HALIFAX, FRIDAY, MARCH 23, 2018

SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE ON SUPPLY

10:55 A.M.

CHAIRMAN

Ms. Suzanne Lohnes-Croft

MADAM CHAIRMAN: The Subcommittee of the Whole on Supply will come to order. We will be doing Budget Estimates for the Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture today.

            Resolution E10 - Resolved, that a sum not exceeding $20,889,000 be granted to the Lieutenant Governor to defray expenses in respect of the Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture, pursuant to the Estimate.

MADAM CHAIRMAN: Welcome, Minister Colwell, if you would introduce your staff and give your opening remarks.

            HON. KEITH COLWELL: Thank you very much. I have with me today the Deputy Minister, Executive Director, Finance Manager, and a group of other staff with me today from the department.

            Madam Chairman, it is with great pleasure I come here today to talk about one of the most exciting industries in Nova Scotia, the seafood industry. When I took the portfolio about four years ago we were in third place in export sales in the country and today we’re number one, a position that we attained approximately two and a half years ago.

 [11:00 a.m.]

            We are very proud of that and I want to thank the people in the industry - the hard-working people who work in the fish plants, the harvesters, the processors, who have made that possible, along with our hard-working staff who have made commitments to working with the industry and coming up with new, innovative ideas to make this possibly happen, the people in our department who have also worked on the marketing so diligently and so effectively. It has really been a team effort, with the government, industry and, indeed, research establishments. It is exciting.

            This year, we had a high record of export sales. We attained $2 billion, well in excess of the Ivany goal of doubling the exports in 10 years and we achieved that in just four.

            It is exciting to see our markets continue to grow in all kinds of different areas, especially in Asia where we spent a lot of time developing and opening new markets that have added to this $2 billion opportunity for us, as well as maintaining our U.S. markets and expanding our European markets. It has all been very positive and it goes right across the whole band of all the products we sell, including lobster, crab, scallops, shrimp, and the list goes on and on.

            We are also very excited about the opportunity to grow aquaculture in the Province of Nova Scotia. This year, again, we hit an all-time high in excess of $100 million in aquaculture sales which were made up from finfish, shell fish, and sea plants. That industry employs over 600 full-time people and draws young people into the fold, which is often not the case in industry in many other areas.

            If I could just go back to the commercial fishing industry, as well. That industry employs directly over 10,000 people and probably, indirectly, two to three times that many people.

            To put it into perspective, our exports in fisheries of $2 billion is double the value of the ships contract that the last government touted so well, and employs over 10 times more people.

            It’s a very, very important long-term benefit to the province and, indeed, it is bringing new economic benefit to the province through exports. Exports - there are various numbers around it. The one I’d heard when I was exporting was seven to one ratio, so the $2 billion in exports really have an economic impact of $14 billion on Nova Scotia’s economy. We are very proud of that, and all Nova Scotians should be.

            We’ve looked at the tremendous support I’ve received from my Cabinet colleagues and the Premier of the province when it comes to funding, and the funding levels in the Department of Fisheries are the highest ever in history.

            Not only that, but we’ve had programs around aquaculture to do some scientific research and development work, and also continue to develop our long-term sustainable growth in aquaculture through a rigorous set of regulations and acts that we have in place that places us number one in the world in regulatory ability in that regard, with the opportunity to look at the environment, as well as the opportunity for employment and, indeed, the opportunity to grow Nova Scotia’s economy.

            That industry, I believe, in the province could grow to over a billion dollars with the right added value products. We’re at $100 million now, and we could go easily 10 times bigger on that.

            I also want to briefly talk about a very exciting project that is another case of government departments working together. I talked about CNS, the Department of Agriculture, and African Nova Scotian Affairs working jointly on a project to market Nova Scotia agriculture and seafood products that puts almost $1 million in place through those three departments working very closely together.

            I want to thank the Department of Natural Resources directly. I know I approached three different ministers on this, when they were ministers at the Department of Natural Resources, about using Natural Resources helicopters to use the bomb lime around the rivers that were working on salmon habitat and as a result of that - I can recall the first meetings we had with the helicopter pilots and they said, no, it should be contracted out, and we had quite a discussion over it.

            To make a long story short, the biggest proponents we have now of liming the river, outside of the Salmon Association and our own staff, is the Department of Natural Resources helicopter pilots and their crews. They have done an exceptional job of working with us and indeed, making this the biggest helicopter liming project in the history of North America, on the West River Sheet Harbour.

            That has come with some incredible benefits to the sport fishing industry in Nova Scotia which is very important to us. It’s a subject that is very near and dear to my heart. I grew up fishing when other kids were playing ball. I haven’t fished since I became minister, the first time since I was seven. I don’t know what happened there but I think it kept me too busy.

            We’ve seen a continuous investment, we get co-operation from companies, we’ve got co-operation from the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the Coast Guard, the Department of Natural Resources, ACOA, and private investors to really do a huge job on the West River Sheet Harbour. Just to give you an example of how far it has come, this is a project that has been in place for a long time, was initiated by the Nova Scotia Salmon Association with their own funds and over a 10-year period.

            With our involvement in it - it’s the first time the province had ever been involved in this at any level - with our involvement in helping them, and I stress that it’s their project, we really have helped them. The gentleman who works with us now at Perennia, Dr. Eddie Halfyard, is probably one of the most authorities in the world now on restoration of rivers. The West River is where he cut his teeth, took his Master’s Degree and his Ph.D., so it’s really a pleasure to have him on staff to work on that project.

            Just to give you some of the successes we’ve seen, prior to the liming process we did, we would see 3,000 to 3,500 salmon smolts annually in the river. After the liming, we’re seeing between 9,000 and 12,000 a year. Just to give you an idea, a lot of people say why bother rehabilitating a salmon river? Well I can tell you that our sport fishing group in our department have been very active and they see the benefit of sport fishing, for recreational people who just want to get away and get a relaxing day, which is a wonderful way to spend the time on a river or a lake or just relaxing near water. We have 80,000 active participants in Nova Scotia involved in sport fishing and it’s pretty exciting.

When we get these rivers so that we can reopen them for salmon fishing, salmon fishing costs you between $2,000 and $5,000 a day for a guide to do a proper fishing trip for one day. The economic benefit for tourism is probably higher than anything else you can possibly do. There’s many willing salmon fishermen who will gladly pay that kind of price to come fishing. That’s another area we never talk about, the economic opportunities.

            I also want to talk about the great work of our stocking programs for salmon and trout. We have three hatcheries in the Province of Nova Scotia. Again, the people who work in these facilities often don’t get credit for the great work they do. We have the Margaree that has released 0.25 million Atlantic salmon in Cape Breton rivers alone - and I want to repeat this, 0.25 million Atlantic salmon in the Cape Breton river system in 2017 alone. The economic benefit of that is unbelievable.

            We’ve also stocked many rivers and lakes all throughout the province and our three hatcheries have worked diligently every year to do that. We also have a large group of volunteers who have helped us every year. We also have a program that allows free fishing for institutions for their patients who would like to fish, again a very medicinal thing to do, a very positive thing.

            We try to promote tourism. It’s really important that this is part of that activity. We’re very pleased this year that we announced free fishing licences for young people 16 and 17 years old. Previously at 16 they had to start paying for a licence. The idea with that was to try to get young people into fishing, who maybe started with their family and at 16 they stopped. They still have to get a licence, we want them to know that they have to get a licence but it’s free of charge, that they can get that licence. That was an idea put forward by our staff.

Each year through the fishing licence habitat fund there is $320,000 contributed from that and the community groups, the 23 community groups conduct a fish habitat restoration, Adopt a Stream Program as well as in addition to the West River Sheet Harbour liming project. Many of these projects are done by a large group of volunteers. So, probably, with the $320,000 a year that goes into that that we all pay when we buy our licence, it’s probably worth over $1 million when you look at the volunteers involved.

There are many positive things when we look at the opportunity for sport fishing in Nova Scotia. It’s one that we are determined to improve and make sure that people can have a wonderful experience fishing and enjoy the outdoors in Nova Scotia, which is a wonderful place to do that.

            I also want to talk about our lobster industry and some of the initiatives we have there. I initiated a lobster training program in co-operation with our staff at Université Sainte-Anne. It’s actually a program that takes the idea of how you handle lobster and I personally have taken the course. It is mandatory for all our staff at all levels to take the course and all our staff, I think, have taken the course. The last one to take the course was the deputy, but he only joined us a while ago. I just want to make sure. It’s mandatory to take the course and people don’t realize there are many things we don’t realize with lobster.

Number one, a lobster bleeds and a lobster bleeds clear blood, and if it bleeds it dies. There’s no exception; they die every time. Lobster has to be treated like an egg. They look rugged and they appear to be rugged but they are very, very vulnerable to any kind of squeezing, dropping. Anything that can happen to them can actually kill them, but they don’t die right away. They’ll die one or two days later, maybe a week later, and that’s a loss we have in our industry.

The lobster handling course we put in place. Over 1,100 people have taken the course: buyers, harvesters, and processors. Initially, when we put the course out, there was a lot of reluctance, they didn’t want to take it and they knew all about lobsters. After a few of them took the course, they finally realized that this was for real. Université Sainte-Anne has extensive experience in lobster handling. They did the course in conjunction with some of our staff, came up with a fantastic program and to the point now that they want an enhanced program which we thought we’d offer in three years’ time but we’re probably going to offer much sooner than that. Altogether, 1,100 people - buyers, harvesters, and processors - have taken this course. It’s very interesting, it’s mandatory for buyers to take it; we couldn’t make it mandatory for harvesters, we don’t have the authority. The majority of people taking it were harvesters, so they understand the quality we need to get.

The other thing, we put in place - the first time in the world - we put together a live lobster quality assurance system. We initiated it in Nova Scotia about two years ago with three very willing companies here that export products all over the world and also three Chinese lobster companies that we would ship to and certify. We managed to get three of Nova Scotia’s companies certified and two of the three Chinese companies certified and we have commitments from one of the companies in China that wasn’t certified to start to make a huge investment in lobster-holding facilities in their country. It probably was the biggest investment I’ve ever seen in lobster-holding facilities. This ensures that the lobster goes to the end customer alive, healthy, and in the best possible condition they can be in. It’s made a big difference in our marketing efforts as we go forward.

We’ve also developed - and I want to thank our marketing staff for developing a Nova Scotia seafood brand, it’s 45^oN 63^oW, the coordinates of a very special place in Nova Scotia, and when we did that we didn’t realize it tied in initially with the Murchyville Mine, where in the 1930s it was the first-ever mine disaster recorded live, or anything recorded live by anyone in the world, it was the CBC Radio. I’ve listened to the broadcast many times, it’s pretty scratchy and pretty different - or I should say a lot different than we would see today, but it made history on that spot, and 45°N 63°W is pretty well in the centre of the province, and it was unique that we landed on that spot.

[11:15 a.m.]

That has been the trademark registered in China, places in Asia, the U.S., Canada, and so on. It sets us apart for premium high-quality seafood and we will put that as well into the other agriculture areas as we move forward.

            We’re setting a standard, now it’s going to be a very high standard before you’re allowed to use this brand and we’re setting those standards now. Some of the companies in the province would already meet the standard, but we haven’t certified them to that level yet; very soon we will. This has caught on in China and in other parts of the world and it’s the actual - anyone who flies, anyone who dives, anyone who does any kind of navigation sailing would be able to look on a map and find out where 45°N 63°W is, but if you say Nova Scotia most people outside of Canada, and even in the U.S., will give you sort of a dumb look and don’t really know where we are. So, it’s really been well done and I want to congratulate our staff for doing that great work.

            That’s all part of the strategy we’ve had when we were marketing Nova Scotia seafood. Not only that, but we’ve had incredible work done by organizations in the fishing industry. I remember when it was mandatory that the fishing industry sign up to workers’ compensation premiums and all that controversy at the time - there were pretty high premiums in the fishing industry with workers’ compensation. Over the years, the workers’ compensation premiums for the fishing industry have dropped substantially. If I recall, I think the first drop was about 14 per cent in their premiums and this year it went down 10 per cent, in the processing industry for the harvesters this year it dropped 9 per cent and the Safety Association of Nova Scotia, which is industry led - we support them but it’s really industry led - it’s hands-on training, with man overboard drills and many, many other things that they do, trying to get mandatory life jackets.

I remember being on fishing boats and I couldn’t even find a life jacket, never had one to wear, they were there somewhere. I can recall one story, I was in Prince Edward Island, we were lobster fishing, it was a pretty calm day and the Coast Guard and the RCMP came up on their patrol boat and asked us, got life jackets? So, the guy dug around and found the life jackets. They said, can you show us your life ring? He said, well I can’t because I’ve got it nailed to the side of the boat - because he didn’t want to lose it. So, anyway he said, we’ll be back tomorrow to make sure it’s loose. We didn’t get fined for it, I was glad for the fisherman because we were on a fisherman’s boat.

            That’s how attitudes had to change to make sure that people don’t die in the industry - every year we seem to have a loss in one region or another, and we had a tragedy this year again.

I also want to talk about, 20 years ago I started the Minister’s Fisheries Conference. The idea 20 years ago was to get fishermen together, we were really specifying fishermen at that time, to look at how we could work together and be a united voice when we went to fight with DFO, which we seem to be doing on an ongoing basis to this day. I shouldn’t say “fight” with them, but lobby them. We couldn’t come to a consensus that day, but we did get a lot of people talking to each other who wouldn’t even talk to each other before. We made some progress.

Over the years that continued, and this year, we had - the first year, we had about 69, 70-some people and it went very well. A lot of very tough questions, a lot of very tough issues we were dealing with at that time, it was around the time of the cod moratorium, but we had a second year and then after that it continued on to successive ministers after that - this year we had the biggest one ever. We invited several people; we had over 400 people attend; and we had 42 exhibitors. When I came back to the department we started bringing the suppliers of the industry back into this as well.

            The theme this year was Wealth Through Quality. It was very, very well-attended. Next year we’re going to extend that invitation to the aquaculture industry to join us, the sport fishing industry to join us as well, because we’re all part of one goal: growing Nova Scotia’s economy. So, it was very successful this year.

            We brought in presenters from New Zealand, in particular the “clean and green” program, New Zealand and Australia, they are people I visited when I was there in the past, it is an incredible program around boat safety, handling, of knowing how to look after your boat, handling the fish when they come on-board. It’s that particular program that is audited by an internationally known and respected auditing agency. They say it costs them more to get it audited than it does to run the program, but it does set them a marketing opportunity forward.

            We’re working on an MOU with them right now to bring that to Nova Scotia in conjunction with them. That came out of this event and when we were doing marketing trips as well, so it’s very, very positive, the change we’ve seen in the industry.

            The industry now wants to talk to us, they want to work with us - and there are still issues we have to deal with, but it is a big change from what we saw 20 years ago or even five years ago when the industry wasn’t so interested in talking to us and we had a lot of issues. When I first became minister the price of lobsters was $3 a pound and everyone was going broke.

They had a big study on it. We reviewed the study and implemented a bit of it, but the real answer was marketing, and we’ve done extensive marketing. Without marketing, the price wouldn’t be where it is today and the markets would not be where they are today. That all goes hand in hand with the quality we’re working on, the brand we’re doing - all those things go hand in hand to get the success we’ve had.

            There are many things we work with. We’ve seen the growth in the rockweed sales and our aquaculture has doubled this year, as I said earlier, to $100 million and that’s because of the salmon, trout, oysters, and mussels. Again, this is the highest ever in history, so it’s so many positive things. We’ve seen in the industry an attitude change; that’s the biggest thing that I really appreciate as being minister. When people change attitude, miraculous things happen and miraculous things are happening.

            I set up - it was already set up but we changed it a bit - an advisory group that we work with in the industry. That group has brought in ideas around how we should change licensing. We put a freeze on licensing here a while ago. It was at the request of the industry, not our request. We’re following up on that to get our licensing system straightened out. To put it mildly, it has been a disaster, a mess, and indeed all kinds of grandfathering, anything you can imagine with licensing around fish processing is in it.

            The industry never wanted to change but now they’re willing to change and they want to change. They want to make sure that they have the opportunities to move forward and let their businesses grow and give them the ability to have the surety that they can invest in their enterprises. It’s extremely important. A lot of people in the industry have done a tremendous amount of work on quality of processing and developing new markets. Again, I want to thank them for that.

            With those few words, because I could go on about this for a long, long time because it’s a file that we worked with and we’re very happy about, but I’ll leave it at that and whenever you’re ready to start the questioning, we’re ready - I hope.

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: Thank you, minister. We will start with Ms. MacFarlane.

            MS. KARLA MACFARLANE: Thank you very much, Madam Chairman. Thank you very much for your words around your department and congratulations - you’ve been in this portfolio right from the start of my four years, or a little over the four years now that I’ve been here.

            I would say that it’s much credited to the last four years of marketing through your department that we’ve seen such a large increase in exports, great marketing, absolutely an industry in Nova Scotia that is highly valuable and tremendous efforts by your department and all the fishers in this province, and I don’t think we should jeopardize that. Unfortunately, in my area of Pictou West we are just about to do that.

I am extremely worried that the potential - and I want to make it clear and make sure it’s on the record that this is not about shutting down the mill, a mill that my grandfather, my father, my cousins, my uncles, all work at.

            Let’s use common sense here. You cannot put an effluent pipe into the Northumberland Strait. So, my first question around this is, I want to know, have you met officials from Prince Edward Island yet?

            MR. COLWELL: I’ve talked to the former minister of the Prince Edward Island fisheries. I talked to him, I suggested that he write me a letter, which I did forward to the appropriate officials that are looking after Northern Pulp, so we have done that.

            MS. MACFARLANE: During Question Period last week, or the week before, I asked a question with regard to a lot of conflict, a lot of misinformation out there with regard to is it provincial, is it federal? I’ve always said it’s federal and you answered me and said it was federal, but we have the Environment Minister saying that it’s provincial.

            I’d like you to clarify for us here why you believe it’s a federal issue.

            MR. COLWELL: Well once it goes out in the ocean, and that’s where the pipe is going, if it goes there or whatever - I don’t know, I’m not involved in that process - but if it goes out into the ocean then it’s Environment Canada, the DFO and the federal regulatory parts when anything is released in the ocean. That’s why I say it’s federal.

            The Environment Minister provincially is probably talking about any on-land treatment systems and anything that would go out from there. I don’t know, you’d have to ask them.

            MS. MACFARLANE: You just said you are not involved in the process - please get involved in the process; please stand up for our fishers; please take the opportunity to accept our invitation to come meet with us and let them know that you support them, that you back them in this decision.

            We have young fishers in my community who have just invested $400,000, $500,000 and they are scared. One gentleman just came back a couple of years ago from Afghanistan so that he would be the fourth-generation fisher in his family. We know this is an industry that is sustainable. You have proved that and we’re proud of that. It’s sustainable, it’s our food security, and we cannot risk it.

            Are you willing to come to Pictou? I know I have invited you numerous times and for whatever reasons we’ve been cancelled at least three or four times. Can we please commit today to have a meeting, as soon as the House rises, with the fishers on the North Shore?

            MR. COLWELL: Well I’ve already met with the people who came to voice their concerns at the fisheries conference, I’ve committed to them to go to the North Shore. I’ve committed.

            MS. MACFARLANE: Has there been a date set?

            MR. COLWELL: There has not been a date set yet because I don’t know when I’m going to get out of the House.

            I’ve talked to Ronnie Heighton on several occasions about this. I’ve known Ronnie for years and years. He was actually one of the attendees at the first conference we had 20 years ago. I’ve known Ronnie for years and years and I respect him and I respect his opinions on things. We’ve talked about this in detail more than once and we will deal with him again on this issue every time we can.

            When I say I have not been involved, it’s not my file. It’s a file that belongs to TIR, Environment and - I guess that’s the two of them, the main ones that are there.

            I do understand the situation with the fishermen concerned, I’m concerned as well that anything it would do to hurt the industry. The more we get in place with this, the more hype we generate about the possibility of any injury to the fishing industry is negative in our marketing. I can tell you why - you’ll laugh, but I can tell you why.

[11:30 a.m.]

            MS. MACFARLANE: I’m not laughing. Believe me, I’m not laughing.

            MR. COLWELL: Well you were laughing.

            MS. MACFARLANE: No.

            MR. COLWELL: I can tell you, I sat across a table in Asia and a gentleman in Asia says to me, what’s the price of lobster today in Nova Scotia? A fair question. I didn’t know the answer. The gentleman sitting beside him did. He flipped up his computer and said, what do you want to know, the price for the last five years?

            They monitor all social media; they monitor all our media. That’s one reason we can’t get our prices higher.

            I’ve had this discussion with the industry and the industry has finally realized that they had better back off with some of the stuff they were doing in the media, the social media. They watch all the social media, everything. When you are sitting across a table from a customer who is going to buy maybe $1 million of lobsters that year, maybe more, or other seafood products and they are saying what’s going on with that paper mill - are we going to get lobsters that are contaminated?

            MS. MACFARLANE: Real concerns.

            MR. COLWELL: I’m sitting there saying no, we’re not, we’ve got top-quality lobsters in Nova Scotia. The more this is hyped locally, people think they’re doing themselves favours and want to get their names in the paper and all that stuff, there’s a process to go through with this system and a process is in place to do it.

            I’ve got great faith in the federal department of DFO when it comes to this; I’ve got great faith in the federal environment department that would be looking after this; and I also have great faith in our Department of Environment as they have to review and make decisions on this.

            The more we hype it, the more I get involved in it, it makes it more difficult for me to market Nova Scotia products. We’re known to have clean, pristine ocean waters in Nova Scotia, which is true. The limited amount I know about this process, it’s going to be a heck of a lot better than what we’ve got now, a heck of a lot better.

            It’s a difficult situation for me. I’m trying to market Nova Scotia products and we have to make sure we keep that in mind - when people get up and make statements it’s monitored all over the world.

            I’ll give you an example of that. When we were working on our lobster handling course that I put in place, without consultation, and I stress “without consultation,” I had a very angry fish plant owner in the province come and meet with me and our staff. I won’t tell you exactly what he said, but at the beginning of the meeting he said, you’re not going to tell me who to train in my business.

            We went on and talked about that for quite a while and we had a discussion on it and everything. Then he points at me and he says, you know I’ve lost customers over this because you went to the media. I said no, I didn’t go to the media, you did, you went to the media.

            These customers were in Asia. So, he said, no more media. I said, I never wanted media to start. From that day on you have not seen any media from the industry that is negative towards hurting the industry.

            It’s a fine line we have to do it. I’ll gladly meet with the fishermen. I’m going to meet with Ronnie Heighton again on April 4^th. He is very articulate with what he does.

            MS. MACFARLANE: There is a date.

            MR. COLWELL: And he’s very balanced in his approach on things, too, and very effective.

            I don’t have to tell you that I’m going to meet with Ronnie Heighton, by the way. I know it shouldn’t be a shock to you. But this is a very delicate situation for our industry. I’d hate to come back here in a year’s time and say that because there was so much hype about this thing that may or may not affect the industry - I sure hope it doesn’t ever - and our markets have dropped because they have started to refuse to buy stuff from us, then maybe they can go to the fishermen that the price is back to $3 a pound and explain what happened, when they can’t afford to run their boats, can’t afford to go fishing.

            This is the reality of today’s society, so when we’re talking about this stuff we’ve got to be very careful what we say in this place, it’s monitored. The records of this meeting will be monitored by our customers.

            MS. MACFARLANE: I hope so.

            MR. COLWELL: Oh, they will be; you want to hope that they take it the right way.

            MS. MACFARLANE: I’m going to finish off with this because I’d like to let my colleague continue on here.

With all due respect, minister - and I do have a lot of respect for you and I do have a lot of respect for your department and what you’ve been able to accomplish and I’m very impressed with the global market - I will say this, when you say it’s not your file, it negates the whole purpose of your department. You are to support the fishers, you are to stand by them and support them, and knowing that this industry is jeopardized, every time someone comes from Opposition with concerns from constituents, serious concerns, we are either told we are fear-mongering or be careful what you say.

            I am the conduit of voices from my community, so I would remind you of that. I am not here to fear-monger, I am here to find solutions and I am here to ask for support for our fishers in a community that is about to jeopardize a $6 billion industry in Canada, with what is it - $1.6 billion coming directly from Nova Scotia.

            I am proud of that. I know your department is proud of that, let’s continue that. Thank you very much.

            MR. COLWELL: I, too, represent my constituency as an MLA and I do respect the member. But we have to be cautious of how we deal with things and how we do things in a province. We are supporting the industry but we don’t do it publicly where we get in a fight with the Department of Environment and other people who could cause us trouble in the marketplace, to be quite honest.

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: Mr. Lohr.

            MR. JOHN LOHR: Thank you, Madam Chairman. I guess I think this is a pleasure to be here again and I do recognize the success of the industry and the marketing efforts of your department.

            I wasn’t planning to ask a question about the limestone on the Salmon River and the West River Sheet Harbour. I wasn’t planning to ask a question about that but that’s the second time I’ve heard you tell the story.

            I guess the only question would be - and I will tell you that I was talking to forestry people down on the WestFor lands and said you guys have to think about how you’re going to put lime on those lands too, because it would bring back the salmon fishery; it could have the potential to bring it back across the province.

            I’m wondering, Mr. Minister, is there any plan or any effort to see this limestone program, and I’m not sure that helicopters are the answer for the whole province but is there any plan to try to see that effort in other rivers in Nova Scotia?

            MR. COLWELL: Well actually the answer is yes. What rivers they are going to be, we don’t know at this time. The West River is a model, we’re developing a model for restoring a river. There’s more than liming it with helicopters. There are all kinds of riverbed work that has been done to drop the temperatures for salmon habitat. There are two lime dosers that have been installed, the second one this year that put lime actually right in the water. The only trouble with that is it is temporary, it lasts only as long as until that water flows through and then you’ve got to keep liming it continuously, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, year-round. The helicopter liming is the most efficient, the best way long term.

            What has been done in Norway where they do extensive liming because they have the same problem we have here in Nova Scotia, when they did the helicopter liming - we’re doing about three tons an acre, so it’s a tremendous amount of lime. It will last anywhere from 25 to 50 years. In that period of time, it will continually slowly release water that comes through from rain, or whatever the case it is, into the river, improving the habitat.

            The ideal situation would be in West River, and we are working on that, we are doing a lot more than just doing this project. There is a lot of science involved in this, too, to prove this will work. Once that’s established, then we hope to roll this out all over Nova Scotia, one river at a time.

            We want to get it in a package that is sort of like mass-producing a car. To get a really high-quality car, you mass-produce it, then you put it out there, so then you get your costs down. You know, the science won’t have to be as much because you know exactly what happens if you do certain things - so all those things. It’s really an exciting project. This could revolutionize how we’re doing this and we are getting attention from this all over the world.

            There is a very interesting - all kinds of new technologies are being developed. We have seen the improvements in the rivers, substantially. A friend of mine, who lives on the river, says it’s the first time he’s seen a salmon jump there in 25 or 30 years and that is a step forward. I can remember being on that river as a child and seeing salmon jump continuously; just continuously. So, we are on the right track and when we get this model built, then we are going to do some more.

            We are also looking at the possibility - in New Brunswick, Parks Canada in conjunction with Cooke Aquaculture, Cooke supplied a net, a lease, part of their lease, and the Salmon Association there and Parks Canada worked jointly to grow the smolts, wild smolts, and put them at sea, grew them at sea to a size that they’re almost ready to lay eggs and then released them in the river. The return rate was something like eight times higher than if you just do the release of the salmon in the river - the smolts in the river and let them come back over time. So, that has really worked and we are looking at the possibility of doing that with aquaculture businesses here.

That would be a next step in West River Sheet Harbour. We already have a salmon farm interested in doing it with us, jointly. They supplied all the food free - worked closely with the local salmon people in New Brunswick. We’re looking at the same thing: working with Parks Canada, working with Northern Pulp - they’ve helped us put roads in, they’ve been very co-operative; Nova Scotia Power has been involved, and the list goes on and on and on.

            Basically, anyone that you ask for this project are there and they’re helping, either in-kind or in cash; it’s been a fantastic operation.

            MR. LOHR: I’ll ask, could you pull the microphone just a bit closer. I don’t know why the room dynamics are - I think it’s those speakers pointing in the wrong direction - that you and I have trouble hearing each other and everyone else hears us very clearly.

            Mr. Minister, when you became Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture, you said your priority would be to support provincially accredited organizations and work with areas from the Halifax County line to the Bay of Fundy to establish them. Is this still a priority and do you support the Fish Harvester Organizations Support Act? How have you made out on that? I guess I am asking for a report card on that.

            MR. COLWELL: Yes, we are making progress on it. The Act and the regulations have to be changed, quite frankly. We did a bunch of outreach a while ago - a couple of years ago, and the biggest thing we see from that from the people who are not in organizations is that they don’t trust how the organization would work; in other words, how the executive would spend money or whatever - whatever the trust issue was. We are working on that now.

We are working with one of the accredited associations to come up with a computer program that we’ve been working on - actually, a website - that a membership can go in, on the website you can see what that particular area is about, what’s happening, the general stuff, but then as a member of the organization you will have a password to go into that and see where all the money has been spent, see who travelled where, what they found out about quotas or whatever the association is responsible for doing.

            We’re working with that as a pilot project, one pilot project, and we’re going to be moving that forward to all organizations, once we get it, free of charge to them, with training to go with it to make them feel more comfortable with their membership.

[11:45 a.m.]

            In 2015, we held a vote in region 2 and now they are accredited, so we’ve got one other area accredited. We’ve been working in southwestern Nova Scotia quite extensively there with them as well. They have come up with sort of a loose working relationship that has not existed before, but they haven’t bothered to certify under FIOSHA, so you’re going to see in the next year or so changes come to the Act - probably the regulations more than the Act. I don’t know if we have to change the Act or not around accountability reporting for internally for the organization to give them more credibility.

            I think that once that’s in place we’ll be in good shape. As far as I’m concerned, I talked about the ministers’ conference we started 20 years ago. I said that the goal at the ministers’ conference was to have one agreed-to thing that we’re going to approach DFO with, as the Province of Nova Scotia’s industry as one voice. We haven’t accomplished that yet, but we’re making progress - it’s serious progress, the best I’ve ever seen.

            MR. LOHR: I would like to ask a couple of questions directly out of the book. I notice that the operating costs were estimated to be $3.7 million actually turned out to be $2.6 million and now are again estimated for this year at $3.7 million for the department. I’m wondering, what caused the dip this past fiscal year and why are you putting it back up again to the approximately $1.1 million - what happened there?

            MR. COLWELL: Actually, what happened was we had grants in the operating budget and we moved them to a different place in our budget, so all the same amount of money is there. We put these as grants but they aren’t really grants, these are projects we are working on. There’s the Catch to Plate program we were doing on the Eastern Shore. It was the lobster handling course, the lobster quality standard program, and also working with Perennia for seafood product development. All the same money is there, a different place, that’s all.

            MR. LOHR: I notice that under the operating cost line is grants and contributions, and grants and contributions went up significantly. You’re saying that in the operating costs there were actually grants and contributions also in the estimate from 2017 to 2018?

            MR. COLWELL: On Page 12.2 - I think you’re looking at Page 12.2 - you’ll see that the grants and contributions went up to $6.9 million and we’re forecasting this year even higher.

            MR. LOHR: I see that, they show a substantial increase this year. Maybe you could outline, what is the expected increase there? I guess that’s pretty well $5 million, to do quick math, $4 million or $5 million - a $4 million increase anyway. What is the logic of that, what is the plan there on the grants and contributions?

            MR. COLWELL: I didn’t hear that.

            MR. LOHR: Okay, sorry. This year, your estimates in the actual for 2017-18, it was $7 million for grants and contributions and it’s going up to $11 million, so that’s a $4 million increase in grants and contributions. What is entailed in that number?

            MR. COLWELL: Actually, it’s the Atlantic Fisheries Fund. The DFO is putting in over the period of the full time of the program, over a seven-year period, we’re going to put in $37.9 million and the federal government is going to put almost $89 million into it. Again, that’s in the budget this year that wasn’t there before.

            MR. LOHR: Okay, what are the projects the department is looking to fund in that Atlantic Fisheries Fund?

            MR. COLWELL: The Atlantic Fisheries Fund is an application-based process that is - the initial application comes into DFO, they review it to see if it meets all the criteria, and then they pass it on to us to have a look at it. At the end of the day, how it works is if it meets the criteria of the fund - and there are quite the criteria around it and that’s all, I believe, on our website or the DFO website, it’s all there, it’s all public information - we’ll look at it and say, okay, we agree with it or we don’t, or we want changes or whatever the case may be. Then we’ll come to an agreement and we sign off and they sign off, and the project goes ahead.

            MR. LOHR: I notice the Lobster Council of Canada has developed a marketing proposal to promote Canadian lobster and the process will access millions of dollars set aside for national marketing under this Atlantic Fisheries Fund, the AFF, and will not interfere with provincial money. The Lobster Council of Canada has received letters of support from other provincial ministers and is supported by a number of fisheries organizations, buyers, and processors right here in Nova Scotia. Are you planning to write a letter of support for this project, this by the Lobster Council of Canada?

            MR. COLWELL: No.

            MR. LOHR: That would beg the question: why not?

            MR. COLWELL: Well, we don’t believe we’re getting value from the Lobster Council of Canada in our marketing campaigns and there’ a long history there of lack of accountability and other issues, and I would double-check my information to see if the other provinces are backing them or not. I would think you’ll find that they aren’t.

            MR. LOHR: Okay, I will double-check my information because my information says they have and that some organizations in Nova Scotia are supporting them too. That’s what my information says, but I will double- check that. Can you elaborate on your reasons why you are not supporting the Lobster Council of Canada?

            MR. COLWELL: There are companies in Nova Scotia that support them and that’s fine; that’s their ability to do that. But in southwestern Nova Scotia, we have zero support for the Lobster Council of Canada - none - and that’s the biggest lobster fishing area in the world and we have had issues with them. I’ll give you one example; I’ll put it on the record. They developed - I call it the “bug” when you look at it, $50,000 towards creating a trademark for Nova Scotia for lobsters, $50,000 that wasn’t very well spent, let’s put it that way. That’s one example and there are many more.

            MR. LOHR: Okay, thank you. We’ll leave that alone; we’ll go on. The haddock box area was under a fishery closure and contributed in 2017 to the 5 per cent target established in the MPA process. Do you support the industry’s request that this area is closed for all ocean users to ensure that it is truly a protected area?

            MR. COLWELL: We work closely with the industry on that and we supported - the industry wanted some line changes on it and we have full support of the industry and we’re happy with what’s transpired and so is the industry.

            MR. LOHR: The next question, is the marine resources division currently assisting industry during the MPA process currently taking place?

            MR. COLWELL: The MSC?

            MR. LOHR: Yes.

            MR. COLWELL: Yes, it is.

            MR. LOHR: I understand, and I guess the question is, is the Department of Energy the lead on achieving the additional 5 per cent target in the MPA process?

            MR. COLWELL: We’ve been talking to the fisheries organizations; we have been talking with DFO about it. We’re concerned of some of the areas they’ve identified - and it’s 10 per cent not 5 per cent. Nova Scotia already has the most marine protected areas in Canada right now. It’s going to go a lot further than it has, and actually we’ve received a map of it and DFO has 25.5 per cent of all Nova Scotia’s coastline earmarked. They haven’t released it yet. It’s going to be a devastating blow to the industry if it’s not done properly and we’ve been working with the organizations.

This is something that we’re working with Energy and Environment and DNR on as well. It’s a concern for us. We totally agree with protected areas, there’s no issue about that, but in Scotland for instance you can have a certain type of aquaculture and certain types of commercial fishing in their marine protected areas. It works well, it protects what needs to be protected.

            Some of the stuff they’re talking about now, which we’re slowly hearing about, is maybe some areas that they’re talking about, there might be a 10 per cent no-catch zone of the total area. That could be devastating, that could spread pretty quickly, and it could be a devastating blow to Nova Scotia’s industry if it’s not done properly. Again, we’re not opposed whatsoever to marine protected areas, I think they’re very important, but it’s got to be done right and with proper consultation. We’ve not been happy with the consultation we have received through the DFO so far.

            MR. LOHR: I’m aware that some fishers have not been happy with the consultation either. Who is the lead on this? Is the Department of Energy the lead on this and why wouldn’t your department be the lead on this?

            MR. COLWELL: Just the way it’s structured internally and they’re interested in different things than we are of course, probably energy opportunities and that’s just the way it has been in the past.

            It was a structure set in place by the past government, the NDP Government, that Energy was the lead on it. Now, we work very closely with Energy and we’re the lead working with the DFO.

            MR. LOHR: Okay, I’ll say that I know there are fishers out there who are very concerned that your department is not the lead, and would appreciate if there was a change. They feel the fact that Energy is the lead is an issue.

            MR. COLWELL: Yes, we’ve engaged the fisheries organizations. Even last Saturday we met with the Eastern Shore Fisheries Protective Association and came to an agreement to work together with them, because their marine protected area is the only one ever in the country that is going to come right up to the shoreline. They are very concerned. They were told one thing by DFO, we were told another, and now we’re going to work together and have an understanding to do that in place.

            There has been a whole process around this. DFO is going out and consulting with very different groups, and we’ve been getting dribs and drabs about what they’re talking to people about, what they’re planning to do. The fishing industry is the same thing, they’ve been getting dribs and drabs. We got together and we compared notes and we will continue to do that with the organizations all over the province.

            MR. LOHR: I want to talk about aquaculture. I have a printout from your website, and it says: process for a new aquaculture lease and licence application - this was just printed out a day ago. It says: decision by minister, the minister reviews the proposal, and if it’s approved, the applicant pays a fee and proceeds with scoping. As you know, we have Bill No. 87 in front of us at this moment in the House, which will give you the power to do so. My question is, is this a case where something is on the website that hasn’t actually been approved by the Legislature?

            MR. COLWELL: No, that’s not correct. What we’re doing on this bill, we’re putting in place, or hope to put in place if it’s passed by the Legislature, it’s just tidying up some of the process. If you come and want to put an aquaculture site in Nova Scotia now, or if you wanted to expand your aquaculture site to a new expansion - not to change what you were already going to do - you have to get approval from my office to go ahead. Once that happens, that’s it, I’m done with it, and then it goes through a whole process that’s clearly laid out.

[12:00 noon]

We were looking for several things. We want to make sure that you have the financial ability to do what you say you’re going to do, you don’t fail, because these things are a real long-term problem with cash flow. Most of them are four to five years before you get any cash flow off them so you have to show that you’ve got it properly financed or have the cash to do it; have a proper business plan of how you’re going to market your product when you get it done; and how you’re going to look after quality, processing - all the things, a proper business plan of how you’re going to do this.

The idea of that is not to hold anybody back from doing it. It could be a small business plan for a small - say it’s an oyster operation, someone wants to put an oyster operation in. It could be a small operation that doesn’t need the same cash flow, doesn’t need the same equipment that a large operation would - make sure that they’re not set up for failure.

We recently took back approximately 145 lease sites that people got for one reason or other and never used them. We don’t want that to happen ever again. We want to make sure they’re going to be used, and the companies have a good chance of being profitable and can succeed and move on. The last thing we want is to encourage someone to do it.

Once it goes through that process - and that’s the only process we do - we also have to look at the spot to see if the spot is suitable or appears to be suitable. If it’s not, then it’s turned down immediately - never mind a business plan. Or they may go back and say okay that spot isn’t good, but the spot over here, which may be a short distance away would work, and it won’t work if you’re talking about it, because we’re continually monitoring what’s happening in the area.

We take a lot of things into consideration. Once that’s done and we’re satisfied, yes, this is a credible candidate, yes, they have the financial resources to do it, yes, they have a good business plan, the location appears to be okay, we give them the go-ahead. That’s the last thing I do with it.

Then they have a six-month option, which can be renewed for another six months to do scoping. They’ll go out - they have to go and engage the community; that’s necessary. They have to do some tests on the site if they already haven’t been done. We’re doing some tests ourselves around the province around water quality, currents, salinity, temperatures, all kinds of things that have to be done to make sure that we’re not setting someone up for failure.

It’s their responsibility to do what hasn’t been done. It can be in co-operation with our department or Dalhousie - anyone they want to do it with, or privately. We don’t care as long as it’s credible.

Then they would take all that information, and when they get that done, say yes, we’re going to make an application, they start the application process, which includes all the information we’ve already received from them - the business plan and all those things. We receive that application - all the community consultation they’ve done, which is mandatory, then they would go back and say now we want to proceed with an actual application. I have no input on that whatsoever - none.

Then that would go through the whole process and would go to the regulatory review board. The review board would hear the case, look at it and say yes or no, or they may want to go back for more information. They may say we’re going to give you this approval but you have to do this, too, or whatever the case may be - that’s up to them. It’s all spelled out in the regulations. That’s what’s in existence now.

The thing we didn’t have in existence - if you had an oyster farm or a mussel farm and you decide you want to go to a finfish farm, under our present regulations you can just apply and it can happen. You have to go through the process still with the regulatory thing, but it doesn’t have that extra step of making sure that you have the expertise to grow these fish, that we don’t have all kinds of problems with them, and prove your business plan and all that stuff works. Some people have made applications to switch from mussels to oysters, and that’s pretty straightforward - it’s still shellfish. But if you’re going to go to finfish or something else - it could be something else we hadn’t thought of.

If they’re going to switch a site, then they have to go through that initial part of the process. That’s what this new change in the bill is about when it comes to the ministerial stuff. It’s no change in where we were, except it’s going to put another layer of scrutiny before it gets to the process of the board that looks after it.

            MR. LOHR: Mr. Minister, I think I heard you say the number and I believe it was 130 or so sites that received approval but nothing had ever been done with them - I think 139 was the number, you might have said 149?

            MR. COLWELL: We’ve taken actually 30 back so far, but the other ones we’re in the process of probably going to take them back, over time. The whole number is around 145.

            The idea of those is they will go back in a bank now and be available for someone else, if they make sense. Some of these sites we will take back and there will never be a lease issued on the site again. We have the ability now under new regulations to take a lease back that somebody hasn’t used or is not using to the full extent, because we want the economic benefit if it’s already there, within reason. You’ve run a business a long time and we’re not going to cause any problem for someone who has had a problem for some reason or another that’s explainable.

We want to make sure we get the maximum economic benefit off that site while at the same time looking at the environmental conditions. If it’s a finfish site we have some pretty strict rules around that now, but before there was literally none and a shellfish site, we want to make sure that they are used. Right at the moment and continuing on into the future, anything in seafood we can get, we can sell as long as there’s quality.

            MR. LOHR: Presumably someone with an operating aquaculture site is able to sell that site to some other business, if they would want to. Would somebody with an approval and a site, one of these 145 sites that wasn’t actively used, would they be able to sell that permit to another aquaculture company or an individual?

            MR. COLWELL: They can request to have it transferred if they still have it in their possession, but we have the ability now, any of the 30 we’ve take back that we now own. If you wanted a shellfish aquaculture site, you could approach us and say, of those 30, are there any suitable for my business plan, and here’s what I would like to do. If there is, then you approach the province and see if you could get that site.

            The process we’re going to use around that, I’ll have to check on. If someone was interested, it would go to a public process and then people would have to apply applications to it. A person applied and they may be the only one, who knows? But it would go through a public process; it wouldn’t just be automatically given to anyone.

            MR. LOHR: When the Doelle-Lahey report came out there was a recommendation that, I think specific to finfish aquaculture and to all aquaculture, there be a map made that would have red, green and yellow coding on it of areas where people could apply. I’m just wondering, is your department planning to put together that colour coding system on the coast of Nova Scotia?

            MR. COLWELL: No.

            MR. LOHR: Can you elaborate as to why you wouldn’t do that?

            MR. COLWELL: We’re actually doing something very similar. There’s going to be areas in the province that are going to be identified that aren’t suitable for certain types of aquaculture. We’ll find that out as we do our testing, the water monitoring testing.

            There will be some areas that will be ideal to grow oysters or fish or whatever the case may be. We’re in the process of trying to identify them and over time they will be identified. If we find an area that doesn’t make sense to do - for instance, we definitely would not want a shellfish farm in Halifax Harbour because of the pollutants coming out of the sewage treatment system here. That would be an area you are not going to have to worry about a shellfish farm, although if it was an oyster farm it would help clean it up, but you would not be able to sell the oysters probably. There’s a whole process around that.

            MR. LOHR: I don’t know if we’re allowed to start talking about a bill that is before the House, but if we think about Bill No. 87, I’m wondering if you could shed some light on what you think will be the definition of “adjacent” in adjacent sites, and what do you expect that will be?

            MR. COLWELL: Adjacent site would be the same owner of the site, the existing sites. We have some in Bras d’Or Lakes now; they’re owned by the Mi’kmaq and there are four or five different sites, leases almost exactly together, and in that area they’re adjacent, so it should be one lease. They only have to have the one application each year to cover them all. It’s the same species and not different species, the same species and they would be able to come in one application. It saves us paperwork; it saves them paperwork and, indeed, when the inspections come, it’s one site that the inspector has to look at and the site would be treated the same as just a big one that someone else had somewhere.

It’s really to cut down on all that paperwork - some of these sites can be quite large and if there’s five or six small ones in this large area owned by the same people it doesn’t make any sense to have four or five or six licences.

Now, saying that, if one of those areas is not suitable and we decide that maybe that area shouldn’t be in production, then we can ensure there is not production. It’s really just we’re going to eliminate red tape, bottom line. That’s what it’s going to do - make it easier for industry and easier for us.

            MR. LOHR: It’s reminiscent of the debate in agriculture about the meaning of the word “local,” and it can be surprisingly difficult to pin down. Would an adjacent site be a site like 50 miles away owned by the same company doing - so 50 miles is too far? If it was an adjacent site, would it be a 20-mile drive to an adjacent site you don’t see that there’s a - you have a mileage distance of adjacency?

            MR. COLWELL: I would think it’s going to be - and I’m going to double-check this - yes, the idea of it is it would be in the same bay or the same body of water. It would have to be something that’s relatively close that you could service from one location, from one wharf for instance.

            MR. LOHR: I’m just wondering what impact and, I guess, presumably, the bill will pass and there will be a certain number of operators that take advantage of this. Have you calculated or do you know how many fishing aquaculture sites will be combined?

            MR. COLWELL: Yes, we would have a maximum of between 10 and 12 in the whole province. That would be a maximum. They would have to apply for it.

            MR. LOHR: Have you calculated the effect this would have on your annual budget?

            MR. COLWELL: On their budget?

            MR. LOHR: How much money are we looking at? How much money would be lost in revenue on licensing for the department?

            MR. COLWELL: Very little. A lease and licence don’t cost very much.

            MR. LOHR: I would like to ask about the moratorium on lobster processors and I believe it’s a moratorium on more new buyers, too, or just on processors.

            MR. COLWELL: It’s not a moratorium. It’s a freeze on licences, all licences in the province.

            MR. LOHR: For purchasing lobster.

            MR. COLWELL: No, all licences in the province for all processing, all buying.

            MR. LOHR: Okay, I would call it a moratorium. You’re calling it a freeze. I guess I would like to ask the question of why, and I know you mentioned earlier the industry requested it. Maybe you could shed some light on that and why did you - how long do you expect it to be on and do you feel this has a negative impact on competition for purchasing of lobster or have a negative impact on lobster fishermen?

            MR. COLWELL: To start with, we have a freeze. You can still get a processing licence in the province. If you’re adding value to a product, substantial value to a product, value-added product, we’ve actually issued a couple since the freeze has been on. There is a concern that you’re trying to get to, I believe, on the fishermen saying if we eliminate or reduce the number of buyers in the province, the price at the wharf is going to go down. That’s not true. We have 333 buyers’ licences now. We have 201 processing licences in the province. The idea is to get a handle on it. A lot of the processors brought this forward because they’re not making investments in their businesses. They don’t have a surety that indeed there are criteria to go through to get a processing licence or a buyer’s license.

[12:15 p.m.]

Some of the buyers’ licences that we have, have been grandfathered; it’s really convoluted. We just started about a year or two ago requesting records of how many fish you bought or lobster you bought, or whatever the case with the buyer. Some of these people have never done anything - they haven’t bought anything.

            Some of the processors have licences for stuff they’ve never processed. We call it the “bingo card.” Something that’s been years ago, you’d get a sheet this size, you look at the sheet and there’s a whole list of licences, lobster processing, cod, haddock, those things you can’t put in - shrimp, you name it. It’s all in there. You just tick it all off and you send your $285 in and you’re a licensed processor, which is not true. These people don’t have the capability of processing three-quarters of what’s on - most of them don’t, some of them do.

            We start asking processors now - we don’t want to know who their customers are and we don’t want to know who their suppliers are, that’s not our business. We want to know if you have processed scallops, for instance - how many pounds of scallops you processed last year. Then we know they’re a legitimate processor of scallops - and we have the ability to go audit to make sure that the information they’re giving is accurate.

            We want to know that information because we don’t want to - we have in some cases maybe 200 licences to process something that the capability of the industry to supply it may be only two or three companies could do it.

            We’re still formulating how we’re going to do this in very close conjunction with the industry. We’ve had a forum with them already. There are a lot of issues out there. Of the buyers that we have - I just got a current thing because some of the people didn’t take the lobster handling course and their licence was eliminated because they wouldn’t take the course. We have 280 lobster buyers presently, and that’s an up-to-date number, and only half of those are actually buying anything.

            When the industry says we’ve got fewer buyers - actually there are a lot of buyers, and it’s not related to the buyers that’s the problem that gives you the price at the wharf, it’s the marketing they do. It’s the markets you establish. We got such a market for it now - that’s what has kept the price up and brought the price up, and it will keep the price up. We could have five buyers in the province or two buyers in the province and the price at the wharf will probably be the same or more if that was the case.

            That’s not a good argument. The industry has talked about that. We’re not going to go down to one or two buyers. It’s not about closing the industries all in and doing that stuff, or processors. We want a good competitive industry here.

            We’re looking at, again, in conjunction with industry of how we can possibly change the rules around it. Some of the things we’ve been talking about are the same sort of thing we do with aquaculture. If you’re going to process something, you get a supply of raw materials - that’s your business how you get that - but you can prove that you have that to us and put a business plan together and say this makes good sense.

            We know that if you do that it’s going to add value in Nova Scotia. It’s not going to negatively affect the industry that’s there now. That’s hard to judge. We can see that happening in many instances where we’d have someone come in with a new idea to process something and work with somebody to get a value-added product, process something that’s not even being processed now.

We don’t want to stop that happening. We’re looking at all that, and we need to set an environment up that the industry is not afraid to invest - some of the investments in a fish plant are extremely expensive.

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: We’re at the five-minute point, Mr. Lohr, just to let you know.

MR. LOHR: Five minutes.

MR. COLWELL: As we go through this whole process, I think we’re going to come out at the end of it with something that will work for the industry, for everybody - the buyers, the fishermen, the processors, everything we need. It has been tried before but never with the co-operation of the industry. This has really been industry driven, which we’re very happy to see. We’re going to have some hiccups along the way, but we think we’ve got an opportunity now to do it.

            MR. LOHR: Clearly there have been reports of lobster industry buyers leaving people hanging on pretty big sums of money. Is that a factor in this decision, that there have been unscrupulous buyers or buyers who have just gone bankrupt or didn’t have the means to pay for one reason or another - is that part of the freeze on buyers’ licences, or is that a factor in how you will deal with this process going forward?

            MR. COLWELL: There has been some of that in the province, without question. It’s something the industry has to sort out themselves. Somebody who has an unscrupulous record of dealing with anything illegal, we automatically, immediately, will cancel their licence - buyer’s licence, processing licence, holding licence - anything they have. We don’t condone that in any way. There are some people coming into the province buying lobsters without licences, so we are going to clamp down on them as well, and that’s not helping our industry, whatsoever. It’s a whole mishmash of all kinds of different things.

            MR. LOHR: I’d like to ask about an issue maybe a bit closer to home for me than some of these other issues. The Gaspereau River had a fish kill last summer associated with a rubber duck race. It wasn’t really about the rubber duck race, it was about the management of the water level by Nova Scotia Power and Emera. I’m wondering, what role has your department had in that issue and what should be done differently there?

            MR. COLWELL: Actually, I received the memo from Nova Scotia Power today, through the system, that they are not going to participate in the duck race anymore. They are going to make a . . .

            MR. LOHR: I couldn’t quite hear you. You said the memo said what?

            MR. COLWELL: Nova Scotia Power said that they are not going to participate in this rubber duck event anymore. I don’t know what they are going to do in the community. There was some indication that they will probably do something else in the community.

They made a $50,000 contribution to DFO’s fish habitat fund, or something besides, and they are going to work with DFO - and this is a DFO issue, not ours. It’s a fish habitat issue. I just received that in the mail, by coincidence, this morning.

            MR. LOHR: Okay. I am aware that it is largely a DFO issue.

            I guess one of the issues I do want to ask in the few remaining moments is that I know the processors in the province - fish processors - have an issue with labour. I am wondering what your department is doing to help address that, so maybe you would comment on that.

            MR. COLWELL: Several things, actually. One thing is we’re encouraging automation any way we can. Not only the Atlantic Fisheries Fund, indeed, we can help that happen, so that’s positive. That’s not going to cure the problem.

            The other thing we are doing, and I don’t think you were here yesterday when I was talking about the work we are doing in both Agriculture and Fisheries with other departments. We met, at our encouragement, with the Department of Labour and Advanced Education, the Department of Community Services, and the Department of Immigration just a short while ago to address this problem, jointly.

            What I am going to host, or the departments are going to host independently - Fishing and Agriculture separately, because the issues are a little bit different - an event to bring the people who have had these problems - to let all of our departments know exactly what the problem is. We have a pretty good handle on it, but again it’s important that the other departments understand that and how we can jointly work together to help them resolve some of these problems. There may be some opportunities, for instance, for Community Services to put some kind of program with people who want to go to work and can go back to work, maybe work in these facilities, if the right kind of program was put in place that they can, indeed, do - they can put the right circumstances in place. Temporary foreign workers . . .

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: Order, the time has elapsed for the Progressive Conservative Party caucus. We will move on to the New Democratic Party caucus.

            The honourable member for Halifax Needham.

            MS. LISA ROBERTS: Thank you, Madam Chairman. Good afternoon. I would like to start, please, with the Atlantic Fisheries Fund, and I would like to understand what role the department played in sort of shaping the rollout of that opportunity for fisheries processors in the province. Did we shape the application process, the details of the program, and what did you ask for if we did get to have input in that?

            MR. COLWELL: Yes, we had input into the initial - after the federal government announced, we had input into what kinds of programs would be in that fund and we’re very happy with the results of those talks that we had with ourselves and the other provinces that were involved. It’s very, very positive; it’s a positive thing for Nova Scotia and, indeed, Atlantic Canada.

            It’s going to cover things such as increased productivity, competitiveness, quality, sustainability, and it’s all the things we’ve been working with that would help our industry grow and also how the ecosystem is changing and what that means for the industry. It’s a very positive program.

            MS. ROBERTS: There’s a Nova Scotia Business Inc. rebate program for investment in seafood secondary processing - is that connected at all to the Atlantic Fisheries Fund or is it completely separate? I guess, likewise, a similar question, do you have input, or did you have input in the building of the parameters of that rebate program?

            MR. COLWELL: That’s administered through the Department of Business, you’d have to ask them.

            MS. ROBERTS: Okay. I’m looking across the table, I don’t know that any of the government members are at the Resources Committee meeting with me. We had a very interesting meeting recently with members of the Nova Scotia Seafood Alliance who, I am sure, you meet with on a regular basis, and they raised concerns about the Nova Scotia Business Inc.’s rebate program because it is designed so that on an investment of anywhere between I guess, $2 million and $15 million the project proponent can get 25 per cent of that investment back, and that the floor, the lowest, the smallest possible investment is still a very large investment for the members of the Seafood Alliance, which are smaller community connected, but certainly very successful and very important seafood processers around the province.

They raised concern that the Atlantic Fisheries Fund process might likewise be sort of, almost designed for such big players that those entrepreneurs and seafood processors that are located in small communities around the province might not be able to benefit as much as they would if there were a program designed for that more modest scale of investment and innovation. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on that.

            MR. COLWELL: Yes, they’re two distinctly different programs. I share some of the concern they have, but you have to realize, too, that fish processing in this province is a pretty sophisticated business, and a lot of the companies in the province would do a project well over $2 million, if they’re doing a major expansion or renovation, or upgrading, whatever they’re doing, so that’s a positive program for that group.

            The Atlantic Fisheries Fund, actually if you do a project up to $100,000 at an accredited fish plant it’s free, it’s all refundable to the company. It addresses that lower one and a lot of the companies in Nova Scotia - and we just talked about the licensing regime - don’t have the confidence to invest a lot because of the licensing regime and supply of raw materials and all that stuff. This really addresses a machine that they may put in place that will save some labour, maybe make a better-quality product. It could be something that could create a new product for the company, a value-added product for under $100,000, or $100,000 less. I know some of the lobster processing machines are $1.5 million and up, and to really get any value out of them you need two or three of them, so you’re soon into the $2 million mark and then some.

            It’s an issue, but I think overall there has been some positive change in the last two or three years towards helping the industry, enabling them to better equip and move forward.

[12:30 p.m.]

MS. ROBERTS: Thank you for your answer. One of my frustrations with our legislative committees is that often it’s not clear if there is anybody from the department in the room when we’re having very interesting conversations related to a department.

I would certainly encourage your staff who are all here to go back and read that Hansard record from the Resources Committee on February 15^th. One of the witnesses was Kerry Cunningham who is the manager of Sea Star Seafoods - which is not a lobster processor - a salt fish processor in Clarks Harbour that certainly seems like it has an awful lot of employees and an awful lot of impact on that community. He said, “We could build a whole new facility for $2 million.” He certainly felt like that Nova Scotia Business Inc. program was too big for most of his colleagues to even contemplate trying to take advantage of. Frankly, I feel like we’ve supported Clearwater enough anyhow.

MR. COLWELL: Our staff was at that meeting. You wouldn’t have noticed them, but they were there.

MS. ROBERTS: Fair. Another subject that came up at that meeting was the Fisheries Loan Board - does that fall directly under your department?

MR. COLWELL: Yes.

MS. ROBERTS: There was a discussion about whether the Fisheries Loan Board might start to actually finance stuff on the harvesting side. Is that something that you anticipate this year?

MR. COLWELL: We already finance boats and licences for harvesters.

MS. ROBERTS: There was a discussion about whether the loan board might actually start to work with processors as well as harvesters. I was curious to hear if you have anything to add on that.

MR. COLWELL: You’re right, they can’t apply it at the present time, but actually we have developed a new set of regulations that, hopefully, soon we’ll implement to allow us to do that.

MS. ROBERTS: Can you tell me, from your perspective, what is leading to that change - why is there a need for processors to be able to access the Fisheries Loan Board?

MR. COLWELL: It goes back to quality, added value, and the ability to access other funds as well. Some of these funds, if you can get part of your project through the Atlantic Fisheries Fund, part of it maybe through ACOA and maybe parts of our loan board, they can finance things that they otherwise couldn’t afford to do the cash flow on in the immediate future. That’s why we’re interested in working with it. It’s all part of growing the industry.

MS. ROBERTS: Can you tell me from the current activities of the Fisheries Loan Board, what’s the average size of a loan and what sorts of projects are you funding?

MR. COLWELL: We don’t know what an average loan is, but it can be from a very small loan, depending on what the fishermen want to buy, to loans up to $5 million, $6 million.

MS. ROBERTS: What is the default rate?

MR. COLWELL: It would run in arrears - that doesn’t mean they’re not going to pay these bills - it runs around 2 per cent. Very small.

MS. ROBERTS: I don’t know where we would see this in - not in the budget - how much debt has the board had to write off in previous years?

MR. COLWELL: This year we have no bad debt allowance whatsoever for the Fisheries Loan Board.

MS. ROBERTS: Okay, thank you. I’d like to - just give me a moment, I have questions coming from various places.

            This is moving to aquaculture - in 2016-17, you earmarked $2.8 million for a more rigorous review process for aquaculture and research into how sites affect the local environment. What are the results of that investment, what have the results been?

            MR. COLWELL: There are sort of two categories we work in. One of them is working with existing operators to improve the efficiency of their operations. For instance, we have some shellfish processors who have accessed the program to work with new equipment they hadn’t before, they’ve cut labour costs, improved quality with their product, that sort of thing. It would go through a whole process before we’d even think about something like that. And we’re doing pretty extensive water testing in areas that may potentially be for shellfish, so we can say this area may be good for this kind of shellfish but it’s not good for this kind of shellfish, it’s ongoing. That would include temperature monitoring, currents - I think we do salinity and we would also do other tests at the same time, monitors.

            MS. ROBERTS: Would that accomplish the intent of the Doelle-Lahey report where it talked about having green areas - are you essentially identifying green areas along the coastline for shellfish aquaculture?

            MR. COLWELL: We actually refer to the independent report because we own it, they don’t.

It’s sort of along that line, yes, because some areas just aren’t suitable for certain kinds of shellfish and we don’t want anyone to go in those areas and set up that kind of process. We don’t want to have a negative impact on the environment if it’s an area that doesn’t flush properly, the currents aren’t properly done, and we don’t want to put something in the community that people would see as a failure, because we didn’t do the science properly or the company didn’t do the science properly.

            We just want to make sure that we’re doing the right thing for the right locations. Also, this feeds into a lot of monitoring outside of what we do for other opportunities maybe down the road. That could be used for any - it could be used in the marine protected areas, areas we’re talking about for information there. It could be used for all kinds of things, this data we’re gathering.

            There has been a lot of ocean data gathered, but a lot of it hasn’t come together. The new technologies out there now make it pretty easy to acquire a lot of information very quickly. We’re actually working with the commercial fishermen to deploy the sensors we have, so it’s pretty exciting working with the commercial industry, which will help them as well because it gives them an idea of temperature changes in the waters. Lobsters are moving north, just to give you one example, and so are crab. What the trends are there gives us information, and even though its aquaculture this information will be used in the commercial fishery as well.

            MS. ROBERTS: What are the department’s plans regarding future research and development in aquaculture? I say that noting in Washington State they recently banned finfish aquaculture on the offshore. In Maine, I guess there’s huge investment in land- based aquaculture facilities. Is the department encouraging research and development for land-based aquaculture?

            MR. COLWELL: If you get a chance, look at the regulations. If you’re going to apply for a land-based aquaculture site of any kind, I never get involved in it. It’s not the process we talked about earlier. If we’re doing an ocean-based one they don’t have to approach us, they just have to go to regulatory people, say I want to build one of these, here are our plans, and they’re pretty well “rubber-stamped,” for lack of a better word. There’s also, when I say rubber-stamped, it’s not just rubber-stamped, they have to put in a plan, they still have to have a farm plan, how they’re going to get rid of the waste, how they’re going to handle that. All the things you would do on an ocean-based site would be the exact same on a land-based site, because they’re not as clean as people think, and they’re not disease free. We would monitor them the same as we would monitor an open pen system at sea.

            It’s a lot easier to get that, and we recently gave a substantial loan to one of the - you’d find that in Orders in Council, though our loan board to one of the aquaculture sites in the province, land-based. We support all types of aquaculture, we’re not one way or the other on this. There’s always a discussion of which is the best but, quite frankly, it’s very difficult to make money off of land-based aquaculture sites - virtually impossible. A lot of people have been successful but that’s not for us to judge, that’s for the independent business to decide what they’re going to do and this is a discussion I’ve had with my counterparts all over the world, and the same conclusion everywhere so it’s not just us.

            Hopefully, someday, someone will come up with a magic formula, usually it’s called energy cost and then go from there. We’ve also funded a lot of R&D-based projects - so that fund we were talking about for land-based aquaculture - because land-based aquaculture is also hatcheries, which are successful.

            MS. ROBERTS: I’m going to let you catch up with your notes there.

            MR. COLWELL: Yes, I just got a note here, which I wasn’t aware of, that we have three brand-new land-based aquaculture sites in Nova Scotia this year.

            MS. ROBERTS: I’d like to ask you about the hatcheries - who owns them?

            MR. COLWELL: Well, we own three, the Province of Nova Scotia. One reason for our Act, we can’t even license those ones because they’re land-based hatcheries. We get to license our own facilities, which would be sort of handy. They’ve been there, some for many, many years, but we own three that grow salmon and trout. All the other ones are privately owned.

            MS. ROBERTS: So, you do license other ones as well. How many hatcheries are there in total in the province?

            MR. COLWELL: There are 15.

            MS. ROBERTS: Okay, and the hatcheries that the province owns, I understand that the trout is for stocking lakes around the province, that’s a program that is spoken about fairly openly, a recreation tourism kind of spinoff. What is the intent or the rationale for the province owning a finfish, salmon hatchery?

            MR. COLWELL: We have it strictly for sports fishing - nothing else. The salmon that they raise in Margaree goes back in the Margaree River and the tributaries around that. That’s the only thing we do, we don’t do any commercial hatcheries at all for anybody.

            MS. ROBERTS: Okay, so we’re not providing fish for finfish aquaculture.

            MR. COLWELL: No.

            MS. ROBERTS: Thank you. I’m interested to know what, if anything, the province is doing to support harvesters and the industry in general, I guess, in preparing - not just preparing but reacting to the impact of climate change. You know, I liked the comment of one of the witnesses. It was Leo Muise, the executive director of the Nova Scotia Seafood Alliance at the Resources Committee who said that if he has now been convinced that climate change is real, there’s no doubt about it, because he was in denial for many years and he said that they’ve had multiple hurricanes this year, they just don’t call them hurricanes because they’re not in hurricane season. Instead, they’re called nor’easters, but they’re the strength of hurricanes.

            How is the department responding to that so that the infrastructure that the industry relies on is not knocked out?

[12:45 p.m.]

MR. COLWELL: We’re looking at different things. We’re looking at different models for different species. It appears that the lobsters are moving north; it appears that crabs are moving north. Again, it just appears that way from what we’re hearing from the industry. That’s why a lot of the research we’re doing even around aquaculture is so important with temperature monitoring.

            I believe we had three of those hurricane-force storms this month again. Some of these storms we’ve had were very severe and really high winds. The thing is in the city here we don’t notice them so much - just the wind - but when you get in the open water it gets pretty severe. These storms are going to be more and more difficult to work with.

            The other thing is, too, the climate change projects are eligible for the Atlantic Fisheries Fund as well.

            MS. ROBERTS: Does that include infrastructure investment in terms of wharves and processing facilities? Obviously, all that stuff is seaside.

            MR. COLWELL: We don’t touch wharves, that’s DFO and Ports Canada. The infrastructure is a business decision somebody would make if they’re going to put a processing facility in. That could be covered under the Atlantic Fisheries Fund and it could be covered under the program through NSBI as well.

            MS. ROBERTS: One of the points that Mr. Muise made was that the Federation of Agriculture was given $1 million to study the effect of climate change on dykelands, and the Seafood Alliance has not had a contribution towards looking at it themselves because, obviously, there are seafood harvesters around the province who are pretty much uniformly right at the spot in our communities that is most likely to be affected by sea level rise.

            MR. COLWELL: The project you’re talking through aquaculture, was applied for directly through the federal government and ourselves, and we support that with $200,000.

            MS. ROBERTS: I had the opportunity to go out with an oyster farmer in New Brunswick and the point was made there that oyster farms actually can mitigate the effect of storm surges - is that something that you’re contemplating as you’re looking at both where shellfish aquaculture can happen and whether to promote it in different areas?

            MR. COLWELL: We’re looking at all the possibilities we can because the fish industry is so important to Nova Scotia, whether it’s a wild caught product or aquaculture products. It has been proven a lot of these activities - for instance, the oysters are fantastic filter feeders and they will actually clean up the water. I know the U.S. has some major programs in place to grow oysters to full size and then dump them overboard for the sole purpose of cleaning up the harbours and the tributaries.

            There are a lot of really positive studies that have been done and a lot of actual things that are happening. Over time you have to look at the particular location; you have to look and see what may or may not work. That’s where the science and why the research funding we have through these programs, we’re quite interested in that kind of work as well.

            MS. ROBERTS: You spoke earlier about marine protected areas and obviously one was just announced on the Eastern Shore. Are there forms of aquaculture, such as oyster aquaculture, that can actually take place within those marine protected areas?

            MR. COLWELL: If it’s done right, aquaculture can be done anywhere. The secret is to do it right. Under the Farm Management Plan now you could pretty well, for instance, I’ll just use - well a shellfish farm, as long as the conditions are right, the water is clean, oysters can go in water that is sort of polluted but you can’t sell them afterwards. That’s no good, it doesn’t make business sense. The same with mussels, they can go pretty well anywhere but they still have to have certain conditions that they work by. They don’t cause any problems to the environment whatsoever.

            There’s a misconception around finfish as well, because the waste from finfish has no E. coli and no salmonella, none - zero. The Halifax Harbour treatment system here that just takes the solids out, it doesn’t do anything else, pollutes in one day probably more ocean water than every salmon and trout farm - if we had a salmon or trout farm in every harbour, every bay in Nova Scotia - would do in a year, in comparison. With the right stocking densities and the right fouling time, which is all prescribed now under the programs, you can very successfully operate a facility that has virtually zero impact on the environment.

That’s what we aim for. It depends on the location; it depends on the currents; it depends on a lot of things. But all those things are measurable and, indeed, will be part of developing a farm plan for a particular site - and there has to be a farm plan no matter what it is.

            MS. ROBERTS: Again, back to the marine protected areas - I’ve heard you and others say that Nova Scotia has done enough. But is there not an opportunity to work with the federal government to figure out the sort of sustainable fishery that is in keeping with marine protected areas, especially given the fact they are protected also means the habitat that might make them actually productive areas for fish might make them great areas?

            MR. COLWELL: We’d be very anxious to look at that and again it would have to be very well done, as every place we look at we want to make sure it’s going to have a minimum impact on the environment or none, any place we set up anything we can.

            The fishery itself, the wild fishery is not static, it moves all the time and quite severe distances, so the two can exist and coexist very well.

            When you look at aquaculture - you’ve probably eaten aquaculture fish and not even known it, many times, because about 60 per cent of all the seafood that is consumed now in the world is aquaculture.

            MS. ROBERTS: Maybe that’s an opportunity for me to move on to seafood labelling briefly. Oceana Canada is an ocean research charity that suggests that as much as 40 per cent of seafood sold in Canada is mislabelled and they suggest that some of that is purposeful fraud - is that an issue you are aware of in Nova Scotia?

            MR. COLWELL: I’m not aware of any that are because if we were aware of it we would definitely ask Environment, through their enforcement division, to investigate it.

            MS. ROBERTS: Does your department not have any role in seafood labelling and traceability?

            MR. COLWELL: We do labelling and traceability, but when it comes to anything that is on the grocery shelf that they would be looking at, it would be only from our own fish plants we would have any control over, and we do monitor that. Again, Environment does the monitoring because they are the enforcement people now. Nova Scotians usually have a very good reputation for being accurate on their labelling.

            MS. ROBERTS: My understanding is that both the U.S. and the EU currently have stronger seafood labelling than Canada and more stringent regulations. There’s also increased traceability of product from origin to end use and they’re looking at going further with that. How is your department responding and preparing our industry to, I guess, meet requirements for greater traceability?

            MR. COLWELL: Well, actually in the processing side of it, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency is totally responsible for that, and all our plants in Nova Scotia, every fish plant in Nova Scotia is CFIA approved, or they can’t get a licence from us to operate.

            MS. ROBERTS: Nova Scotia fishers and coastal-community citizens are deeply concerned by the risks posed by BP’s drilling plans offshore. Given the tides in the Bay of Fundy area, there’s a sense that any kind of spill could be devastating to the lobster industry in particular. What is your department’s role and view on this?

            MR. COLWELL: Well, we’ve talked to the industry several times about it, but again those questions you should ask the Department of Energy. They are responsible for their activities in that regard and the industry people that have come to see us, whom we will talk to any time about it, and we always send them to the Department of Energy for more information. But we are also, we have members of our staff on the CNSOPB group, which is the overseer of the whole thing, gas drilling and all that, it was a committee put together for offshore drilling and there are fishermen and fisheries organizations on that committee. That is done through that process.

            MS. ROBERTS: Can you tell me a little more about that committee that’s, I guess, an advisory committee to the CNSOPB?

            MR. COLWELL: It’s an advisory committee to look at things around the offshore drilling and production platforms. It’s a committee that was set up - I don’t know when it was set up because it’s under the Department of Energy, not under my responsibilities, but we’re an active part of that and so is the fishing industry. I would suggest you ask the Department of Energy, when they come in, for more details.

            MS. ROBERTS: Luckily, I’m the spokesperson on that as well, so I can.

            I would like to ask about clams and clam digging. That’s one of these interesting fisheries where I think in many cases there’s split jurisdiction between the province and the feds, DFO, but clam digging, because it happens onshore, that’s entirely within your realm to open a beach?

            MR. COLWELL: Sort of.

MS. ROBERTS: Sort of? Please, explain.

            MR. COLWELL: It’s sort of complicated. It’s really DFO that’s responsible for it, but we do have some aquaculture sites - a few. If it’s an aquaculture site, it’s under our responsibility and we’re encouraged, and try to encourage that more and more because it improves the industry. It’s a very viable industry in the province and the water testing that’s done, or lack of water testing that’s done by Environment Canada - they used to do the water testing, now they just close an area and don’t do the testing to see if it needs to be closed or not. It has caused the industry a great deal of grief. We’ve been trying to get that resolved with Environment Canada and DFO, but to this date we haven’t. It’s a really expensive process to do this testing, or else we would just do it for the industry, the whole process.

            We’re working with Environment Canada and the DFO in that regard, to see if we can’t get some kind of a co-operative venture between ourselves and industry and those two departments, to get these open. The clam industry in Nova Scotia is one of those very underrated industries; it’s worth several million dollars a year and it’s pretty widespread around the province. I know just outside of Halifax, in Chezzetcook, that was one of the most productive clam flats for years in the whole province, and down in the Digby area and the French Shore, there’s a very vibrant industry there as well.

            MS. ROBERTS: Who or what agency makes the call that clams need to be depurated? Is that the right word?

[1:00 p.m.]

            MR. COLWELL: What’s that again? Depuration.

            MS. ROBERTS: Yes. Who makes the call that clams from a particular beach need to be put through that process?

            MR. COLWELL: It’s pretty straightforward. If they’re digging clams in an area that’s closed for digging - that has identified E. coli and salmonella, usually - that’s usually the two culprits that would come from septic systems, sewage treatment systems, all that kind of stuff - they would typically close that area and anything in that area would have to be depurated.

            MS. ROBERTS: But is that where you’re suggesting that Environment Canada is actually not testing whether that process is necessary?

            MR. COLWELL: Well, what Environment Canada does now is, they just close it, they don’t test it. If in doubt, close it. These areas may not - at certain times of the year, certain clam flats are - with temperature rise, you get more bacteria generated. At certain times of the year they probably should be closed. Even in a closed time, you go through depuration to make sure that the clams are clean. It’s a well-proven system. But it would depend on the time of the year, and they’ve taken the philosophy now that we’re not going to spend the money testing, so we’ll just close the things that we’re in doubt about.

            MS. ROBERTS: And when the beach is closed, that means that the clams can only be processed if they are going to go through a depuration facility? Is that correct?

            MR. COLWELL: That’s correct. They can only be dug and taken to a depuration facility. There’s a whole process through CFIA that they have to do, and testing of the water. It’s a whole complex system that they would have to put a depuration system - you need a lab and expensive machinery.

            MS. ROBERTS: My understanding from some conversations I had down in the Digby area is that the depuration facility and access to a great number of beaches that are closed is all quite concentrated in one business’ hand, and many other traditional clam diggers are effectively forced out of the activity. Is that a concern that you hear within your department?

            MR. COLWELL: We’ve heard that before. Again, the diggers are licensed by DFO, not us. It’s an issue because the depuration system is very expensive to put in. We just had a study done on depuration. We had a policy in the department that all operations had to have a depuration system by a certain date, but we have five or six small businesses that would do a reasonable amount of business a year and they can’t dig in those spots. They can dig for a company that has a depuration system and supply to them, but that usually doesn’t give them enough money to operate their business by.

            We just did a study on depuration, and that came back with pretty straightforward answers on what we needed to know. Actually, it’s one of the better studies I’ve ever seen. We’d be pleased to give it to the Chair and the Clerk to distribute to the Parties. I think that would be very appropriate. We can do that sometime in the future.

            I’d like to see more depuration systems, but the financial capability of some of the companies to do this is not possible. The solution for them is to have water testing done in the areas and get the areas opened. That’s the best solution of all, anyway. Then they can go and clean them, get it in a spot that they can supply them.

            MS. ROBERTS: I guess I’m left wondering how complicated this water testing is. Is this the sort of thing like a local organization, a community organization - I think about the Clean Annapolis River Project, for example, which obviously was not working on beaches - it was working in a river - but did a lot of citizen science that I have heard only good things about. Maybe there’s a similar sort of grassroots-ish approach to this which could enable more people to be working and making a living from what has been a long-standing economic activity.

            MR. COLWELL: I would agree. I had the same question about the water testing, and we’ve looked at it. The trouble is that Environment Canada has some very strict protocols on it, and for obvious reasons. They’re concerned about shellfish poisoning, which could easily happen if the tests aren’t done right and if the right decisions aren’t made.

            They have done tests before. They had independent people do them, but they’re usually scientists who are trained to take the samples, what they’ve got to do with the samples, how they’ve got to handle the samples, how quickly they have to get them to the lab. There’s a whole protocol. Typically, someone in the community can’t all of a sudden decide to take samples and send them off and approve them. They won’t accept them.

            MS. ROBERTS: Okay, thank you. Did you have something you wanted to add?

            MR. COLWELL: Yes, just one other thing here I neglected to say was that it has to go to an approved lab, and there aren’t a lot of approved labs that can take these samples either.

            MS. ROBERTS: I wonder if you could comment on the economic impact of the fishery around Nova Scotia? I think you made a comment today in the House about how - I don’t know if it was that all of us combined aren’t worth as much as a lobster fisherman, or something like that? Could you comment on the value of the fishery to the economic well-being of communities around Nova Scotia?

            MR. COLWELL: Well, as everybody is aware, commercial fishing activity - or fishing activities in general, including aquaculture - has a huge economic impact in rural Nova Scotia. In some communities, if the fishing activity wasn’t there or the aquaculture activity wasn’t there, there would be no community. It’s that simple. You would probably have a group of people who weren’t able to work, and maybe some retired people enjoying the peace and quiet, but there wouldn’t be much else.

            As people migrate more and more into HRM, it’s more important that we make job opportunities available to people in Nova Scotia who want to live in a rural area. It’s a beautiful lifestyle, and you can make a very good living via the fishing industry.

As I said earlier, the fishing industry exports are $2 billion a year at this present time, and aquaculture is $100 million. Years ago, I was told by External Affairs that the multiplier is 7 to 1, so that’s a $14 billion economic benefit to Nova Scotians overall, and the benefit to local communities is equivalent to that.

If you look at the ships contract that your Party - you weren’t elected in the Party at that time. We’re talking about this fantastic ships project, which was good and going to employ thousands and thousands of people, and they did employ a few people, and is worth - without even the multiplier for economic spinoff - half of what the fishing industry is in Nova Scotia, to put it into perspective.

That money comes from other parts of the country. It doesn’t come from outside of Canada, so you can’t use the same multiplier for the ship contract as you can for that. That contract is important to Nova Scotia, but we can’t undervalue the fishing industry.

I think for so long, people have looked at this as you smell like bait after you go out and fish, a day working - it’s not a very luxurious job. But I can tell you, I spent a lot of time on fishing boats. I sometimes would come home and had to get rid of my clothes, but that was okay. I’d take a shower, maybe a couple, but at the end of the day, what a wonderful way to make a living.

Some of these harvesters today are making more than a living. They’re making a substantial living. I’ll put it this way: totally financially independent in a very short time. It’s one of the most lucrative jobs you can get in Nova Scotia, but they don’t talk about it.

MS. ROBERTS: I think that takes me back a bit to some of the concerns that I’m hearing around the BP exploration. My understanding is that the total economic impact on the province from oil and gas activity offshore to date is somewhere in the realm of $1.9 billion. That would be approximately equivalent to one year - any given year - from the fishing industry. When the fishing industry is telling us, as legislators, don’t put this at risk, the math and the economics certainly seem to lend credence to those voices.

            The CNSOPB - you mentioned earlier that members of your staff sit on an advisory committee, but one of the concerns that I’ve heard, again - particularly with changes that the federal government has just recently made - is that the CNSOPB is really being put in a position of being both the regulator of offshore drilling activity and the promoter of offshore drilling activity.

            Do you have concerns? Have you voiced concerns from the department regarding that?

            MR. COLWELL: Well, offshore exploration, if it’s done right, can coexist - but it has to be done right, like everything. The things we do, we have to make sure they are done right. That’s why we’ve changed our laws and regulations around aquaculture. That’s why we are probably going to change - we are in the process of changing - some of the licensing process around our processing, and the other work we do.

            It’s a matter of making sure you have checks and balances in place and that you have a good co-operative working effort with multiple industries.

            You can look at all kinds of activities that happen on land and say, well, can they coexist? And they have forever. Just because it’s in the ocean doesn’t mean it’s any different. It’s a different environment, that’s all.

            MS. ROBERTS: Well, a difficult and very challenging environment, in terms of actually getting to where you might want to cap a blowout, for example. My understanding is that where BP is exploring is approximately three times the depth of the Gulf of Mexico, where it took them 120-odd days to get a capping stack on a blowout.

            When I listen to fishermen and they are like, you’re telling us we can’t fish in certain areas because you are so concerned about the marine environment, and then oil exploration is allowed to happen where lobster larvae are found in great abundance, you certainly - I can understand why they are frustrated with us.

            MR. COLWELL: Sometimes, yes. It depends. The regulators of a lot of these things are the federal government, and they make rules and regulations. Around the drilling platforms - and again, I’ve only ever been on one in my lifetime, but those things are tightly regulated - I think they are more concerned about the fishing around them from the fact of danger of maybe collisions or other activities - more safety issues than anything else, from what I’ve seen over the years, but again - and here everything we do is pretty regulated.

            MS. ROBERTS: Our Party has taken the position that a capping stack should be available in close proximity to offshore exploration. Do you agree with that view, which was also expressed by the Seafood Alliance when they came to the Resources Committee?

            MR. COLWELL: I didn’t hear that, sorry.

            MS. ROBERTS: We’ve made the decision, as a caucus, to support a call for a capping stack, which is basically the technology that you would use if there was a blowout in an active oil well, exploratory or otherwise.

            Do you agree that a capping stack should be available on the East Coast in reasonable proximity, as opposed to being in Norway and potentially taking two weeks to get here?

            MR. COLWELL: That is something you are going to have to ask Energy. I’m no expert on that.

            MS. ROBERTS: Okay. Thank you. Would you be able to provide me with an organizational chart for the department with job vacancies identified?

            MR. COLWELL: Yes. We’ll supply that to the Chair and the Clerk.

            MS. ROBERTS: Thank you. I would also be interested in seeing how much the department spent on services provided by a temp agency next year, and how much the department is budgeting for those services in this year.

            MR. COLWELL: What’s that again?

            MS. ROBERTS: Do you use temp agencies within the department?

            MR. COLWELL: It’s not much. I know it’s not much, because I have to sign off on them every time, so it’s not very much.

[1:15 p.m.]

            MS. ROBERTS: Okay. We would be interested in that. We know that there are departments where the use of temps seems to be increasing.

            MR. COLWELL: I think I can give you the number right now.

            MS. ROBERTS: Okay. Thank you.

            MR. COLWELL: From what I remember, I can recall signing off on the approvals on these, just a couple of places that we had them. If I remember, that was about $10,000 to $15,000, and those were temporary people we brought in for pregnancy leaves, someone off on long-term or short-term illness, that sort of thing. That’s the only thing we have.

            We looked at 2016-17, and we would have had - it was $69,000, but that’s all services, not temporary workers. That would be somebody - we might need an accountant to do something special for a month or two, and we need something else for that, but it would be - we’re very well staffed and our staff are all - we’ve got some people off now on pregnancy leave, and time to time different sections of our department, we would have people off.

            Sometimes we backfill a position and sometimes we don’t, just depending on - and we have some seasonal activity that would hire some temporary people to come in for maybe a month and do some work. That’s it.

MS. ROBERTS: Okay, thank you. Likewise, I’d be interested to know how much the department spent on external consultants last year. Are you able to provide a list of contracts and the types of services provided and the amounts and so forth of the vendors?

MR. COLWELL: It’s all in the records, in Public Accounts. It’s all there to the public right now.

MS. ROBERTS: Okay, we’ll take a look at that. I think that’s Volume 2, maybe.

Finally, what about internships? Does the department use or host any internships, and what are those interns paid?

MR. COLWELL: Could you repeat the question, please? I’m having trouble hearing. You’ve got to get closer to the microphone.

MS. ROBERTS: Sorry. I’m interested to know if the department hosts any university interns, and if so, are they paid?

MR. COLWELL: We do have students from time to time, interns, and when we do get them, we pay them. We always pay them.

MS. ROBERTS: That’s great to hear. Thank you.

The last thing I’ll say - I think I’m ticking down here. In some of your opening remarks, you mentioned safety and increasing safety culture in the industry. I’ll just bring to your attention that Bill No. 56 is on the order paper. It’s called Occupational Safety General Regulations. It was introduced by my colleague, the member for Cape Breton Centre, but that was actually a bill that Sterling Belliveau introduced in his last session in the Legislature, regarding the use of PFDs while onboard.

I understand that PFDs have evolved quite a lot since initially, when many fishermen didn’t want to wear them because they were cumbersome. We’d welcome your support to bring that bill forward for second reading and possible passage.

MR. COLWELL: The lifejackets are required now.

MS. ROBERTS: My understanding is that there’s some language around how they are required, which is that they are not necessarily required to be worn whenever onboard. There’s something about the language about how and when they are required that results in people not always having them on.

            MR. COLWELL: The regulation is through the Department of Labour and Advanced Education, and you should talk to them in more detail about that. There’s a risk of drowning on a fishing boat - there’s always a risk of drowning, so it’s probably covered now, but they are required.

            The other thing we have done is work closely with the industry on helping develop new PFDs that would make it easier for them to work in and more comfortable. I’ve seen some of the ones that they’ve developed, and it’s almost like wearing a scarf, in some cases, except it’s strapped to your body and inflates by itself if you hit the saltwater, or you can manually inflate it. It’s very important.

            MS. ROBERTS: Thank you very much, I appreciate the answers.

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: Three minutes.

            MS. ROBERTS: I think I’m done.

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: We’ll switch over to the PC caucus and Ms. Masland.

            MS. KIM MASLAND: Thank you, Madam Chairman, and thank you for the opportunity to be here this afternoon to ask some questions.

            My first question to the minister is, I’m curious to know who holds the majority of marine cage salmon licences in Nova Scotia.

            MR. COLWELL: I’m sorry about that, I was distracted there for a second.

            MS. MASLAND: That’s okay, no worries. I’ll repeat. My first question is, who holds the majority of marine cage salmon licences in Nova Scotia?

MR. COLWELL: That would be Cooke Aquaculture.

            MS. MASLAND: My next question is, I’ve heard you boast about the positive numbers of aquaculture in Nova Scotia, and I know you are really passionate about aquaculture in Nova Scotia. I’ve heard you say in the past that it’s worth $60 million, and most recently you stated it was worth over $100 million.

            Could the minister please advise the value of marine cage Atlantic salmon aquaculture to Nova Scotia, especially considering the fisher process in New Brunswick? The well boats and harvest boats are in New Brunswick, the crew are from New Brunswick, and cage repair is done by workers from New Brunswick. Very little money is spent in Nova Scotia by Kelly Cove Salmon. With DFA and NSC spending millions to regulate this industry, it seems to me that maybe Nova Scotia is losing money.

            I’m just wondering if you could please advise the value of that.

            MR. COLWELL: Well, I can tell you that one of the marine shipyards - one of the bigger ones in Nova Scotia and independently-owned ones - I believe the salmon industry occupies 60 per cent of their total market now, which is millions and millions of dollars. The investment in boats, a lot of boats built here - the feed mill alone that’s here in Nova Scotia, that services all of Atlantic Canada, is worth around $100 million and employs all Nova Scotians. Almost all the local people who are employed in the aquaculture industry here in Nova Scotia are Nova Scotians living and working here.

            It’s an industry that has huge economic impact. The average salary on a finfish farm, whether it be trout or salmon or whatever you want to call it, is around $35,000 a year - a huge economic impact for rural Nova Scotia.

            MS. MASLAND: Just to clarify, because I don’t think I heard correctly, did you say that the people who are working on salmon aquaculture farms are Nova Scotians?

            MR. COLWELL: Nova Scotians - they’re living in Nova Scotia, yes, and they work here. I guess once you live here a while, you are Nova Scotian - not like P.E.I. You could live there a lifetime.

            MS. MASLAND: Interesting.

            Madam Chairman, I know the minister has been here since 11:00 a.m., did he want to have a break? I’m willing to give a little time. I know he has been here since 11:00 a.m.

            MR. COLWELL: I didn’t hear that.

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: She’s asking if you want a break. Would you like a pause in the proceedings for a break?

            MR. COLWELL: No. Thank you anyway.

            MS. MASLAND: Could the minister advise how much money is spent to regulate finfish farming in Nova Scotia?

            MR. COLWELL: That’s a good question. I don’t know if I have the answer, but let me check.

            The actual enforcement is not done by us but by the Department of Environment. We monitor the sites for several things, which is in our regular budget. We have regular visits to the sites. We review their farm management plans on a regular basis.

            It’s very well managed now. It’s not like it was four or five years ago when basically we had five pages of regulations and if you were operating any kind of an aquaculture site - land-based, finfish, shellfish, ocean-based - you could pretty well do anything you wanted.

            With the new regulations and regulatory requirements, we set up a new fish lab in Truro. We have some of the highest-qualified fish veterinarians in the country - in the world, actually - working for Nova Scotia. The regulations we do on this are set up to really monitor the industry. If there’s an issue, we want to find it ahead of being an issue and even all the construction - everything has changed with our new regulations. We’ve got the toughest regulations in the world, probably, but they’re fair and they are transparent.

            If somebody does something, it’s very easy to see whether they are going to be charged, and Environment would do that, not us. In our part of it, if we see a farm plan that’s not done properly, we have the ability now to take a licence away, which never happened before. It could never happen before. We’ve got a fantastic regulatory system in place now.

            MS. MASLAND: Well, I’m really glad to hear that. I wasn’t around prior to learn all about this. This is a lot of learning, and new for me, so I appreciate your work in trying to tighten up those regulations.

            I would like to talk on transparency, which you’ve brought up, because I think that’s very important.

            The Doelle-Lahey report stated that there was an absolute need of much greater transparency with respect to the events that have transpired and statements made on dates with respect to the bad storm in late December and early January - which you and I have had some exchange in the Legislature about - and the effect it had on Cooke’s Jordan Bay aquaculture site.

            Will the minister be prepared to release a detailed timeline of events outlining when your department sent your divers and your veterinarians in to inspect the fallout from this event? I would like to formally request that that information be provided to me by the department.

            MR. COLWELL: The total cost in doing that from our department - not the Department of Environment, because they do the enforcement - is somewhere around $14,500. We did more monitoring in this case because a couple of individuals sent us information that there were thousands of fish floating on the surface and thousands of fish on the shore, which of course we’d be very concerned about.

            We came to find out that there were no fish on the shore and there were none in the water. We sent a helicopter up twice to double-check that. We sent people on the beaches. We have our own boat that we go to the sites with now. That’s an investment we made a while ago, and it was over $0.25 million for the boat. We go out in pretty much any weather, unless it’s a hurricane.

            We investigated that totally. We came to find out that there were almost-identical emails on more than one occasion from the same individuals, the same claim. We’re looking at the possibility of trying to recoup our costs for the false reporting of information. It’s a serious offence in other areas, and even if we think it’s a false report of something, we will investigate it.

            We want to make sure that things are being done properly - that’s what our regulations are about - but we can’t waste our time, our energy, and our resources running around all over the place because somebody has some other agenda or they have some kind of issue, that they don’t like a particular activity going on. I know in agriculture, a farmer has a right to a peaceful existence.

[1:30 p.m.]

            Some of the claims that are made that we see all the time are not backed up by science and not backed up by fact, and that has to change. We take this business seriously. This is billions and billions of dollars’ worth of business, this business is, and typically, the companies want to do it right as well, because if they lose fish, they lose gear, it costs them a lot of money. Every fish that they would lose out of a mature site would be worth somewhere between $30 to $50. It doesn’t take many fish on a site to be destroyed or lost or hurt in some way before you are into millions and millions of dollars in loss, and they are not interested in that.

            The equipment has gotten a lot better. There is a lot of erroneous information out there from outside the province, as well. There is some accurate information, though, and all that stuff too.

            We have to make sure - we are the regulators of this industry and the Department of Environment are the enforcers. They are the police force. If we see anything irregular, we report all that information to them - all the information we have. We have the experts, with our veterinarians and biologists, who aren’t necessarily available through Environment, so we co-operate very closely with them.

            If somebody is doing something wrong, we’ll be the first ones to push to have them charged. I have the authority, as minister - whoever the minister has - to take a licence away from somebody if they don’t perform to the standards we’ve set. That was never available before - never could do it before. We hope that we will never have to do that, but that’s why we do such a rigorous process now about approving sites initially, to make sure that people have expertise, make sure they have the financial resources and everything to do these sites. Before you could basically apply for the site and it was a pretty simple process you went through, and you could get a site. That didn’t mean you had the financial resources or the expertise to do it.

            The people who operate these facilities now are experts. It’s a huge, huge business. I don’t know what it would compare with. I believe one company in Norway does $9 billion U.S. per year in business - in salmon farming. They are not fooling around. They don’t want their fish to escape. They don’t want any diseases. They don’t want anything else like that. They spend millions and hundreds of millions of dollars to make sure that doesn’t happen.

            There seems to be a small number of people in the province - I can’t give it to you, but I can give you the five or six names. It’s the same people every time with the same complaints and the same story. After a while, we have to make people accountable. If they’ve got truth in that, if there’s an issue, we want to know about it, and we want to know about it immediately. It will immediately be investigated by us and by Environment, and whatever corrective action needs to be taken, it will be taken. There is not even a question about that.

            I know that in the Legislature - you’ve got your pictures of the gear you gathered up off the beach. Some of it may not be aquaculture. Some of it definitely was, but the thing is, by law, they have to clean that all up. They have to clean it up.

            The point I made in the Legislature, when you asked me questions in Question Period, is that they are the only ones. You can go down there and you can dump garbage bags full of garbage in the ocean and nobody can do anything about it. If you own an aquaculture site and you have a rope that goes loose, you have to go clean it up. They get a bond posted for that and it’s all part of the new system. If they don’t clean it up, we’ll clean it up and claim the bond, and if we clean it up, it costs a whole lot more than if they do it.

            There is a lot of protection in this whole system to do it, and that equipment was all cleaned up. Some of the people who were complaining down there didn’t give it enough time to get done. You can’t clean these things up unless the weather co-operates, which is sensible.

            I believe there was an order issued by Environment to clean it up - which would be normal process, just in case it wasn’t cleaned up, so that’s in place. Then we could collect on the bond and our department would organize the cleanup and Environment would make sure we did it right, which is very important.

            This whole thing is, if we want to grow an economy in your area - and you’ve got a really fantastic area to live in down there for the commercial fishing industry - we really have to look at other alternatives too. With climate change, fish are moving, and in 10 or 50 years’ time, your area may not have the resources there to harvest because they’ve moved somewhere else. They may be off Greenland by that time - hopefully they never are, but then we have to look at other alternatives.

            That’s why we’re so interested in aquaculture. About 60 per cent of all seafood consumed today is aquaculture. You probably eat aquaculture products sometimes and don’t even know.

            MS. MASLAND: There’s some I don’t eat.

            MR. COLWELL: I remember one of the aquaculture people from Europe told me one time - and it’s not quite true in Canada - if it’s pink, it’s aquaculture. There’s some truth in that, but in Canada it’s a little bit different, because we do have a fresh fish fishery and some other stuff.

            But you never buy wild Atlantic salmon. There’s no such thing. If you’re buying them, you have to get them in Iceland or Greenland. Greenland, that’s where they kill a lot of our wild fish in the commercial harvest.

            MS. MASLAND: I’ll just go back to the question again, which is that I would like to formally request that that information be provided to me by the department.

            I’ll take it a step further. I would like to know, when storms like this happen and your department goes in to do your inspection, is it the department’s divers who are going down or is it the company’s divers who are going down and then reporting back to you folks?

            MR. COLWELL: We don’t have to employ divers anymore. We have our own ROV. We bought an ROV for specifically this purpose. I don’t know if we deployed it that time.

            The other thing is, from what I am able to remember from that incident - and I’m going strictly by memory here - they count the fish when they move fish from one pen to another. If they’re going to repair one of those pens, they count the fish. They want to know exactly how many they’ve got.

            There were none gone. None. They had some mortalities, which is normal because they get beaten up by the bad weather, but they’re all in the cage, and that’s normal. They would send divers down. They would check their nets. They would also check for mortalities on the site. They would remove those, because they don’t want there to be any kind of a problem for their other fish or for the environment around there.

            MS. MASLAND: It is the company’s divers who go down and report back to the department? That’s my question.

            MR. COLWELL: Yes, but we have to be satisfied that they’ve done the job properly. We would verify that, and if need be, Environment would follow up on that too.

            If they have mortalities, they have to report the mortalities to us as well, as they have to if they have any escaped fish.

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: May I interject? Are you requesting this?

            MS. MASLAND: Yes. Twice.

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: All right. I do not have a Clerk, as you see, so you’ll have to submit that to the Clerks over in the main Chamber.

            MS. MASLAND: Absolutely.

            My next question is this: Kelly Cove Salmon has stripped nine out of their 20-net pens in the last 10 days. This is the third successive failure of Site 1358. In 2015, all salmon died. In 2017, there was a superchill and they died. In 2018 - well, I’m not really sure what’s going on.

            Regardless, the site infrastructure has been severely compromised with these storms we’ve had. I heard you talk earlier this afternoon about the fact that with these powerful storms, it has been destructive. A reasonable person would agree that the Site 1358 experiment has failed. I’m just looking for what the minister’s plan will be for the lease on this site.

            MR. COLWELL: The information is not accurate. In 2015, we had a superchill event in the province. Not only did it kill some fish on finfish farms, but it also killed wild mackerel in other areas. That was an anomaly. Actually, research is being done on that at the present time to prevent that from ever happening again.

            They also found that if they approached the nets when there are really cold temperatures, the salmon will come up to the top where it’s cold, instead of staying on the bottom of the net, and that can kill them. Now at a lot of the sites, if not all of them, they have temperature monitors on them showing what the temperature is remotely so they don’t have to go to the site and see it. They stay clear of the sites to make sure that they don’t come up off the bottom part of the net.

            They are looking at other technology that we automatically trigger if we have a superchill again. That was a very unusual incident. Again, a lot of wild fish died, as well. It was just one of those things that happens in nature.

            MS. MASLAND: Finished? Can I ask my next question, or do you have more?

            MR. COLWELL: Yes. The sites in the superchill is correct. We investigated that. You will see everything that happens now on an aquaculture site that goes up on our website. There is no more suspicion around hiding anything, and I was out in front of that once we found out about it.

            There was quite severe mortality at that time. But there haven’t been all those incidents they are talking about. There hasn’t been all these fish killed. The same people telling you that are sending us these emails that claim there’s thousands of fish floating all over the place all the time.

            I would just suggest that in the future, if you have any questions like that, call us directly. We will tell you exactly what is going on in your area.

            I would suggest you contact the company as well. We’re pushing the companies all the time to do more outreach in the communities and inform the communities of exactly what’s happening if they do have a problem. They said they would do that, and they have taken some steps in that regard. I would suggest you sit down and talk with them and say, look, I want to be informed of what’s happening so I can have accurate information for myself and my constituents. That would be good.

            Also, everything we know, we will tell you. We are not hiding anything. That’s the purpose of our new regulations and regulatory framework, to make sure that’s out there.

            MS. MASLAND: For the record, during that last storm, I did contact your department. I left a message, and no one returned my call.

            MR. COLWELL: That won’t happen again. You call me directly.

            MS. MASLAND: I’m looking for your cellphone number.

            MR. COLWELL: I will give you my phone number - my direct number.

            MS. MASLAND: Minister, you have indicated in the past that the department was required to pay about $14,500 a day to investigate the site after that last storm.

            Can you please provide a breakdown of this cost to me? I will take it another step further - I realize an inspection comes from the Department of Environment, but will there be more inspectors hired? I guess it’s hard for you to speak to that. But if there is going to be, shouldn’t the cost of this be borne by the industry?

            MR. COLWELL: Typically, we wouldn’t have this much because we normally would never send a helicopter up. Reports of all kinds of dead fish that could have moved away from the site prompted us to do it, and then we did it a second time to be sure.

            Typically, our enforcement cost wouldn’t be that much, but we did react to the complaints we had. We assumed they were accurate until we found out otherwise. We checked and saw what had come in in the past, and it was almost identical emails every time there is a storm.

            We will give you the breakdown of the $14,500, but inspection on sites are regular activities we do. We don’t want the companies paying for those because we don’t want it to be perceived at any time that the company is buying us off or paying for things they shouldn’t.

[1:45 p.m.]

            Now, if there is an incident, they would have to pay, and there’s a bond in place for them to do that. They have to pay voluntarily. If there’s a cleanup required that they don’t do themselves, or there’s other activities that we deem to be their expense and they should pay for it, we have the ability to collect from them.

            The regular routine inspections and enforcement, we cannot, would not, ask the company to pay for. Then all of a sudden, we would be viewed as being bought off by the company to report what they want us to report. We don’t ever want to be in that situation.

            MS. MASLAND: My next question is concerning the Doelle-Lahey report. One of the core recommendations was the creation of the classification system under which coastal areas would be rated as yellow, green, or red based on their relative suitability for finfish aquaculture. It’s my understanding that is not in place now. I’m wondering if the minister can advise if this classification system is something that he is willing to look at.

            MR. COLWELL: I didn’t hear the first part. Sorry about that.

            MS. MASLAND: No worries. One of the core recommendations in the Doelle- Lahey report, was the creation of a classification system under which coastal areas would be rated as green, yellow, or red based on the relative suitability for finfish aquaculture. It’s my understanding that that is not in place now. I’m just interested if you would be willing to look at that classification system.

            MR. COLWELL: No.

            MS. MASLAND: Why not?

            MR. COLWELL: Your counterparts in the other Party asked me the same question and the answer was the same.

            MS. MASLAND: I didn’t hear it.

            MR. COLWELL: That’s okay. You can’t be in two places at once.

            The reason is that report is an independent report. The province owns the report. We don’t use the names of the people who worked on the report, so we refer to it as the independent report on aquaculture.

            What we are doing is basically the same sort of thing. We’re doing extensive monitoring of areas that could be suitable for aquaculture. We’re starting with the ones that could be suitable and places we feel may not be suitable. We’re doing very extensive water testing from the standpoint of currents, temperatures, salinity, and two or three other things.

We have contracted with Perennia. There’s a Ph.D. in that area who works with Perennia and is responsible for doing this testing. It’s arm’s length from us. We funded that testing. We are actually working with the commercial fishing industry - we’re not, but they are. They help deploy the sensors, retrieve the sensors, and download the data in conjunction with scientists who work on it.

            We want to identify areas that aren’t suitable for aquaculture. More importantly, we want to identify areas that are - so commercial possibilities. That is going to be based on science, the part we’re working on. Then it’s up to an individual who may want to set up an aquaculture site somewhere to go to the community. It’s all part of regulations now. They have to go to the community and do public engagement about what’s going on. That’s totally their responsibility, not ours. Then they would have to make their case to the review panel that has been set up, which is independent from us.

            MS. MASLAND: Under the licence agreement now, are these licence holders required to set up a liaison committee in the community?

            MR. COLWELL: It’s not required under regulations. It’s site by site. The panel that decides on this could indicate, could rule, that you need to do one of those. That would be up to them. We don’t have it in our regulations.

            MS. MASLAND: Just one last question on aquaculture and then I’ll move to another question. I know my colleague here would like to have a few minutes with you.

            As minister, are you completely satisfied with everything and the operations that are happening at Site 1358 in Jordan Bay?

            MR. COLWELL: We’re never completely satisfied with anything, ever. That’s for sure. We monitor this very closely, and I stress “monitor” because we’re not the enforcer and we’re not connected with companies. We are satisfied that they are following the rules as the rules have been laid out. Oftentimes, we find that they go above and beyond what the rules are and do some things that they don’t have to do. That is really the sign of a company that’s hopefully evolving into a more community-conscious company which we hope we would have lots of in Nova Scotia.

            The farm management plans lay out what they have to do. Those plans aren’t made public, but that’s something we monitor all the time, and we have to approve the farm management plan. It’s like a quality assurance system. We can make them change the plan to better monitor what’s happening either scientifically or whatever else we need to do, even cosmetic things on the site.

            We’re happy with the operators there. They have always been very co-operative when we have indicated they have a problem. They have always immediately reacted and put the resources behind what needed to be done.

            The cleanup on the bay was one of the examples, even though they have to do that under the regulations by law. I told you about the one we did in Digby before you were elected and the Aquaculture Association has done cleanup. What we’re finding on the beaches is more than 99 per cent commercial fishing gear. That’s what we’re finding, and a lot less than anything in aquaculture was there before we had these new regulations in place. There should be almost zero from an aquaculture site, pretty well zero.

            MS. MASLAND: I’m going to ask one more aquaculture question because my colleague here has given me permission. Back to the Doelle-Lahey report, it stated “Regulations and licence requirements must be enforced. Penalties must be significant to act as a deterrent. Ongoing lack of compliance should be associated with lease termination.”

            Do you as minister feel that the penalties of $410 or $237.50 for failing to report a breach are significant deterrents? I’m really concerned about these, especially when we have a company putting their own divers down and reporting back. I understand why some people are asking questions. They’re looking for transparency, and when you have a self-reporting system, sometimes it’s not always transparent. My question is, do you feel that those penalties are sufficient to act as a deterrent?

            MR. COLWELL: These are minimum penalties. They’re minimum. There’s one thing that we have that we never had before, and that is the ability to take their licence and lease away. If we had somebody who had a catastrophic failure of some kind or simply didn’t follow their farm management plan and persistently gave us trouble, I have the authority, as minister, to take their licence.

            The inventory on some of these sites is extremely valuable, and the site is extremely valuable from the standpoint of having a place to work. It’s the same way the ocean is valuable to the fishermen who utilize it.

            The penalties are strict enough now and hard enough that companies pay attention. We have not had any kind of issue at all with any of the larger companies that we work with. When there is an issue, they work with us. They follow any suggestions we have to improve what they’re doing, and they definitely follow any orders that we have and Environment has. It’s a change. I would say five years ago, that was not the case. We had no tools then, none.

            MS. MASLAND: I’m going to switch now to sport fish. I had a senior come visit me the other day and advise me that he was told that a senior’s licence is free, but the sport fish habitat cost that’s attached to that was going to double for people whose licence is free. Is that correct?

            MR. COLWELL: There was a request actually from the industry, from the sport fishing organizations themselves, to have that in place. That was not approved.

            MS. MASLAND: I’ll pass what time I have left to my colleague.

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: Mr. d’Entremont, you have about 24 minutes.

            HON. CHRISTOPHER D’ENTREMONT: First question, which do you think is the lobster capital of Canada, Barrington Passage or Shediac? I tell you, if you get this wrong . . .

            MR. COLWELL: Spence is asking a question.

            MR. D’ENTREMONT: It’s on the record.

            MR. COLWELL: Nova Scotia is lobster capital of the world.

            MR. D’ENTREMONT: All right, but that is not what I asked. I tell you, when CTV did the report - it was a wonderful report. I think that we presented both of our areas very well. One is Nova Scotia, and the other one is New Brunswick, and somehow New Brunswick took it. I’m going to ask you again, do you think Shediac, New Brunswick, is the lobster capital of Canada or Barrington Passage?

            MR. COLWELL: Barrington Passage, without question.

            MR. D’ENTREMONT: Thank you. There you go. There’s the answer.

            MR. COLWELL: Without question.

            MR. D’ENTREMONT: But in all seriousness - no, I was a little disappointed in the results. Someone in Barrington Passage decided they would call CTV and complain that because of the storm that had just gone through - I think our third nor’easter - the power was out on Cape Island. They figured not enough people would be able to call in and support the Barrington Passage area for the capital. They extended it for another day, and we lost. I just want to say 46 per cent of respondents believed Shediac was and only 45 believed that Barrington or Barrington Municipality was.

            MR. COLWELL: You’re going to have to tell those guys in Barrington Passage to stop shipping their lobsters to Shediac.

            MR. D’ENTREMONT: Well, we need to have your support in getting some more processing in the area. Maybe that’s it.

            My question, though, is going to revolve around licensing, when it comes to the review that you’re going to be doing on licensing. Over the last few months, I have gotten some calls about people who are interested in one licence or another - processing, buying, those kinds of things. I know that there’s an ongoing review of that. Maybe I’ll give you an opportunity to explain what the review is and what kind of timelines you’re going to have in it.

            MR. COLWELL: You can actually still get a licence today if you prove to us that you’re adding substantial value to a product. We have already issued I think two or three licences under that as well. We don’t want to stop industry from growing.

            We were approached by industry to put a freeze on the licences to do a review. They’ve come up with some very positive ideas, some ideas I think will probably work on the industry, and it’s exciting. You would know because you have been involved in this a long time.

            The industry was pretty anti any kind of change for a long time, but now they have come around. They have come to the realization that if they don’t get some change and get some regulatory change that is concrete - you would also know we have grandfathered things, policies and regulations. It’s a real dog’s breakfast, to use a term. It’s horrible for us because sometimes you have two people doing the exact same thing next door to each other, and they don’t have the same licences, which they should have. We want to sort that out.

            Even the buyer’s licences - before we had 280 licences for lobster, and half of those aren’t even buying anymore. The question is, why do they even have the licence? If they’re not buying, they’re not adding to the economy. They’re not adding to anything. As you are well aware, we have what we call bingo cards. When you’re licensed, you just check them all off. You send your $200-and-some in, and you get all those licences without anything to process and never any hope of getting anything to process.

            That has been an issue from the industry, and we agree with them. We want to review all that. There’s also some discussion from the industry around maybe putting licensing fees up substantially. We have had numbers as high as $10,000 per licence. We’re not interested in putting the price of licences up. They’re not revenue for the province. We’re not interested in that at all.

[2:00 p.m.]

            We had some preliminary discussions around that and said, if you want to do that, we’re not opposed to it, but that money has to go back in the industry. Whatever the cost of licensing is would have to go back to the industry for research and development. Maybe it would help pay for some of their organizational stuff, or whatever the industry wants to do with it. That’s not up for us to decide. That would be for them to decide. That would give them a stronger voice and more direction than what they’re going on.

            I’m seeing a change in the last four or five years in attitude. You’re probably seeing the same thing in your area. They’re concerned about their long-term livelihood and how they’re going to get there, so we want to address that issue too. That’s not easy to do.

            We also want to review the succession planning so we can set up a structure so that they can easily transfer licences to family members, which is not even possible in some cases now - that’s ridiculous - and some of the other stupid stuff that has been in the licence. If you live on the county line, you can’t move across a line and process your fish. That’s crazy. It’s just insane. I think it was set up years ago when people had wagons, and they didn’t want their local plant moved away for the sake of employment. There are all kinds of these things that are easy to fix and to change.

            Overall, we’re open to ideas. If you had any ideas how we can make this all work, we would love to hear them. We have gone to the industry over and over again. We sent information to all the licence holders with the new licensing package. Our staff and I had a meeting at the Oak Island Inn. We had 100-and-some people show up for that. It was an open discussion on what their concerns were and where we thought we might be able to go, with nothing decided - just sort of ideas.

            We have engaged the industry three or four times now, and we’re going to do more of that. I’m really pleased with the response we’re getting from the industry itself. They’re coming across with some excellent ideas, ideas they wouldn’t have entertained two years ago even, never mind now. They’re bringing the ideas forward, not us. This review was requested by them, and the freeze was requested by them. I think it’s a very positive thing.

            When are we going to finish this? My answer would be that I would like to have it finished next week. The reality is, I don’t know. The sooner the better. I think some of this was spurred on by the things we have already talked about.

            I think about this lobster handling course we put in place. There was a lot of opposition to that until they took the course and found out, wow, this is really going to help us. Now they’re coming back to us and saying, we need the course changed to have more practical stuff in it too. We were going to change it in three years’ time, but we’re working on changing it right now with the input from the industry on how to improve that, make it even better.

            We’re taking all those things into consideration. I know this is a long answer, and you know it has to be a long answer. I hope that within six months or less, we will have some kind of direction that we’re going to try to see if it works. At that point, we’ll go back to the industry with it. We’re still accepting ideas, and we have had some pretty good presentations put in by some of the organizations and individuals.

            I would encourage you and any MLAs who live in a fishing area to reach out to their fishermen and processors and say, if you have any ideas around this, please send it either through yourselves or directly to us. We want to look at all of this and see what we have. We tried and tried and tried and got almost nothing back - almost nothing. Now we’re starting to get information because they’re very serious about it.

            I know it’s a long answer and not really a direct answer. I like direct answers better. It’s a work in progress and we have made significant progress in a very short time, thanks to the industry.

            MR. D’ENTREMONT: I knew it was going to be a long answer because it’s a difficult one. Things are changing that people don’t want changed, but we have to be able to ride that wave as we move along. I know we worked on the issue now that my constituency actually crosses a county line.

            R&K Murphy had a licence on one side, and they wanted to transfer it to another side. Boy, you talk about a little more work than it needed to be. I want to thank your director of licensing. I know he has done some work on that file. I don’t know if it was completely resolved, but I think it was.

            There’s a lot of those old rules that don’t make any sense. As far as how much it needs to cost or how much a licence is worth, I don’t know. They are owned by the province, and we have to make sure that the same thing doesn’t happen as happened in the federal system, where quota and fish all become these big bargaining chips. Quite honestly, it should be a lot more like a sports fishing licence. That can be transferred easily and surrendered, and easily purchased if you need to have it.

            I’m glad you brought up the issue of intergenerational transfers. This is one of those issues that I think we need to do a little more work on. I’m finding a lot of our existing fish processors are getting of an age where they’re looking at the possibility of transfer. If you add up the buildings, the processing equipment, the possible quota that they might have, depending on the kind of processor they are, these are multi-million dollar businesses that need to be transferred to another generation.

            I’m just wondering, have you put some thought into how to help these groups in order to do that? It’s more than just transferring licences from one generation to another. There has to be some kind of financial parameters put around some of these.

            One fish plant in my area, Inshore Fisheries, has done a large amount of transfer at this point. I think they’re three-quarters of the way through their process, but it’s $10 million to $20 million worth of transfer. What youth today has the capability of taking on that kind of debt? How do you provide that kind of payment to the older generation that wants to have some kind of quality of life as they enjoy their retirement years?

            That’s another lob at you there, a lob ball. It’s like lob ball here. What’s the department going to be doing to help them out?

            MR. COLWELL: That’s such a complex issue. It’s not just in fisheries - it’s also in agriculture. We have some farms worth almost as much as some of the fish processing facilities in the province. It’s a huge problem. It’s one thing if they’re going to sell a facility to someone else who just wants to buy it. That’s a whole different issue. If someone’s going to buy it, they pay the price, and away they go. They have to pay the capital gains tax, whatever it is, and that’s over with.

            What I hate to see is if a son, daughter, nephew, brother, or whoever in the family wants to buy it, they have to go through all that rigmarole, and they’re part of what has made that business grow. That’s the one that’s so difficult. People want to retire, and they want to get their retirement funds out.

            Maybe we have to do a whole bunch of other things too. Maybe we can plan for this a lot earlier. Maybe they set up pension plans. We should encourage them to do that to get the money out that way so they have an income, and then they can get their money over time. We’re looking right now at new proposals through the loan board so that we might be able to help finance that. I haven’t seen all the recommendations yet, but we have been looking at it. We’re pretty well ready to go for consideration by Cabinet. We’ll see how that goes.

            These are big acquisitions. I’m just worried and want to make sure we have enough money in the loan board to do it. That’s the only thing that I’m concerned about. That’s another reason why, from our standpoint, we had not talked to the industry about it, and we have not talked about it at all even internally. These assets, if you’re going to put it through the loan board, you want to make sure you have collateral. If you have all these licences and they’re no good, you have no collateral. Even for us or a bank, it’s the same sort of thing, or even private investors.

            One thing that has been pretty interesting lately has just started to happen. Because of the success we’re having in the fishing industry, we’re being approached more and more by people who have major money they want to invest - not to buy the companies but to invest. They have major money, billions of dollars, that they will invest. Typically, they would put that into something else, but now they’re attracted to the industry because it’s so successful. That may be another avenue for an investor that can be bought out down the road. Typically, these organizations aren’t interested in running the operation. They just want to buy it for an investment, make some money off it, and sell it back to the proponents.

            With the loan board, I am anxious to see how that could happen. I don’t know if we’re going to have the right tools in place or not. Hopefully, we will, but we’ll have a look at that. Even the license transfer, we have to make that easy because a licence transfer to a family member should be a no-brainer. We should just say, okay, that’s it. You have the licence. That’s one thing we’re going to look at changing for sure.

            MR. D’ENTREMONT: I know there have been a couple of instances - we have had a number of different investments come along, especially around lobsters. Lately, we have had a number of Chinese or New Brunswick companies that have bought pieces of some of our buyers, tank houses, and things like that in the southwest. To get those licences in the correct names has been - I wouldn’t say a challenge, but you have to make sure that everything is done correctly. There has to be a streamlining, maybe, of those systems.

            MR. COLWELL: Yes, foreign ownership - there has been a long history of that in Nova Scotia in the processing industry. Of course, I can’t give you any of that information, but I was shocked to see how much. It’s long-standing. It’s not just something that’s new. You would be aware of that as well, being a former Fisheries Minister.

            Just one thing right now, under the regulations - if majority shareholders change licence on a process, they have to cancel their licence, which is crazy.

            MR. D’ENTREMONT: How long would it take for an organization to reapply? If it needs to be cancelled, how long does the department need to get the new paperwork done and get it out, especially for an existing facility that has been doing its work for a while, and there has just been an ownership change?

            MR. COLWELL: We typically work with the organization to make it as quick as we possibly can to get the transfer done. It’s one thing for sure we’re going to change in the regulations.

            MR. D’ENTREMONT: How have we been doing in lobster processing and lobster buying licences? I know for a long time we have been challenged in making sure we’re giving them to the right people, making sure that not too much of the cash gain continues - that we have good processors, good tank houses, and those kinds of things. How have we been doing? I know now we’re limiting it because we’re doing a review. I haven’t heard of the fly-by-night kind of buyer showing up on the wharf like they used to with some cash and trying to chase them off. I’m just wondering how that part of the business is going.

            MR. COLWELL: That’s one reason we wanted to go through this regulatory change ourselves. We have heard rumors - again, they’re rumors because nobody’s been charged - of people coming in from outside the province, paying cash well below the market price for lobster, paying cash at the wharf, and then taking off. All we need to do is let Environment or the RCMP know. We can have them charged and seize their vehicle and do all kinds of stuff, but if we don’t know who they are, we can’t do anything. We have more enforcement capability now with Environment than we had before in their own department, which is very positive.

            We are going to move over time - I’m going to stress over time - to a lobster quality program we have for holding lobsters. That’s going to become mandatory over time. That will ensure that the lobsters are held properly. We’re going to push more, too, for buyers. We’re going to get rid of all the grandfathered ones that could just flip. They’re going to have to be associated with a credible Nova Scotia fish processing facility or holding facility, or have their own, whichever the case may be. We’re looking at all those things over time and making sure that we’re getting the best quality delivered too.

[2:15 p.m.]

            Quality is a big issue here. That’s probably the biggest issue of all. That probably costs us more money in the pockets of the fishermen, and they don’t even realize it if they land stock that’s better put back in the water and caught a month later when it’s in good shape, than anything else in the industry. We’re moving towards more and more quality, and as we move there, I think it will sort out some of the stuff automatically.

            MR. D’ENTREMONT: My final question will revolve around working with partners, other departments. I have a number - the sort of explosion of tank houses, I guess - of individuals who have applications into DNR because they need to get their water services out into the bays. They need to cross over Crown land in most cases because it’s that space of land I guess between the high-water mark - there’s a lot of work we need to do at DNR. I think anything that’s heading out into the flats has to have their licensing. I’m just wondering how the relationship between DNR and the fisheries is going when it comes to making sure they have the right permits to go and construct these things.

            MR. COLWELL: We haven’t had really a big issue with that. Typically, when we had, our staff have been able to resolve it. If not, we will take it up to the deputy minister’s level, or my level and resolve it. We haven’t really had much of that. It has been working very well. I know staff work very closely in the different departments, and the deputies do as well. I work very well with the minister. It really hasn’t been a problem.

            MR. D’ENTREMONT: I know this is probably the wrong question for you because it is more of a DNR question, but how long does it take for them to approve a pipe for a lobster handling facility or a lobster tank house? I’m hearing six months or more, at this point, to get them to move on stuff. That impacts your people, who are the processors, who are selling our product around the world.

            MR. COLWELL: Typically, it doesn’t take long with our own. Our problem, as you know, is, if you’re doing a plant, it has to be CFIA approved. If you are going to build something, the federal government has to approve it, and we have no control over that. That ranges from really good to work with to horrible, depending on who you are dealing with in DFO or Environment Canada. Some of the things we work on have a really quick turnaround. Also, the quality of information that is provided to them - of course, if they don’t have the information they need, they can’t make a decision one way or another.

            MR. D’ENTREMONT: I have Kevin D’Eon in Middle West Pubnico, who is setting up a tank house across from the Red Cap. He has been given a six-month timeline before DNR will come back to him with any permit or what have you. It seemed a little excessive. Kevin D’Eon, Middle West Pubnico - if you guys could have a look at that to help him out, that would be great.

            That pretty much finishes my questioning for today. I could ask a lot more questions about the health of fisheries, but I know from my discussions with fishers in southwest Nova Scotia that things are going well. They wish the weather was a little better, but the weather is actually keeping our prices at a really nice level. The quantities of lobsters they have caught, the quality doesn’t sound too bad. I know we talked quickly about quality.

            I think the industry is in good stead. It is actually taking care of itself. I’m hoping that whatever handle the department has had on it - I know it has done a lot of work on marketing, but there’s also some health issues that we need to continue to work on to keep up that good work.

            MR. COLWELL: I appreciate that. We are all about quality now. Quality programs make marketing easy. I want you to pass on a compliment to your fishermen and your processors from our department and myself. I want to thank them for the great work they are doing to help grow Nova Scotia’s economy. They are doing a fantastic job. They are the ones doing it. We are just the ones enabling it and making it move forward.

The industry doesn’t get credit for the fantastic contribution they make to Nova Scotia’s economy. You’re working away in a rural area in Nova Scotia, and nobody sees what’s going on. The product goes on an airplane or a truck somewhere, and it’s gone - or it’s in a local grocery store. They don’t see the effort that goes into that and all the hard work and all the risks that people take, the bad weather and all the other things. I really have a tremendous amount of respect for the whole industry and the great work they Are doing.

            Sometimes they don’t agree with me, but that’s fine too. That’s how we make positive change. I appreciate the work that you have done in the past too. The work that you have done and you do in your communities helped a lot, both of you, and all the MLAs that have fishing in their communities. It’s a very important industry for all of us. I don’t think Nova Scotians really realize how important this industry is and what fantastic opportunities there are for people for employment . . .

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: Order. Time has elapsed for the Progressive Conservative Party caucus.

            The NDP are no longer here, so we will turn it over to the Liberals.

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

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: You have, combined, about 38 minutes. That will include the minister’s closing statements.

            Mr. Mombourquette.

            HON. DEREK MOMBOURQUETTE: Thank you, minister, for the information you have provided to all my colleagues today. I know we’re working with a limited amount of time, but you know how near and dear Cape Breton is to me.

            In some of your opening comments, I heard about the Margaree. Lobster fishery is very important at home. I represent the urban area, but I have a lot of friends and family who are involved in the fishery. I try to fish recreationally, myself. I’m not very good at it, but it’s beautiful. I travel the Margaree every year with friends and family. That is so important to the tourism industry on the Island, as well. What I’m looking for are just some comments on how you feel we are doing on the Island.

            MR. COLWELL: Cape Breton Island is another one of those areas, when it comes to the fishing industry, that doesn’t get the credit they should. It’s such an important industry when you think about $2 billion in exports. That’s just the exports. That’s not all the activity around boat building, the local trucking company that moves the fish around, the guy who supplies fuel, all the other stuff. That said, that’s over the whole province.

            Cape Breton, especially the Margaree, is an incredible place. As I said earlier, you might not have heard it, but sport fishermen will spend $2,000 to $5,000 a day for a day on the river where they have a chance of hooking a fish - just a chance. The Margaree is an incredible place. There’s an opportunity to do a lot more there.

            I know the golf course there in Inverness has attracted some high-end tourists who bring their jets, fly in, and play a few rounds of golf. If we can get some of those people to bring their friends and have a day of salmon fishing along with golfing, it would soon add a tremendous amount of economic value to the Island, which is good.

            The lobster industry there is doing well. The sports industry is doing well. We have many top processing facilities, probably some of the best in the world. We have Louisbourg, the area of Cheticamp, Glace Bay, and Premium. These are very important to the province as a whole, never mind Cape Breton Island, and the country. They do great work.

            I know Louisbourg has been a leader in new innovation and ideas. I often talk to Dannie Hanson about the things that he does. He lobbies very, very well - let’s put it that way - and very articulately.

            The contest he had about solving problems at the fish plant is so intriguing. What they achieved with that is just incredible. Actually, we were looking at doing that in different areas of our department and in Agriculture. There is a program I want to get in place. We are talking about using the sandbox approach to develop new innovation. That’s how we can change. So many times, Nova Scotians underestimate our capabilities, and this is one case where that didn’t happen.

            The Cape Breton University has been incredible. We’re working with them now on some research projects. We’re looking with them at the possibility of harvesting tunicates, which are a real pest when it comes to shellfish aquaculture, in particular mussels. It has almost put us out of business in mussels. If they can prove that they are edible, I can sell them.

            We’re dealing with a market now that will take any type of protein, and they will turn it into something that is an incredible product. We’re looking at that as a potential new product for Nova Scotia. Not only Nova Scotia - probably other parts of Atlantic Canada have tunicates. People say all the time, as soon as we find a market, they’ll disappear. That’s probably true, but if we develop a market, and we sustainably harvest them, it will help the mussel industry, and it will help other industries as well. That technology, we hope, will come out of Cape Breton University as we work with them.

            Université Sainte-Anne, I can’t say enough positive about them. They developed our lobster handling course in conjunction with our staff. They’re now finalizing our lobster quality program - holding and shipping and the whole nine yards, from when it leaves the boat right to the customer. This is something that doesn’t exist in the world. We’re the only ones in the world who have this. We get a lot of attention around that now. I visited one of the companies we deal with and sat around a boardroom in his office. He said, I’m going to spend $3 million on a live lobster holding facility to your standards, what have I got to do? That’s in one city. He said, once we get that one up, and I’m happy that it’s running right, I’m going to set them up in every city in China. That’s our standard to hold our product and to grow our industry.

            It’s exciting to see the things that are happening. You probably noticed already, but 14 per cent of all businesses in Cape Breton Island are seafood - 14 per cent. That’s a pretty high number. I would like to see it higher, quite frankly.

            There are some opportunities there for aquaculture. I know some of the municipalities have approached us on it, which we are very happy about. We’re going to work with them to see if we can get some appropriate sites in there long term.

            Overall, I think it’s a great opportunity for the fishing industry, both the traditional and the aquaculture industries, for Cape Breton Island. What a wonderful place to live, besides. You have the bonus of living in a gorgeous spot.

            MR. MOMBOURQUETTE: I was going to make a comment that one of the first events I did as an MLA was to represent you at the SEA++ event. I was running the sandbox at CBU at the time. We were involved in the periphery of providing space and some of the resources for that contest. You are absolutely right. You’re taking students and community leaders from different facets - whether they were involved in seafood or agriculture, aquaculture, business, the arts, and social sciences. We put them all together, and it was a huge success.

            We actually used that as a blueprint for some of the other competitions that we did with students right across the province. In some of the competitions, we actually went as far as linking up students in China and England. I think there are some great opportunities to do some really fantastic research projects and proposals from students in partnership right around the world. We did it very easily with universities across Nova Scotia in one the competitions that we did, and we did it with six countries. Congratulations to your department on that. That was really a blueprint for expanding a competition.

            You are absolutely right about Louisbourg Seafoods. Dannie Hanson is in touch on a daily basis. They are really champions for the industry, and they are champions for the new entrepreneurs who are coming into our communities. They want to support them, whether it’s in this industry or others. I want to recognize Louisbourg Seafoods on the record for that specific competition and also for their support for innovation and entrepreneurship on the Island. I just wanted to say that.

[2:30 p.m.]

            One of my first events, I was representing you at that and was honoured to do it. Thank you.

            MR. COLWELL: Actually, Jim Kennedy and his wife, Lori, are leaders in the fishing industry in Canada. It’s great work they have done.

            Louisbourg, with that sandbox competition and the way they are approaching business, has really set a new standard in the industry in Canada. They’re really tying the scientific community into their business in a practical way, solving real problems in real time, and it’s really commendable.

            I’m starting to see more of the industry, and the fishing industry in particular, taking note of that now. They were talking to us more and more about different things, and they are moving forward on things.

            For so many years, you would hear that Nova Scotia can’t do anything. I have travelled around the world, and I have sat in many boardrooms. I started looking for the engineering rings, the ones you can identify, and asked them where they’re from. Almost every boardroom I went to in the world had an engineer who was trained in Nova Scotia and a Nova Scotian. We have to bring those people back.

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: Ms. Arab.

            HON. PATRICIA ARAB: I have just a quick question. I represent an urban riding, as you know. Unless our youth have ties to rural communities, sport fishing isn’t really something they participate in a lot. I’m wondering if there are any incentives from the department or anything that’s happening with the department that would particularly target youth involvement in sport fishing, how we can grow that and how we can touch our urban community members to get them more involved.

            MR. COLWELL: Actually, I grew up fishing, sport fishing, in my life. As I said earlier, when everyone else was playing ball, I was fishing. It’s a wonderful sport if you can get some young people involved.

            What I would suggest we could do is, in the community I represent, a local canoe club has a fishing derby every year and it’s meant for the kids. A lot of adults go too. I think there’s a $250 prize for the biggest fish, so that attracts some pretty serious fishermen. It’s great. Sometimes they will supply the rods and help people. It’s really good.

            If you get some of them involved like that, it’s not far from here. It’s a nice peaceful place, Lake Echo, right on the lake. It’s a nice canoe club there, not a very high-end one, but a nice canoe club that 200-and-some kids go to every year to paddle. It’s the home of five Olympians, too, by the way, which we’re very proud of. When you see the building, you would never believe it, but it’s true.

            If you get out in some of those fishing operations - we have a list of them that we can forward to you - there’s a lot of opportunities for young people to get involved. It’s not as expensive a thing to get into as other sports, not nearly as expensive. I talk about salmon fishing. Those are the people who are really serious, and they’ll travel all over the world to do that. That’s a different clientele than we’re talking about. You can still go salmon fishing for basically nothing except a licence. In a young person’s case, I don’t even think they need a licence up to a certain age.

            We have derbies, and we have learn-to-fish events. If you talked to some of the kids in the community, and they wanted to do something like that, we could probably put something together and help you with it.

            MS. ARAB: There’s a lot of studies that link fishing to the reduction of stress and anger management. It can be a great link for young people in particular who struggle with anxieties and who struggle with anger issues. I would be more than happy to chat and see what options are available. Like I said, for youth in the urban ridings, unless they have a link to a rural community, this really isn’t something they think about in terms of sports or in terms of options. I would be really interested in seeing what is out there.

            MR. COLWELL: Actually, there’s a lot. I know my son - he’s not a child anymore of course - goes fishing quite often very close to the city in the saltwater, on land. They catch all kinds of different things. One of the things he gets is a lot of flounder, which are very good to eat, by the way, and other products. Once in awhile, he’ll get a sea trout and that kind of stuff. The cost to do this is very nominal once you get to the site.

            If you’re interested in doing something, Mr. McNeill beside me is the Director of Inland Fisheries. Talk to him and anyone else who’s interested about anything we can do to get more children involved, or adults. That’s what the game is with sports fishing - we want to get everybody involved we can, for the purposes you’re talking about and also for the sake of the industry.

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: Mr. Glavine.

            HON. LEO GLAVINE: Actually, both these questions fall right in line. Salmon fishing was part of my youth on the Exploits River in central Newfoundland and then net salmon fishing with my grandfather in Notre Dame Bay.

            We all know a lot of the wild Atlantic salmon, a beautiful fish, has been dramatically reduced. While we have a couple of rivers where we still have salmon fishing, due to over-fishing in the Greenland area and also the acidification of our rivers, there has been quite a reduction and demise of the fishery.

            What I would like to know is, are we doing anything to try to bring back some of that fishery, and as you have alluded to, attract tourists who could come here and be very valuable to the tourist economy of our province?

            MR. COLWELL: You’re absolutely right, and I envy you fishing those rivers in Newfoundland. I can tell you that. Those are incredible rivers to fish on. I believe some of them are still very viable today, which is good. They don’t have the plight of acid rain like we have. I often thought we should be suing New England, Ontario, and Quebec for dumping all their acid rain on us for so many years, but that’s another topic.

            The commercial fishing off Greenland is a big problem. It’s something that we have been talking to the federal government about and our counterparts in other provinces. I know the federal government has been talking to Greenland about it. They’re making some progress. I don’t know how much, but it’s a topic that’s on international trade negotiations all the time.

            I was speaking a little bit earlier about the West River Sheet Harbour. That started 10 years ago with the Salmon Association and a few salmon fishermen who decided they would make a small donation to the river. This river has a tremendous amount invested in it now. It’s a real success story. If I remember my numbers right, there were about 3,000 smolts returning four or five years ago, and we’re up to around 9,000 to 12,000 this year gone by. It has been a real success story. We use the helicopters to lime it and also two lime dosers in the river now. There was one for a long time. It’s a very successful story.

            We’re building that model right now to use all over the province and probably in other parts of the world. We have gotten international attention from it. The credit really goes to the Nova Scotia Salmon Association, the Atlantic Salmon Federation, and the people in the community.

            We had one incident. Some of the salmon came back, and we had a couple of poachers. Word was put out in the community, you can’t do this because if you do this, you’re not going to have any salmon, period. That stopped pretty quickly. Then there was an issue of native fishing on the river, which they have the right under treaties to do. One of the gentlemen in the community was Mi’kmaq. He went and got all the tags that were available for those salmon they could harvest and destroyed every one of them. That’s the kind of buy-in we’re getting in that river. The whole community is behind it.

            As we move forward, we see the actual success they’re having there. I was talking earlier about New Brunswick, where Cooke Aquaculture went into a partnership with Parks Canada to actually grow larger wild salmon in a pen for release in the river. The return on the salmon was some eight times better than the traditional methods we have used forever. We’re looking at doing that in Nova Scotia. That will be the next step on this river. Where the pen is going to be won’t be there because of transportation issues and all that.

            It’s something we have to do. It’s part of growing Nova Scotia’s tourism industry. Also, my colleague was saying just a minute ago how it’s really relaxing for people, a stress reliever. It’s fun to get one of those fish on. You could share the experience. You never know what’s going to happen when you hook a salmon. It has to be the most exciting game fish in the world. Anybody who hasn’t experienced has to experience in a lifetime, but it’s hard to do.

            We’re dedicated to that. We have a great group on our inland fisheries working on this. Natural Resources has been an incredible partner in this. We look forward to making that happen in more rivers in Nova Scotia as soon as we can, and some of the productive brooks.

            MR. GLAVINE: I like that overview. Also, innovation can be part of hopefully restoring a viable sport fishery.

            The other question I had was around small coastal communities, in particular looking at the Bay of Fundy. When I first became an MLA, there was a project under way that I took part in through two phases. That was wharf restoration in a community like Harbourville, which now can have four, five, or six boats operating for the Bay of Fundy fishery. That infrastructure is critical to some of those communities holding on to one, two, or maybe three boats.

            Is that directly linked to a federal program still, or are we now having to become more engaged in that kind of infrastructure?

            MR. COLWELL: Actually, we can’t get involved in that kind of infrastructure. Our health care budget, which you would be very familiar with - if we took all the money out of the health care budget, which we would never do, we couldn’t possibly address a tenth of the problems with the infrastructure around wharves.

            It’s under small crafts and harbours in DFO. They have a reasonably good program. The secret is to make sure you keep your wharf up all the time, as much as you can. Where it’s working, it’s working well. Where it’s not working, it’s not working at all, and a lot of wharves are collapsing. We’re concerned about being able to replace them under the current environmental rules.

            We have some wharves I know, in the Digby area, that are overcrowded, simply overcrowded, with so many boats at them that they just aren’t functional anymore. It is a big issue. It’s an issue we continually bring up with the federal government, with both small crafts and harbours and the DFO.

            You’re absolutely right - it’s critical to any kind of aquaculture, fisheries, sports fishing, or anything. Those wharves are critical.

            MR. GLAVINE: Connected to the community of Harbourville and the fishery for dogfish there for a few years. They would come out of Digby, St. Mary’s Bay, and some other communities and be there in the community for a while. They were taking the product and shipping it to Prince Edward Island for processing, and maybe you remember that.

            I’m just wondering, is that still a healthy fishery? In the overall picture for the province, are we doing less shipping of whole fish and doing more processing? What’s the trend? I look at that one micro-fishery of dogfish, where we were catching them but then taking them to another province for processing. I just wonder if you would make a few comments, because I believe - as you have subscribed to in your work - that is adding much value in our province. That’s what leads to our manufacturing jobs and full value of that raw product that we do catch.

[2:45 p.m.]

MR. COLWELL: That’s a very good question and very well put. Added value is where we’re headed, quality added value.

            I can give you an example. A codfish in Iceland is worth about $45.50. In Nova Scotia and Atlantic Canada, it’s worth $7.70. We have a major problem. Realizing that, we’re really pushing for more value-added, more use of what we would formerly call waste. We have some projects on the go now.

            We’re working on projects now with lobster shell waste, grinding them up and feeding chickens. It’s pretty interesting. That was the agriculture industry. They feed them a calcium supplement or something now, and this is healthier for the chickens. If they feed them too much, it doesn’t hurt the chicken at all, but it turns out to be a pink yolk. A pink yolk may not sell too well unless you’re doing a fundraiser for the Breast Cancer Society or something like that.

            It shows that there are new uses for that product that used to go in the waste. We’re looking at many projects in that regard.

            Back to the by-products of the codfish, one thing that the Iceland Government did - Matís is an organization very similar to Perennia. Actually, we have an MOU working relationship with them. They found that there is an enzyme in the codfish bones that’s worth $1,600 an ounce. I’m just using this as an example. They have a bandage - they take a cod skin, make a bandage of it, and put it on your skin. You never take it off. It just sort of melts into your skin. The U.S. military is putting a huge amount of money into that for wounds and injuries they may attain in their operations. The healing is something like four times faster than normal because of something in the codfish skin. We need to do the same thing in Nova Scotia, and we are moving on that.

            We do have a freeze on processing licences in Nova Scotia. We have already issued two or three licences, even though we have a freeze on, for companies that are going to add value to their products. That’s how important it is for us. We still see too much stuff being shipped out of Nova Scotia. We really do. We can’t stop it legally.

            Newfoundland, part of the deal when they joined Confederation was that they can demand some kind of secondary processing in Newfoundland. They do that, and it has and hasn’t helped their industry. Newfoundland, as a processing industry, isn’t near as efficient as ours at this point - as a general comment, not overall. Some industries are way ahead of us, and some aren’t. We’re ahead of them on some issues, and they’re not.

            The added value is the way to go. I have seen it when we’re in Asia marketing our products. We have one company that has a blueberry honey, honey derived from bees that pollinate blueberry fields, getting $50 a bottle for a bottle half the size of this cup. That’s what added value does. That’s good marketing. What they’re marketing is accurate. They only get the honey from the hives that pollinate blueberries. The problem is, they can’t get enough honey now for that purpose.

            We need to do more and more of that. That’s why we’re putting lobster quality handling and holding facilities in place. It’s all about quality and value-added.

            I think without catching one more fish, without adding one more aquaculture site, we could reach $3 billion a year in exports by adding value to the existing products we have. And we can add other things to that, so I think we’re on the right track. It’s a hard road to convince companies to take something they could easily ship and make a few cents a pound off of and turn it into something they can make $10 a pound off of in the long run.

            MR. GLAVINE: Madam Chairman, I have another question, but I just want to check first to see how much time the minister needs for his closing comments.

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: He typically uses about two minutes to do a wrap-up and his resolution, so you have about seven minutes left.

            MR. GLAVINE: We hear quite a bit in terms of the amount of plastics found on our beaches and those plastic islands now in the oceans of the world. Is there any program of stewardship with our fishermen to have them make sure that they are doing more to keep everything on a boat and do proper disposal? We have tremendous recycling programs here in our province. I am just wondering if fishermen who are out at sea now have embedded that kind of thinking with the materials that they use for the boat and for fishing.

            MR. COLWELL: That’s a very good point. It’s a point that has been raised internationally by successive ambassadors who come to visit me from other countries and also by the industries in other countries - the fishing industry and other industries - when we travel. It is a really big problem internationally - not just here but internationally.

            We are going to look at different packaging materials. It is something we have just started to get into. We have to develop a better shipping box for live lobsters. In that process, we have also come across some other products we have to ship as well.

            For instance, we freeze mackerel in a plastic bag and then put it in a cardboard box. There’s no reason that can’t be strictly cardboard. It doesn’t need the plastic bag. We have to develop the packaging and make it available to the industry. I’ve been talking to two companies in Nova Scotia that are very interested in this. That’s the way we need to have it. We need to look at things.

            We’re also looking at alternate bait so that we don’t have those - most of the fishermen bring the bags and boxes back. Also, a lot of stuff used to come out of the sewer system here in Dartmouth or Halifax. People flushed stuff down the toilet, plastics and stuff. I have been witness to that actually on the beaches not far from here.

            This is a really important issue. We’re moving forward. We’ve been working with the Aquaculture Association to do beach cleanups which cleans up everything at the beach. Down in Digby, we took in 20 tons, I believe, of material in one day. A bunch of volunteers - fishermen, aquaculturalists, department staff, and the community altogether.

            This is a topic that we are going to pursue more and more. It’s a really big problem. I didn’t realize until just recently that it’s not just the pieces of plastic. The microscopic plastic that’s being disposed of in the ocean is becoming a problem.

            It’s something we have to do in the recycling program. I remember when we were in government in the 1990s, and we put that program in place, we took a lot of flack for it, initially. Once people started to realize how important it was, it has gone very well. Actually, we have probably one of the best systems in the world.

            I travelled with the Minister of Environment, when I was in Opposition, to Trinidad and Tobago, and they were more interested in our recycling and garbage programs than anything else we were there to talk about. I hope that they followed through on some of the things that we were talking about. They were willing to buy the system, get trained how to do it, and everything. We are setting the standard.

            Plastics are a big problem. Probably one of the best things that ever happened is the invention of plastic, but we don’t look after waste. We’re not doing it very well.

            MR. GLAVINE: I just wanted to thank the minister for his comments. I know some of my colleagues have learned quite a bit from the discussions and the opportunity to be here during estimates.

            Not because Minister Colwell is my colleague, but I thank you for the passion you and your staff have brought to this industry. We’re seeing very positive results and I think a balanced approach to the industry. Thank you very much.

            MR. COLWELL: Thank you.

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: Anyone else from the Liberal caucus? You need to keep talking. Mr. Jessome.

            MR. BEN JESSOME: I just wanted to give the minister an opportunity to talk about anticipated potential target markets for the seafood industry generally. We have seemingly done a lot of work to make ties and export our products to the Chinese market as an example. I’m kind of curious, are we going to continue to focus on China as a region? If you’re doing something well, you want to make sure you continue to keep doing that well. Is there opportunity to look elsewhere? Is it either/or?

            MR. COLWELL: One thing we’re instituting - there was quite a bit of opposition to at first - is, we are all about quality in our products now. That hasn’t happened before. I know we had a lot of good operators in the province and extremely good-quality products, but we want to take it to a level higher.

            I can give you an example. An Australian-New Zealand lobster sells in Asia for $200 a kilogram. Our lobsters sell for one-quarter of that, and we have a better product. They have done the marketing right, and they have done the quality right. Our quality, with the systems we’re putting in place over the next five or 10 years will catch up and exceed where they’re at, unless they make changes.

            We’re in the process of doing that. The industry is buying into quality, and that adds value. Then you tie the quality into added value of products - packaging, canning. They have come up with added value. When I say added value, there’s one company in Nova Scotia - I don’t want to name the company - they plank a little salmon. You can put it in your oven and cook it . . .

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: We’re down to the two-minute mark, Mr. Colwell, if you want to wrap that question up and then do your closing remarks.

            MR. COLWELL: That company started with an idea - never been in the fishing industry processing or anything. They bought an old barn somewhere, if I remember right, and properly equipped it, CFIA approved. Now they’re in international markets, and they’re doing extremely well. We need to do more and more of that as we move forward. They’re not in processing except for that, and they’re not in harvesting, none of that. It’s a company that’s a model, and there’s many more examples of that. As we move forward and work with our department and Perennia and the universities in the province and industry, we’re going to see a big change in the next few years.

            With that, I would like to make my closing comments.

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: Go ahead.

[3:00 p.m.]

            MR. COLWELL: The budget in the Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture was stuck around $9 million for years and years. This is the biggest budget this department has ever had. I want to thank my colleagues in Cabinet and my colleagues in our Party for supporting the work we’re doing there and making this increase in our budget possible.

            With these extra funds, we have managed to do a lot of work, and we will continue to do a lot more work. We’ll do the things we’ve been talking about: quality, added value, and all the things we need to do to make sure we have jobs for young Nova Scotians to stay here - high-tech jobs. This industry is a high-tech industry now. We need people who know robotics. We have several companies moving to robotics, automated processing. That equipment needs to be maintained and operated by young people who really understand computers and computer automation. That’s something new to this industry.

            We’re excited about that. As we move forward and see opportunities for young Nova Scotians, and see our population grow even more than it has now - which was the highest population we have ever had in history - I want to see a lot of those jobs go back into the traditional industries of fishing, farming, aquaculture, and all those industries.

            Have I run out of time yet?

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: Yes.

            MR. COLWELL: Thank you.

            MADAM CHAIRMAN: Shall Resolution E10 stand?

            Resolution E10 stands.

            The subcommittee is adjourned.

            [The subcommittee adjourned at 3:01 p.m.]