HALIFAX, FRIDAY, MARCH 26, 2021

SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE ON SUPPLY

12:35 P.M.

CHAIR

Keith Bain

THE CHAIR: Order, please. The Subcommittee of the Whole on Supply will now come to order.

We are meeting today to consider the Estimates for the Department of Agriculture as outlined in Resolution E1.

Resolution E1 - Resolved, that a sum not exceeding $40,613,000 be granted to the Lieutenant Governor to defray expenses in respect of the Department of Agriculture, pursuant to the Estimates.

The honourable Minister of Agriculture, you have one hour for your opening remarks.

HON. KEITH COLWELL: What time is it that we started, so we’ll know how long we’ve got?

THE CHAIR: The time is 12:36 p.m.

KEITH COLWELL: It’s a pleasure to be here to present the estimates and conversation around agriculture in the province of Nova Scotia.

Last year in 2020, our cash receipts from farms was almost $600 million. That included dairy, poultry, and eggs, which amounted to about half of the farm receipts. The other ones of field crops were approximately $36 million. There were blueberries with the large number, cattle, several other products, fresh apples, furs, grocery stock, and other things.

We have primary agriculture employment in the province at roughly 6,000 people. That doesn’t count the spinoff industries. Agriculture is the third largest export category in Nova Scotia. The largest exporters are the fishing industry, around $2.2 billion - Michelin Tire, and then it’s our fishing industry. The exports in agriculture were around $400 million last year. Our major markets are the U.S., Germany, the Netherlands, and China. All those markets are continually growing. The exports, of course you know, add a lot of economic benefit to the province, and indeed to the economy overall.

Wild blueberry exports topped the exports at $151 million. That’s 42 per cent of all agriculture exports. The export leader, as I already said, is fisheries, and we’re very proud of that.

We initiated a program two years ago, I believe, or maybe three years ago, called the Small Farm Acceleration Program. The idea of this program is to start to get people to transform from being a small hobby farm or small farm that couldn’t reach commercial size. We’ve taken that idea and we’ve put special programs together to work with any farm that’s under $150,000 in sales. That has been very successful. To date, we’ve had over 100 participants in this program, and some of them are very near the $150,000 mark, which would put them outside of that and into regular programs. It has been very successful, and we’re the first ones in the country that have done that.

It’s been important for the small industries and the industry overall. The succession planning and indeed for a young person or individuals or even someone who’s retired to get into commercial farming - it’s a stepping stone. This is being watched by many of the other provinces and considering the success we’ve had, I know several who are looking at doing this. This program has been funded under the Canadian Agricultural Partnership.

I want to talk about the wine sector. The wine sector is very exciting and very interesting. Just some history on that. Nova Scotia wine has been in production, unbelievably, for 410 years. That’s hard to believe. We just discovered that recently and we’re going to celebrate the 410^th anniversary this year. It started in Bear River, Nova Scotia and that’s 200 years ahead of Ontario and 250 years ahead of B.C. These are critical milestones for Nova Scotia. We always talk about our emerging wine industry and unfortunately the other parts of the country got ahead of us in the meantime.

We’re very fortunate in having a very unique climate in Nova Scotia. Very talented winemakers and world class products in Nova Scotia. We want to grow the industry through strategic investments and export development. That is why we have developed the Nova Scotia Wine Quality Strategy and will be investing $4.5 million over the next five years. The strategy will include the investment in a wine authority to administer Nova Scotia’s Wine Standards program. We’ve been developing a quality program in Nova Scotia for high-quality wines for about two years now. We’ve hired the best experts in the world in quality.

During their work, we found out that we do have a unique thing in Nova Scotia. Everybody knows Tidal Bay and knows it very well. We found out that Tidal Bay is probably the only true Appalachian wine in North America. I give a lot of credit to the people who started the Tidal Bay wine and the idea of Tidal Bay wine many years ago. It’s really important that we get recognized for that. With our quality program put in place, we will have one of the highest wine quality standards in the world, which will mean in return for that higher benefit to the producers of the wine, higher prices and indeed a standard that the rest of the world will try to achieve. That’s quite a feat, considering the 500, 600 or 1,000 years in some cases of winemaking history ahead of us, and we have to look at Nova Scotia as a true opportunity. Our wines are typically better quality than anywhere else in Canada, indeed North America, and in some cases than any other place in the world.

We recently received a trade challenge from Australia and some European countries. I totally believe that challenge has nothing to do with what we were doing. They’re trying to put a slowdown on the development of their highest-quality wines. The highest price ever paid for Nova Scotia wine, including all imports, was Benjamin Bridge. They sold 500 bottles in 24 hours at $285 a bottle. Every time I mentioned this to the owner of Benjamin Bridge, he said, Keith, don’t tell me again, I know I should have sold them for a lot higher price and I would have got the price. This is something that can be repeated by many of our wineries - incredible quality and incredible recognition of the industry.

As we look - we can expand into other markets across Canada and internationally. This is going to help us tremendously. We work with the industry on a replanting program for growers to replace the older vines, which will be part of the $4.5 million we’re providing over the five years. More marketing and more help for the wineries to achieve the goals they have. We just finished our four-year $12 million vineyard expansion program, which focused on expansion of vineyards, wineries, innovation, quality and market. This is part of the outcome of that program, this wine quality program and new markets.

[12:45 p.m.]

The new investments will target building a strong future in a time we need more exports in the province and we need more opportunities to sell our products inside of Nova Scotia and to the rest of Canada. We need to build on our capacity to supply grapes here in Nova Scotia to support the growth of the industry, and that has happened. Since 2017, 263 new acres of vineyards have been planted. We don’t just randomly plant vineyards anymore. They have to be very specific types of vines to produce a grape that’s going to give us a high-quality wine.

Wine sales were $24.3 million, including $12 million in exports, and we feel that number can easily be doubled over the next few years. We have 74 grape growers and 25 farm wineries and support 640 direct jobs and spinoff jobs in 2019. Our acreage has grown from 640 acres in 2012 to 1,200 acres now, a 99 per cent increase.

We have worked again with our loan boards to make sure that there are loans in place, that the payments lower interest rates to help the Vineyard Development and Expansion Program, also to bridge any funding they need.

Along with the major Canadian wines and grape-producing regions, Nova Scotia is a founding member that has helped establish the first-ever wine and grape cluster focused on research and development. Five projects led by Nova Scotia are included in the cluster. This also helped us to gain another $3.4 million in research projects in soil health, improved plant genetics, and disease resistance. This research also helps our agriculture industry. As I have already spoken about, it’s exciting to see that Nova Scotia has the longest history of growing grapes and winemaking in Canada, if not in North America.

Another very important organization to the province of Nova Scotia is 4-H. We’re so proud to work with 4-H, and we have been working with 4-H for many, many years. Our staff has been provided services and indeed works closely with 4-H. This year will be the first full year of 4-H taking on their own responsibilities. This is quite unique. This is not something where we went to 4-H and said, are you interested in doing this? Just the opposite - 4-H came to us.

They took over Camp Rankin with our support and our continued support a few years ago and, indeed, have changed that substantially to the point that it’s more successful than ever. It’s run by volunteers as well as paid staff in the summertime. That really allows the young people to enjoy 4-H as a group, a large group. Anyone who hasn’t seen Camp Rankin, you should definitely take time when COVID‑19 is alleviated so we can have time - you can appreciate just what a wonderful thing it is. Mr. Chairman, as a member from Cape Breton, you would have that with great pride, I’m sure. It’s a testament to Cape Breton Island and to 4-H altogether.

What they did is, they came to us about two or three years ago, I guess. They said, we want to take over all 4-H activities. They came to us with a budget, a budget that I thought was a little bit too low considering the things they were going to take on. We came to a conclusion with them that we would provide them $460,000 annually for them to take over administration and strategic leadership of 4-H programming in Nova Scotia. That has been very successful, and this year will be the first full year of that happening. We’re very excited about that. We will still be supporting, in client support for our staff at all levels, 4-H. I think it’s one of the best programs that we could ever have in place for young people in the province and would encourage anyone who wants to see a young person grow and prosper and really shine, 4-H is the organization.

I always tease when I go to a 4-H event and indicate that they have so many young people and great speakers. I hate to go after them because it’s the high standard you’ve got to follow. I’m telling you they really, really do a great job. I want to thank them very much for the great work they do for our families in Nova Scotia, and the great work they do with young people to really bring them forward and express their opportunities and things they can do - not only in agriculture, but in many fields.

I want to thank my Agriculture Extension Coordinators. We have six staff in the province that live all over the province in different locations, and that’s intentional to make sure they are in the agricultural areas and are supporting our agriculture and farm and processing activity. These staff typically will travel to farms, processing facilities, get a pulse on what’s happening, see what they need, and, indeed, see what they require to make sure that they can bring that information back to us, and also help them with the Canadian Agriculture Partnership Applications, help them take soil samples, whatever is necessary. This is a program that was eliminated a few years ago and we’ve reintroduced it again. Working with these very energetic and enthusiastic staff members, they’re part of an organization I am very proud of, and I’m very proud of all our staff.

We’ve done a lot of work in innovation. We’ve done an incredible job in conjunction with our industry partners, and I stress other industry partners. It’s not just us. Finding new market opportunities and increased visibility of our products in China, Asia, Europe, the European Union, and even exploring new markets in the U.S. We’re very excited about those activities, and they’re paying off.

We’re also working with different organizations such as the Christmas Tree Growers of Nova Scotia - actually, they have been developing a new, smart Christmas tree. That was started before they came to our department two years ago, and that will change how we do business - Christmas trees. We’re really excited with Christmas tree growers this year. They’ve had the best year in history when it comes to sales, and, indeed, in HRM, anyone that doesn’t live in HRM should be aware that we pretty well ran out of trees in HRM this year. I think that’s the first time in history that’s ever happened. That’s good news. I think more people stayed home instead of travelling out of the country, and that’s really helped out the market.

Not only that, we’ve been talking to some of the growers and they’re indicating their export markets are so high that they don’t even know if they’re going to have enough trees to supply either the domestic market or the export markets. That is really good news. The Christmas Tree Growers are incredibly good to deal with. We put a program together with our Growing Tomorrow fund to do a lot of great things, and I’ll talk about that a little bit later.

Wild blueberries was a problem a number of years ago. They came, the growers are coming and they weren’t making any money - the sales were too low - our warehouses were full of blueberries and freezers all over North America. The market didn’t appear to be there. So, working with the producers and with the Bragg Enterprises and Millens and other producers and processors, that has become an incredible success. Our problem this year is I don’t think we’ll have enough blueberries to supply the market. That is good and bad. It’s good in the fact that the price of the blueberries will go up in the fields and help our farmers which is desperately needed; it’s bad because we may lose the market share.

In the meantime, we’ve been working with blueberry producers to develop new products, new ideas, and I will talk about those a little bit later.

We’ve also been actively assisting the maple industry, the pork industry, the beef industry, chicken sectors developing and implementing new strategic plans and a new business approach to run their businesses and hopefully make them a lot more profitable. Again, some of those fields, like the pork industry, were hit hard with COVID-19, but overall the other industries have done quite well.

I’ll talk about wild blueberries again here for a little bit. Again, at $151 million in 2020 export sales, we are very happy, and that didn’t happen by accident. It happened by very extensive marketing in Asia and China. We were always very strong in Japan, but we had no penetration whatsoever in China. Also by improving the export market activities in the European Union. We’ve had increased sales in all of those and for the first time ever in China. The Chinese market has turned out to be a very significant market, with hundreds of container loads of frozen blueberries being sent to China on a regular basis.

As we did this, we’ve also looked at different ways to sell it. We are looking at different fresh delivery products, frozen, as we’ve already done, and value-added products, and we’ve seen a lot of those things happening. I put in a government Notice of Motion today congratulating one such company working with the blueberry industry, developing products, and that is just one of several. We are working on the goal of sales domestically, as well. So, that is also coming.

We also developed a wild blueberry wine for the marketplace in Asia and other countries. Many of you don’t realize it, but blueberries ‑ it doesn’t matter what format it’s in, it still has the same health benefits as if you take a fresh berry and eat it off the bush, or you freeze it, or crush it to put in a pie, or you even make blueberry wine, it still has the same health benefits, which are very significant. They are probably the healthiest super food that ever existed. That has been something we’ve been working on closely.

As we move forward in that industry - I talked about this last year, as well. This has become a continuous, super-success story that we need to replicate. We are trying to replicate and will replicate that in other marketplaces in other provinces.

I want to talk about the minister’s conference that we started last year in agriculture. We had the first annual Agriculture Minister’s Conference in Halifax last year. Maybe some of you attended or hopefully had a chance to. The Legislature was over at that time, so it was pretty difficult for all of us to get there. We had 800 people attend. We were hoping for 100, but we had 800. It was a two‑day conference that allowed people to network with each other. It was also a tremendous chance to talk about new technology and meet market experts from all over the world in science and marketing, you name it.

This year, unfortunately, due to COVID-19, we have to run a digital conference. We are running topics this year that have already started, and we have really good take-up. These are 90‑minute events and anyone is welcome to join them and see what they are all about. They will be recorded and put up online when we’re finished.

Some of the things we’ve been looking at are the consumer trends, climate change, of course, innovation and adaptation, and advancing the role of women in agriculture. All these are extremely important topics. I will say, from personal experience with this, that all these things we do to work with other ideas and technologies have really changed the dynamic in the agriculture industry, making people more interested in new technology, new ideas. Indeed, you can see a shift already happening. We have to make that shift, especially with the climate changes coming and especially with coal that we are probably going to be dealing with for many, many years. These things are very important.

We are talking to people in the world, the leaders in certain types of technology, and we are starting now to adopt that technology in Nova Scotia, which is extremely exciting.

We have issues with labour and we always have issues with labour. We always have a severe labour shortage. It is hard to find local people who want to work. Thank goodness we can bring temporary foreign workers in to the province.

[1:00 p.m.]

Last year was quite challenging with COVID-19. This year, we announced yesterday that the foreign workers will come in, they will be isolated in hotels that are set up for this, with one person per one room. The province will be subsidizing the cost of the stay in the hotel. We’ll also make sure that the proper testing is done.

This will take a financial burden off the farmers and I believe we can recuperate some of that money from the federal government. That would be a fantastic way to start. This will help our farmers to make sure we can get crops in the fields and after we get them in the fields, we can get them harvested.

This year, it looks like we’re going to have enough workers to come in. Last year, thanks to New Brunswick coming up with the policy of not bringing any temporary foreign workers in, we managed to get some of theirs. That really helped us when we needed it the worst. It really hurt the farmers in New Brunswick, but it was great for us.

We work with Perennia, the Nova Scotia Federation of Agriculture, the Department of Health and Wellness, and the Department of Labour and Advanced Education to set up the isolation programs and protocols for temporary foreign workers in Nova Scotia. It has really been a team effort. I want to personally thank everybody on that team. We’ve had excellent co-operation with all different categories of different departments. The turnaround time on answers is not your typical turnaround, it’s been just a few hours, and sometimes a few minutes, to get answers. If we need to come up with a new type of protocol, they’re there to help us and work with us proactively to make sure that Nova Scotians stay safe, and the temporary foreign workers too, so we can have a sustainable, safe food supply in the industry.

I also want to thank the farmers themselves for the great work that they have done on the temporary foreign worker issue, ensuring that they have excellent housing and excellent opportunities to work on our farms in the province.

One of the things we’re trying to do to get some more workers in the province is a student bursary program, which we put in place a couple of years ago. It’s an on-farm bursary program that awards students who work on farms throughout the summer. Not just the summer; they can work on the farms even after school - whenever it is. This provides an employment connection between farms and students.

We’re hoping some of these students will go into agriculture and make it a career, whether it be working on a farm, owning a farm, being a scientist, or anything else that’s associated - maybe even a veterinarian. All really good career opportunities, and maybe some of them may even work for our department someday.

The program provides $500 to $1,000 worth of bursaries based on the hours worked towards educational fees for the students. The money is forwarded directly to the educational institution of their choice, wherever they’re going to go to school. That includes outside and inside the province, and community colleges as well as universities. It’s put in their fund so they can use it to pay their tuition, buy their books, whatever they need to do.

It has been a great program. We have the same program in place in the Department of Fisheries. The one in the Department of Agriculture, as well as Fisheries and Aquaculture, is administered for both departments by our program staff at Agriculture. It gives us great opportunity to give young people a chance to see what it’s like to work on a farm. This costs the farmers no money. It’s 100 per cent funded by the province.

I talked briefly about climate change. We need to really, really look at climate change and we’ve been doing that. We’re very concerned about food security into the future. I’ve been talking for several years about food security in the province of Nova Scotia, never imagining that COVID-19 would come along and make this so prevalent.

I thought it would be some kind of natural disaster, or something would happen outside of disease, that would stop the flow of trucks into Nova Scotia. We have so many trucks coming into Nova Scotia bringing the food supply. Indeed, it was a disease instead, and the others are still real possibilities. We hope they don’t happen.

We really are working hard to make sure we can have enough food produced in our province to ensure we have enough actual food supply when we need it. Through COVID-19 - we never talked about this through the COVID-19 problem, but we came very, very close more than once in that whole process, early on, to running out of beef, pork, and some other products that were being processed outside the province. The plants were shut down for extended periods of time and there was a real risk. Fortunately, we had some locally licensed abattoirs in Nova Scotia that worked at full tilt to get product on the shelves in the places they could sell them. The farmers did an exceptional job to help our food security.

These are real things that are happening, things that most people take for granted. You go to the grocery store and you look for a steak and it’s always there. Well, I can tell you that during COVID-19, it almost wasn’t there - cereal, meat on the shelf, along with some other products. There’s still a risk of that today.

I’m also very pleased that we just recently announced a $5 million program over the next two years toward our efforts to combat climate change that’s already been talked about, and also linking our growing season. Again, it’s all about food security, while reducing our energy costs and making our farms even greener than they are today.

All these things will help the industry become more profitable, so they can take that money and reinvest it in their farms and more efficient equipment and processes such as lighting and ventilation - all kinds of different things that help. More efficient heating and cooling systems can greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, while at the same time making a farm more profitable. We’ll be launching the applications for that in April and we’re looking forward to some really innovative approaches and indeed a change to make our industries more profitable and extend the growing season.

Growing season extension is critical. We do have at least one greenhouse in the province now that’s going through a year-round operation. That means they won’t operate in the Summer because they always have to shut down for a month or two to clean the greenhouses, reset up everything, and start production. That will happen in the Summertime now instead of the Wintertime. That means we’ll have a more stable supply of local tomatoes and cucumbers, in this case. In the Summertime when we shut down, it means the field crops will fill that gap. It will help the local farmers and it will help our food security and food supply. I could talk about this for a very long time because it’s top priority for us.

Another thing I want to talk about is the dike system and aboiteau upgrades, providing the community with flood protection on agricultural land, public infrastructure, cultural assets, and commercial and residential property. The province has a cost-share project with the federal government to upgrade 60 kilometers of dikes and five aboiteau structures along the Bay of Fundy and in some other areas as well. The work on that is ongoing. Over the next few years, we will make significant upgrades, which desperately need to be made, and also do some smaller projects as we move this forward. It’s critical that we protect these areas from flooding. Indeed, farmers rely on the land for many of their crops, for grazing. It’s very important to our food supply as well.

I want to talk about the COVID-19 response facing Nova Scotia agricultural businesses. Before I start that, I want to thank our federal counterparts for the exceptional job they have done in helping us with this. Without their assistance, this would have been a huge, huge financial drain on the province of Nova Scotia. With the assistance of the federal government, that cost has been greatly mitigated and, indeed, helped bring us to a closer balance in our books over time than would have been possible otherwise.

We provided support packages to help farmers manage the risks that threaten the viability of their own farm operations and the food supply system. We have been very lucky so far, thanks to good planning, thanks to the precautions that have been taken. We continue to have those on our farms and our processing facilities. We’ve had some hiccups, but only minor ones compared to other parts of the country and the world.

As we look at the programs we have put together jointly with the federal government, we have a COVID‑19 response and mitigation program funded under CAP, the Canadian Agricultural Partnership. This program helped farmers get vital assistance with personal protective equipment and to make changes to processing facilities that allowed them to operate safely during this pandemic.

They also delivered the federal COVID‑19 Emergency On-Farm Support Fund, providing additional provincial funding, raising the assistance rate from 50 per cent to 75 per cent. This was a game-changer for farmers. It’s extremely expensive for the farmers to do this at the same time as trying to produce their products. Without this kind of assistance, some of the farmers probably wouldn’t have even put seeds in the ground last year. There was a lot of discussion about that last year, and thank goodness they did. These programs made it possible to operate successfully.

As of yesterday, Nova Scotia and Ottawa agreed to increase the AgriStability 2020 Interim Payment Program to 80 per cent from where we were before, and also remove the reference margin limit. This is fantastic. This was agreed to across the country by all provinces and territories, and it’s a game-changer, again, for the industry. It gives our farmers more security in case the time when they - especially with COVID‑19 or something like this - they know they can survive those times and continue to produce products and food supply for our province.

Also, the AgriInsurance people, for the last year and this year coming, are giving a 10 per cent discount producer share of AgriInsurance and insurance programs. That really helps farms with the cash flow, as even with the programs we have, they have additional costs, and it has really helped them with that.

The Farm Loan Board is offering low-interest, fast-approval loans to help with the immediate costs of temporary foreign workers. That funding then can be - they can apply for the programs I talked about and some other programs to have the cash flow to make that happen. When the money comes in, they pay it back, or the Farm Loan Board is paid back directly. It’s a great thing for the Farm Loan Board and it’s a great thing for the farmers themselves, to give them cash flow at a time of the year when they typically do not have a lot of cash.

The Farm Loan Board also did some COVID‑19 loan deferral programs, up to $7.5 million dollars in hand to farmers to mitigate through the pandemic. All those things helped, but the most important thing was the farmers and the great work they have done themselves. Those things are so, so important to our farming industry and to our food supply. We’ve got to continue to look at food supply.

Other things we’ve been really working on - I’ve touched on it earlier - is trade and market development. We have a great opportunity now with the CETA agreement with the European Union, that tariffs are being removed on a regular basis. We have tariffs removed in 96 per cent of export products like blueberries, with over 12 per cent of that passed. Fresh apples are 9 per cent and live lobsters are 8 per cent. These are going to zero. That’s going to help us a tremendous amount as we market more and more products into that part of the world.

Also, the new Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement, which came into effect on July 1, 2020, has preserved existing agricultural trade commitments. That leaves our biggest customer, which is going to be the U.S., accessible basically by free trade. That was also very good.

[1:15 p.m.]

Nova Scotia companies are competing, and we are winning internationally, big time. We’re always looking for new markets. I already talked about the new markets in China for blueberry wine and frozen blueberries. That has been really, really positive. Virtual presence in large hospitality trade shows last Fall reached new clients from all over the world. Even though with the pandemic we can’t travel, we’re doing a lot of virtual marketing and have had tremendous success.

We also have the Trans-Pacific Partnership with Asian countries. That has removed a lot of the tariffs as well. That partnership is critical for us to ensure that we grow that part of our industry as well.

Another organization that most people don’t realize exists is Perennia. Perennia is our industry-led board. I’m the only shareholder. I own the company as minister. Every minister does, whoever it is. I put in place the first-ever industry-led board. I appointed top farmers in the province, top processers, and also from the fishing industry the same thing. The board is there to make sure that Perennia, over time, becomes self-supporting and, indeed, can do more and more work and extend the work they do. They have incubator facilities to allow start-ups. They have things like, in the wine industry, to put in a bottling line that can bottle capacity, which has been very well received. Indeed, the line does travel outside the province now. They also put together other product lines like that. They help farmers manage their costs of production. I will talk about costs of production a little bit more shortly.

Perennia is a very unique facility and it’s growing in size. It’s going to be known for a lot of other very positive things. There was a need in the province for a marijuana- or drug-testing facility and they put that in place. I’m pleased to say it’s one of the things that we put in place that has been very successful and is actually making money. The idea is to move Perrenia to a money-making operation so they can then re-invest that money in research and development to help both the agriculture and fishing industries.

Another important topic is the bee industry. We have 788 registered beekeepers with 25,856 hives. There are almost 15,000 hives available to meet pollination requirements. This year, we hope we have enough hives for pollination and we’re working towards that. We are keeping the borders closed to importation of bees and hives into Nova Scotia because of the small hive beetle, but now it’s in New Brunswick. If New Brunswick had listened to us and used our protocols, it wouldn’t be in New Brunswick now either, probably.

We put strong protocols in place when we were importing these bees, but bees that were certified in Ontario to be clean of the small hive beetle, we did find that a lot of them were infected. If we had made the mistake of bringing those hives in, we would have had a major problem with the small hive beetle. We will eventually have a problem, but the longer we can hold it off, the more competitive we can be and the safer our hives are. These small hive beetles are really devastating to the bee population.

The other thing we have really an advantage of in Nova Scotia is Winter loss. Bees are always a problem over the Wintertime. We are among the lowest, and sometimes the lowest in the country, when it comes to losses. Over the past years, we’ve averaged only 20 per cent loss. It’s those losses that really add up and cause a great deal of trouble.

We’ve also had the fourth annual Beekeeper Symposium. This is something I set up four years ago, where we could sit down and the department could bring in experts to talk to the bee industry. We did it separately from their AGM and the way they operate. They did the same thing. They brought some people in. It was a very expensive way to do that. Now, since the first meeting we’ve had, we had the second meeting. We put the two of them together - their annual meeting and our day - to talk about the bees and give them technical expertise. Basically, anything they wanted they could put on the agenda and we would try to get experts in, and also talk about any other technical issue they wanted.

They have now combined that. It’s now called the Beekeepers Symposium and it’s 100 per cent with the association. We’re very proud of that. We’re very pleased to see that we can help the association in every way possible. There are a large number of beekeepers in this province, as I said, 788 of all sizes, from two or three hives to very large, well over 50 and some of them over hundreds of hives. It’s an important business because without bees, we can’t pollinate our crops and we will have, again, a problem with our food supply if we don’t have bees and pollination bees.

Also, the honeybees are another great product of Nova Scotia. As we work towards that, we have built a really good working relationship. Some of you might remember the producers had a little demonstration outside the Legislature because they thought they needed some more things, and we’ve worked with them now. We work very closely and that won’t be happening again.

The other initiative that’s critically important to the local food supply and local food security is our Buy Local initiative. Starting last year, the Buy Local initiative partnered with Taste of Nova Scotia, who we still have a great partnership with, and Get Your Hands on Local. We’ve fine-tuned that a little bit more this year and you’re going to be seeing a lot more products on the shelves marked 100 per cent Nova Scotia products.

We’ve developed partnerships with all the major retail outlets - Sobeys, Atlantic Superstore, Walmart, Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation, even Costco and a lot of them, most of the large, independent retailers, as well as farmers’ markets - to identify local products on their shelves. That would include beverages, as well, at the Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation. It’s been a very, very good partnership and, as we move this forward and ramp up our marketing activity, it’s going to help people in Nova Scotia to be aware of what is available. Ontario has been using an incredibly good program over a large number of years now, very successful, and we’re going to model a lot of what we do on their program, but we’re going to make tweaks specific to Nova Scotia. Also, not just agricultural products - all agriculture food, seafood, and beverages. It’s time we started celebrating all these things.

Another thing we’ve been doing quite actively is the pan-Atlantic technology transfer team that we’ve been working with, aimed at improving honeybee health and overwintering success. They also promote hive security (and that’s, again, our beehives).

We’ve been involved with the Atlantic Poultry Research Institute in multiple projects on production of chickens without the use of antibiotics, food safety in eggs, health of layers, and feed costs. We’re also working with the Atlantic Grains Council, developing the grains and oil seed sector strategy that can be used to help producers make more decisions on new opportunities. We’re really working hard with our partners outside the province, and it brings more resources to the table that we can move our industry ahead faster.

We’re investing in some major projects in the province that will help our Provincial Exhibition, which is owned by the Nova Scotia Loan Board and will be owned by the Nova Scotia Loan Board into the future. We’re helping harness racing by putting in a new grandstand. The grandstand was so antiquated that it was not a very nice place to visit and to spend an afternoon of harness racing, or an evening, whatever the case may be.

Also, we’re going to build a new horse barn on the facility for both harness racing and for events, when we can have events again, at the facility. That’s a major investment by the province and I want to thank my colleagues for doing that. When we took it over a few years ago, the facility was in total disrepair and we’ve been working on buildings. I can tell you from what I’m hearing and seeing in the community, we’ve come a long way. There’s still a long way to go, a long way, but the people in the community are happy. They don’t have an eyesore in their backyard anymore. They don’t have other problems with the facility. Those have been removed. We also put in place a code of conduct on the site to make sure we run a top-notch organization we can be proud of and it’s a showcase for the Nova Scotia Provincial Exhibition, which will continue on that site for many years to come.

The idea of that facility is to put a team together that will manage the facility - it will still be owned by the Farm Loan Board - and that the facility can make money over time, so they can reinvest in the property and the infrastructure to make it helpful.

The other thing we’re doing is the Perennia Innovation Centre, the demolition and design and replacement with a new building. That work is under way now. They found out when the RCMP left the building - it had been rented to for a long time - that the building had asbestos in it and all kinds of other problems. It was a lot cheaper to demolish it and build a new building to replace it. That building in Perennia Park is badly needed by Perennia because they are expanding, and that is good news.

Of course, we already talked about the dike rehabilitation and upgrades at various locations.

There are a lot of exciting things happening in the departments over the last number of years. I also want to talk about a cost of production project, something I initiated some time ago and that’s being completed by the group at Perennia. The idea of that is it would accumulate all the costs live by computer and give a farmer or a business owner that information live every day, so that you know what your labour costs are, you know what your power costs are, you know what your equipment cost is - everything. You’d be able to look it up when you want to know how much fuel you burned that day. You’d be able to look it up on your flip phone or on your computer and it will tell you what your fuel is. It will tell you when you need to reorder fuel, if you have a fuel storage facility.

It will give you financial information around when is a good time to buy new equipment: is it better to keep the equipment you have and track the cost of repairs, maintenance, and everything else? It’s also about live monitoring. We’re already putting a test in place now for power consumption. Now that is going to be key as we move to get rid of more greenhouse gases and help the environment. This is going to be key. We can reduce power consumption by all kinds of means - maybe changing lighting, maybe changing motors on equipment, maybe starting motors at a different time. There are all kinds of things that we have the technology for now and, again, we’re just installing it. We’ve been a little bit delayed getting installations done because of COVID-19, but now we are on track.

It’s starting to come together. It will tell you exactly what it costs to produce every crop in your field. If you’re growing corn, you’ll know before you harvest it, right to the penny, what it costs for that corn. Now most farmers don’t have that information and have really no reliable way to get it.

Also, they’re working on a program to disuse herbicides, so that you can reduce the amount of herbicide you use. That does several things. It helps the environment, number one. It also helps the farmer become more profitable because they don’t have to use these herbicides, only when they need them to avoid a disease problem or an insect problem, whichever the case may be.

[1:30 p.m.]

That program, we’re very excited about it and there will be a rollout of that over time because it’s quite complex. It will work on the internet, on any smart phone. It’s going to work on any computer system, so a farmer would have access to that. For instance, we have a strawberry field. We know what it costs, all the input costs - your fertilizer, your water, your tilling of the soil, your ground cover that you put over the strawberries to stop the weeds coming up, what it costs to harvest it, what it costs to weed it, what it costs to run the machinery to operate that - right to the penny. So you’ll know you can sell that quart of strawberries, or whatever size container you put them in, you will know exactly what your cost is in that container, including the cost of the container and putting it in the container to get it to the store, and your transportation if you have to pay the transportation to get it to your customer with the labour. So, these are the kinds of things we have to do. We’re living in a world of technology now, and the technology on farms really has to catch up with where the technology is.

As we move forward in this, we work with the farmers in the province of Nova Scotia and the processing industry. We are excited. We see a lot of opportunities, a lot of opportunities for high-paid careers in agriculture - on the farm, off the farm, and supporting the farm. That’s exciting. It’s exciting to see so many people coming back to Nova Scotia and have people who would get an opportunity to help grow our economy.

When you look at the economy in Nova Scotia, the economy ‑ the key driving the economy in Nova Scotia is food. It’s the seafood industry and the agriculture industry. Our number one export, as I’ve already said, is fisheries. Last year it was 2.3, this year it’s 2.2, and I will talk about that in the fisheries segment in more detail.

Number two is Michelin Tire - a great company, wonderful to have them here, a lot of exports. Number three is agriculture. So, when you look at the biggest employer, the most economic benefit, and just as importantly - probably more importantly - as food security for our people and everybody in the province. That is key. We’re doing it in a more and more environmentally sound way. We have to move in that direction.

The industry has been doing that already. As we give them the tools to help them do it, it’ll happen even sooner. That means we can open up markets in places like Europe, where you couldn’t even go near before - very, very important.

As we go through this whole process, we will be seeing innovation, real opportunities for young people to come. This is a high-tech business thing. This is not going out in the field anymore, taking a hoe and digging out weeds. We’re developing a weeding machine already in Nova Scotia, or partly here in Nova Scotia, partly in Quebec. It will automatically go down the rows, distinguish between a crop and a non-crop, a robot goes all by itself, picks the weeds out, and takes them away or lays them on the soil, whichever the farmer wants to do, and eliminates that cost.

Those are the kinds of technology we need to use. As we move more and more towards technology, as more growers open there, it means we have less problem with labour shortages, which is critical. We do better for the environment, so that means we don’t have to use as many people, transporting people around as much. It also makes it easier to control what they do in the field.

When they go back to the cost of production, they’re really going to be able to sense the soil - when they need to water, when they don’t water. You make sure you get the exact water content, you check the nutrients in the soil live as we do with those things. So many opportunities we have that we need to put in place.

It’s an exciting time to be in agriculture. COVID-19 was a real big problem for us - in some cases, a blessing because it really has highlighted what we’ve been trying to do for some time as we move forward more and more to make sure we have everything in place that we need for our farmers to operate their farms productively and, indeed, to have the food supply on the shelves year-round that we presently don’t have enough supply of because of the seasonality of our industry. With the tunnels that we’re looking at now with greenhouse production, alternate heating systems for that, LED lighting that’s so available now, and innovation like we’re seeing our industry going to now, we’re really poised in the province to take a giant leap forward. It’s just a matter of a short time and we’ll be there.

With those few words, I would welcome questions. It’s going to take me a couple of minutes here to get my system set up so I can talk to my staff.

THE CHAIR: Okay, thank you for that, minister.

Following the COVID-19 protocol, of course, we have to take a 15-minute COVID-19 break.

Before we do that, I would like to suggest that - there’s a lot of activity going on on the other screens, so maybe if people just took their video off and just the people that will be doing the speaking stay on for a while. That’s something that Legislative TV is noticing, it makes it a lot more difficult, I think, for them and for us.

HON. PATRICIA ARAB: Mr. Chair? Can we get a ruling on quorum if the video is off?

THE CHAIR: That would be the only thing, yes. Exactly.

PATRICIA ARAB: So maybe, Ms. Kinley, if you could find that out? We have no problem turning off our cameras, as long as we’re still counted for as quorum.

THE CHAIR: Okay, maybe we’ll try to find out during the break. How would that be?

PATRICIA ARAB: That’d be great. Thank you.

THE CHAIR: Okay. So, we’ll go take our COVID-19 break now for 15 minutes, and we will resume at 1:51 p.m.

[1:36 p.m. The subcommittee recessed.]

[1:51 p.m. The subcommittee reconvened.]

THE CHAIR: Order, please. The Subcommittee of the Whole on Supply will reconvene.

We still haven’t gotten a ruling yet, so I think for the time being we’ll just stay as we are.

Now we’re going to have some questions to the minister. We’ll start with the PC caucus, with the member for Kings North, for one hour.

The honourable member for Kings North.

JOHN LOHR: I’d like to express my appreciation and echo what the minister said of the Department of Agriculture and the farmers in Nova Scotia. I’m just going to remove my own pin here and go - I’m sorry, I’m just doing something that’s too distracting.

I’d just like to echo the minister’s words of appreciation for the department and for the farmers of Nova Scotia, who work so hard - among the hardest-working citizens of our province, who contribute so much to our economy. I want to echo the minister’s words in that regard.

Mr. Minister, you covered a lot of topics in your remarks. I just want to start with one you mentioned briefly: your responsibility for dikes and aboiteaux in the province. I just want to start with one that is of considerable concern right now to the community of Windsor - the Avonport River, the Windsor Causeway aboiteau. The gates there, which are your responsibility - and we’re hearing concerns from the community that they do not know what the plans are for this twinning project and the new gates that will be there, or flow structure.

Just wondering, Mr. Minister, if you can tell us when the information will be released on the final plans of what this gate system will look like and how it will function.

KEITH COLWELL: Yes. I’m just going to have to confer with my staff for a second here.

We’re still awaiting approval from DFO on the new design of the new aboiteau that’s going in. It’s going to have more fish passage on it and still be able to maintain security of the area for flood protection. There is a real serious… if that aboiteau was removed and gone - it protects over $300 million worth of infrastructure - a lot of buildings would be under a severe situation, would be underwater.

JOHN LOHR: Mr. Minister, I’m sure you’re going to appreciate the concerns in the community about what this structure will look like, and the work is well under way. I just wanted to ask: Who’s responsible for communicating the information to the community on what this new structure will look like and how it will function?

KEITH COLWELL: Sorry about the delay here. A little bit of technology we’ve got to get in place.

The existing structure is our responsibility: we operate it. The new structure, until it is completed, will be the responsibility of the Department of Transportation and Active Transit. In the meantime, we are working closely with TAAT, the community, the Mi’kmaq - they’re presently there. There is a community liaison committee that’s being consulted on a regular basis.

JOHN LOHR: Mr. Minister, we realize the technology is difficult. I’m wondering whose responsibility - obviously, the new structure may involve changes in how the whole Avon River functions. My question is: Who’s responsible for liability to the community stakeholders - including agricultural producers, industrial and recreational users, the fishing community, the municipality - for any incurred costs? Who is responsible for the liability if there are negative effects in the changes that are made?

KEITH COLWELL: From what our understanding is, the existing structure - again, it’s our responsibility to operate it and we operate under orders from DFO. We’re under one now to open the gates at a particular time, and it will be for some time, I think. It’s normal this time of year. Our feeling is if it’s a problem caused by order by DFO, they’ll be liable. Under the Act, we have no liability on these things because of obvious reasons. Something could happen beyond our control, so it would be the DFO, we think, at this case.

[2:00 p.m.]

JOHN LOHR: Mr. Minister, I’d like to ask you about that ministerial order. I understand it was signed on March 18^th but not issued until 5:00 p.m. last Friday, on March 19^th. Very few people were notified, just a few right away. Why was the ministerial order put out in that way? Why did this happen in this way? The community was quite taken aback by this ministerial order to have the gates be opened.

KEITH COLWELL: We received the notification late Friday. Shortly thereafter, we phoned the municipality, the boat club, Ski Martock, and the Federation of Agriculture, the provincial one. The Hants County one was also notified, but their email bounced back, so it was some kind of technical problem with that. It was posted on Facebook shortly thereafter. We’re looking at a better system to do this. Members of the community liaison group are notified as well, but we’re looking for a better system to do that.

JOHN LOHR: Mr. Minister, my question is: Going forward with the new structure, will it still be the responsibility of the Minister of Agriculture - the Department of Agriculture - to maintain the water levels in the Avon River on the freshwater side?

KEITH COLWELL: I can answer that question without asking staff. It will be the responsibility to operate the structure. The structure will be basically a new structure. We’d have all the same operating protocols or whatever the case might be. Who operates it is still going to be us. We’re not responsible for the construction, but we are responsible for the operation.

JOHN LOHR: I mean, as the minister knows, I’m sure, there’s a man-made freshwater lake there, Pesaquid Lake, as well as multiple lakes upstream. They have many purposes now which are important to the users of those. The amount of salinity in the water - in other words, the amount of salt water that mixes in - on a seasonal basis for sure could have significant impact on some of those usages.

I know the minister said, and I agree, that we need food. Our world needs food. We need our food. We need these farmers to continue to operate.

I’m just wondering, Mr. Minister - I understand that you’re saying you’ll have responsibility for the operation of the new structure, but will you have responsibility over the contents of the water in that? In other words, will you be able to maintain the fresh water when fresh water is needed there?

KEITH COLWELL: I can answer that question directly, too. It’s going to be up to orders from DFO. It should be a lot better, because there’s going to be a fish passage built into the new aboiteau that was not in this one when it was designed years ago and didn’t have any provision at all to allow fish passage. That should improve the overall operation. But it’s totally up to the DFO, what they want to order. If they order that we have to open it, we’re going to have to open it.

We’ve raised those issues over and over again with the DFO. We’ve made them very aware of the need for the fresh water in the area, for the farmers - for the canoe club, not so much, but the farmers and even in the Wintertime at Ski Martock, it’s important for their business to keep their business open.

A lot of other things too. We don’t really want salt water going into the firefighting equipment either because that would cause some problems. We’re aware of all those problems. We’ve made DFO aware of those, so when they make these orders, hopefully they take everything into consideration. Whether they do or not, that will be interesting to see.

JOHN LOHR: Mr. Minister, I have to question - as I am sure the minister would know and have had experience in other areas. Salt water intrusion into wells is also another concern for local residents that had been brought to us.

My question is: If there is salt water intrusion into wells, will the homeowners be made whole, I guess the expression is? In other words, be provided with alternative sources of water or the situation ameliorated, however that is done?

I know salt water intrusion is not an easy thing to fix, but I’m just wondering if the minister can tell me who will take on the liability for that?

KEITH COLWELL: I share your concern with this. We’ve been discussing this. I just want to check with my staff and see what the most recent update on it is so I can give you more detailed information.

JOHN LOHR: All right.

KEITH COLWELL: It’s a very important topic for us. We did put some wells in to do monitoring of the salt content ourselves, what it is now, so we can monitor that. We also are monitoring private wells. We’re all very seriously concerned about fresh water for irrigation on the farms and a lot of other issues that we’re looking at.

If there is an issue, it would be the same as any other road construction project. There would have to be compensation or alternate sources of water, whatever the case may be, for the people who are affected.

JOHN LOHR: I think what I just heard the minister say is that the Government of Nova Scotia, the Department of Agriculture, will be responsible for making any wells affected by a change in the operation of the Avon River - that would be the department’s responsibility.

KEITH COLWELL: It would either be - probably the Department of Transportation and Active Transit, because of the construction, and maybe the federal government as well, and possibly us. We’d have to wait and see what it is and who is responsible for what, but definitely there’s liability there. It’s going to have to be looked after by somebody in one or all those departments combined.

JOHN LOHR: Mr. Minister, I have to ask, do you have any indication - there has been some indication from the community, and I don’t know where this comes from, that the gates - this is a normal opening. Every Spring for a couple of weeks the gates are open, but maybe what I could say is that there is some fear from the community that the gates will be left open longer this time. Does the minister have any indication of that or any reason or know why that would be the case?

KEITH COLWELL: I’m just going to check here. We are working continuously with DFO on this issue and we don’t know. We don’t know. We talked to the DFO last night and indeed they had not even given us an indication yet. I know we’ve got a two-week order, where typically we’d get another two-week order, but we’re hoping to have a situation where we do have fresh water.

JOHN LOHR: I’m kind of surprised to hear that you don’t know, Mr. Minister. Frankly, I wasn’t expecting that. I’m kind of disappointed. I guess that’s a point of communication between the DFO and your department. You are responsible for the opening of those gates. Would it not be your responsibility to know what the plan going forward was?

KEITH COLWELL: Yes and no. The problem is we have no idea what the DFO is going to order us to do. We have to operate under their orders. They have not told us. That’s why we’re continually talking with them, because we want to know as badly as you do. Everybody in the community does. It’s really important that we have the things put in place as soon as we can, as soon as we know. We can’t tell. It’s up to the DFO orders. Whatever they order us to do, we have no choice under the Fisheries Act. We have to do what they tell us to do. We are lobbying them all the time to try and keep those gates closed as much as we can. Sometimes we may not be able to do what we want to do, under order from them.

JOHN LOHR: Mr. Minister, just to say back what I think I just heard you say, a few minutes ago you told me you had responsibility for the water levels and were operating it, had responsibility to operate those gates, and now you are telling me that you don’t. Which is it?

KEITH COLWELL: In theory we have responsibility for the water level, but ultimately it goes to the DFO. On that particular aboiteau, the DFO makes a decision where the water basically - how much intrusion of salt will be there, how long the gates have to be open, everything. They give us a very distinct order of what we have to do, and it’s under order of the DFO.

If there was some other way we could do it, we would gladly do it, but we can’t. It’s an orders issue. Sometimes I don’t think they even know when they’re going to leave it open or closed. It has a lot to do with fish passage and when they think the fish are going to go through, so it’s all that process.

[2:15 p.m.]

We’re in continual dialogue with them. I guarantee you, we are letting the DFO know our concerns. We do not agree with them on a lot of these openings and stuff, and the few times we’ve actually refused to open the gates under order, they issued a great penalty to us. We haven’t had to do that.

One second, I’ll get you some more information.

To put it in a better context - my staff just outlined it for me again - this has been a file we’ve been working on very actively for a long time. We are the operators. We’re not the regulators. DFO is a regulator. In real terms, that’s what it is. We open the gate when they tell us we have to. We have no order, and then we can maintain the level - the lake - where the community wants it. We can do all the things we need to do, but the DFO ultimately is the regulator. They issue us an order like they just have, and they will issue us some more in a very short time, I would think - but it’s just a guess at this point. We have to follow those orders. They are the regulators, all to do about fish passage.

JOHN LOHR: Okay. I appreciate that answer, Mr. Minister.

Just to clarify, though, what I heard you saying about DFO was not what we normally expect from government. We expect governments to move with deliberation and consulting stakeholders and having plans laid out for months and years ahead, not days ahead. I mean, we’re a week into this closure order - or opening order - and you don’t know a week from now if you’re going to get another order to have it open or closed. It sounds like DFO might not know themselves. That’d be correct?

KEITH COLWELL: That’s correct, unfortunately. It’s not us. As I say, we put all these concerns that you’re putting forward, and a lot more, to the DFO on a regular basis, and we remind them of this continuously. They sometimes listen and sometimes don’t. They’ve made concessions for us to make sure we keep the lake level at certain times of the year when we’ve requested. If they’re going to issue an order, they’ve been co-operative that way from time to time, but fish passage trumps everything when it comes to DFO. Whenever the fish decide to show up, whenever that is, then they can issue us an order and we have to follow the order. If we don’t, some of our staff will go to jail. Literally to jail. We can’t jeopardize not doing that.

JOHN LOHR: I’m still just trying to wrap my head around this. There are a lot of moving parts in this whole discussion. There’s a causeway that’s 50 per cent built. It’s a multi-million-dollar expansion of Highway No. 101 - much needed. Much needed. It’s a very dangerous section through there.

It has to start very soon. We’re about to see fish - some sort of structure put in there to replace the existing gates, which we all agree are inadequate and showing their age. From what I hear you say, you’re going on virtually a day-by-day basis with DFO on the orders on the gates. We don’t have a plan for the fish passage that’s been approved, and we don’t know what it will look like, and we don’t know how it will impact the residents. We don’t know how it will impact fisheries.

We all want to see fish passage succeed through there, too. Just a lot of moving parts. We don’t know how it will impact the municipality and the stakeholders upriver and various things.

Mr. Minister, is that an accurate assessment of the whole situation we’re in here?

KEITH COLWELL: I want to get some more information here.

The answer to this question is - this is not an easy file. I’ll put it to you this way: We have put a proposal in to the DFO under the new program on the new structure to maintain a freshwater lake. They’ve come back to us. We’ve put an application in for this some time ago. The Department of Infrastructure and Housing is responsible for all this stuff. We’re part of it, but they’re the new construction.

We’ve put that request in for a freshwater lake. They came back and said no, it doesn’t meet the fish passage requirements. Actually, today and yesterday, we’re negotiating with them right now - again, that’s Infrastructure and Housing - so when they come in later, whenever they come in for their Estimates, you might want to ask that question of them as well.

We’re working very closely with Infrastructure and Housing on this issue. Actually, they loaned us one of their engineers to be part of the aboiteau design and development work. We’re got a really good proposal put forward. It meets all the requirements for fish passage and everything else. I think the only problem left - and I’m not positive about this, because I’m not part of the negotiations - is the opening and the salinity in the water.

So that’s ongoing. By the time you get to Infrastructure and Housing, maybe they will have some more information on it than we have right now.

JOHN LOHR: Mr. Minister, I appreciate that. I certainly will ask the question of Infrastructure and Housing when the time comes to ask that. I’m just trying to wrap my head around what you’ve just told me now.

It is raining today, but it has been a dry Spring. We had the burn restriction orders come on as early as I ever can recall. Farmers in that Avon watershed - a number of whom I know personally - I know that some of them irrigate. They could be irrigating as early, unfortunately, as the second week in May, maybe. What advice would you have for them?

KEITH COLWELL: Our preference is to have fresh water available all the time, of course. That’s what we’re pushing for. We are working on some alternatives in case we can’t come up with the fresh water for the farmers. It’s going to be a little while before we can get that in place. Hopefully we can get it in place before they need it. If they need it sooner, we are going to have to immediately work on a solution. We want to make sure the farmers can farm this year. It’s really critical for us. It’s critical for the department and it’s critical for our province.

It’s a difficult situation until this thing gets resolved, but again, as we work forward on this thing, there have to be long-term solutions. If there is salinity in the water, we have to come up with a long-term solution to help the farmers and the homeowners and the business owners there for fresh water.

That’s all part of the discussions as we’re moving forward. We’re making DFO aware of all this stuff on a regular basis and pushing forward even at the minister’s level. I’ve personally talked to the federal minister about this more than once and will continue to do that.

JOHN LOHR: Did you say go ahead, Mr. Chair? Thank you. I didn’t hear that.

Again, I’m just still trying to wrap my head around what I’m hearing from you. A freshwater lake in the Avon River - or freshwater reservoir - which you say you put a proposal forward to - I believe you said DFO. Was there any community consultation on that, or any community engagement on that, or stakeholder engagement?

KEITH COLWELL: We’ve talked to the community lots of times, and they really want a freshwater lake, to be quite honest. That’s a process going through.

As far as drawing water out of the system, it’s a regular process they have to go through and get permits to do that. You may be personally aware of that from on your own farm. That’s the process they have to go through.

JOHN LOHR: Been a few years since I pumped irrigation water, Mr. Minister. What I recall was that I had a standing permit to remove a certain amount of water and had to report it, but it wasn’t an annually-done thing. It was just something that was there. I’m sure the farmers who would have the permits to remove water are aware of the issues but would have to be concerned about salinity. They may not be asking. Is there going to be a mechanism to report the salinity levels in the river to the farmers?

[2:30 p.m.]

KEITH COLWELL: A very good question, member. We are doing salinity testing now and the DFO is also doing salinity testing. We’ve got some more monitors live on order so they can give us live information on the salinity. We’ve been doing this for quite a while and we’re going to increase our monitoring - hoping to by early June, probably. Hopefully we’ll have that available on either a daily or weekly basis, so the farmer can go and look at what the salinity is.

Also we’re working on some recommendations of what salinity can be used for - different cattle or different crops that you would identify that will be acceptable or not acceptable. We’re working towards that goal.

JOHN LOHR: Mr. Minister, I’m sure you’re aware that many years ago, before your time and my time, probably, when this first causeway went in, the farmers of the area protested against it and did not want it. In fact, not only did it have impacts on fish passage but we know that it changed the climate further in the upper reaches of the Avon River by making it slightly colder, because there was no longer the twice a day washing in and out of the tide. It had a considerable effect on the environment at that time.

Now we’re in a situation where the farmers upriver want it to stay so they are protesting to keep it. I know you may take the opinion that farmers are always against change. That’s possible, but seriously, the reason they fear the loss of it or fear that moving in and out of the tide is for a couple of reasons. One is the salinity of the water. There are many uses to having fresh water there and we’ve discussed that. The other is that the running dikes that were there to protect their land are all gone. There was considerable investment in running dikes.

I think you know what a running dike is. I don’t know if I need to explain it to you. For the benefit of the other listeners, it’s a dike that runs alongside a river rather than cutting it right off.

What we’ve seen is we had one ecosystem and a very significant set of environmental impacts from the installation of the causeway and the gates, which your department controls. But that whole area has adapted to a new reality over, I think, 50 years. There is a new ecosystem there that is sort of fresh - mostly fresh, sort of slightly salt - and changing the way these gates operate is going to alter that, too.

My question is: Where does - I guess the correct term is Department of Environment and Climate Change - where do they come in on this whole discussion and decision-making process? What role do they have? What role is there to protect the biodiversity that’s in the system now versus the biodiversity that should be there if the system is returned back to its original state?

KEITH COLWELL: That’s a very complex question with a very complex answer. It really goes back - the first one we have to deal with is DFO. DFO’s got a really powerful Act that they operate under that controls the whole ecosystem - the fish and everything. That’s the first we’d have to do.

The Department of Environment and Climate Change, all the other departments involved in this whole process all the way through, and as DFO finally comes to a decision of what they’re going to do with this - with us and what we’re going to have to do - not with us - particularly Infrastructure and Housing - what they want to do, then the other things will kick into being or not being, whatever the case may be.

This whole thing is so complex, and it hasn’t really been helped very much by the demonstrations that are going on there. That’s put another whole twist on it. Not right or wrong - it’s immaterial whether it’s right or wrong - but it’s a whole twist on it. It’s a lot of interests there. The DFO, again, is listening to all sides of this, and hopefully they come up with a conclusion that’s satisfactory to the community.

We want to put an aboiteau in. I think we need one there. Our department believes that and our government believes that. We’re hopeful that - the system that’s there now, the microclimates and everything have changed, and the industry is changed to that. As you know and I know, farmers are very resourceful, and they will make things work when other people just can’t make it work. It would be a real crime if they had to readjust, again, what happened 50 or 60 years ago. That would not be good, never mind all the other problems we would have that go along with that.

We’re aware of this. We’re pushing it. We’re doing everything we can. DFO have been really difficult to deal with on this one. I think some of it goes back with the negotiations they’re having with the Mi’kmaq and other files - not just this file, but other files as well. We’re well aware of what’s going on there, but again, it affects everything. The Mi’kmaq have a good reason for what they’re doing, and we don’t dispute that whatsoever, but we’ve got to come to a solution here that’s satisfactory for all concerned, if that’s possible.

We’re a small little part of that. Our problem is we’re caught in the middle of it because it’s going to be our aboiteau, and it’s our aboiteau now. We do have the authority, no matter what DFO says. If a big storm comes, we can close those gates. Even with their order in place to prevent flooding in the community, we have the authority to do that. That would be the only way we could override the authority they have. We’ve have to open them after the storms open, or whatever we have to do to make sure there’s no flooding either way on the system.

That’s basically where we’re at. I’d love to have an answer for you. I’ve been pushing for an answer for a year. I know my staff have been working on it steadily. Infrastructure and Housing’s been working on it steadily, too. It’s like one of those really complex problems where you don’t quite know what all the problems are and as you find another one, it creates two more problems.

I think we’re getting there. At least we had all the documentation the DFO wanted. They came back and they’re still negotiating it, so that’s positive. We hope that what comes out in the end will satisfy everybody - the best we can, everybody. At the end of the day, we need the aboiteau there.

THE CHAIR: The honourable member for Kings North, with about 10 minutes left in your hour.

JOHN LOHR: I know, Mr. Chair, my hour is going too quickly.

I’d like to thank the minister for his frankness on the whole situation and I do recognize the many dilemmas in this situation.

I would like to ask about another dike. As the minister knows, we’re concerned about dikes all over the province because of climate change as the oceans rise, undoubtedly rising. One that is of concern in my constituency is the Farnham dike. That project was listed as for this year and has been delayed. When can we expect the Farnham dike to be built up? As the minister knows, it’s a very near thing on a high tide whether the water is going over the dike or not.

KEITH COLWELL: First of all, I’d like to thank you for bringing this forward. You brought this forward before. Let me just check and see where we’re at with that.

That dike was not on the original priority list, but it’s on the priority list for the second round. There’s a lot of engineering work and stuff that’s going to start this summer. They have to do an archaeological assessment and an engineering assessment on it, and they have to do engineering design on the aboiteau to make sure it’s going to be right.

The estimated time in this round as it goes forward will be two to three years to get it done. There’s seven to eight years left in the program with this funding in it, so it’s not in danger of losing the funding or anything like that. It’s just a matter of getting the big ones done first. Some of them are going to take like a five-year time. Grand-Pré is one example. It’s going to take five years to build it. Once that gets under way - we’re getting that under way - then they can work away at building it and then we can have the engineering done for the other ones and move it forward as quickly as we can. It will be done.

JOHN LOHR: I appreciate that answer, Mr. Minister. I know it was part of the 10-year plan when that first came out two years ago and I appreciate that it’s there. In fact, as the minister knows, every single dike we have is inadequate, in my opinion. I will tell the minister that where my family comes from in Holland, they are building the dikes to a one-in-10,000-years flood situation. That’s about as big as can physically be done, at great expense.

Our dikes are built - it’s not hard just to walk on the dikes. Many people here do in our area, and see the debris of a high tide right on the top of the dike. I’m telling you, it’s not an uncommon sight, so it’s a big concern.

[2:45 p.m.]

I appreciate the fact that it’s there. I know it’s not the only one. They all need to be done, for sure.

I would like to ask the minister, and I’m sure the minister heard about this over the past year as well - I had a number of farmers reach out to me about the new requirement to provide Canada Revenue Agency tax information on your membership to the Nova Scotia Federation of Agriculture (NSFA). When I spoke to the NSFA, I understood that that was a requirement that you put in. I’m just wondering what the reasoning for the requirement was and why was it needed.

KEITH COLWELL: This is a program we put in place to find out who the real farmers are in the province. We get continuous complaints all the time. One of the worst ones I’ve seen so far is someone running around with a $200,000 Porsche with a farm licence plate on it, to give you an example of what’s going on - tons of complaints about that outside the farming industry, which gives the farming industry sort of a black eye for no reason. We want to make sure that the people who are actually farming are getting the benefits of all the programs and all the money goes to them, not to somebody who may not necessarily be farming.

The system we have in place now worked well. We’ve had some of the farmers who make their full-time income from this complain about this process. This year we’ve just signed an agreement with the CRA, so the information will go directly to Service Nova Scotia. They will have that information and they will tell us. They share that information automatically, like they do for workers’ compensation, and we do services in all those different departments. That’s the basis for this. We want to just make sure that any program we have and the funding for that goes into the hands of the farmers who are full-time and really moving forward.

That’s one of the reasons we put this Small Farm Acceleration Program in place, too. I would say we’ve got 100 people already involved in that. If they are part-time farmers, they could get their income up to - hopefully as soon as they can, strictly at their pace, they can become a full-time farmer. It’s no problem for them to register as a farmer, but they have to show the fact that they are actually farming and make sure they are farmers. That’s why this was put in place.

JOHN LOHR: I would like to point out to the minister that even expensive cars can have a hitch on the back and haul a trailer. Not all farmers are poor. Let’s just say that, all joking aside.

One of the things I want to ask you about, Mr. Minister, in the time as it goes, is: I am concerned about the beef industry in the province. I think that it is one area where we have an opportunity to see agriculture improve in all areas of our province. I am wondering what the logic is behind not having what is known as the bull bonus?

KEITH COLWELL: The bull bonus really didn’t perform. It really didn’t provide what we needed. If we’re going to improve our herds in the province - and of course bulls are key to that, as you know, being a former farmer yourself - the bull bonus didn’t really do anything. It didn’t help the quality of the product.

We want to change programs so that they would help get a better, more robust beef product, a product of higher quality, better turnaround, more opportunity for the farmers to get better weight gain while maintaining the quality - all those things in place. We’ve redirected that money - still into beef - into other ways and we’re still working with the beef industry all the time.

Actually, we’ve made a little change that we’re operating, too, because we deal closely and we have dealt closely with the beef industry. They had handling equipment as one of the top priorities. We followed through on that early on after I became minister. For a number of years, we did the same thing, and we can still do the same thing. We’re trying to tailor our programs to make sure that the farmers have an opportunity to make more money off their product and have a better-quality product. That’s the end of the game.

Paying a bull bonus really didn’t help anything. It helped a few people with bulls, and anyone who wants a good bull, well, they’re going to pay for it anyway. It will typically tend to put up the price of bulls in the marketplace without the bull bonus if they’re good quality bulls. Basically, that’s why we’ve changed it.

We are now talking to all the beef producers in the province before we talk to the association, which does not necessarily represent some of the really big farmers. They are really pleased that we’re reaching out to them. We’re going to continue to do that and we’re going to develop programs that will help the industry overall get stronger and stronger and stronger. That’s what we want to see: better quality and more value for the product when they go to a marketplace, everything the farmer needs to do. We are putting a pretty comprehensive study together now and it is direct with the industry and all participants, from the guy who would have two or three . . .

THE CHAIR: Order, please. The hour for the PC caucus has expired.

Again, following COVID-19 protocol, we will take a 15-minute COVID-19 break. We’ll be back at 3:06 p.m.

[2:51 p.m. The subcommittee recessed.]

[3:06 p.m. The subcommittee reconvened.]

THE CHAIR: Order, please. The Subcommittee of the Whole on Supply is called back to order.

Just before we begin, we did get a ruling: It’s necessary to keep the videos on. Thank you very much for that.

Next is the NDP caucus. The honourable member for Halifax Needham. You have one hour.

LISA ROBERTS: Thank you very much for this opportunity. It’s a little bit different this year. I’m going to get right into it because there’s a fair amount that I’d like to cover, and I know I will run out of time.

First, related to the Biodiversity Act, I assume that the minister is in frequent communication with the Nova Scotia Federation of Agriculture. I understand that the Federation had tried to get a meeting with the Department of Lands and Forestry about Bill No. 4 and wasn’t successful. I’m wondering if the minister was aware of that and if he, in any way, tried to facilitate that meeting or provide any clarifications of the impacts of the Bill in response to any concerns that it would impact private land use in terms of agricultural production.

KEITH COLWELL: I’ll have to check with my staff. I’m not aware of that meeting, or asked for the meeting, but let me just check to be sure.

We weren’t engaged in that. We didn’t know anything about it. Normally the Federation of Agriculture would, you know, if they have trouble meeting with another department, they would contact us and see if we could help them facilitate a meeting. In this case, it didn’t happen, maybe because it was just sort of a quick turnaround. I don’t know.

We always work with the Federation on all of these topics to make sure their voices are well heard. We’ve been very successful with the Department of Labour, Department of Environment, and working jointly. Typically, we would, at their request, go to a meeting with them to make sure that we understand what the dialogue was between the different departments, so we can cooperate with both the Federation and the other Department, whatever it may be.

I will add that the Federation has been an incredible partner in all of this. They really have stepped up to the plate, as they always have. We sometimes disagree on things but at the end of the day, we always come up with a common ground to move forward. Our goal is to always do what’s best for the industry.

LISA ROBERTS: Sorry, I was just turning down the volume on the television screening of the Committee on Supply in the Chamber. I’ve been sort of monitoring both.

Thank you for that answer. Your mandate letter mentions that you will be working with the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development to get education about biodiversity in the schools. Can you give a couple of examples of what themes you might expect to cover related to agriculture and biodiversity?

KEITH COLWELL: It’s new to my mandate, even though we’ve been working on biodiversity with the farmers forever. They have talked to us about it.

What we do is we have an Agriculture in the Classroom program under our Community Access Program. We work with the department, the federal government, on that as well. It’s a national program but we fine-tune it or get it specific to Nova Scotia. We’ve been very successful in the classrooms and it will be one of our topics as we move forward. But again, it’s just a new mandate so we haven’t laid that out, although it’s still part of what we do every day. We’ve been doing this every day from the beginning.

LISA ROBERTS: Your mandate letter also mentions that you’ll be working with the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development on school food. The letter says a focus on locally produced food and school meal programs will help our children be healthy and happy and support our local farmers and fishers. We certainly welcome that item in your mandate letter. I have personally met with a number of local leaders in bringing school food with local products, various pilot programs into schools. Can you tell me what amount of money could be generated for farms in the province by a school food program that serves one lunch a day made from locally produced food? Would your department have done that sort of analysis at all?

KEITH COLWELL: Our number one priority is to get our local foods in the schools, not just in schools, but also in the hospitals and all institutions in the province. That’s critical for us and we’ve been working on that ever since I became minister. The Department of Health and Wellness has done a great job. Some of the universities have really stepped up and they are doing a great job. I’m really happy with the new mandate.

If you read my mandate letter carefully, which I know you have, the other departments work with us to make that happen. Now in the past, that has been our roadblock. We would have one part of the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development, a one-school-board system or whatever they call them now. We’ve been very cooperative. We had a lot of materials, a lot of good products in schools and some of them just didn’t cooperate.

Now, under the new mandate, and the mandate of my colleagues, this should become a lot easier. It’s not so much that it would benefit the farms in the short term but that it would benefit them long-term, because it will have an impact on the younger generation to want local food. So, the long-term economic benefit is there and also the health of the food is. We’ve talked about this before.

[3:15 p.m.]

The other thing I’m concerned about but we never talk about - the one thing you need to talk about is that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) does a great job of inspecting food before it gets to Canada and before it gets imported to here. In the Wintertime, we have a lot of product come in and sometimes in the Summertime we have some products come in. We can control our own food supply. We know exactly what’s happened to that product before it goes into the system here for people to consume. They don’t have the assurance, even though CFIA does a great job, that 100 per cent is safe. Typically, we would see recalls on - sometimes you’ll see a recall on lettuce or something. It’s almost always a product that’s brought into the province. That’s a serious consideration too.

We’re very much in favour of - more than in favour of - getting into the institutions. Again, it goes back to our food security. It all ties together. We’ve been working on this for a long, long time. I’m just going to get you some more information here, if you can just hold one second.

We’ll just be one minute. We’re having a little bit of a technical issue here.

I’m glad I asked my staff. I forgot something. The other thing we’ve been doing very proactively is we’ve been looking at different packaging and different, very healthy products. We’ve developed some with some Nova Scotia companies - some blueberry products. We have had them in South Shore schools, and when COVID-19 came, we had to withdraw them because they weren’t in single-serving packages. The single-serving packages now, in co-operation with the companies, are almost developed. Once we get that in place, it will be something to bring to the schools and work on that. It’s not only providing the healthy food and blueberries, of course, are one of the most healthy foods you could possibly eat - you get all kinds of benefits from them - but it’s also developing new products that will pass the test of COVID-19 for children. We win-win on all these things. We’re very anxious to have - I’d like to see 100 per cent of Nova Scotia food in all the schools in the province.

LISA ROBERTS: In 2004, the Healthy Foods in Nova Scotia Schools Steering Committee, which was a committee formed by the Office of Health Promotion which had staff from the Departments of Education and Agriculture and Fisheries, recognized the School Milk Program as the only provincial program supporting Nova Scotia agricultural products in schools. You’ve been the Agriculture minister for the last eight years, and, you know, you speak to this possibility of local food in schools with enthusiasm. Can you tell me, are there any other programs, other than the milk program, that currently support Nova Scotia agricultural products in the school system?

KEITH COLWELL: Actually, the question you are asking is around my mandate letter and rightfully so. But before we got this mandate letter, we had already been working with the South Shore in particular, with the salad bar system that we put in place with them, with local farmers and the school boards, and ourselves in that area.

Now, with the mandate letter in place and the mandate to the other departments’ folks, so procurement, education and all of us working together, this should be a lot easier for us to do. Even for us, it’s very difficult to break down the barriers in those departments.

We saw an example of that here not long ago, in one of the school facilities. They went to a - made it easy for them to buy products and we immediately contacted the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development and so did the Federation of Agriculture on this issue as well. We worked very closely on this with local farmers and with the Federation of Agriculture on this project. We were a bit ahead of the curve on that, which we should have been.

We’re going to be able to move even further now with the new mandate, not so much for us because we’ve been working on it anyway, but it will take down the barriers, the sort of interdepartmental barriers to making these things happen. It’s hard to change attitudes internally, as hard as it is to change them externally.

LISA ROBERTS: During the pandemic period, I visited the Station Food Hub in Newport Station, which is working to process agricultural products - you know, think tomatoes into tomato sauce or apples into applesauce or basil and spinach into pesto. I’m aware that that kind of aggregating and processing facility is one of the important pieces of agricultural infrastructure that we’re certainly going to need to get local food into local schools. In fact, the main person behind that start-up is a dietitian who was working with school food programs and seeing all those barriers. How, specifically, do you anticipate investing or making policy changes to facilitate rapid escalation of local food into schools?

KEITH COLWELL: Well, we’ve already been making significant investments ourselves in new products, like the one you’ve talked about. I don’t know if we have an investment in that one or not, but I can check if you want me to. We very much encourage that type of activity because any time we have a value-added product, not only is it good for the schools, a quality product that is good enough for a school, it is also good enough to market outside the province and within the province.

Any time we can do a value-added agriculture, it’s a big bonus. It brings up lots of career opportunities for people, puts more money into our economy from the fact that we buy from local companies. It all adds up. That’s why we did this particular blueberry project. It’s part of what we were doing in the blueberry industry. I talked about that earlier in my comments. That has been a real success. We’ve gone from basically an agricultural disaster, which was only because of markets, to a tremendous success. That’s one of the products that has come out of that blueberry issue. We want to replicate that with everything we can and we’re in the process of doing that.

The trouble is with this stuff, it takes a long time to go from the idea, find a supplier that has the capability of producing it, or can create the capability of doing it, and go through all the food safety, all the labelling, all the packaging, all the stuff you need to get it into the marketplace. This is looking at two to three years typically for anything of any kind of quantity that can really make a difference. I’m not saying that we don’t want them, because we desperately need the small operations that come up with very specialized stuff as well.

So it’s all process and this new mandate that we have, and not only myself, because we’ve already been doing this, but my other colleagues, and they’ve been very co-operative in the past but there always seemed to be some kind of roadblock we ran into. If we can remove those roadblocks, that will make a big change in a hurry.

LISA ROBERTS: Another roadblock, another barrier that we certainly heard a lot about during the pandemic period from women in the agricultural sector, is child care. A number of women working on farms, co-owners of farms, were not happy with the Premier’s comments that child care would happen organically.

Katie Keddy wrote to the Premier, in her role as president of the Kings County Federation of Agriculture and again as part of the Maritime Agricultural Women’s Network. Keddy was asking for financial support so that farmers, as essential workers, could hire someone to provide child care so that they could continue to work. Amy Hill another farmer and mother, said in an article that “it feels like the government doesn’t see us.” Did you or your department reach out to these women who were raising concerns about child care and their ability to work and therefore, their ability to run their farms?

KEITH COLWELL: Yes, we had several discussions on that. It was brought, not only by the women who are having this problem, which is a very real problem for them, but also the Federation of Agriculture has been working very closely with this problem as well. They’ve brought this up over and over again. That’s a program that we don’t administer, of course, through the department. That would have to be another department that would do that type of program. We would support a program like that.

Again, there are so many women now in agriculture, and always have been, but they typically were never noticed in the past, unfortunately. But now, when you talk to the farm, oftentimes it’s the wife whom we deal with instead of the husband, which I think is absolutely fantastic.

As we move away from a different model, and more or less the same model of people living in the city and urban areas where both the husband and wife work on the farm, it is a little bit different. The day starts at daylight and ends at dark and sometimes not even at dark through the crop season. It’s very difficult for women who have children to deal with all the extra child care problems they would have from that and the hours they have to work on the farm to make the farm successful. Compound that with the fact that they have to deal with COVID-19 and their staff besides, that makes it even more difficult.

It’s one that we’re very aware of and it’s a policy that probably, I would guess, would be better to address with maybe the Minister of Community Services or the Minister of Labour, other departments than us. We recognize the problem. We are working with the Federation on this and we’ll continue to work with them on it.

LISA ROBERTS: I appreciate that answer but I’m well aware of the problem and frankly I just don’t accept that your department cannot play some role in coming up with a response to the problem. The challenges faced by women in the agricultural sector are somewhat unique, exactly because of those long hours and also because many rural areas in Nova Scotia are basically child care deserts, where there aren’t regulated child care spaces available close to them.

[3:30 p.m.]

I’ve heard proposals from these women and others. There often are programs that support labour challenges in the agricultural sector. Why couldn’t some of those programs be modified to encompass support for labour challenges when it comes to child care, so that the most skilled farmer on the farm, who is often a mom, whether or not she’s farming with her husband, and whether or not either of them is also working off the farm - as you know, farmers often have more than one source of income - why couldn’t the department work to support this particular labour market challenge as you do support other farmers to address other labour market issues?

KEITH COLWELL: Actually, to your point, on April the 7^th, we’re having, as part of our digital program to replace our minister’s conference on agriculture, - we’ll fill in this year so that we can have a live conference again - is Women in Agriculture. It’s something we added this year that we’ve never had before. Part of this is to hear from women about all the different challenges they have running a farm, working the farm, child care, all those different things. We’ve got some pretty interesting speakers and people there. Once we go like that and get some ideas, I think it’s going to open up some new ideas and possibilities for women in agriculture, as well for more support and things they can do.

But our regular programs are not really geared to do any of this. We’re not geared up for it. That’s why it has to be another department that does it. Even to date, the programs we have are natural programs. In order to make a change, we can’t do it on our own - we have to get agreement across the country. That agreement may be possible. We’re renegotiating the CAP - Canadian Agriculture Partnership - now and into the future. A lot of issues on that that we have to address, and we’re working on that.

LISA ROBERTS: I expect that there might be a way. The last time we were here in Estimates, you said that your department had difficulty tracking rates of local food, consumption of local food, and maybe also production of local food as required by EGSPA, the old Environmental Goals and Sustainable Prosperity Act. You were working on a new system to measure data. Have you resolved this situation, and if there are local targets, local food targets, in the regulations for the new Sustainable Development Goals Act, do you feel confident you’ll be able to produce numbers for the minister’s annual progress report?

KEITH COLWELL: I’m glad you asked that question because that is one of the most important things we have to track and it’s a difficult thing to track. We have come up with some systems to do it. We’re going to come out very shortly with a consumer survey of who the consumers are, what their food behaviour is, what kind of foods they want to buy, everything else.

We also have - we’re working with the retailers. The large retailers provided us with information on what products are purchased from local farmers because some of that we don’t necessarily have. That product information - they’re a little bit concerned about sharing detailed information on their own operations, but we’ve come up with a system where they would feed information into an overall system and we come up just with an overall number, not identify where the information comes from. I don’t blame them for that because this is very confidential information and could hurt them in the marketplace if it’s not handled properly. So we’re working on that.

We’re working closely with the farmers’ markets. We’re getting reports back from them now and also from farm markets. It’s all coming together so within this year, we should have a reliable system of doing this. It’s all part of our Buy Local Partnership Program that we’re rolling out. We’re tweaking it a little bit right at the time to make it more effective, to make sure we get more product on the shelves.

We’re also talking to a lot of the farmers themselves to see what kind of sales they are seeing locally. That’s a bit more difficult to get because there are so many of them. We’re tracking all that and we’re coming up with a system that can be reliable, and we can have a baseline that we can work from that’s real.

LISA ROBERTS: My apologies - my device is almost out of energy and apparently there is only one electrical outlet in the Johnson Room, which is where I’m standing next to.

Thank you for that answer. Related to the Sustainable Development Goals Act, the province was meant to do public consultations on the targets that will be set in regulations and this hasn’t happened yet. Has your department contributed resources or materials for the upcoming consultations and specifically has the department done an analysis of the greenhouse gas emissions related to the farming sector in Nova Scotia?

KEITH COLWELL: To start with, we’ve been tracking greenhouse gases in the province with some projects we started a couple of years ago. We fund a position with Efficiency Nova Scotia to actually work with the Department of Agriculture on farms, the processing plants, and everything. We can prove right now we’re just under 1,000 tonnes a year of greenhouse gases reduced already from farms and operations. Mostly it’s on electricity savings and other savings as well, heating savings. That’s all part of our cost of production as well, as we’re tracking this, as we get the cost of production up on farms and we’ve got some of the farms set up now, or are in the process of setting them up. We’ll be able to track that almost by the minute. It’s going to be a big change over time.

Nationally they keep track of the greenhouse gases, but they really don’t break it down very fine. That is a goal we have, and we have had even before we started this process of reducing the greenhouse gases. The Federation of Agriculture is very interested in this as well, so we have their full co-operation and ideas from them. We’ll work very closely with them, so we’re on the right track. Now we can accelerate this more and we actually put the same position in place in Fisheries, to do the same thing in Fisheries, so we’re going at this reasonably aggressively.

LISA ROBERTS: The Sustainable Development Goals Act also requires a Climate Change Plan for Clean Growth by the end of December 2020, which we have yet to see. According to the Act, the plan will address inclusive, clean growth. What does that mean for the agricultural sector? Can you tell me how you are achieving inclusivity with the $5 million Agricultural Clean Technology program?

[3:45 p.m.]

KEITH COLWELL: Okay. We are working with the Department of Environment on a climate change adaptation program. We have targeted, initially, three groups in our department, covered by our department: Christmas trees, cattle, and horticulture. Those are all very good-sized operations. We’re working with them closely, and we’re going to measure how we’re doing this as well, as we go through it.

LISA ROBERTS: When I look at the Agriculture in the Classroom report for 2019-20, I see a budget item for work with underrepresented communities. Almost the entire amount of the money spent on that line item was for French translation materials, which I assume is so that that program can unroll in CSAP Acadian schools. What programming is directed in your department towards other underrepresented communities?

KEITH COLWELL: Actually, we’ve done a lot of work in this area. We started before even our mandate letter came out on this topic. We’ve put programs, special programs, in place for the Mi’kmaq community and also for African Nova Scotians in the province. We have full-time staff assigned to this. One example of this is there’s a lot of history with the blueberry industry, both in African Nova Scotians and the Mi’kmaq industry, around blueberries, wild blueberries. There’s a big element of that.

We’ve contracted with Hope Blooms, which has a great operation as you’re well aware - the great work they’re doing to develop garden kits so we can send the garden kits home with the children in the African Nova Scotian communities, so they can grow this stuff when the COVID-19 was on and get an idea how plants do, and tie that in with the classroom that the teachers were talking about.

We have not been able to go in the classrooms, of course, with COVID-19, but our staff typically would go in and give sessions to the community. We’re doing a lot around that, and we’re going to be doing a lot more in the future.

LISA ROBERTS: I think I have a little bit more than ten minutes left, is that right?

THE CHAIR: Yes. You have 16 minutes.

LISA ROBERTS: I’m going to ask one more question, and then I’ll turn the rest of my time over to Ms. Paon.

I wonder if the department, or if the minister, could address the concerns that we’ve heard from constituents about a COVID-19 outbreak on mink farms in Nova Scotia. We’ve had quite a number of emails about this. Does the department have a plan to respond to an outbreak of COVID-19 on mink farms, as has happened in Europe, resulting in significant culls?

KEITH COLWELL: The mink industry in Nova Scotia has a strict biosecurity system in place, probably one of the strongest in the world. No one is allowed on the farm who doesn’t work on the farm. Nobody is allowed in the buildings who doesn’t actually physically work in the buildings. They had this developed over the years.

They’re also, in the present - I have on order a COVID-19 vaccine for all the mink that will be administered as soon as we can get it. That’s been developed and it does work. They have that in place. We have not had an outbreak in Nova Scotia. Basically, we are monitoring all the time with chief veterinarians, monitoring and working with the mink industry.

I guarantee you, the industry does not want an outbreak. That’s made our mink worth a lot more than it’s ever been in a long time. They’re very cautious of this and the biosecurity is incredible on this front and always has been, but it’s heightened even more now.

LISA ROBERTS: I’m going to take one more question and then turn it over.

Minister, what culturally relevant materials about vaccination has your department prepared or asked for as temporary foreign workers arrive in Nova Scotia? Will information about COVID-19 and about the vaccines be provided for in various languages? Spanish, I think, would certainly be relevant. How are you ensuring that that workforce, which can be quite vulnerable, is fully accommodated?

KEITH COLWELL: That’s a question we asked very early on because we want to protect the temporary foreign workers, and we also want to protect our farmers and our regular workers as well.

The protocols are very strict around when the temporary foreign workers come in with the new system we have. We announced yesterday that there’s going to be extensive testing done by the Department of Health and Wellness and health boards for temporary foreign workers at Day 1 and Day 12. That will be done by the Department of Health and Wellness. And the strict isolation requirements for people for 14 days when they come in, to protect them from contracting the virus here. I have been assured by the Department of Health and Wellness that when the vaccine is available, they will be on the list to be vaccinated here as well. Certainly, that has been moved forward.

Our only problem is, it’s Question Period today and what I’ve been hearing is we’re just waiting for the federal government to release vaccines to us and we’re all set to go on all of these things. When they’ll be vaccinated, that will be up to the Department of Health and Wellness.

THE CHAIR: Just to be sure, the member for Halifax Needham . . .

LISA ROBERTS: I’m surrendering my last 10 minutes to Ms. Paon.

THE CHAIR: The honourable member for Cape Breton-Richmond.

ALANA PAON: I thank the member for Halifax Needham for ceding me some time. Minister, I would like to ask you a question with regard to farm animal welfare inspectors, which I know that a couple of years ago we added that in, or the government added that area into the protocols within the purview of the Department of Agriculture. I want to know how many animal welfare distress calls the department receives on a yearly basis. How many of those calls are false claims? Is there any recourse for anyone who actually makes calls which are deemed as false?

KEITH COLWELL: I can answer part of this, and the rest you’ll have to give me a minute to get the rest of it. The enforcement for animal welfare calls is now handled by the Department of Environment, not by the Department of Agriculture. It used to be the Department of Agriculture. These calls are usually responded to by a Department of Agriculture veterinarian when necessary and with an enforcement officer from the Department of Environment. Anyone who does make a false claim, that really has to go to the Minister of Environment at the Department of Environment, not us.

ALANA PAON: May I ask you, because, of course, these animal welfare distress calls are coming obviously on farm, they’re farm-related and so it’s agriculture-related, although the enforcement officer is officially under the purview of the Department of Environment, do you not receive any information with regard to how many claims, what areas basically are receiving the most claims, and what types of claims are being done? Is the Department of Agriculture not interested or would you not be receiving some of that information?

KEITH COLWELL: I believe that our veterinarians would be involved in all of that, to get that information, because they would be a key part of that to reinforce. The enforcement officers may not have the medical experience dealing with the animals. We work closely with the Department of Environment at their request for enforcement. As you’re aware, the Department of Environment does enforcement for pretty well everything now in the province except companion animals. We’ve designated that to the SPCA.

[4:00 p.m.]

ALANA PAON: I would again just like to ask: Does the Department of Agriculture receive some sort of an annual report, which basically outlines how many calls have been made that were reported, distress calls that were reported, that, in fact, there was a reason behind and what the reason was? I’m just interested in the statistics. How many calls were real? How many calls were false? What’s the recourse if something is false? I understand that’s probably the Department of Environment’s question. Shouldn’t the Department of Agriculture receive some sort of a reporting process, considering it’s agriculture-related, to anything related to agriculture, but especially if there’s a false reporting issue going on with anything distress-related with the animals on a farm?

Mr. Chair, if I may ask, how much time is left?

THE CHAIR: Five minutes.

KEITH COLWELL: Again, we would have a verbal update from the Department of Environment and Climate Change of ongoing dialogue in the case of a complaint that they would need our expertise with, and that’s it. You would have to go to the Department of Environment and Climate Change for any statistics about how many false claims come in. We’d have no idea of that. We would only work on active cases at the request of the Department of Environment and Climate Change.

ALANA PAON: Minister, I’d like to change course now and just ask you some questions. At the last sitting, we had done a lot of discussions around food and food security. We had a chance to ask the minister a few questions about that at that time. I put in a bill myself and I think a few other members put forward bills.

Could the minister please tell me, what are our goals for more self-sufficiency, more food security? We saw with the pandemic and with some environmental changes that had been happening that we are not prepared, basically. If we are cut off for a certain period of time, we are really not prepared. We weren’t prepared for the pandemic and I think that we are also not prepared, considering that we only produce less than 10 per cent of our food here in Nova Scotia.

I know there are continuous investments, but where are we? Where is the minister as far as a goal in mind to increase the amount of food security here in this province by, let’s say, the next 10 years? Where do we hope to be in 2030-2031?

KEITH COLWELL: Well, it’s a very important topic for us. I have been talking about food security for a long time, like I said before, even before COVID-19 came along. We had no idea that COVID-19 would really highlight the need for local food.

I’ll give you some examples here. We have one greenhouse - I talked about it in my presentation earlier - that will be operating, basically - we say full-time, year-round, but year-round will be all Winter and displacing imports during the Wintertime for tomatoes and cucumbers. It’s really high-tech, energy-efficient, with LED lighting, heating systems that are really innovative and becoming world standards. We’re looking at the use of tunnels to extend seasons in the industry. These are all things that the industry is interested in doing.

It all spurs from the discussions we’ve had at the Agriculture Minister’s Conference, trips we’ve taken with farmers to see technology in Denmark and other European countries, where they really understand greenhouses and that technology. Some of it is being adopted from there, especially the lighting. They are doing incredible work around LED lighting, the colours, the times, and all kinds of cycles on lighting, which are critical to really improving the speed at which a product is ready to go to market. We are well on the way to this.

There are two important things with this. Number one, programs to help people do this, and the other thing is the industry wanted to do it. I can tell you the industry has totally changed in the last - well, I’ve been the minister now for pretty well eight years, and eight years ago this is a conversation that we didn’t really talk about much, but now, every time we talk to the industry it’s about how can we innovate, how can we use more things to extend our season? Even extending our season by just one month at the end of the season or at the beginning of the season makes a difference. They’ve developed a day-neutral strawberry that basically - a local strawberry that’s sitting on the shelves that is pretty well all-season. That’s a fantastic operation.

We did the announcement the other day on our new fund, a $5 million fund, in a greenhouse operation that will probably operate close to 10 months a year, with strawberries. These things are really innovative and the industry is really stepping up to adopt them. We’re there with programs to help them and with joint research with them and whatever we need to do to get them on board because without the farmers on board and them leading the charge, it won’t happen.

THE CHAIR: Order, please. The time for this hour of questioning has expired. Again, we’ll take our final COVID-19 break for the afternoon and we’ll resume again at 4:21 p.m.

[4:06 p.m. The subcommittee recessed.]

[4:21 p.m. The subcommittee reconvened.]

THE CHAIR: Order, please.

The Subcommittee of the Whole on Supply is called back to order. We’ll finish our final hour of the afternoon.

The honourable member for Truro-Bible Hill-Millbrook-Salmon River, with one hour.

DAVE RITCEY: Minister, I just have a few questions around Perennia, as well as the Truro Raceway, just to provide you a little heads-up. How much of a grant will Perennia receive from the department this fiscal year? And this sort of ties into it: How many employees work out of the Bible Hill facility at this time?

KEITH COLWELL: We have roughly 55 employees at Perennia. That changes from time to time. It depends on if we have any vacancies and what we’re working on. About one-third of those work in Truro, and the other ones work in Kentville. The budget we give each year to Perennia, just the standard budget, is $2.458 million, plus there are several contracts that are on an ongoing basis that they work on, out of both Kentville and Truro.

DAVE RITCEY: I appreciate that. Lots going on in Colchester County, in Truro-Bible Hill, in the agriculture industry, anywhere from dairy to beef to even hop farms, now, in the county.

You talked about some exciting things happening there at Perennia in your speech. I just wanted to ask this question to you, Minister: Why are the revenues estimated to decline this year by almost half of the forecast of this fiscal year? Why did you make those assumptions?

KEITH COLWELL: Could I get you to repeat that? You broke up really badly and we didn’t get . . .

DAVE RITCEY: Your revenues were estimated to decline this year by almost half of the forecast of this fiscal year. Why did you make these assumptions?

KEITH COLWELL: Actually, the revenue forecast this year for Perennia is up almost $5 million. They budgeted for $99,741,000 and their forecasted sales increase is up to $14.9, almost $15 million. It’s the work they’re doing, the contracts they’re working on and the opportunities for more work.

Perennia is really expanding rapidly and they are getting a reputation. They are running a lot of programs for the federal government. They’re doing a lot of research and development work for individual industries. Their reputation is getting out there as a solid establishment that can fill the gap between the university and the farmer.

DAVE RITCEY: You are absolutely right. Perennia in Bible Hill is a great asset to the province. I just need a bit of clarity before my next question. Are the Nova Scotia Exhibition grounds owned by Perennia or the Farm Loan Board?

KEITH COLWELL: The Farm Loan Board.

[4:30 p.m.]

DAVE RITCEY: Okay. What did it cost this year to run the Nova Scotia Exhibition grounds? What are the additional dollars, if available, for improvements or enhancements? Are there any in the budget?

KEITH COLWELL: Well, we’re going to spend, in a capital program, on a new horse barn, which is under design now, and on the racetrack. I forget the name of the building. We’re spending $4 million or $5 million on that as well. On the grandstands we’re spending $5.2 million, and we’re investing another $3.2 million in new barns. We’re going to make an almost $8.4 million capital investment there.

DAVE RITCEY: I’m now leading into the harness racing piece and the Truro Raceway and the $4.6 million that was invested by the province in the Summertime into the grandstand. I guess my question to you, Minister, is: What’s the strategy or what’s the plan for the Truro Raceway?

KEITH COLWELL: Well, originally, we were budgeted for just over $4 million and it has actually gone to $5.2 million now because we have to put some extra things in there for the Fire Marshal, which will be good news.

What we want to see with the facility, and as you’ll see - you live in the area and it’s in your riding - you’ll see improvements going on in the buildings. All the old buildings are pretty well gone now, the garbage has been cleaned up. We’re coming up with a code of conduct for people who use the facility. We’re trying to get the place to a really high reputation again because I can tell you it was a disaster - and I’m being very polite - a total disaster and it was in disrepair. There were all kinds of activities going on that aren’t appropriate for a facility like that. Those have all been stopped.

We have a great manager there now and we have a group of dedicated people who are really working there. If it hadn’t been for COVID-19, we would probably have broken even this year on the facility, with the bookings they had for events and stuff.

Now the facility is the Nova Scotia Provincial Exhibition and that is going to be the home of the Nova Scotia Provincial Exhibition, hopefully, forever. The ownership of the facility, hopefully, will stay with the Farm Loan Board forever. The Department of Agriculture is not allowed to own land, but the Farm Loan Board is. There’s a whole big long history to this, so some day if you want to have an offline chat about it, I’ll give you all the history on it. It’s one of those files that has been wicked to deal with, very rewarding to deal with, very disappointing to deal with, and everything in between.

Now we’ve turned a corner. You can see major improvements going in. You see the roofs gone on the old barns there, a lot of really good things. You must be hearing from your constituents how happy they are that it’s not an eyesore anymore. It’s an asset to them and to their community. I know the village of Bible Hill has been just ecstatic and unbelievably good to work with, as far as we’re concerned. We’re very, very happy about that.

We’re dedicated to harness racing in the province. There had to be some changes. I would have to talk to you about that offline, not here. I’ll give you the total background and you won’t have to worry about anything being held back. We’re dedicated to harness racing and one of the ways to do this is through the grandstand being properly set up. The viewing station in the grandstand that the judges used to use wasn’t safe to walk to, never mind to occupy. It was that bad. All that’s been taken into consideration.

We’re cleaning the whole place up. We’ve got a lot of work left to do there and, hopefully, over the next few years we’ll make some more investments there. We had a little bit of criticism from other facilities, other places in the province, but this is the only provincially owned one, and it’s going to be provincially owned to protect that asset for your community and Truro, Colchester County and, indeed, the province.

It almost got turned into a subdivision, an industrial park. That’s why we took ownership of it at the time and there was money owed to the Farm Loan Board, so that gave us the tool to do it.

We’ve had all kinds of problems. The problems come but not with us, but they’re old history stuff. Again, I will gladly sit down and talk to you or they can do a Zoom call or whatever you want. It’ll take more than an hour to go through it all. You won’t believe half of it and it’s all true. The cure in the past had always been to write a cheque, make up the deficit. In the meantime, all kinds of weird stuff was happening that’s not appropriate. We stopped writing the cheque for that and started holding people accountable.

It’s a success story that’s almost there and we will get it there. We would like to work with you to make it happen because it would be beneficial to you. The last MLA for the area was very, very helpful with this file as well. She understood what was going on and we would have an off-the-record conversation about exactly what was going on and give you a better understanding of what the dynamic is there.

I can assure you we’re totally dedicated to preserving harness racing. We’ve got to get that facility up to a really good standard that we can bring in horses from all over the - not only Atlantic Canada, but maybe beyond. The way it was before and the condition it was in, if I had a quarter-million-dollar or a $1 million horse, and I wanted to bring my family and race my horse in Truro, I’d come and visit it and go home again. I wouldn’t even race my horse. It was that bad a situation. That’s been rectified now. We’ve got some great people working there now. Harness racing people are fantastic to work with now. It’s really turned the corner.

We’re going to be late getting the buildings done because of COVID-19. There have been some delays. The track people tell me that the track’s in the best condition it’s ever been in. They’re maintaining it themselves and that will continue. We’re taking over all the buildings and we’re going to rent out the buildings. The rent will be proper rent for a facility like that. That money will all be turned right back into renovations on the harness racing part of it. We’ll put it all together so the exhibition and harness racing will work closely together. That hasn’t always been the case in the past and it’s held the facility back.

We have great management in place now. It’s a positive story and it’s going to get better. They don’t notice since you’ve been elected that a lot of things happened. We’ve had a lot of - you can see with the new roofs on the barns. They were all leaky. That would have destroyed the structure. We’ve taken down the last barn that had to come down. I don’t know how many barns - five or six were taken down now, maybe more - and cleaned up all the junk. You’re going to see that the roads are going to be improved. We’re buying equipment to keep the gravel roads in really good shape. They should have their hands on that. We bought them a 100-horsepower tractor so they could maintain the facility.

The horsemen actually took over the lease on the other tractor we had so they can maintain the track. Their responsibility is to maintain the track. They get someone, a commercial lawnmower, to mow the grass. The grass wasn’t even being mowed before. It was an eyesore. All that stuff has taken place.

A lot of improvements. If you have any ideas around how we can make it even better, I’d love to hear them. If there’s any way to put them in place, we will do that. There’s not a question. This is provincial. Well, it’s a Maritime - Atlantic Canada - showcase. It used to be, and we want to bring it back to that standard. Once we get back to that standard, the place will be more than self-sufficient with the proper management. We’re putting the proper management and the proper safeguards in place.

DAVE RITCEY: Thank you, Minister, for that explanation. Yes, I’ll definitely follow up with you. I’d love to learn a bit more. We are the hub of Nova Scotia in Truro, so you’re right. It’s a pass-through for the Maritime provinces. I’m so excited to have the track up and running again. I’m glad to hear that we have a new manager there and things are running well, so I look forward to chatting with you in the future about that. Mr. Chair, if I could, I’d like to pass over the remaining time to my colleague, the member for Cumberland North.

THE CHAIR: The honourable member for Colchester- Cumberland North.

ELIZABETH SMITH-MCCROSSIN: It’s great to see everyone. I have to say, Minister, I love the wood. I love the room that you’re in. I was noticing that.

I also just want to say thank you, too, for the work that’s being done for harness racing. We have a lot of owners of horses that race here in Cumberland North. It’s a very important part of our economy here, so thank you for the infrastructure that’s being done there.

I’ve got a few questions because, as you know, Minister, agriculture is a very important part of our economy here. One of the things that I’ve been looking at this year and working a little bit with our municipalities on is around our barns - the physical structures. We’ve got a lot of physical barns that, unfortunately, have - they’re in the middle of being - they’re falling down, in disrepair. It’s been a challenge for a lot of our farmers to find the money to maintain and keep their infrastructure strong.

I’ve talked to the municipality about trying to find ways to incent people that have these barns in disrepair to fix them up or to tear them down completely, just for improvement. I’m just wondering: Is there any money, provincially, for farmers for infrastructure, for capital costs, specifically for barns?

KEITH COLWELL: I’m going to have to check. Just one second.

I just want to make sure that my - that I recall this properly. There’s one good note with all this. We do not have a program for infrastructure anymore, but our Farm Loan Board does cover the construction or maintenance, or whatever it is, of barns. They just have to apply to the Farm Loan Board.

They just told me that there’s an increase in the loans for infrastructure for farm repair, replacement - increased this year 44 per cent over last year, so that’s a really good sign. Anybody who’s interested in fixing their barn, they can get a loan from the Farm Loan Board. Unfortunately, we don’t have a capital program for that anymore.

ELIZABETH SMITH-MCCROSSIN: Thank you, Minister, for clarifying that. I’m wondering - speaking with - beef farming is huge in this area. I have a two-part question. One is some beef farmers have shared with me that they’ve had a hard time with their normal beef sales due to the pandemic. I’m wondering if there’s any relief packages or programs for beef farmers specifically, due to the impact of the pandemic on their business.

The second part of my question for that is an update on the Maritime Beef Strategy. I do believe my colleague from Kings North did already bring that up, but I would like to ask specifically, as it relates so much to Cumberland North. We have so many beef farmers, and, of course, we have the Nappan Experimental Farm and the testing barns, as well, there. Wondering if you could answer that.

[4:45 p.m.]

KEITH COLWELL: The system works well, so far. A couple of things, two or three things: I answered this before, but we have mandated our staff to go and look at all the beef farms in the province. The beef producers association didn’t necessarily have some of the bigger farms involved, particularly in your area, because they just didn’t see the value. We had a dedicated staff member who actually called and emailed 31 of the biggest beef producers in the province.

As far as I know, in the last briefing I had, we contacted all the large ones - and they’d be mostly in your area - to talk to them about what kind of programs would help them, what they needed, how we should do this. My staff told me they were sort of shocked that they got a call from us because typically that never happens. They were even more shocked when they got a follow-up call to discuss more ideas and dialogue with them. That’s going to continue with us. It’s something new we’re doing and with a dedicated person working on this file, it’s going to make it better.

What we want to do is to get the industry to grow in the province and it’s a difficult one to get to grow. It’s very expensive. Not everybody can get into doing it. It’s all to do with pasture land and getting the right cattle to produce a premium product. All those things you have to take into consideration.

We’ve been working with the industry ever since I’ve been there. When I first came there, they said they weren’t happy with the program, so I challenged them. I remember being there in Truro and I said to them, what do you want? Well, we want the program changed. I said no, that’s not what I asked you. I said, what do you want? What do you need? You go away, come back and tell me what you need to make your industry grow, and they did. I kept the same envelope of money in place, and they told me they wanted cattle-handling equipment, specifically what it was, and we put it in place. We did that. That was a very successful program.

We have to move way beyond that now. We were looking at the possibility of looking at genetics and all kinds of other things that we would need to improve the herd in Nova Scotia. A lot of the cattle farmers, in your area in particular, are already doing this. They are doing it on their own and they pride themselves on the beef they produce, and they should because it’s some of the finest beef there is.

How do we - not necessarily take any of their trade secrets away, because we’re not interested in that - but how do we increase the quality of our food in the whole province? That’s the question we’ve been asked. We’ve been asking that too. We did get rid of the bull bonus because it did nothing to help that happen. It was just a transfer of money and didn’t really do anything, so we’ve taken that money and repurposed it into programs. We want to get better programs in place, which we’re working towards, but we want to get input from the industry.

Often we hear there’s not enough consultation with industry. They can’t say that with this one this time because we’ve been there. We want to know from them exactly what they need and then we’ll put a program in place to do that.

We’re very interested and we’re very excited in dealing with them. They are part of the cure for our sustainable food supply. Our only problem is processing. That’s done in P.E.I., which is fine, but we’ve also made a significant investment in the abattoirs in the province to get the capacity up. We’re going to keep that going on as a program we’ve worked on jointly under CAP, with the federal government, and try to access more money through that so some of our small provincially inspected facilities could look at CFIA. If not, they could just improve their equipment and processes towards CFIA.

It was pretty good uptake on that. If you’re interested in that, I can get the exact number of how many people took uptake on that. Do you want me to get that now?

ELIZABETH SMITH-MCCROSSIN: I really would be only interested in whether Dickie’s Meats were given any support. They’re an incredible - they’re at capacity. If they were larger, we have many beef farmers that would be using them, but they’re beyond capacity. I’m not aware that they were given any support.

KEITH COLWELL: Through the Farm Loan Board, we can get loans. We put programs together that aren’t repayable to help that kind of expansion. We want the expansion, again, for food security. Also, it creates career opportunities for people in the province, too, and all kinds of value-added products - all the things we need to do.

If you want to talk to them about that and let us know, we’d be only too pleased to work with them. We’d even help them with a business plan - pay for help and pay for a business plan. There are a lot of things we can do, but it’s got to make economic sense for them to move forward. We’d love to see that happen.

ELIZABETH SMITH-MCCROSSIN: I’d love to see that too. I know this isn’t under your umbrella, but they went through a lot of stress about three years ago, when the Department of Environment didn’t replace a retired inspector and told them that they were going to have to change their hours of operation based on when the Department of Environment would provide an inspector. The hours were actually inhumane for the animals. Really, they were just ready to pack it in because of solely on the way that our government was not working with them.

Anyway, I know that’s not under your umbrella, but it’s unfortunate that inspectors for the abattoirs are under the Department of Environment and Climate Change, because I don’t think they have a good understanding of the beef industry and the demands of them. It took a lot of work to get them on board.

KEITH COLWELL: I’ll put it to you that way. I’m very familiar with that. I did get a call from them on this particular issue and you will notice that once they got hold of us, it was resolved very quickly. It’s not a problem anymore.

ELIZABETH SMITH-MCCROSSIN: No, it’s not, but it was very stressful on the business for quite a while because it took quite a while before we got anyone to listen. There’s a lot of potential for growth there. I know that there’s a processing facility in P.E.I., but if we can be processing right here, locally, it certainly helps with the transportation costs and that.

KEITH COLWELL: One other thing, if I could just add to it. The CFIA has a program now to move provincially inspected facilities to CFIA standard and recognize them. I don’t know if they’re aware of that or not, but if not, let them know. Our staff would gladly work with them. If they’re interested to move toward CFIA, we can do some different things to help them get there.

ELIZABETH SMITH-MCCROSSIN: Okay. You did mention, just, about - that some people didn’t see the value, or that you only spoke with large beef farmers. Do you know if - I was curious how you define large: Is it a certain number of head of cattle?

KEITH COLWELL: I believe it’s the number of cattle. We’ve got some pretty large beef producers in the province. Typically, they didn’t belong to the association, for whatever reason. I mean, that was their choice. We would always deal with the association, but I instructed our staff to reach out to all of them. They’ve done that and now we’re getting feedback from them directly, so let’s see what they say. There are some common threads to what they’re telling us and some of them aren’t common, but the common threads are easy to address. The ones that aren’t common may be very important, overall, that other people just haven’t mentioned. We’re looking at the whole realm of it.

ELIZABETH SMITH-MCCROSSIN: Okay. Well, I appreciate that. Beef farming is very important in Cumberland North, as are our dairy farms, although we only have a couple left. We’ve had a lot of growth in our sheep farming. Very proud of the work that’s been done in setting up the processing plant for that. Of course, maple is important here, as well as our blueberries. I’m not sure if you’re aware of this: We have a beautiful, large apple orchard in Malagash now. Also several vineyards.

I’m curious, with your department - looking at your budget - do you have staff from the Department of Agriculture that are actually based in Cumberland County?

KEITH COLWELL: There are actually two full-time staff in your area, and they have access to all our other staff and all the services.

ELIZABETH SMITH-MCCROSSIN: Are they actually in Cumberland? I was only aware of staff that are based out of Truro, and they’re responsible for the whole Northern Zone.

KEITH COLWELL: Depending on the time of the year. We just found out that we actually have three people who live in Cumberland and work from there. Sometimes in the Summertime, in Nappan, we would have two to three extra staff there all Summer, in addition to the two already there.

ELIZABETH SMITH-MCCROSSIN: That’s great! I’m really happy to see that because it must be a change from the last time that I spoke with someone in the department. I’m really glad to see that change. I think if the department invested more heavily into the Cumberland area, I think you’d see a significant return. I’m obviously biased, but I think we have some pretty incredible people here. There’s been a whole movement with local, organic food, a lot of small operations that are just growing - I’ll use the word - organically. They are moving along forward.

[5:00 p.m.]

Then, of course, we have several other new and emerging as well. I think any support we could get from the department would be welcomed. Where we do have documented 30 per cent of the arable farmland in the province, I see a lot of potential for us to be a part of the provincewide strategy to increase local food production in our province of Nova Scotia. I know you’ve heard me speak about that before, but we all know that temperatures are rising and that is changing just how fertile and how productive - we do have a longer growing season here in Cumberland now than we did 30 years ago and becoming even more an integral part of our agriculture system.

I do want to move on to another topic of great importance to our area and, really, to the entire province and Maritime region. I did mention it in my Address in Reply and that is the study that is due to be released next month that’s in collaboration with New Brunswick and the federal government regarding the Chignecto Isthmus. I’m wondering if you - I didn’t see it in the budget when I was looking though Estimates, so I’m wondering if you know where the money is going to be coming from in our province, in our provincial budget? I just want to make sure.

I know there is a commitment to climate by this government and I’m wondering if we’re going to see that commitment in actual money committed to the Chignecto Isthmus.

As you know - it’s a long title - the Chignecto Isthmus Climate Change Adaptation Comprehensive Engineering and Feasibility Study is the one that’s currently under way. It was due to be released last November and I think they are hoping it will be ready by April. That report will be making recommendations on how to prepare and rebuild 35 kilometres of dike land all along Nova Scotia and New Brunswick - the Chignecto Isthmus. I’m just wondering if the minister has any information about that.

Mr. Chair, how much time is left?

THE CHAIR: Eighteen minutes.

KEITH COLWELL: The review is still under way. Very soon it is going to go to consultation. The cost is estimated at $700,000 and half of that funding comes from the Province. The other half comes from New Brunswick, and there is probably some funding in there from the federal government too.

I can’t verify this number right now, but it looks like that area protects about $35 billion in assets, so it’s a critical infrastructure corridor for Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the federal government. It’s got to go out to consultation after this original one is done. Once that is finished - that would include the Mi’kmaw community, all different kinds of consultations. Then once that’s done it would go for an engineering design process. Once that’s finished, we’ll get some kind of an estimate of what it’s going to cost and then we’ve got to find the money some place, between the two provinces and the federal government. It’s a long process, but it’s a process we have to go through if we ever hope to get any funding from the federal government.

ELIZABETH SMITH-MCCROSSIN: You’re quite right: it’s incredibly important for the future of this region. It even connects the high voltage transmission lines between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick for shared - to balance our electrical generation, as well as passenger travel, commercial travel connecting the Maritimes, as well as with the rest of the country. It is critical infrastructure, for sure. Just want to make sure that our Province has budgeted for contributing to that work.

I’m wondering if the minister can speak to greenhouses and wondering if there’s anything in the budget to encourage growth and construction of greenhouses in the province, to contribute to an increase in food production year-round.

KEITH COLWELL: I’m glad you asked that question. The answer is yes.

ELIZABETH SMITH-MCCROSSIN: Good.

KEITH COLWELL: Part of the $5 million we just announced is to improve the efficiency of greenhouses, look at tunnels, all the different things that we can extend our seasons in - earlier Spring, later Fall, even into Winter. That can be accomplished with tunnels. Some of the greenhouses can go through a full year-round operation. They’re looking at the possibility of thermal energy, solar energy, heat pumps - all the things that we never even considered before because they didn’t think it would work here but definitely will work here.

It all goes back to a trip we had to the Netherlands about three years ago now. We asked the greenhouse operators and some of the major people in the province and people who are very keenly interested in moving in that direction to come with us. They have since gone back, a lot of them, and made connections with the people there that we had met. Actually, in the Valley right now, there is one of the operations that’s gone to LED lighting, improved their heating system, and they’re going to year-round production. I don’t know if they did it last Winter, but they’ll be geared up for it this Winter. Now they’ll be able to run all Winter, supplying cucumbers and tomatoes.

There are other ones there – Stokdijk Greenhouses. You’re probably familiar with them - a great operation. They’re making some upgrades all the time, a very, very progressive company, vertically integrated, great people to deal with. They’re looking at upgrades. It’s not just them. We’re doing a raspberry project up under cover with the Mi’kmaq - Webster Farms. They bought Webster Farms. This is new technology. That will increase the yield and extend the season.

Raspberries don’t sound very exciting, but it’s a huge market for them. We have not been selling it because of all kinds of problems we’ve had in the province with diseases and other things with raspberries that have stunted the growth but really diseases that don’t cause any problems with berries, but it stunts their growth and they don’t get the production they should. That’s a new project we’re working on. They started that last year. They’ve got to put, I believe, one acre in production. Two more operations are looking at doing the same thing. That’s under the program we have. Very interested in that.

We’ve been talking about tunnels for a while and the industry now is really starting to say, yes, we should do that - especially with the climate change we’re seeing, and the season is longer anyway. They could probably be selling them already. They’re in production, some of these things.

The evolution of the new berries, like the new strawberries - that’s going to be under glass very soon and in the field. Going to extend almost year-round for strawberries. All these things are adding up and they’re all coming. We’ve been working on this for a long time and it’s coming. It’s exciting to see. It’s coming just at the right time, I think.

ELIZABETH SMITH-MCCROSSIN: Could I ask a favour? The person who’s in your department who’s working on that: I’m wondering, is there any way they’d be able to reach out to me?

KEITH COLWELL: We’ve got several people working on it, actually, and if you could just give me a list of questions you want answered . . .

ELIZABETH SMITH-MCCROSSIN: Okay, well this is what I would love. I would love - not just me. In my neighbouring area, Cumberland South, we have an incredible potential with the geothermal industrial park. I believe, as many believe here, that greenhouses would be perfect for that because, of course, one of the biggest costs with greenhouses is heat. You have a 70 per cent heat savings with that.

If somebody from the department would be willing - and I’m very familiar with Den Haan Greenhouses, as well as Stokdijk Greenhouses Ltd. I’ve even reached out to them to see if they’d be willing to consider expanding up in this area. I just see such potential, and I feel like right now is the right time for that development. Something to ask.

I would like to give the remainder of my time to my colleague from Kings North, and I want to thank the minister for this opportunity to highlight some of the questions and concerns with Cumberland North.

KEITH COLWELL: Just before you go, I’d like to also let you know that we’re working on geothermal mapping in the province with the Department of Energy and Mines. That’s well under way. We started that about a year and a half, two years ago. There was no geothermal mapping. You’re right about your area. We are looking at that, and once we get that information, we’ve got other people from outside of province interested in making investments, too. As long as they don’t compete with our existing greenhouses, we’d be glad to see them come.

ELIZABETH SMITH-MCCROSSIN: Thank you very much.

THE CHAIR: The honourable member for Kings North, with nine minutes left.

JOHN LOHR: With the permission of the members of the committee, and particularly my NDP colleagues, I want to offer time for the minister to make his closing resolution to end the agriculture part of that. I guess I would be looking for a nodding of the head from - I’m just looking. I know we need to have a couple of minutes for that. I see one Yea. So, if that’s okay, I’ll allow the last couple of minutes for that.

I do have a question for you. There are actually many, many questions, Mr. Minister, so I know there will be more time, I’m sure, at some point.

One question I do want to ask, Mr. Minister. I wrote you a letter about five or six months ago about a gentleman who was involved in the Small Farm Acceleration Program, and through - in my opinion, and I realize the department had another opinion - his claim, which had been all signed and approved, had been rejected. His name - I’ll give you his name because you know it. I wrote a letter about Lorne Quinn. I guess I don’t want to get into the details of that right here, but I just want to request that at some point in this session, we have a conversation about that and just address that.

I realize we have very, very little time left. I do want to just ask the minister about the next round of business risk management and CAP negotiations, and just suggest to the minister - there’s an incredible interest in land clearing. We see land clearing on the Valley floor, on fields that have not been farmed in 100 years are being farmed again. Will there be a land clearing portion in that? I realize it’s happening in the absence of subsidy, virtually, but our goal is about food. Self-sustainability would be much - that means we need more land farmed. This is a way to make that happen. So I just want to ask the minister about that.

KEITH COLWELL: Yes, we are negotiating now the new CAP program, whatever that’s going to be called. Yesterday we made a national agreement to remove the reference margin and move the agricultural stability up to 80 per cent from where it was, which the industry has been talking about. That was agreed to yesterday in a phone call.

On the gentleman you talked about, of course, I can’t comment on that publicly, but if you want to give me a call, I can get you the information on that particular one.

JOHN LOHR: Yes, Mr. Minister. Maybe we’ll make it a Zoom call. I don’t know. I would appreciate that.

I would like to, just, at this point - I know we have - I don’t know how long your motion would take to do, but I do want to have time to do that at the end of this. There are so many other things to ask about. Mr. Minister, I did want to ask about community pastures. Tell me what’s happening there.

[5:15 p.m.]

KEITH COLWELL: We have done a study. I think we’ve got the final report, or almost have it. The first report came in and it just wasn’t very well done, so we went back to the proponent - that’s been the holdup here, the person who was doing the study - and laid out in no uncertain terms: here was a determinant agreement, you didn’t fulfill it. They have fulfilled that now, I think, and we’re just waiting to get the final part of that back.

It looks like there are quite a few recommendations in that that we are going to act on, and we want to put something in place that the community pasture system isn’t plagued with the problems we’ve had in the past, with uncles and aunts and brothers and sisters getting community pastures and no one else could get them - all this stuff that is a problem in parts of the province but not in other parts. You want a system that works well, and I think we’ve come up with that. We want to make full utilization of those pastures and we want to make sure that the people who really need to use them are going to have access to them and that we can grow. They are perfect for beef and some other things in some areas, so whatever the best is for the area. We’re moving in that direction.

JOHN LOHR: Why show community pastures as a part of the Farm Loan Board? That’s a curiosity of mine. Why is it wrapped into that in your statement?

KEITH COLWELL: It’s really a simple answer. They are the only ones allowed to own land. The Department of Agriculture is not allowed to own land, and the Farm Loan Board actually owns most of those community pastures.

JOHN LOHR: I’m finished.

THE CHAIR: Minister, I don’t know if you can make your closing remarks in four minutes or less but I’ll turn it over to you.

KEITH COLWELL: With your permission and with the committee’s permission, I would like to read the resolution first and then finish the time off with a few comments. Could I do that?

THE CHAIR: Sure.

Shall Resolution E1 stand?

The resolution stands.

KEITH COLWELL: I would just like to wrap up with a few comments. I want to thank the members for the questions they’ve asked. All the topics they’ve raised are critically important to the province and I am pleased to have that happen. Anyone who wants to contact me by Zoom or phone, we’ll arrange that, to talk in more detail about any of the things we’ve talked about or anything else you want to talk about. We work together on this. We’ve got a great opportunity to create an even stronger economy in agriculture in the province.

During COVID-19, there was a lot of concern with the farms that some of them weren’t going to plant. There were all kinds of problems but that was all overcome. The industry has done very well this year. Some of the farmers tell me that it has been the best year they have ever had. They got better prices for their product because of COVID-19. Some of them got better crops. Now that’s not across the whole board, but a lot of it is and there are a lot of issues that we’re dealing with.

I’d like to put that offer out to any of you. We’ll do it by Zoom or a phone call, however you want to do it, it doesn’t matter. I can bring on - if you tell me what the topics are I can make sure I get that information available to you, or I’ll get it after the call. That goes for everybody on this because we’re in this together and the better the economy that we can create for Nova Scotians, the better off we are.

I’m really pleased to see one thing that’s happening in the industry and it’s still not totally resolved. When I first became minister, we had a major problem with succession. Major problem. That is a topic I don’t hear very much about anymore. You see a lot of younger people now when you go to meetings, with their children there and their parents, in some cases. In some cases, people are buying farms, which is really positive. I’m glad to hear, Mr. Lohr, that land is being cleared that definitely hadn’t been cleared in years. That’s a good sign for Nova Scotia. Time’s pretty well up? Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. It’s always a pleasure to come before this committee.

THE CHAIR: Thank you, minister, and thank you to everyone. We got through the first four hours.

JOHN LOHR: The resolution was done already. Thank you, Keith, it was a pleasure again, as always.

THE CHAIR: We will meet again on Tuesday. Just keep an eye out for the hours, but it will be after daily routine. I believe it’s going to be the Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture in this particular Subcommittee group on Tuesday.

With that, folks, I want to wish everyone a great weekend, and we’ll see you all on Tuesday.

[The subcommittee adjourned at 5:21 p.m.]