going to the media. I said well I didn’t go to the media, you did and I had to respond. He said, I lost orders in Asia because of that, he said no more media. He felt it directly.

            Now unfortunately the fishermen who fish for him or who he buys the lobster from don’t know that but even if we bring it up in this Legislature, I would encourage you not to ever bring up price in the Legislature. You can say look, there’s reduction in markets and then we can talk around that, but never price. The industry is starting to realize that now - it’s a battle.

            Our lobster-handling course, too, I just forgot about this - we’ve had over 800 people signed up are taking the course already and a lot of them are lobster fishermen. We’re going to put a course on for all the MLAs and just to give you an idea what you’re dealing with lobsters. Some of the people around the table here and in our caucus live with lobsters every day and some of us don’t, so I’d take the course. It’s mandatory for all the staff in Fisheries and Aquaculture to take the course - no matter what you do, you have to take the course, it’s mandatory.

I think almost everyone in the department has already had it, so I would encourage you to do that. We’ll put a program on for all of us, so we will make sure that happens. It’s quite interesting. Wait until you have the course and see what you think, but you would find if you’re selling any lobsters at your market, it might be wise to have your staff take it too because it just shows how fragile a lobster is. They’re like a real soft shell egg - you just squeeze them the wrong way and they’re dead, but they don’t look dead for a day or two sometimes. A long answer to your question.

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: Ms. Smith-McCrossin, do you have another question?

            MS. SMITH-MCCROSSIN: No, but I’ll do the course if it’s in Cumberland North.

[7:30 p.m.]

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: Would Mr. MacLeod entertain questions? You have a little less than 15 minutes.

            HON. ALFIE MACLEOD: I’m not even sure I can remember what my question was. (Laughter) Thank you very much, minister, for the opportunity to ask a few questions. I’d like to start off by saying that I appreciate the work that you and your staff have done for our fisheries industry. There are a few things that I would like to explore with you.

            I notice you took great pride, and rightfully so, about talking about the value that the fishery puts into the economy of Nova Scotia - over $1 billion. In my constituency of Sydney River-Mira-Louisbourg, fishing and processing is a big part - huge employer in our communities. As a matter of fact, we’re also the home of the best lobsters in Nova Scotia, just for the record - in case anybody had any other ideas about that. (Laughter)

            What I’m curious about though is, the Leader of the NDP had asked a question about the potential impact on tax changes that are coming. I spoke to a fisherman the other day who had signed 14 paycheques that day and he was concerned as to what was going on. I’m just wondering if your department has reached out to any of the fishery groups or any of the different organizations that you work with on a regular basis to find out from them their concerns about the impact and what this may do to our industry - what the impact might be and the bottom line of how it affects our economy.

            MR. COLWELL: We’re concerned about that as well. Really, you look at it from a business standpoint - I’d be very concerned about this tax change if I was still running my business. We’ve made presentations to the federal government - I know our government has. I would strongly suggest that every one of us lobby our MPs and the ministers responsible for that to see if it can’t be looked at in a little bit different light. I think that’s the best way to put it.

            We’ve got the fishing industry now, the average fisherman who decides that they want to work at the industry - which is most all of them - who makes a pretty good income, and it would be nice to keep as much of that income as we possibly can here in Nova Scotia. It’s a pretty good opportunity to do that, but I would suggest to lobby. I know that everybody know is lobbying - I’m getting a lot in my constituency office and you must be getting the same thing in yours about that. It could be tough for the industry.

            MR. MACLEOD: It is tough and I guess that’s the reason why I ask the question that if, indeed, you’ve reached out to the different partners that you work with. You’ve been around politics for a long time and you understand that if we have a minister speaking to a minister and bringing forward the concerns of a whole industry, it would have a bigger impact than just single lobbying going back and forth.

            I’m really curious as to has your department reached out to the people that you were with, who were relying on you for trade shows and relying on you for guidance in the industry? Have you reached out and asked them for their opinion, and in turn have you made arrangements to pass that opinion along? A billion dollar industry in the Province of Nova Scotia is nothing to shy away from, and it is very important that every effort be made. I’m curious as to what a minister talking to a minister can do versus somebody talking to an individual MP and/or MLA.

            MR. COLWELL: That’s good advice.

            MR. MACLEOD: It’s great advice but unless you act on it, it’s no good. I’m wondering if you’re going to actually move forward and do such a thing because time is very short.

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: Quite a few meetings are coming out of this Supply. (Laughter)

            MR. COLWELL: That was good advice, thank you very much.

            MR. MACLEOD: Minister, I would like to move on and ask you a couple of question about what is the policy of your department and, in turn, the government as far as production and producing of the catch that we have in our Nova Scotia waters? Are there any rules, regulations or laws that say if you catch it in Nova Scotia water, it must be processed in a Nova Scotia plant?

            MR. COLWELL: I can tell you, if you’ve got a solution to that, I want to hear about it because I totally agree. I would like to see everything not only processed in Nova Scotia but value added to in Nova Scotia, besides the processing.

            When Newfoundland joined Confederation - and I’ve dealt with this since I was Fisheries Minister in the late 1990s . . .

            MR. MACLEOD: Were you at that meeting?

            MR. COLWELL: No, I wasn’t but I thought you were. (Laughter) When they joined Confederation one of the things they had at that time was to make it possible that everything landed in Newfoundland should be processed in Newfoundland. That was wise on their part, not like the deal they made with the power with Quebec. That was a good deal.

            They found out over time that it doesn’t work too well, but at the same time they have stuck to that - we don’t have the same protection. We can encourage people to process here, we can try to force them to do it, but we actually can’t do it. People like the company in your area, Louisbourg Seafoods and some other ones are very dedicated to processing everything they can in Nova Scotia, but sometimes it’s not practical.

            I want to see everything we can processed in Nova Scotia because if we had everything, we have so many more jobs in the province, so much more wealth in the province, if we could process more of it and we can. The example I used earlier of the lobster processor who invested in equipment and that lobster was going to New Brunswick for processing - it’s now being processed in Nova Scotia.

            It’s a complicated issue, you look at free trade, that whole deal. I’m running into that all the time now and we’ve got to make sure that we don’t infringe upon that when we make rules.

            I know the only thing we can do is encourage local processing as much as we can; local value added. The fact that we’re developing new markets is helping that because I see opportunities to grow Nova Scotia’s revenue and revenue for their companies by adding value to products that they didn’t see before. I’ll give you an example of one. It’s a Cape Breton company again, I won’t name them. We were in China at a trade show and a potential customer came up, they made a deal to sell container-loads of this one product, not packaged.

After that I was in China again with the same company, about a year and a half later, and they were talking about with their customer wanted it packaged. Now they said well we can package it, but I said if you’re going to package this you’ve got to add all the labour costs, all the material costs for packaging, all the labelling costs, plus you’ve got to put a margin on it.

The answer I got back was quite interesting. He said, of course we’re going to do that and we’ll add even more than that to it. They told the customer what they’d probably have to do around price. They said no problem, we’ve got to come back with a firm price, and it probably put their margin up by about another 15 per cent or 20 per cent, over and above what it cost to do it all. They were already getting a containerload of the product, they were shipping about $12,000 U.S., more than they would get anywhere else in the world.

            The companies quickly catch on to this once they see there are real markets, and we’ve got real markets for Nova Scotia seafood, because we’ve got a good reputation. There are few companies that need to sort of get corrected a little bit on what they do - not sending as good quality as they should.

            Our lobster-handling course is one thing that we did for lobsters, and we did a pilot project on a quality control program for lobsters. It’s something I initiated and there isn’t one that exists in the world. We’re going to be the only place in the world that has the lobster quality program, very strict - how you hold the lobsters, you have to be qualified. Perennia is going to be the auditor, and they can show up at your facility any time and audit your facility to make sure it’s done right.

            The pilot was successful. We had a little bit of trouble in Asia with it - nothing to do with the program, it was all about face, but we got them interested. The last trip to China, one of the companies that claimed they weren’t too interested committed to me at a meeting we had for an hour they’re going to invest $3 million U.S. in the lobster-holding facility, and they asked me if that was enough money. I couldn’t tell them, but I knew $3 million would get them started well, and he said that’s just in one city and they’ll replicate that all over China.

            So this is where we’re going and with that pilot project we did, we got the mortalities down under 1 per cent. It’s the lowest it has ever been. Local companies are now approaching us, they want to get involved in the program as well. It’s one of those things that we’ll have to tweak over time. The Chinese company had some suggestions and paperwork that they needed that we didn’t have in the program; we committed to doing that.

As we move this forward, that’s going to add a lot of value to our lobster. Just the fact that we’re getting low mortality, that it’s not an issue anymore with shipping. We’re going to look at designing new packaging for the flights. At this time, there is also some work going on with some sea containers, but they’re not ready yet. Nothing to do with us.  Also for shipping directly to the customer from the holding facility. That’s a huge problem because temperatures sometimes 35 degrees Celsius and it takes two hours, and sometimes the lobster is almost cooked when they get there.

All these things, these companies are really interested in pursuing all this. We’re going to develop the technology and we’re going to make it available to anyone in our quality program so they can get built or designed or packaged in that area.

            That example I used of Iceland where they rounded the corners on the box - we’ve got to go way beyond that, but the possibilities are there. There are all kinds of opportunities to grow Nova Scotia’s economy just on some really simple things that could revolutionize the industry over time, but we’ve got to do the research and development.

            We’re putting a significant amount of money in our budget for those things. We’ve got to development some more equipment to check the lobsters. It’s a big, long list, but we’re simultaneously doing a lot of these things. It’s really starting to work well and it’s a situation - we’ve got good quality product, now we’ve got to maximize the value of that product. It’s that simple. As we figure we’ve got it maximized, we’ve got to do it again - the same product, over and over again - improve and improve, and improve. It’s happening.

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: Mr. MacLeod, you have less than a minute.

            MR. MACLEOD: I can’t even clear my throat in a minute. (Laughter) I’m pleased to hear you talk about the advantages and the things that have improved. You did mention Louisbourg Seafood. They are a major employer in our community. They employ at peak production over 500 people around their different plants and that has a direct impact on what’s going on.

            I would like to have the opportunity to ask you a few more questions about the oyster industry and the Bras d’Or Lakes in particular because there have been problems in the past about different issues and diseases in the Bras d’Or Lakes and how that has affected things. I heard you talk earlier to one of my other colleagues about the potential for oysters in Nova Scotia. I’m just curious if there is any update as to what is . . .

[7:45 p.m.]

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: Order, time has elapsed. I will turn it over to the Liberal caucus for questioning. You have an hour, if you wish. Does the minister know how long his closing remarks will be?

            MR. COLWELL: I don’t know.

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: Did you have a specific amount of time you wanted.

            MR. COLWELL: Likely at least 10 or 15 minutes - maybe 10 minutes, 15, it doesn’t really matter.

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: Okay, thank you. Mr. Gordon Wilson.

            MR. GORDON WILSON: Madam Chairman, could you tell me the total time we have left in the session?

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: One hour and four minutes and 13 seconds.

            MR. GORDON WILSON: Just to start with, I heard my colleague from Sydney River-Mira-Louisbourg mention the best lobsters in Nova Scotia and I can’t take a chance also to pass up on that. It’s a conversation that has gone around for a long time. I had an opportunity to meet lobster fishermen from one end of the province to the other. I guess it was best summed up to me at one point in time finally by a lobster fisherman - obviously in my area - who said the answer to that is easy. I know a lot of testing and a lot of measuring on meat content and shipping and all that stuff but he simply said to me, who gets paid more for their lobsters in Nova Scotia than the lobster fishermen in southwestern Nova Scotia? I guess that’s your answer.

            So to start off with, knowing that there can’t be a rebuttal, which I am sure I will hear at a later date, minister, I’ve had the opportunity, it’s truly been a privilege to sit here. I think we’re into our 11^th hour - into our 12^th hour actually - and I’ve had a chance to listen to all your conversation around fisheries and I must say it’s the one place that actually draws a gallery. I commend you for your understanding and your staff and the work they do. I’m sure that’s a cumulation of the years that you’ve spent as minister.

            One thing I’d like to add is that it’s a waste to have you in the Red Room. You should be in the main Chamber. I say that for one reason, because we would then have you on Legislative TV and I think that taking that Legislative TV clip and shipping that to China as a marketing for the Province of Nova Scotia on your comments would be well worthwhile.

            In all seriousness, I think in representing my area, obviously the Clare-Digby area is one that I think pretty well has it all. When you walk around my riding - I’ll start with the salmon industry that has been in the Annapolis Basin for 18 years or 19 years. I can remember when it first came to the Basin. By the way, they are harvesting as we speak right now and probably over a period of six to eight weeks there will be 1.2 million salmon, averaging about 10 pounds each, that will come across that wharf - 12 million pounds of high-quality fish. That co-exists with our lobster industry, and I think it’s a great example and I’m quite proud of the relationship we have in that area, working together there.

            I can go right around the whole area and I’m not going to belabour a lot of conversation although I’ll give you a little break in talking here. With our lobster industry, I’ve watched the migration of that industry - and when I say migration, I mean that. LFA 35 used to have maybe four boats out in front of Digby fishing and now there’s 25 to 30. I know the dynamics and the changes that we see must be very challenging for the industry and for the regulators to keep up with that. The landings that are coming across the wharf in Digby, which used to be primarily in the scallop industry - there used to be 50 or 60 boats, and now we have upwards of 100-plus boats in that harbour and the majority of them are lobster boats. It’s a growing area that I’m sure to keep your eye on the moving target is difficult.

The other side of it I see is the work that’s being done with Riverside Lobster International and Gidney Fisheries. Riverside, for example, when I first got elected - which wasn’t that long ago - had 60 people working there. Now there are 250. A company that is talking about the challenges that they might need a daycare so they can attract more employees, approximately 30 or 40 temporary foreign workers, unbelievable people. I do have some questions down the road about some of the marketing opportunities and the challenges in that area with the advent of the new equipment they have there and at Gidney’s.

Also, I’ve watched the growth and the ups and downs in the other sectors that we have. When I say we have it all, the lobster industry is huge, the scallop industry is huge, the aquaculture industry is huge, the clam industry - I mean everybody knows that Digby clams are Digby clams - there’s no other clams in Nova Scotia that are named after a community like ours.

            We have such a tremendous opportunity in our area to grow all the sectors. It’s encouraging to watch the challenges and the changes that we’ve seen, mainly through the regulatory changes, I have to give full credit around the aquaculture industry especially. We know that we heard the outcries in our communities, some of the problems and some of the changes and challenges we had and I think that’s changing quite a bit. I have a very vested interest in everything you say and every word that you said and when I go back to my community, I think the people have also.

            My first question, I think fittingly it’s Treaty Day today. I listened very intently - I’ve heard very few questions from our Opposition people so I don’t want to ask questions that have already been asked. First Nations play a very important role in our province and I know in my area their interest in aquaculture. Seeing that it is Treaty Day, I would be very interested in knowing provincially the involvement and the opportunities and the challenges with First Nations in any of the fishing sectors that we have.

            MR. COLWELL: That’s a very good question and it’s a very important question, actually. Recently we went to Aqua Nor in Norway and we took three Chiefs with us - I was trying to think of the Chiefs - all of them very interested in aquaculture, different types of aquaculture each one. We’re very excited about that. They have changed some of their attitudes towards aquaculture since we put the new regulations in place.

Actually Chief Paul is the Co-Chair of the Advisory Committee on Aquaculture. We meet only twice a year and we have one meeting in Halifax and one meeting in Membertou, to respect him. I chair the meeting here and he co-chairs it here. He chairs the meeting in Membertou and I co-chair it, so it works very well. I have a tremendous amount of respect for Chief Paul, a tremendous amount of respect for the Mi'kmaq Nation, the work that they’re doing around the fishery is something that is traditional to them.

It’s exciting to see that they’re very interesting in moving aquaculture forward. They are interested in finfish and Whycocomagh is doing a fantastic job with trout and they want to expand that facility. They do the processing, they’ve got every fish sold that they can possibly grow and orders for more that they can’t fill, so that’s very positive. We see that happening.

            I often talk to Chief Paul and the other chiefs. It’s refreshing to see the business approach that they have. There are few businesses around that are as business-oriented as they are now. They want to make money for their bands, they want to make sure that their people are working. They want to add to Nova Scotia’s economy and they’re very clear about that. It’s an exciting partnership that we’re developing.

            I personally don’t do anything with the treaty rights. I tell them very clearly that anything I do as a business is totally business - any treaty rights things have to be dealt with the proper departments of the federal and provincial governments. So we work on a business approach to what we do - I like that, they like that, we both win. If it’s a treaty issue they can go discuss that and come back and then see what we’re going to do.

            It’s a change - I’ve seen a change even in the last year. I remember visiting one of the chiefs recently and he was adamantly against aquaculture. I took aquaculture scientists with us and our director of aquaculture and they said they’d never seen such co-operation from a government before around what they were interested in, and what they were interested in we are very interested in. They are talking about doing some aquaculture around clams, which we’ve wanted to do for a long time - excellent ideas, excellent approach to that. I believe you were at that particular meeting as well - maybe, maybe not. I have so many meetings that I can’t keep track of all of them. It was a really good meeting.

            So we started a new relationship there towards developing that kind of industry. It’s refreshing to see that partnership evolving with the province and also other parts of the industry. As we move aquaculture forward in particular, we’re going to need a lot of partnerships developed with the fishing industry, with the Mi'kmaq, with the developers that come in and the companies that come in - or the existing companies - to make sure that we have the whole partnership.

            The other thing is that some municipalities went to Aqua Nor with us too, and it’s the first time the municipalities have really been engaged. Before we could take - and we can still do it - we can put an aquaculture site out in front of their municipality and that doesn’t do us any good, the company any good or the municipality any good. So it’s a partnership that we’ve started to develop with the Mi'kmaq, with the municipalities - all of us working together. That is a distinct change from whatever has happened in the past, so we’re looking forward to that. I’m sort of deviating from your question a little bit but it’s all interrelated.

            MR. GORDON WILSON: I know the meeting you are speaking about now, yes, my apologies with Bear River First Nation - we’ve met and talked a while ago about that.

            In the aquaculture industry it’s no secret that there’s been some challenges in the past - managing of some of the sites has been challenging. I was a provincial employee for quite a few years and I remember when I was with Natural Resources especially, my colleagues with the Department of Fisheries, I had a nice 18-foot Boston whaler. We were better equipped within Natural Resources at that time - this was a while ago - than my friends in provincial Fisheries were and we used to work together quite a bit but I always felt a little bad in that sense.

            Also I know that because things have been changing, some of the locations of these sites aren’t easily accessible, some of these pens aren’t. We’ve seen some problems with interactions with fishing gear, lobster gear, these kinds of things.

            What can you tell me has changed since the days that I was with Natural Resources to today, in regards to adequate equipment and things to address again those changes that we’re seeing in the industry and the ability for your staff to keep up with those changes?

[8:00 p.m.]

            MR. COLWELL: Actually I’m surprised that no one asked us this question, it’s a very important question. One thing that we realized when we started looking at our regulations, our ability to react to the industry wasn’t good. We basically had to call up anyone that had an aquaculture site and say our vet, for instance, is coming down tomorrow, can you take us out on the site. Of course, the answer would come back sometimes, we can’t take you for a couple of days because the boat is tied up. So that would make you think that maybe they didn’t want you on the site that day - that was the fact of it.

            We have a 21-foot Boston whaler that - thanks to the generosity of DFO - they leased to us for almost nothing, but that still doesn’t do what we need to do because a lot of weather we can’t go out in it. We do have now in our possession and we just got it, but we haven’t announced it yet - I guess it’s okay to talk about it here - it’s a 32-foot aluminum all-weather boat, so we can go out in pretty well any kind of weather. It’s equipped with all the stuff we need - electronics and everything. We waited almost a year and a half. We had it custom built for the department. We actually didn’t have people trained to run the boats so the training is either underway or complete. We hired some people specifically to operate these boats, so we’re pretty excited about that.

            On top of the boat, we also have an ROV so we can actually dive under the system with the ROV with a camera on it and we can take samples from the site. Also, I believe it has GPS on it so we know exactly where we are with the ROV. That’s something that departments never had. So finally we’ve caught up and surpassed the Department of Natural Resources in that regard. This boat is not typically used for enforcement. This would be to do the samples and if enforcement is needed, then the Department of Environment could use the boat or our operator could take them out on the site if need be.

            The biggest deal with this is now we can go any time. If we get a complaint about anything, we can make sure that our boat is available and it goes out, does the inspections or whatever we have to do or tests, or whatever the case may be, and we don’t have to rely on the generosity of the companies we’re there to check on. That has been a big change, so there’s a huge change in the department from what it was three and half or four years ago.

            We’ve got so many things in place now that weren’t there before that made it impossible for our staff really to do their work. Now they have the resources, and if we need more resources we will.

            One thing we go on a regular basis and check on is fish health - not to do the fish health work, but just to check on fish health if there is a report of any kind of problem. We now have the equipment to go do that and take samples and take them back in a controlled environment so we know exactly what we have and what we do. So it’s exciting to see this.

This is a high-speed boat. I don’t know how fast it will go - it will do 32 knots. I haven’t even seen the boat yet - it’s just a picture of it, but I remember seeing the requirement to buy it, and the discussion around it. It’s going to be very clearly marked Nova Scotia Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture.

That’s the other thing we’re changing too. We want to be visible in the community. So many times we’ve been accused of not being on site where there was some kind of an issue - we were there, but nobody knew it was us, so we’re changing that on our vehicles. We’ve got new vehicles as well to tow the boats. We can launch the boat from anywhere in the province we can find a boat launch, which we couldn’t do before.

We are really equipped - before we had no way to enforce things, we had no way to check them, and now we have all that. We also have remote sensors now for finfish sites with temperature, dissolved oxygen in real time, so we can watch it from our office and see what’s going on. We never had that before as well. There is going to be more and more of this added.

Also, we’re doing our research on potential sites for aquaculture or sites that are already there to do all kinds of testing because we have the equipment to do it and the people to do it now, which we never had before.

            MR. GORDON WILSON: I don’t know if it was meant to be but you mentioned the word “research” so it’s a perfect opening for the next question that I had. I heard you a couple of times, through questions from previous colleagues, talk about the role that some of the universities - like Dalhousie, also Perennia, I don’t think I heard any mention of any other universities outside that - but I do believe there has been some involvement with Université Sainte-Anne in some things but I’m not 100 per cent sure what it is.

            More so - I mean again provincially - what role do the universities play in moving any of the industry within the fisheries sector forward?

            MR. COLWELL: That’s a very good question and it’s an exciting answer to that one, too. I’ll use Université Sainte-Anne as an example and just one example. We’ve done work with Dalhousie, we’re looking at a project now with the University College of Cape Breton, and we do a lot of work in the agriculture industry with Mount Saint Vincent.

We’re looking to working with all the universities in the province; each one has their own level of expertise. Université Sainte-Anne in particular has done a tremendous amount of work with us around our lobster quality program and our lobster training course. They’ve been working on the lobster industry very quietly for years and years and they’ve developed some expertise that is second to none in the world. We’re leaning on that expertise to help us.

We actually gave them a contact a while ago to do the interaction between the finfish aquaculture and lobsters because there’s a myth out there with naysayers - and I don’t know if it’s a myth or is true, but whatever it is, we will find out what the interaction really is between the lobster fishery and the finfish aquaculture, which is a very important topic for both industries, extremely important.

            The finfish site operators typically tell us that their biggest problem is the lobster fishermen getting their buoys all tangled up in their anchor lines because they tried to get as close as they can to get to the finfish farm because there are a lot of lobsters under there. We don’t know if that’s accurate or not. Anywhere there’s a finfish operation we haven’t heard any complaints from the fishermen about catching lobsters. There might be some other ones but not about catching lobsters. Université Sainte-Anne did some preliminary work around it and now they’re doing it actually under the cage - I believe testing is underway now.

            We haven’t talked about it, but we have a science committee that I appointed for aquaculture and Dr. Gray from the Agricultural College in Truro, he has a great deal of expertise actually - from Scotland, where he came from - in aquaculture, so I appointed him chairman of that committee. We’ve made appointments from several other universities, all at the Ph.D. level, who have expertise in fish and fish products. They peer review all the applications we get and they peer reviewed the one at the Université Sainte-Anne, made some suggestions on how they might improve their approach to this. We incorporate that, exactly what they said, in our process so we’re anxiously awaiting the results of that but I would think that it’s going to be some time before we get those results back. It’s not a quick and easy thing to do but you want to make sure you do it properly and we put the proper resources in place to fund it.

            That’s just some of the examples and we can repeat that over and over again. The more we can work with practical solutions with the universities, the better it is. The Cape Breton University came in the other day and there’s a new product that I want to see if it’s safe for human consumption. If it is, I can sell it literally in Asia. We don’t know - it has never been marketed, never been tried, so we’re going to find out if it’s safe to eat. I don’t think I’d eat it, but anyway - maybe I will some day.

That’s the sort of thing we’re doing - really pushing the envelope to see what we can come up with. The universities are an integral part and extremely important part of that. It’s time that we did some practical research. There is a lot of scientific research, which is critically important, but we have to do practical research on things that really help.

I just got a list handed to me. It’s a longer list than I thought. These guys have been spending money I don’t know about. That’s good news. We’ve been working with Dalhousie, Acadia, Saint Mary’s, Université Sainte-Anne, St. F.X. and the Cape Breton University, just to name a few. We want to expand this. This is all industry supported research - except for the one for Université Sainte-Anne - that we’re doing ourselves because we want it totally independent. Answer back to that question.

It’s a really good working relationship we have. We’re going to expand that more and more. I think that’s the answer. I use the Icelandic model at Mentis about research on the codfish. That’s how they achieved with the codfish - working with the universities. They actually have a training program right in Mentis so if you’re going to take a Master’s degree or Ph.D. degree, the university actually sets up a classroom in the facility, and we’re going to do the same model in Perennia.

I’ve been talking to two universities about it already and they’re very interested in doing it. They would send a professor in, do the theoretical part of it and then they work at, say, Perennia in this case on actual projects that we need solutions to. That’s how the industry in Iceland really moved ahead light years in no time flat. They had the expertise of the professors, expertise of a research establishment that the goal was to create new products, and the two of them come together, which never happens.

So we’re looking at that model too. It’s a slow process getting it all set up, but once it gets set up and rolling, it will work very well based on what we’ve seen in other places in the world. That’s sort of a short answer to what we’re doing and there are so many positive things happening. It’s only possible from the standpoint of all of us working together for one goal - that’s to grow Nova Scotia’s economy.

MR. GORDON WILSON: China - I know we tease you about it. I wish I’d had a chance here just recently - I know that there was a trip over there with some colleagues of mine, the Warden from the Municipality of Digby, the Warden from the Municipality of Clare, the President of Université Sainte-Anne. I only had an opportunity briefly with the two wardens to even vaguely get into the trip. I understand that they are going to be doing a joint council presentation, and they’re going to let me know the date of that. I’m just keeping my fingers crossed that the Legislature is not sitting because I truly want to hear about that. I also know that there were some members of our industry that are accompanying you, David Deveau, from Riverside Lobsters.

The only comments I really heard back were that these trips are not easy. My two municipal colleagues could not understate how difficult - these are not vacations. These are not cruises. This is very important work and very hard work, and they were both extremely excited about what it meant to the province. I do know that they spoke very highly of the tenacity that you have. I think you’ve been there four times? Five times - we missed one, I’ll have to tell my colleagues.

[8:15 p.m.]

            What we have for opportunities in southwest Nova Scotia and more particularly in my riding - I know these are provincial initiatives, but I’m curious if you can tell me in generalities, I know that you can’t get into specifics about deals that went on there - what the fruit is. We know that the fruit is opening up the markets in China. For what we have in our area, how does that directly link to my community? I know my colleagues are talking about going back, and again, I’m very curious about how this works. Can you tell me how your trips to China make a difference for us?

            MR. COLWELL: It’s not an easy answer, not a short answer. The really short answer is building relationships. The Chinese market and the Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese, all have great cultural difference than we have. You have to get to know the people. You have to get to understand the culture. You have to spend time with them.

            The first thing that anyone in any one of those countries asks you is, how many times have you been here? If it’s your first trip, they’re happy that it’s your first trip. The next question they ask is, when are you coming back? It’s that simple. The more times you visit one of these countries, the happier they are. They want to build relationships. They want to get to know you, get to know you as a person, get to know what Nova Scotia is about and what Canada is about when we do these trips.

            Fortunately, I have been able to build extremely good relationships with my counterparts in China and Korea. We have just started in Vietnam and some other areas. I can tell you, these trips are no fun. It’s a long, slow process.

            We see where we have come. I’ll just give you an example. In 1996, we had $5 million worth of exports. In 2009, we had $14 million. This number, I think is much higher than what we have here, but so far in 2016, we have $256 million. The trips are paying off big time, and they’re paying off in actual benefits to the harvesters in your area. It keeps the price up on the lobsters, the one product in particular.

            The demand is unbelievable, just unbelievable. They want reliable high-quality products. In Asia, their government system is a whole lot different than ours. Whatever the government tells the people to do, typically in the country, they pretty well do.

            Going there as a minister is important. I can remember one company in particular - it wasn’t in the fisheries, but they are getting into fisheries now, just the export part of it. That was the first time I went to China. It was an agricultural conference, and I was there. One of the companies from Nova Scotia came over and said to me, can you come over and say hello to my customer? Sure, no problem, and I go over there. The gentleman from here spoke fluent Mandarin, and of course, I can’t speak any, and he’s fluent in English. The gentleman we went to see could speak only Mandarin, he couldn’t speak English. Usually in China and Asia and these places, now they take English classes, so a lot of the people can speak English. Anyway I went over for a minute and a half or two minutes. We had a picture taken. We had a chitchat with an interpreter and everything, and then I was gone. I never thought any more of it. Two or three days later – it would probably be better if Scott could tell this story, if he were allowed to talk - the guy had credibility because I had come over, because the minister had talked to him, because politicians are held in really high regard in these countries. Because I was there, he was interested in doing business.

            To make a long story short, a couple of years later the Premier and I were over there, doing the grand official signing of the agreement with the two companies, and it just happened that this guy was the distributor for Perrier water in all of China. He was selling a very special bottled blueberry juice. They signed the agreement, and since then, they’ve been doing really, really well. Because of that first meeting, they ordered a whole container-load for just a sample. That’s typical in China.

            When you go, and you go as a minister, it’s a whole lot different than going as a business. Once the businesses there realize that Nova Scotia business is supported by the province, not just from the standpoint of money but the fact that there’s credibility with that company, then they will do business with them. It’s that simple. It’s hard to build that rapport to start with, but it’s important to reinforce it, reinforce it, reinforce it.

            We’re working on some major deals in Asia right now, and if they come through, it would be the biggest to ever happen in the province for our department - and probably some of the biggest deals that have ever happened in the province. Who knows if we’re going to be successful, but I’d say we have a pretty good chance. We’ve built such a good rapport that one of my counterparts there calls me “brother” and the other one calls me “friend.” That’s quite a compliment in Asia - a very great compliment.

            It just shows that it’s a different type of marketing. Nova Scotia is leading Canada in marketing in Asia, especially when it comes to seafood. We’re way ahead of everybody else, to the point that some other provinces are complaining that it should be a pan-Atlantic approach, because they’ve been caught with their pants down a little bit. We go to trade shows and we easily double or triple the sales that they do. We have a better setup. Everything is really ahead.

            Actually, we were at the Senate hearing - or not a hearing, but the committee meeting on agriculture - today. A senator from Manitoba said that she was in China and she was ashamed after what they had displayed - privately ashamed of what they’d done when they saw the Nova Scotia booth. She remembered seeing me there, and what we had done around the same industry.

            We’re leading the country in a lot of this, because of the gentleman sitting beside me, and all of his staff who work around us, all the support staff - they’re committed to growing the economy. We have to do these trips. We have to. Quite frankly, I don’t like travelling. I’ve travelled a lot in my life, and I really don’t like it - 24 hours on an airplane, and then you go to one city, and then the next day you’re going to another city, and another city. They seem to have somehow arranged that there’s no time, only time to sleep in between the meetings. You get sort of worn down afterward. But we really take advantage of the time we have there.

            It’s expensive to go, so we need to get results when we’re there. Some of the things we work on, we may start this year and it may be a year or two years before we really get a lot of things done. But it’s coming.

            We’ve seen so much happen in that market so quickly. They want to buy product. Our biggest problem with product is a continuous supply, every week, 365 days a year - same quality or better quality each time - and they’ll buy it. There’s not even a question. When you see the market and the huge opportunities - you cannot imagine it until you see it. You have to see it. So many people, and the people are great to deal with. It’s a long process to explain all the stuff that we do, but it really is paying off.

            MR. GORDON WILSON: I think we have about 10 minutes more before you are probably going to want some wrap-up time here.

            The clam industry - we’ve watched the clam industry for years. I’ve experienced the challenges, especially when I was with the Municipality of Digby, of open beaches, closed beaches, depuration, that whole area.

            I had to give a lot of kudos to my municipal counterparts at the time. They envisioned - if you can well imagine the Annapolis Basin, for example, from out toward the ferry terminal all the way into the Town of Digby, all the way around the Conway area, into Smiths Cove, and then all the way to Bear River, that whole catchment area for their wastewater treatment now funnels or pumps to one single discharge location in the Annapolis Basin. It’s a tremendous example of municipal governments working together. More so, it’s a tremendous example of trying to give that Annapolis Basin the best opportunity it has to again become fruitful or more fruitful.

            There was some questioning on Friday, I believe, in regard to some of the monitoring. I know it’s not our area of responsibility, but we do our best with depuration and allowing that to happen. I’m just interested to know your thoughts on how we can explore more opportunities in that Annapolis Basin, which a good colleague of mine, Junior Theriault - it’s hard sometimes to get here and not mention Junior and some of the wisdom that he had.

            Saint Marys Bay and the Annapolis Basin are simple extensions of the Annapolis Valley, which is the breadbasket of Nova Scotia. When you think of it that way, the lush productivity that we have in the Annapolis Valley and how it’s noted for that, we come to the two bodies of water, and it doesn’t stop there. They are known to be tremendous areas for growing protein out of the water. That’s why I’m so passionate about that area - I think the potential is huge.

            Going back to the clams, can you tell me what your thoughts are on how we can explore better opportunities of growing that industry - and right across the province, don’t get me wrong. But again, the Digby clams name is huge and I’d like to see it continue to be huge.

            MR. COLWELL: Well, the clam industry is probably the least-valued industry in the province. The truth of the matter is that it is a multi-million dollar industry that sort of quietly works away. I think we could do a lot to move it even further.

            I did a lot of work years ago in Chezzetcook with the clam industry. They would argue that their clams are better - I’m not going to get into that argument - and they claim that that industry and that area is up to about $6 million, when you would never know that it was worth a penny.

            It’s an industry that we’ve really got to look more and more at aquaculture opportunities for. There are some people who have been interested. I think it’s a next step with that. If we do it that way, I think we can get the production up a lot higher and we can get a consistent supply, because the problem has been getting a consistent supply.

            With the federal government not doing the water sampling that they used to do, it is causing a great deal of trouble. As I said earlier, we’re doing a study now on depuration and the whole issue around that, to see what we can do long term about helping the industries succeed. A lot of the clam processors - I think there’s only five in the province - there’s four or five of them in the whole province so they actually process all the clams in the whole province. Some of them are pretty small operations and to put in a depuration system is a pretty big price tag. But past the price tag you also have to have a lab to test the water that’s going through your system to make sure it’s doing exactly what it should do and that when you put your product on the market it’s safe, to make sure there are no issues, so that’s an issue.

[8:30 p.m.]

            We’re looking at the whole issue to see if we can get something set up that would make it easy for them to do this properly. We’ll have to wait and see when the report comes back and see what it’s all about. That’s a depuration site.

            Some of these areas that are closed, that may not actually be the problem but there’s no way to test them right now, the federal government has stopped it. We can’t afford to step in and do the testing, we just can’t afford to do it. But we’re looking at avenues that maybe we can get someone in the area to take the tests. Some of the tests we can do in our own labs because we have pretty extensive labs in our fish lab and also agricultural labs in Truro, so we are looking at the possibilities of that.

            I think the long-term solution is aquaculture and with areas that a digger may have, that’s his leased area that he looks after and works on and makes sure it’s basically a farm and between the high water and the low water mark. If we can get to that point I think we’ll be much further ahead than we are now and just go and harvest, get the proper size clams and then turn over the flats and away you go.

            That’s okay for a while, it has been that way forever but if we can get 10 per cent more production out of that site or 20 per cent more production, it’s a huge economic impact to that community, and it also gives it a stronger supply and more regulated supply so you can say okay, today if you’ve got an aquaculture site, we need 150 buckets today. Then you go and harvest 150 buckets and you stop. You don’t gather them all up. Then the next day you might need 50, so it’s more regulated, it’s easier to harvest, you know that it’s there and it makes it easier to supply the marketplace. I think that’s where we’ve got to go.

            I know the First Nations are interested in potential aquaculture clam harvesting and it makes a lot of sense so we’re looking at all that. You talk about the municipal government, we’ve probably got the closest working relationship in history with the municipalities and our department. That’s critical for us because they are the people on the ground, they are the people who know what needs to be done in their community, more so than we do, even though we keep close track of it. They’re important partners that actually have been ignored for many years when it comes to the industries that I represent so we’re interested in doing more and more of that.

            MR. GORDON WILSON: The last question I have is - and again, I apologize, I’ve been here for your duration, which again is an education but I hear an awful lot of this from mainly our offshore draggers and our offshore scallop fishermen about our marine protected areas. Again, I know that’s not an area that we are responsible for managing, it’s a federal area, but I would like to know what your position is on the federal government’s goal of increasing the number of marine protected areas in Nova Scotia.

            When I go back to my community I always have a lot more questions than I have answers. If you could provide me with your position on that one, that would help me an awful lot the next time I go down on the wharf.

            MR. COLWELL: The marine protected areas we’re very concerned about. We’re not against marine protected areas, I think they’re very important. I did bring this up with the federal Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard at interprovincial meetings, about marine protected areas, and if you had seen the maps that the DFO put out first, I don’t think there would have been enough space left over to catch one lobster and never mind the lobster we catch today, never mind anything else. We were pretty well mapped out to do the whole thing.

            At that time they had 52 potential sites off Nova Scotia and we have 37,000 square kilometres already protected, so it would have had a super negative effect on Nova Scotia. So we put a pretty strong case forward and finally the minister said that this has got to be shared across the country. So they backed off from us a lot and started looking at a place like the north off Newfoundland, New Brunswick almost had nothing, P.E.I. was very little anyway but they had very little and it really has sort of changed over time and has started to see a lot of change and where they’re at.

They’ve got to get to the goals, they’re going to get to the goals but the case I put forward, we don’t want it to be at the economic detriment of Nova Scotia. We can still do some things in protected areas and we have to make sure those things happen.

            We did send a letter off to the Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard, and also the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, which I will table here, and it is signed by myself, the former Minister of Energy, the Minister of Natural Resources and the Minister of Environment. All of us signed on this letter and I will table this for the committee. It’s very distinctive where we are and we very clearly laid out our concerns around marine protected areas.

            The whole issue of marine protected areas is so important but we can’t do it at the detriment of the economy and at the same time we can’t use the economy as an excuse not to put in a marine protected area so it’s a very fine balance. I think we’ve hit that balance and I think the federal government is listening to us now.

            MR. GORDON WILSON: Thank you very much.

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: There are 12 minutes and 12 seconds left. Would you like to take the rest of the time or is there another question from the Liberal caucus?

            MR. GORDON WILSON: I didn’t have another question. I believe my colleague has but again, you said you wanted 15 minutes to wrap up so I won’t take too long.

            Just to comment again, it’s an education to sit here. I think my colleagues from the Opposition would say the same thing, that Estimates is probably one of the best opportunities there is in the Legislature to actually learn what’s going on in the Province of Nova Scotia and I appreciate the way that you’ve brought it here. Thank you.

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Wilson. Ms. Regan.

            HON. KELLY REGAN: I was sitting here listening to your fascinating information that you’ve been sharing with us tonight. One of the things I was thinking about was a number of years ago I had the opportunity to do some sport fishing on the West Coast in the Yukon and then also had an opportunity to fish off Vancouver Island as well.

            I know there’s lots of sport fishing in different parts of Atlantic Canada but I was wondering if you could tell us, are we doing anything to encourage it here? Sort of, what’s happening in that area?

            MR. COLWELL: It’s a long answer, but I’m going to try to give the shortest one I can. We have commissioned a study to see what we have to do to attract out-of-province sport fishermen. Sport fishermen are probably as dedicated as golfers and in some cases maybe even more so.

            I talked earlier about the rehabilitation program we’re doing on the West River in Sheet Harbour. That’s an extremely successful story, and if we can continue that and actually put an ocean-based finfish farm with wild salmon in the Sheet Harbour area near that river so that they get used to fresh water that comes out of there and the conditions around there and condition them for moving back into the rivers after we release them. That looks like it’s going to add another value to it because what Parks Canada has done in New Brunswick has had really incredible returns. We’re going to do one thing different when we get to that point, which is that we’re going to release the salmon up the river instead of at the mouth of the river to spawn there. Then they can come back.

            We have had tremendous co-operation from Parks Canada and the local community. There’s a wildlife club there. There is the Nova Scotia Salmon Association. That river is going to serve as a model for the rest of Nova Scotia and probably the country. We have done things there thanks to the work of the Nova Scotia Salmon Association previous to us getting involved. It’s probably world standard now in rehabilitation of rivers.

            DFO tried for a long time to get results, and they get minimum results. But the Salmon Association has done it. They have raised a pile of money from industry and individuals. Co-operation, it is unbelievable how that has really contributed to this river coming back. A friend of mine lives on the river, and he said this year is the first year he has seen salmon jump in front of his house - he has beautiful clear water - in 25 years. That is something.

            A salmon fishing trip, I have said this earlier, is between $2,000 and $5,000 a day, and that doesn’t count the hotel, doesn’t count the meals, doesn’t count whatever else is connected. The other thing which I have not talked about is the ability for outfitters and guides to make a living off of these rivers once we get them up to standard. It’s really successful.

            Once we get this perfected, with the help of Natural Resources, the helicopters now for the biggest liming project ever in North America on the land adjacent to the river, that’s going to help the forest and help the fish. We’re really cutting edge where we’re going.

            I’m so excited that our department is part of that now. Prior to me becoming the minister, that wasn’t the case. There was no participation whatsoever from the province. There was some assistance, some expertise, I believe, but that’s about it. Now we’re subsidizing freight on lime through Agriculture, so Agriculture is involved. Fisheries hired scientists who have been working on the river full-time. There’s a full-time job on that river.

            As soon as that one is to a point where we figure we’re in pretty good shape, we’re also going to get him to work on other rivers. We’ll pick another river with the Salmon Association. The Mi’kmaq have already got a river picked out that they want to do in Cape Breton. We have committed to them that we will do that as well. It’s exciting, where we are. It’s even more exciting where we hope to get, and we are getting there. The results are incredible, just incredible. The pH in the water has come up to where the fish have now got a healthy environment to live in.

            They put a lime doser on the river about 10 years ago. The trouble with the doser is it’s a big device that monitors the pH in the water and adds lime to bring the pH up to where it is. When that water flows through, it’s gone. What we’re doing now . . .

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: Order, the time has elapsed for the Liberal caucus. We’ll have closing remarks from Mr. Colwell.

[8:45 p.m.]

            MR. COLWELL: I’m going to continue on talking about the river. Maybe you can let me know when there is about a minute left and I’ll read the resolution.

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: You have about four and a half minutes now.

            MR. COLWELL: I want to talk about the river rehabilitation again. That river used to be one of the best salmon fishing rivers in eastern Canada. Basically a few years ago before they started this rehabilitation you might see 50 fish, 100 fish in the river. We’ve got over 70 fish this year have returned, and the smolt count is going up every year substantially.

            We have not done any restocking there. We’ll start stocking now, which will bring the numbers up even higher, but prior to that there was no stocking - just the natural rehabilitation of the river and the stocks itself. So once we start stocking that will make a big difference.

            Once we get the finfish site in the Sheet Harbour area - and we’ve got one aquaculture company that’s willing to provide the expertise, the food and the nets and everything to put this in place, and I’m sure there are going to be others.

            This has been a unique project because everybody we’ve talked to is in agreement and they want to do it. There are a lot of sport fishermen out there, but not only that, they see the benefit to the environment. As we see the environment improve for these fish, it helps us all, and it goes back to our environmental sustainability goals that we have to get the province. So every river we can rehabilitate is another thing we can do.

            So I just want to wrap up this thing. It’s exciting what I get the privilege to do every day - to help grow the economy, help grow Nova Scotia and all kinds of employment for people, help build wealth in the province - wealth creates jobs. We see it happening all the time. Members from all Parties here talk about the things that they’d like to see in their communities and we agree.

We’ve got great opportunities in aquaculture and finfish and shellfish. We didn’t even talk about seaweeds. Seaweeds and marine plants are some of the fastest growing aquaculture in the world and we haven’t even touched it yet in Nova Scotia. We talked about clams - again, that hasn’t really been touched in Nova Scotia.

So all these opportunities are there, and as we get closer and closer to reaching our goal of more employment, more wealth generation in the communities, working together with everybody - and that’s what we’ve done so well. We’ve got the municipalities on side. They’re surprised when we call them up and ask if they would like to be a member of one of our committees or if they would like to get a briefing on aquaculture or would they like to get a briefing on something else. They’ve never had that before. It has always been a disconnect. The disconnect has cost us all as Nova Scotians. I’m a former municipal councillor as well as being an MLA.

So it’s so important that we work together. There’s one problem we have in the province and we all have to work to that problem. We’ve got to grow our population and grow our economy. Without growing the economy, nothing else can happen.

It’s the biggest budget in history for the Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture in Nova Scotia.

MADAM CHAIRMAN: Shall Resolution E10 stand?

The resolution stands.

Thank you, minister to you and your staff, and the MLAs.

            [The subcommittee adjourned at 8:50 p.m.]