STANDING COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES
Mr. James DeWolfe
MR. CHAIRMAN: We have members from each Party so we will begin. My name is Jim DeWolfe, Chairman of the Resources Committee. We have before us Brian Muise, to my left, he is an Aquaculture Strategist, and Marli MacNeil who is the Executive Director of the Aquaculture Association of Nova Scotia. We are very pleased to have both of you here today. You have already heard who I am and I think we will start introductions around the table so you know who we are, starting with Brian.
[The committee members introduced themselves.]
MR. CHAIRMAN: As you were probably, no doubt, informed, we will ask you to make a presentation for the first part of this morning's session and then that will leave us, hopefully, ample time to ask questions from the floor. I don't know who would like to start. Marli, are you going to take the lead on this?
MS. MARLI MACNEIL: Yes.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Okay, I will turn the floor over. It is quite informal. I don't know if you would care for anyone to ask questions during your presentation, that is entirely up to you, or if you want to wait until the end. I will turn it over to you, then.
MS. MACNEIL: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Perhaps what I will do is make a short, formal presentation and then Brian and I will be available to answer questions or elaborate on any of the points that I have made during the presentation, if that is to your satisfaction.
MR. CHAIRMAN: That would be fine.
MR. BRIAN MUISE: I just want to say a brief hello. I am here in several capacities. I am the President of the Aquaculture Association of Nova Scotia. I have been on the board since back in the 1970's when it first started. We were recently celebrating our 23rd Anniversary which, as far as we know, we certainly are the oldest aquaculture association in Canada and probably in North America, which sort of speaks back to the long history of research and development that took place in this province. I am currently a consultant and a commercial mussel farmer so I will be prepared to answer anything on that slant.
We will turn things over to Marli, then, for a formal presentation.
MS. MACNEIL: Good morning everyone and thank you for the invitation to meet with you today to discuss our industry. The Aquaculture Association, which you heard is my employer, is very enthusiastic about the future of this industry and the potential it holds for creating jobs and wealth in the coastal areas of this province. We hope during this morning's session that we might be able to infect you with some of this enthusiasm.
Aquaculture is quite simply the farming of aquatic animals and plants. While a vast variety of fish, shellfish and plants are farmed throughout the world, here in Nova Scotia we are farming Atlantic salmon, rainbow trout in both fresh water and salt water, Arctic char, halibut, mussels, scallops, native and European oysters, clams and quahogs, seaweeds and we are involved in experimental work with haddock, tilapia, striped bass and eels.
Our industry is spread throughout the province, from Yarmouth County to Cape Breton Island. Annual sales of Nova Scotia farmed seafood have risen from $7 million in 1994 to some $34 million in 1999. There are approximately 1,100 people employed directly on the farms and in the plants which process our products and we are also creating spinoff employment and sales in the industries which supply the aquaculture operations. Just for a point of reference, nationwide the value of the industry has risen to $550 million annually.
We believe that the aquaculture industry holds significant opportunities for growth in this region. Nova Scotia has an international reputation for producing top quality seafood. The aquaculture industry has been able to take advantage of and add to this tradition and we are now selling farmed fish products into the market that we once flooded with captured products.
The significant human resource we have in our fishing and farming communities must be considered one of our assets as well. Trained workers experienced both with harvesting the sea and cultivating livestock make up a large portion of the workforce for our industry and local educational institutions, including the Nova Scotia Community College and the Nova Scotia Agricultural College are graduating new, skilled workers with technicians' diplomas and university degrees. Aquaculture is increasingly becoming a knowledge-based industry.
Nova Scotia is favoured with significant research capabilities, both in terms of the institutions and the scientists available in this province. This resource has been responsible for the development of both the technology and science which has promoted the growth of the industry not only here but throughout the world and Nova Scotia is blessed with an abundance of the cool, pristine water which produces the quality products that are prized in the marketplace. We have over 29 square kilometres of coastline in Nova Scotia and at the present time, only 255 of those square kilometres are being used for aquaculture. That is less than 1 per cent of the province's coastline being used for both finfish and shellfish farming. I guess for a reference point, if you look at the productivity in this small space, it is quite impressive. For instance, a typical salmon farm is producing some $350,000 worth of product per year, per hectare of production.
Aquaculture has the potential to become a significant contributor to the economy of Nova Scotia but there are problems, there are constraints to the growth of the industry. As I mentioned earlier, the real value of this industry is that it is carried on in the rural and coastal communities where employment opportunities are sometimes scarce but this positive aspect of our industry is also the seat of many of the challenges we face. Our coastal areas have multiple users and sometimes the best place in which to site a finfish or shellfish farm is also the best place for recreational use or for another industrial use such as a seasonal capture fishery.
Developing a true coastal zone planning process which recognizes aquatic farmers as legitimate users of this resource is critical to the survival of the industry in this province. In fact, the biggest obstacle to the growth of the industry right now is the lack of growing areas.
The scrutiny under which a lease application is placed is onerous in Nova Scotia. This intense analysis of how an aquaculture site might impact on the host community often fails to consider the best use of the marine environment but this analysis is successful in keeping aquaculture from growing. According to the Department of Aquaculture and Fisheries, less than 25 per cent of all aquaculture lease applications are ever approved.
As well, there are well-publicized concerns about aquaculture and the environment. I certainly can't sit here this morning and tell you that that aquaculture has no impact on the environment. Aquaculture, like every human activity, does have an impact. However, aquaculture well practised is an ecologically sustainable activity. One of our association's priority goals is to help farmers learn the best practices to achieve sustainability.
To that end, our members have recently adopted environmental management guidelines for both finfish and shellfish, which I believe have been distributed to you in your binders. These guidelines are part of a multi-phase approach to environmental responsibility. The next phases, which will begin immediately, are the development of an environmental monitoring program for both finfish and shellfish farms and the creation of environmental
management plans for each of the participating businesses which are members of our association.
The members of this association are not undertaking these projects because they have been forced to by regulators. Instead, our farmers have recognized the value of environmental stewardship to the efficient and effective management of their operations. They understand the link between the responsible practices and sustainable farms. They recognize that public concern, although sometimes unfounded, must be taken seriously and that the residents of communities in which aquaculture is practised deserve to have their environmental concerns addressed.
As the result of a recent legal interpretation, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, fondly known as CEA, now requires many proposed aquaculture leases to undergo an environmental assessment before an application is approved. The industry welcomes this as it not only raises public confidence in the leasing process but an assessment gives the applicant important information about the site that he or she is interested in. However, it is necessary that this assessment, which an aquaculture lease undergoes, is based on the risk associated with the activity. Research has shown that environmental risks associated with aquaculture are relatively low, localized and of short duration. Therefore, we expect guidelines for completing an environmental assessment will reflect this.
The cost of such assessments are also a concern to the industry in Nova Scotia. Recent guidelines developed by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to aid the industry in completing these assessments have been analysed by an environmental consultant who estimates that the cost of completing one will start at $25,000. When you consider that a small shellfish farm may only have a capital value of $80,000, that $25,000 becomes a significant barrier to the industry's growth in Nova Scotia.
Our members have the additional concern that the rules applying to environmental assessments are so vague that a farm may be required to do several which will aid significantly to the cost of accessing the resource and impeding this industry's ability to compete in the market place.
We know there are also concerns about disease interaction between wild fish and farmed fish. Nobody wants sick fish. From the industry's point of view, in order to run profitable businesses, it is necessary to keep fish healthy. Nova Scotia is involved in an industry-led initiative which will result in a national fish health program which is based on disease prevention.
Some of the other concerns we encounter centre on finfish escapement and to alleviate this fear, we are working with other salmon farming provinces and countries to develop an international code of containment. Obviously it is in the best interest of the industry, because if we can't keep fish in cages, we can't take them to market.
We are also involved in Aquanet, an NSERC National Centre of Excellence program which will lead research into many aspects of aquatic farming. We believe that science will answer all of the questions people have about aquaculture. We have already seen the impact good research can have. As an example, this region now uses very little medication to treat sick fish as the result of advances in fish health practices and in vaccinations. In the last 10 years, drug use on Maritime Canada farms has been reduced by 90 per cent.
We believe that the regulatory framework for aquaculture also needs attention. The rules developed to conserve publicly-owned wild stocks in the capture fishery really have no place in fish and shellfish farming which deals with privately-owned stocks. This industry requires regulations and policies designed for a culture industry, which is not a fishery but is sometimes, actually oftentimes, practised in public waters. Until a proper regulatory regime is established investors will be wary of putting their money into this industry.
In Nova Scotia, the lack of a clear development policy for aquaculture has been a constant impediment to growth. Successive governments in this province, regardless of the Party, have failed to provide the sustained support necessary for an emerging industry. I am not talking about financial support, mind you if there is some available we will take it, but what I am talking about are the basic support structures, such as technical assistance, research and extension services, which bolstered the development of terrestrial farming for over a century in this province.
To date, governments and the bureaucrats have poured their time and money into big, highly-publicized projects in their quest for the success story, which would bring them positive profile. It has never worked, and when these projects fail, as they inevitably do, it is the industry and the small local suppliers who take the hit. In the meantime, the small success stories have kept happening in spite of government involvement in this sector; however, it gets harder for these individual companies with every much-publicized fiasco.
As a point of interest, I found it interesting and you might as well, staff in the federal Commissioner for Aquaculture Development's office have told me that there are more problems in which they are asked to intervene in Nova Scotia than in any other part of the country. In Nova Scotia we are proud, and with some justification in my opinion, in the history and growth of our aquaculture industry. We have just entered our third century of fish farming in the province. Oyster farming was practised in the Bras d'Or Lakes in the mid-19th Century. Many of the commercial farming techniques utilized in shellfish farming around the world were actually pioneered in Nova Scotia. Now we are taking the Canadian lead in cultivating new finfish species such as halibut and cultivating seaweeds.
However, there are many challenges to the continued development of our industry, and we are gratified that you have chosen to learn more about what we do this morning. If you want to get a more close-up and personal idea of what happens on fish and shellfish farms, I would be happy to arrange a tour of sites for the committee. Enhancing an industry
which employs Nova Scotians in their home communities and produces in an ecologically sustainable manner a quality product which is exported throughout the world must be a goal that we share. I thank you for your interest in the aquaculture industry in Nova Scotia, and would open the floor through you, Mr. Chairman, for any questions or comments.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much, Marli, for your remarks. Just in response to your last comment, arranging a tour for this committee is something that we had in mind last year, and hopefully we could pursue that in the spring.
MS. MACNEIL: Certainly, we would be happy to do it.
MR. CHAIRMAN: We will certainly be in touch with you about that. We will open the floor up. Who would like to go first? Mr. John MacDonell, you have the floor.
MR. JOHN MACDONELL: Thank you for your presentation. I have to admit that my knowledge of aquaculture is limited. I know that a number of years ago when I first heard about people trying to raise fish in a non-natural setting, I guess is the only way to say it, farm them, I was quite intrigued by it. I thought this is probably a very good thing. Where you mentioned that less than 25 per cent of the applications are approved is probably for the same reason that some of us as politicians, if anything comes across our desk, quite often it is not positive in regard to the aquaculture sector.
I know from going to the Agricultural College and looking at what they are doing there, and I was asking some questions about two tubs or containers of rainbow and speckled trout. They were telling me about the rainbow trout, which they considered to be the chicken of trout species, in making the comparison about the conversion from what they eat to what they put on in weight, which was fairly high; and then also the relationship of that to the temperature the fish were in, that the closer to body temperature, that means less energy went to keeping the fish warm, so therefore more of that went on to making meat.
I am curious as to your competition, I would think about South America or somewhere such as that, where water temperatures are such that our colder temperatures, they wouldn't have a disadvantage there. So I am looking for two things. One is, where does the major competition for you come from? And, the food supply that you feed fish, who has the market for that?
MS. MACNEIL: Competition is an interesting factor. If you are talking about rainbow trout, for instance, most of our rainbow trout is grown in salt water as steelhead. That goes into the same types of market places as salmon, and most of ours are sold on the eastern seaboard of the United States and some into Quebec and Ontario. The fresh market rainbow trout industry has sort of fizzled out in Nova Scotia, and our main competitors there were the Ontario trout growers and the trout growers in the Midwest, Idaho, areas like that. We just found that, actually because of our water temperatures, we couldn't get fish to grow at the
same rate that they have been able to. High energy costs in Nova Scotia really do keep us from doing too much indoors. The cost of running an operation that is land based is significantly higher than growing in the marina or the freshwater environment naturally.
Right now our main competition comes from the salmon countries. The top three are Norway, Chile and Scotland. Interestingly enough, the market for salmon is growing. People are eating more seafood. We just saw a significant rise of almost a pound in the amount of seafood eaten per capita in the United States. That is the market. We have the advantage here of being very close to the market place, of having established ties because of the traditional fishery with a lot of the brokers that we are now selling farmed product to.
In Nova Scotia competition hasn't been a major problem. Our real problem is not being able to produce enough to keep the customer basically . . .
MR. JOHN MACDONELL: Secure.
MS. MACNEIL: . . . well, secure year-round. For instance, I am working with a group of Arctic char growers who are down in Colchester County. I met with them last week, and they have a superior product that is getting a superior price in the market place but they can't supply the market place 52 weeks of the year. That is a major problem for their marketing efforts. So they need to grow quickly, and that is a difficult thing to do in this province.
On the feed question, there are several major feed producers that sell into Nova Scotia. There is Moore Clarke that is owned by the International New Truckers Company; there is Suregain with a local plant; Cory Feed Mills out New Brunswick; Connors Brothers out of New Brunswick; Martin Mills out of Ontario. I know one or two farms that are actually importing feed from the United States on a trial basis to see if there is any advantage to it because it is a different formulation.
MR. JOHN MACDONELL: What goes into making the feed? Are we catching fish to make feed to feed fish?
MS. MACNEIL: You are catching fish to feed livestock. Much more fishmeal and fish oil is used to feed terrestrial livestock such as cows, chickens and pigs, than goes into the aquaculture industry. Only about 10 per cent of the fishmeal and fish oil that is caught for food development goes back into aquaculture. There has been a lot of experimentation on the feed side using all vegetable products or experimenting with things like soy to see if we can continually reduce the amount of fish oil and fishmeal that goes into the product, primarily because it is not a dependable resource. For instance, when El Nino hit there was a real drop in the amount of fish and fish oil available for feed and the cost of feed went up significantly.
When you think that the cost of feed is about 50 per cent of the cost of production, anything we can do to reduce that cost, especially if we can find other sources, would be acceptable and actually well-received by the industry. We have run into problems though because when you are looking at soy, you are looking at potentially using genetically-modified organisms which goes into an area that the industry doesn't want to go, we just want to stay out of that.
MR. JOHN MACDONELL: So is the feed produced from a by-product of the traditional fishery or is it from fish that people go out to catch to make the feed?
MS. MACNEIL: A lot of it is by-product but there are species that are prized for fishmeal and some of those are caught specifically for food development but as I said, that development would be happening with or without an aquaculture industry. As you noted, the feed conversion ratios are becoming very efficient so that most of what a fish eats becomes flesh, so it is a real recycling of the product. We used to have food conversion ratios of 3 to 1 or 2 to 1. Now for trout we are at about 1.2 to 1; char is 1 to 1, everything they eat becomes utilized in the metabolic process.
MR. JOHN MACDONELL: You mentioned the risks and you said they were short term. I don't really understand that statement. If you were to have an operation for 20 years, how can the risks be short term, can you explain that?
MR. MUISE: What that statement is referring to is the result of research that was conducted through Maine and New Brunswick, primarily in response to concerns over environmental impact and trying to get some handle on the relative risk. The research has pretty well shown that the impact - leaving that go for a moment on what the impact is - is generally localized within the region of let's say a cage site and short duration meaning if you were to remove the farm, it seems to be about three years by the time the entire community is re-established and you would not even know there had been a farm there. So yes, while a farm is located, it is having a constant impact, as it obviously would, but as soon as the farm is removed the impacts disappear very quickly. So we are not talking about something like nuclear waste or persistent chemicals, we are talking about organic waste which is metabolized very quickly in the marine environment. So that was the research we were referring to.
MR. CHAIRMAN: We have witnessed a lot of ups and downs in the industry through the years and consequently governments have taken a considerable hit with respect to aquaculture development and investment. I guess business has gone through obvious growing pains but we have also seen - and I have witnessed this in my own area - where some pretty impressive small operations have been swallowed up by larger companies. I feel that if they were allowed to develop at a more gradual pace, bigger is not always better, wouldn't you agree? Sometimes people try to expand too quickly and of course, the bigger the operation, the bigger the losses could be if there is an infection or a bacteria problem.
MR. MUISE: There are several aspects you are posing here about the variability in our industry. If you look at the overall statistics, there are some big ups and downs, a high variability. You have to keep in mind that when you have a small industry, the exiting of even one farm can create quite a significant change in the annual statistics, so there is that aspect of it, and you have to keep that in mind.
[9:30 a.m.]
With regard to bigger is not necessarily better, again, the answer is not clear. I recently sold my mussel farm business simply because I couldn't expand it. There are real efficiencies that are gained with scale, even on a small scale, and we are still talking small business here. We are talking business with five, six or seven employees in a community. My inability to expand to even achieve efficient use of my capital equipment was hampered by four and one-half years of just trying to get more area to expand to. It just becomes a wearing away of resources.
There is a tremendous amount of consolidation taking place within this industry so if you want to talk big business, yes, that is present as well. There are some very large international companies involved in this industry with plants in all the areas Marli mentioned: Chile, Norway, Scotland and over here. So it is an industry with a lot of different scale players. I think those businesses that are based on sound business planning, sound business control of costs, good technology, good husbandry, like any other business, whether it is on a very large international scale or a very localized, small-scale employer, there are good businesses and there are bad businesses. Again, it depends very much on the management and the business plan upon which the business was established and with which it is operated on a daily basis. It is a difficult business to make money in and a very easy business to spend a whole lot of money or waste a lot of money on. You have to be very cognizant of that, for sure.
MR. JON CAREY: I was interested in the comment that seaweed was being produced. From what little experience I have in this, I am familiar with Irish moss, but what is the production of seaweed? What do you do with it?
MR. MUISE: It is probably one of the best kept secrets in this province, that Nova Scotia is considered a world leader in the development of seaweed products, seaweed aquaculture, the extraction of seaweed products. Acadian Seaplants, located in Dartmouth and run by a gentleman named Louis Deveau, is considered a world leader in all aspects of seaweed husbandry or culture. Their operation down in Charlesville is one of the largest in the world, which is a land-based seaweed operation. You hear very little about it.
Again, maybe we haven't blown our own horn enough here in Nova Scotia. Most of the success stories in aquaculture you never hear about but that company in particular, internationally, is known as a world leader. They are marketing a number of products in the
Japanese and Chinese markets, different types of sea vegetables, not just the Irish moss, though the Irish moss is a core product. They are looking at different types of laminate seaweeds to be used as sea lettuce, that sort of thing. It is a highly successful business but again, not one that you hear much of locally, unless you are involved in the research community.
MR. CAREY: You said that less than 25 per cent of your applications are approved. Are there any particular compelling reasons that these are turned down? I am sure a lot of research and thought is put into an application and then it seems to hit a barrier here.
MS. MACNEIL: Aquaculture has sort of had a boom and bust reputation in the province, as the Chairman noted, up and down cycles. When it looks like we are heading for a boom a lot of people prospect that there is something to be gained and they go after a lot of applications, so sometimes the system is clogged and nothing gets through. We don't have an efficient system in this province for dealing with applications.
You will note in your binder that there is a copy of the Memorandum of Understanding between the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the province in determining who is responsible for leasing and licensing. The province is responsible for leasing and licensing; however, the feds do have a fair amount of say in whether something goes through. There are two specific areas where they operate it, one is the Navigable Waters Protection Act, looked after by the Coast Guard, and the other is the habitat section of DFO which has to review all of these applications. So there is a breakdown in that system. No lease has been approved in 2000. Here we are into almost the end of October and nothing has come through for this calendar year. There is a backlog, I guess is the best way to put it.
On the other side, the rules for getting a lease through are different, basically, from area to area. In some areas there is something that is known as a RADAC, a Regional Aquaculture Development Advisory Committee. Some of these work very well, and they have been able to assimilate or accommodate aquaculture into the community and see it as a legitimate user and they work with other users of the marine resource to determine where is the best place for something to go.
In other areas, RADACs have been set up almost as adversarial bodies, which just debate and never really get anywhere. I spent a lot of time in Digby when the discussions were going on for allowing aquaculture into Annapolis Basin. It was a very painful experience for everybody, not just for the people trying to get the leases but for the people who didn't want the leases. The RADAC was set up with equal numbers of pro and con, and no mechanism to move forward.
In other areas there is no RADAC, and a public hearing process is utilized. I have been to public hearings that have been well organized, people come with concerns but they present those concerns in a reasonable fashion. I have been to others where no one who supports the application is allowed to speak.
There is this wild variety of ways in which public consultation is sought. I want to be very clear that the association and the industry recognizes and actually endorses public consultation in this process. It is necessary that the community or at least a majority of the members of the community want a farm in their presence. If they don't, the farm will not succeed. That is just simple. We have had that happen too many times, and we have had nets ripped and fish have escaped and we have had boats sink.
These are small business people, as Brian said, the majority would have five or six employees and they don't have the time and energy to put into a farm that is somewhere where it is not wanted. On the other hand, public consultation has to be sought in a manner that actually gives the public, not just a small segment of the public, an opportunity to discuss the issues. I am often known to say that democracy is a failed experiment. I think what I mean by that is democracy always assumes an informed public. On the aquaculture side, too often the processes that are put in place don't do anything to inform the public about the issues. People come to the table with an opinion or something that they have heard, and we aren't really helping them to understand the issues. As a result, leases aren't going through very quickly.
Another thing you have to keep in mind in Nova Scotia, we have a lot of coastline but not all of that coastline is suitable for aquaculture. We need, as Mr. John MacDonell pointed out, certain temperatures, salmon will die if the temperature in the water goes below about 0.7, so we have to find areas that don't reach those lethal temperatures. A lot of that is the reason for the low number of leases getting through as well.
MR. CAREY: Finally, the relationship between your people and the fishers.
MR. MUISE: Again, it depends. I would say generally it is surprisingly good. You can't exist in the coastal community and be in place with fishermen all around you without getting along. Those few operations that for whatever reason were uncooperative or got into a situation where there was antagonism don't last long. As Marli mentioned, as recently as a couple of weeks ago, all it takes is one person with a little jackknife and you can lose $0.5 million worth of fish in one evening. It is imperative that you get along with your neighbours. If someone wanted to do damage to your business, they could very easily, I can quote cases.
In most instances our businesses are fully integrated with the fishery. A company that lost a lease in St. Margarets Bay very recently moved to the Eastern Shore and was absolutely astounded at the level of cooperation. At no charge whatsoever the local fishermen helped
them put out the large mooring blocks that were needed to help locate the cages, help anchor their cages in place, something they hadn't experienced before.
Peter Darnell, down in Mahone Bay, who has a very large work barge for his mussel farm allows it to be used as a multi-purpose vessel. As you know, Mahone Bay has a lot of cottagers and a lot of people who dwell on islands. During the weekend Peter makes his vessel available to people to bring vehicles, to bring lumber, to bring materials out to those islands at just cost, the cost of gas.
It is well recognized, and I think if you looked at the situation with an unbiased eye, you would find that in the vast majority, I would say 99 per cent of all the cases, of our business people are very well integrated and very well related to the fishing community.
Perhaps one of the reasons for your question has been some of the highly-publicized confrontational situations during the RADAC process. Again, we as an industry accept a great deal of responsibility in our inability to inform the public about the reality of our industry. We enter some of these meetings faced with people who are ill-informed or misinformed for whatever reason. In those situations we have seen confrontations. That is usually upfront and before the businesses happen.
Those sorts of confrontations are rare afterward, once the situation is in place and our people are allowed just a reasonable amount of time to get their businesses set up and integrate themselves with the community. I think you will find that most of the stories have been highly successful.
MR. FRANK CHIPMAN: I am very interested in your statement here, there is a regulatory fog. I am just thinking we are in the midst of a federal election, there is all kinds of money to hand out at election time, but we never seem to get any reduction in our regulations. Maybe that is something we should hold the government hostage for.
Anyway, our government is trying to untangle some of the bureaucracy here in the province, or I should say the red tape, and I guess red tape and bureaucracy go hand in hand. I find it interesting that you have to have 26 different federal approvals, that is astonishing. What about the province? Are there as many provincially as there are federally?
MR. MUISE: Eleven isn't it?
MS. MACNEIL: Yes, 11.
MR. MUISE: Eleven agencies.
MR. FRANK CHIPMAN: Eleven agencies provincially and 26 federally. You have to go through 37 different hoops, I can't believe it. Then I am reading here that one gentleman had to go to Chile using Canadian taxpayers' money to start an aquaculture firm there. Chile is supplying 68 per cent of the U.S. market and Canada is only supplying 15 per cent. I remember reading an article a few years ago where in the State of Maine, I am saying 10 years ago, it is probably a $365 million a year business, which is phenomenal, it has probably progressed a lot since then. But here we are, Canada has three-quarters of the world's fresh water, salt and fresh, and we are stagnant. We are stagnating, why? Is it because of the regulatory process? The markets are out there. If Chile can produce 68 per cent of the U.S. supply, what is wrong with Canada? What is wrong with Nova Scotia?
MR. MUISE: There's a question. Let's see, looking at the bigger picture, if you really took a look at our industry, looking overall, you are talking about the salmon industry. Salmon growth in New Brunswick, depending on your perspective, I guess, was either the biggest environmental failure or the biggest economic success story in the Bay of Fundy. Seven years ago the value of salmon production in the Bay of Fundy surpassed the groundfish landings. There was a success story. It turned southern Charlotte County from the area of New Brunswick with the highest level of unemployment to almost full employment, at fairly highly-paid jobs.
In Nova Scotia, again, speaking specifically about Nova Scotia, if you really looked at it, despite all the problems we are having, I think the last time I did the figures was for last year, we are experiencing an annual growth rate of 16 per cent, 17 per cent, 18 per cent, which by any stretch, in any industry is a good rate of growth. Whether that growth could have been improved, I would say absolutely, with a better infrastructure, legal infrastructure and real policies to make this industry happen to put policies in the field that actually work.
Canada-wide, things have changed. One of the big hurdles facing the industry in the last couple of years has been this whole business of concerns over the environment. Valid concerns, there is no doubt about it. As we said, any industry, any activity, human activity or farming activity, aquaculture activity has an impact. Whether that impact is acceptable or not, that is a decision process that we are now undergoing. This Environmental Assessment Act has pretty well brought everything to a grinding halt over the last year or so, not because there is anything inherently risky about aquaculture, any more risky than many other industries, it is the fact that the information or the policies are not yet in place, within groups like DFO, to actually define what is an environmental impact, what is an acceptable environmental impact with regard to our industry, with regard to any industry.
If you look at the history of our industry you will find that periodically, every four or five years, some new piece of legislation comes along which presents a hurdle. In some provinces, again, I point to New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, the governments react very quickly to help their industry overcome those hurdles and/or adjust their industry to meet the new requirements. In Nova Scotia consistently for the 31 years now I have been in this
industry, it has been left to us to find a way over those hurdles. It has been a battle of attrition, death by a thousand cuts, if you want to put it that way. I couldn't point to one single piece of legislation or one single policy that has dragged us down, but it is constant, as soon as you are over one hurdle you are facing another and so on, that has certainly been my experience.
I have been in and out of this business as a commercial producer three times in 31 years. I only have so much energy to put in, I think it is the last time I will be involved in commercial production. It is this cumulative effect of small hurdles that is delaying things.
MR. CHIPMAN: I can't believe, like you said, 26 federal and 11 provincial applications, why would anybody want to get into the industry? Look at the cost. How much will these regulations cost you as a percentage of your business? In a certain respect, I suppose you would have to go out and invest money to start, you would have to buy equipment and that sort of thing, or do you go out and get all the approvals first?
MR. MUISE: You get the approvals first. I learned a very tough lesson about taking the word of a very senior official within the Department of Fisheries that I had a lease approval. I went out and purchased the equipment only to find out that the lease had actually been cancelled eight months prior. We could tell you horror stories like that but I don't particularly want to focus on the negative here. As I say, this industry moves ahead despite those sorts of problems.
Let's just take the most recent issue, the environmental assessment. In my business - which was a small mussel business, probably the fourth largest in this province but still a fairly small mussel business - the cost of an environmental assessment as it presently stands, again, please don't take this as criticism of the environmental assessment, we welcome a good environmental scrutiny because I am 100 per cent certain that our industry will make it through, no problem; the problem at this stage is trying to hit a moving target. The process is that we submit an environmental assessment, it goes through all the government processes, they come back and say, we don't like this part, we don't like that part, and throw it back at you. You go back, you redo those tasks and send it back in. Then they say, now we don't like this part and we don't like that part, so this process is going on and on. Two of our growers are in the middle of this process, they are the forerunners in trying to get through, it is essentially trying to hit a moving target at this point. The one out in Mahone Bay estimates its current costs at $28,000 and . . .
MS. MACNEIL: It is $50,000.
MR. MUISE: It is $50,000 and growing. The other company in the middle of the process, which is a shellfish farming operation in Guysborough County, now estimates their costs at $20,000 and growing and they have still only started the process. The problem here in Nova Scotia is, once you get your environmental assessment conducted, then you have to
go through the provincial licensing thing, which for us was three and one-half years and finally I stepped away from it because I just didn't have the time to wait any longer. So, it is the cumulative effect of all of these things.
Let's just look at mussel farming. It takes you two years to produce a crop, so you are looking at two years to produce a crop, three years to get through the licensing process, two years to get through the environmental assessment. It doesn't take long to do the math, why would anyone bother looking at seven year's lead time and who can plan a business seven years out, I can plan aspects of it, but the point I am trying to make is it is such a fuzzy environment in which to try to develop a business. Despite all of that, we have good, sound, successful businesses ongoing, which to me is an unbelievable tribute to the tenacity and the intelligence of the people involved. We are recognized as having some of the world leaders in our industry here.
MR. CHIPMAN: What about an inland fishery and what I am talking about I am saying greenfield or inland?
MR. MUISE: Do you mean freshwater inland?
MR. CHIPMAN: Right, freshwater inland. I guess I am thinking in ponds where I guess maybe you would have the same problem with environmental issues there with disease and that because of the fish waste.
MR. MUISE: Well, again, freshwater or land-based facilities, the technologies are in place to do freshwater scrubbing.
MR. CHIPMAN: I believe there is a place down in Digby Neck where they are doing halibut. We talk about these regulations and I guess that concerns me but what if you had a self-regulating body?
MR. MUISE: The sort of approach we are taking is that with our environmental standards and our code of practice that is coming, we would like to set standards in which we don't foul our own house. It is a basic tenet of our business that you can't foul your own house. Anyone here who knows farming knows that you can't run an unsanitary operation and expect to succeed and it is the same with us. We are facing the same sort of issues related to sustainability. Good husbandry equates to sustainability, whether that is land-based or in the ocean.
MR. CHIPMAN: On a final note, my colleague, the member for Kings West was on the red tape commission and he can probably give you some insight into some of the issues that were raised and some of the roadblocks that were set up.
MR. HOWARD EPSTEIN: I wonder if you could help us understand a little more detail about these different applications that you were saying you have to make, the 26 federal and the 11 provincial? Can you maybe just take us through a typical application and explain in a little more detail what it is that is required?
MS. MACNEIL: First of all it will depend on the species but let's just take a salmon farm as an example. Your application with a business plan and your $500 application fee will be submitted to the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries. At that point it gets sent out to all of the different departments and agencies which have a stake.
MR. EPSTEIN: This is the application under the Aquaculture Act you are talking about?
MR. MUISE: Yes.
MS. MACNEIL: The application will be sent, in the province - depending upon where it is and what it might impact on - to Natural Resources, it would be sent to provincial Environment, it would have been sent to Agriculture in the old days but now I guess it will just be walked across the hall and whatever other agencies might be interested, depending on where it is again. It may also be sent to municipal bodies if there is a specific interest or a specific concern there. On the federal side, within DFO for instance, it will go to probably six or seven different branches: it would go to Habitat, it would go to Fish Management, it would go to Coast Guard, it gets spread around that way. It would also go to Environment Canada, so it would just keep sort of spreading out.
At some point one would hope, if the process is working, those answers would all come back to the provincial government, to the Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture and at that point, most likely the public process would also be coming in, which is either a public hearing or some sort of public consultation such as a RADAC meeting. When all of that information is in, it is then put on the minister's desk. The average amount of time that takes right now is two and one-half years.
MR. EPSTEIN: So, am I misunderstanding? Do you actually have to make 37 different applications or do you make basically, one or two?
MS. MACNEIL: You make one . . .
MR. EPSTEIN: One to the province.
MS. MACNEIL: . . . and they are responsible for then spreading it around but during that process it is often hard to find out where it is and why it is being held up. It is not a transparent process and there is very little communication back to the applicant. As Brian and I have spoken about, there is this new requirement for an environmental assessment. We have
people who put applications in about three years ago when an environmental assessment wasn't required that are now stuck in the process and will need to have this environmental assessment done, which they certainly didn't count on and didn't budget for when they started the process.
MR. EPSTEIN: So, conceptually, if you are trying to understand the process, the province would primarily be concerned generally about siting, that is about whether a particular stretch of shoreline, from their perspective, was inappropriate. I suppose the main indicator there would be community acceptance, an appropriate site. The federal involvement would also focus on two things, one part of it might be siting, for example, under the Navigable Waters Protection Act and that would be a concern that would have to do with interference with shipping and other activities like that. The other federal concern would be the environmental assessment. Is that a conceptually adequate picture of what the process is?
MS. MACNEIL: Yes.
MR. EPSTEIN: The new element seems to be the federal environmental assessment, is that right?
MS. MACNEIL: Yes, it is the newest one.
MR. EPSTEIN: So there wasn't a provincial environmental assessment, there was some kind of provincial review under the Aquaculture Act that wasn't actually an environmental assessment but maybe had some kind of dimension of that, is that right?
MS. MACNEIL: Most of the environmental concerns would have been raised by DFO through habitat and fish management.
MR. EPSTEIN: That is prior to the requirement that it go under CEAA?
MS. MACNEIL: Yes.
MR. MUISE: Yes, that would have been under Section 35, I think, of the Fisheries Act, if I remember correctly, under the release of substances into the fish habitats. They were the primary reviewers with regard to impact on fish habitat.
MR. EPSTEIN: The ruling that you referred to, can you just tell me a bit more about when that ruling came down. That was a court ruling, did you say?
MS. MACNEIL: No, it was a legal opinion within government. It was December 18, 1999. It was actually that the Coast Guard had asked for a ruling on whether or not aquaculture operations had to be considered as a work under CEAA. Up until then aquaculture was on the exclusion list for assessments and was not considered works, but at
Coast Guard's request it was reviewed and the new legal opinion came down that most aquaculture operations should be classified as works. The ones that are not classified as works fall into two categories: bottom culture of shellfish and the use of French tables, which are structures that sit on the bottom for oyster culture. Those two things were excluded, but anything else needs to go through an environmental assessment.
There are triggers for environmental assessments and that is where we get into an issue. There are three triggers that we have to be concerned with. The first is the requirement of a federal permit, so if you are going into a marine or even some freshwater locations, if NWPA is invoked for a permit from the Coast Guard, that is a trigger.
MR. EPSTEIN: NWPA is the Navigable Waters Protection Act?
MS. MACNEIL: Yes. The second trigger is federal money. In this industry there are two sources of federal money that are fairly common: loans from ACOA, and research and development money from NRC's IRAP program. Those are two triggers. The third one, which we don't anticipate will be triggered very many times, is the involvement of federal land. Really it is under the Navigable Waters Protection Act and funding that will trigger an assessment.
MR. EPSTEIN: So this is almost a year old, the re-interpretation of the Act?
MS. MACNEIL: Yes.
MR. EPSTEIN: Of course, this is a national requirement so it would apply to aquaculture proposals all across Canada.
MS. MACNEIL: No.
MR. EPSTEIN: Why not?
MS. MACNEIL: We are special in Nova Scotia. For reasons that we can't get answers to, they decided to develop it in Nova Scotia first. As I said, we have not had a lease go through this year, and that is because of the assessment requirement, because up until very recently there weren't even guidelines for how to do an assessment and no assessments have actually been reviewed and approved by DFO. DFO as the responsible agency has that right.
In other parts of the country, they have been allowed to do business as usual. Right now, it is only Nova Scotia that is impacted by this. In Prince Edward Island, for example, there are no sites in that province which actually have an NWPA permit. They were all granted without the involvement of the Coast Guard. That is not necessarily shocking because NWPA permits only became a necessity about four or five years ago, and most of the sites in P.E.I. are older than that. They knew that they were all going to have to have assessments
because they were all going to have to get permits, and what they were allowed to do there was develop class screenings, because shellfish farming is shellfish farming is shellfish farming.
We have not been permitted to do that in Nova Scotia. In fact, the process we have undergone here has been a strange experiment, I think, in how you might want to do it, but we have been the guinea pigs.
MR. EPSTEIN: We better just clarify, I guess, class screenings; this is a term used under CEAA. What this means, I think, is that there are different categories of environmental assessment: some are regarded as reasonably routine, others require a slightly heightened form of scrutiny, and some will, on rare occasions, go to public hearing. That is really the hierarchy, is that right?
[10:00 a.m.]
MS. MACNEIL: Yes, and what they have decided in Prince Edward Island is that because shellfish farming is incredibly repeatable, the same processes are used over and over again. They have been able to develop these class screenings so that if Brian went in to get an assessment done in Prince Edward Island, he would be able to take pretty much a template that had already been established for him, 99 per cent of the work would be done, and he would have to provide specific information from his site. In Nova Scotia if he went in for the same assessment, he would have to start from scratch and provide all of the information, thus the $25,000 price tag.
MR. EPSTEIN: I understand, of course, your point about having difficulty with delays and uncertainties associated with the process, but is it also fair to conclude from what you are saying that the aquaculture industry has grown in Canada and various sites have been established but no environmental assessments have been done of those sites?
MS. MACNEIL: It depends on where you are. In British Columbia, for example, extensive environmental work has been done. There have been three environmental reviews of the industry. So processes have been set up and have been working there that certainly haven't been working here.
MR. EPSTEIN: Those are provincial environmental assessments?
MS. MACNEIL: Yes.
MR. EPSTEIN: You said environmental review, did you mean an environmental assessment under provincial legislation in B.C.?
MS. MACNEIL: No, there have been complete environmental reviews of the legislation and the processes and the procedures in place, and there have been a lot of environmental assessments and not federal, but provincial on-site applications.
MR. EPSTEIN: But there have not been here?
MS. MACNEIL: There haven't been here. For the most part a lot of the leases in Nova Scotia have been here for a long time. I think there are only two places where environmental assessments were done prior to farms going in and those would be in the Annapolis Basin, which was part of the condition under which farms were allowed to go in. There was an assessment done beforehand, baseline information taken, and there has been continual monitoring. For a site in Cape Breton, in Arichat, there wasn't so much assessment done beforehand, but there was a requirement for monitoring.
What we are trying to do, as an industry - without government leadership, that's for sure - is establish that we now have the baseline system, the environmental assessment will take place, but there is no monitoring system in Nova Scotia. What the industry is going to do is take the lead and develop that monitoring system. There are monitoring systems for finfish throughout the world and we are going to look at those and adapt them for Nova Scotia's conditions. There is no such thing as a shellfish monitoring system, so we will be creating something from scratch.
MR. EPSTEIN: Sounds like a very good idea. On the other hand, if the application of the federal environmental assessment legislation has only been declared since December of last year, I guess I wonder what the basis is for suggesting that it takes two and one-half years to process an application since it is less than a year in which that requirement has been in place.
MR. MUISE: We are not simply focusing in on one point which could delay a licence . . .
MR. EPSTEIN: So if it takes two and one-half years, it is not exclusively attributable to the environment assessment.
MR. MUISE: No. We applied for our farm expansion well before the Environmental Assessment Act came in. As you suggested, there is only a single point of submitting an application to the process, but we do have to respond to the concerns of every one of those 26- plus-11 agencies. While the application process to the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries is one application, it is vetted to all these other groups. Every one of them have their input and we have to respond to it. So, yes, the application itself is not a big deal, it is the entire process that becomes very costly, very expensive.
Again, please, I would just like to make one other point on the environmental assessment. I haven't heard any complaints about undergoing environmental assessment from our industry. All we have been asking, and we have been putting a lot of pressure on the federal government, is please set some standards. We hired an environmental consultant to come in and do a review of the proposed assessment. At our semi-annual meeting three weeks ago, he basically said that if he were to look at an application, he couldn't tell whether it was for a nuclear power plant or a mussel farm.
I would ask you, as legislators, what use is a document like that? If it is so broad and so absolute that it can't even discern the impact of a little mussel farm versus a nuclear power plant, what is the use? All we are asking is to please set some standards so at least we have a target to aim at. Right now, even within the habitat branch, I understand, of DFO, this tremendous debate is still ongoing about what constitutes an environmental impact.
Some people are taking the stand that any disruption of a critical component - that means, any interference whatsoever of a critical environmental component, without even defining what a critical environmental component is. We get into that issue as well. All the way over to people saying that the class assessment is fine. A mussel farm is a mussel farm is a mussel farm. They have been here for 30 years and there has been really no negative impact.
That philosophical debate is still ongoing within the department that now is holding up our applications. That is the problem we are having. All during the while, we are trying to keep our applications moving forward at cost to us. It is like trying to hit a moving target. It is the best way I can describe it.
It is very random at this point, or appears to be very random. If you happen to sit with a group of people - if the application happens to land on a desk of someone who has a bit of a less polarized stance on what constitutes environmental disruption, you may go through. If you get someone who is an absolute theoretical ecologist, it probably will not go through. All we need is a standard. That is all we need. That is all we are asking and we will undergo the process because we are quite convinced that we will meet the requirements.
MR. EPSTEIN: Once a disruption is identified, don't they ask how you propose to mitigate it? Is that the next part?
MR. MUISE: Yes, there are all kinds of things like that.
MR. EPSTEIN: I think so.
Can I ask another question, Mr. Chairman? Do we have time?
MR. CHAIRMAN: Sure.
MR. EPSTEIN: Okay. There was reference earlier to true coastal zone planning as a desirable objective, or as a desirable mechanism that might assist the industry. Can I hear a bit about this? What exactly did you mean by that?
MS. MACNEIL: Well, I think, as I mentioned, there are many competing uses for the marine environment. This is not just in Nova Scotia but in areas where they have tried to sit down and sort of map out, what will we do here, how are we going to use this environment, aquaculture has always been given what is left over. After everybody else has their say, well, maybe we can put aquaculture there.
There was an exercise, I believe, in Mahone Bay several years ago. It is often pointed to as, well, this is the way we should go around the province. Again, it was, we will decide what everybody else needs and if there is anything left over we will look at, maybe, putting a mussel farm there. What we need, I think, in this province is some sort of a process that really looks at all of the users equally and determines what is the best use.
As I mentioned earlier, productivity on a hectare of a salmon farm is fairly high. There is a good financial return and that means jobs for the community and spin-off effects for the province.
For instance, on Thursday, we have one of the largest - actually, I think the largest feed producer in the world coming to meet with us because they are considering expanding into Nova Scotia. They see that the industry is capable of growing here and they want to be part of that growth. But, too often, there are no processes in place which allow those sorts of contributions aquaculture can make to the community, to be aired.
MR. EPSTEIN: Is your association involved in assessing potential sites on the coastline of Nova Scotia?
MS. MACNEIL: The association isn't. Basically, you are seeing the association here. We have an office and a computer, and that is about it. The province has undertaken that in some specific areas. Brian, you were involved in that, I believe. Oh, that wasn't the province, that was another organization down in Yarmouth County.
MR. MUISE: Yes.
MS. MACNEIL: Assessing sites.
MR. MUISE: There were, I think, maybe, two studies in Nova Scotia that tried to get ahead of the process, to look at opportunities ahead of time. Generally, the proponents of our industry and applicants, farmers, potential farmers, sort of jumped that queue by submitting applications and selecting sites for a variety of reasons.
MR. EPSTEIN: Well, I remember seeing, I think, a DFO map of the coastline of Nova Scotia that showed areas that were closed to the shell fishery. It seems to me, it was pretty extensive. That is, there was a huge amount of our coastline that was closed to shell fishery. This would apply, I am sure, to aquaculture, as well as to, kind of, wild shell fishery, if that is the right term. The reasons, of course, are because the waters are polluted and the product is not likely to be safe for consumption. The pollution would come either from industrial pollution or it would come from sewage going into the receiving waters. So it seems to me, you are already starting with a lot of the coastline, not appropriate, just from that perspective. Would that be the first constraint you would face?
MR. MUISE: That's one, yes. Those sorts of issues are handled by Environment Canada, in terms of the growing water classification system they put in place, which is done under an international agreement between Canada and the United States.
There are quite a number of areas in which the water quality is below what we would consider acceptable for growing shellfish, but there are also a number of areas on the Eastern Shore, parts of Mahone Bay - well, throughout the province - that are closed to shellfish, not because there is a problem, it is because they have never been classified. The water surveys that are required under this international protocol have never been conducted.
I just went through the process and Environment Canada has been very cooperative with us. They allow me to go out and take the water samples in a certified manner. They train me how to do the samples; I deliver them; I pay for all the water samples and they will classify an area. They are very cooperative that way. Again, we have to incur the expense and it takes a little over a year to do that sort of thing.
There is a combination. Yes, degraded water quality, primarily due to human use, and large areas of our province simply are not surveyed often enough to retain international classification. So it is a combination of factors.
MR. EPSTEIN: Just going back to the coastal zone planning, I take it, what you have in mind is a kind of round-table discussion among all potential interested parties, is that right?
MS. MACNEIL: Yes. Under some sort of format that would establish some ground rules for those discussions and just really considering, sort of, what happens in the near shore area of a community, and what is compatible with that activity and what isn't.
For instance, there are a lot of public comments about aquaculture not being compatible with lobster fishing. It has been well publicized in other provinces but in this province, interestingly enough, the lobster fishermen love the fish farms. Lobsters are scavengers and they look for food and they find ready food underneath fish cages. So at lobster season, you know, everybody's best friend is the fish farm because they want to put their traps as close to that farm as possible. There are competing uses but there are complementary uses. It would be nice if these things could be done - could be discussed and some decisions made or directions suggested - before there is the emotional baggage of an actual application.
We have seen, over the years, that some applications go through very easily, in terms of the public process, not the government process. There are concerns and the concerns are answered. The farmer has done his research or her research, they have gone out to the community, they have talked to a lot of people. So by the time the actual public hearing comes, it is really not a big deal. Others, there are polarized views in the community. There is no mechanism to get people together to talk. When they actually talk, they are adversaries and nothing good ever comes from that sort of process.
MR. EPSTEIN: So this would be a marine equivalent of municipal land use planning strategy, something in which you put out a plan. . .
MS. MACNEIL: Something similar to that, yes.
MR. EPSTEIN: . . . and maybe even a zone in place?
MS. MACNEIL: Yes. There is a long history of that in the municipalities and, for the most part, I think, it does take into consideration what is the best use of the area. We are not always going to get things our way. We understand that, but if there is a process, it would help.
MR. MUISE: In a recent presentation we made to the Minister of Fisheries, Mr. Fage, we requested, basically - and, again, I appreciate the perspective you folks have as representing the public. The process now, when it becomes polarized, puts the local politicians in very difficult positions, that the stances become highly emotional, highly inflamed. Nobody wins in a situation like that - was please try to work with us to put a process in place that takes some of the emotion out of it and gets into some sort of fact-based decision making with regard to locating businesses. I am not saying that people's aesthetic concerns aren't respected, but let's do it in a fashion that doesn't allow this emotional, confrontational approach to happen. It has happened continually. Everybody loses.
It puts people like yourselves in very difficult positions because usually you are going to have one or two proponents for a business and all it takes is four or five opponents to skew things politically, put it that way. So it was a lose-lose process.
The gentleman over here asked about the growth rate in our industry. We could speculate and say that the lost opportunity cost in this business has been enormous. Yes, our industry is growing at a 16 per cent rate but, as we have seen in New Brunswick, it can grow at a 79 per cent, 80 per cent or 90 per cent rate per year and be quite sustainable if conducted properly. We can get into speculative talk like that but I think there is a tremendous lost opportunity cost. There is a lost opportunity here.
We are trying to put a positive, constructive process in place and we have always said we would be willing to work on it. It is just difficult to define that within the reality of Nova Scotia and the situation that has developed over the years.
MR. EPSTEIN: I have some other questions but I will certainly yield to other members now.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Well, perhaps we will come back to you then, Mr. Epstein.
MR. EPSTEIN: Sure.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mrs. Baillie.
MRS. MURIEL BAILLIE: I am kind of interested in the education part of it. The Nova Scotia Agricultural College recently opened up a centre, right? I was wondering, what courses are they offering? What are the chances of those young students getting work?
MS. MACNEIL: The Nova Scotia Agricultural College is actually giving a Bachelors Degree in Animal Science with a concentration in aquaculture. They are also developing a Master's program as well. At the community college level, the school in Shelburne is turning out technicians after a one or two year program, depending on what they want to take.
The prospect for the technicians finding work is fairly high. These folks have very hands-on technical experience, if you will. They make a fairly easy transition from the classroom to most small businesses. The folks with the degree tend to expect to come in at a company higher than a fish feeder, shall we say. Given the size of our industry, there have not been a lot of opportunities for middle management jobs for them but I do know some that are working in the industry in New Brunswick. Some have continued on in research and are doing well there.
I think the placement rate is high but it is not specifically for Nova Scotia. They work, basically, across the country and I think they actually have some in New Zealand right now and they look for opportunities. There is also a program in Newfoundland from the Marine Institute and another community college program in New Brunswick. So there are a fair number of people being trained in the industry.
If we could achieve the sort of growth we think we can achieve in Nova Scotia, I think you would see a lot more of these students working here and coming into the companies at a level where they are contributing what they want to contribute. They are well trained and there is a lot of communication between the schools and the industry to make sure that the training is appropriate to what is happening and changes in technology and practices. I have seen these people make a real contribution to the companies they go into.
MRS. BAILLIE: So right now, we are actually training them and training them well, and possibly exporting them, would you say?
MS. MACNEIL: Well, unfortunately, we are doing that in a lot of our schools. Interestingly, they keep in touch because they want to come back to Nova Scotia. They do keep in touch with farmers, with my office. They tend to come to our annual conference if they are in town so they can meet one-on-one with growers, find out what the prospects are for, maybe, next year. For the most part, they do want to come back.
MRS. BAILLIE: Another question I had. You talked about mussel farming. Usually you are quite friendly with the fishermen. When you make application, when you get these people against it, would you say it is more the recreational people or the tourists that have the summer homes and the cottages in that area? Also, is it usually a recreational area like the beaches that has the best water for these type of farms?
MR. MUISE: Yes, you are correct on that and well, it depends on the situation but there is a strong lobby against our industry by boaters and, often, cottagers. That is a siting issue. That usually comes up ahead of time in the hearing process. There is a perception, again, very often a misconception. I have listened to some of the discussion that took place among the local residents out in St. Margaret's Bay where people start citing cases of tons of waste feed washing ashore on beaches, that sort of thing, we have been looking, I have no idea where that type of information comes from, we just can't find it. Those are fears that get expounded.
Again, it is a combination of a valid concern about the recreational value, these people come to the rural areas to recreate, and there are valid issues about, we don't come here to see more business right in our face. On the other hand I can cite a case where Shelburne Harbour, where a farm met with a lot of opposition but it turned out that the licence had been approved years ago so the farm located, a local newspaper man went down and did a survey, stood on the wharf and did a survey, asking people about the impact, and most people were not even aware, and he handed them a set of binoculars and said, there is the farm. It was only a kilometre away and no one could even see it from the public wharf.
We have failed in our public relations aspect of our industry. I would attribute much of the confrontation to misinformation, quite honestly. As far as siting farms, beach-type areas, the technical term or biological term for those are high-energy areas. There is no mud
and silt around simply because the waves are so high. Those are not the types of areas we want. We want areas that are a little more sheltered. The areas you are looking at are sort of mud-bottom areas where you can put good anchors down, that sort of thing.
Where you hear complaints about people concerned about beaches and stuff, again, the fear of all this waste material coming out and washing up on their beaches, there has never been a case of that. It may be a valid concern, I am not saying these people are not sincere, I am just saying there is no evidence that that takes place. Those are the types of issues we like to try to get to and discuss in the community at the community level, and often we don't get there. I don't know if that answers your question.
MRS. BAILLIE: Yes, it does. I guess the public has to be more educated.
MR. MUISE: It is partly our fault, yes, and the process itself. If I could make one other point, just getting back to your previous point about where these young fellows are going to go with a higher level of education. I just spoke at the Agricultural College, and one of the pleas I put out was, get your degree, get out, get some experience in the industry, and hopefully within a few years when all us baby boomers start retiring there will be places for these people in government, because the last time I looked the departments in charge of our industry, there is not one single individual, no I am sorry, I take that back, two months ago one individual with some industrial experience actually entered that department.
We have departments that are regulating with absolutely no commercial production experience, which is a sad statement considering that our industry has been around for over 30 years. If you want to see another place for those university-level graduates, that was my plea, please get your degree, get some experience, and surely the Civil Service or the Public Service will be opening up within a few years to get these experienced-type people in there who have a real sense of the industry potential and what the reality is.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Boudreau.
MR. BRIAN BOUDREAU: First of all, I want to congratulate you for your presentation. It is obvious you are very well educated in this and you present yourself very well. Most of the questions I had were already asked. The involvement from the feds, Ms. MacNeil, I think you indicated that in this province the federal government gets involved more than in other provinces. Why?
MS. MACNEIL: There is a number of different combinations of how things happen. In Prince Edward Island for instance the feds actually issue the aquaculture licence, but there is a very strong support of provincial department backing the industry. I guess in Nova Scotia there are a couple of issues that we deal with. The Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, what was Fisheries and Aquaculture, has a very small aquaculture division with a very small budget. I think there has been a reluctance to get involved in some issues, because of
resources or whatever, so DFO has been able to step in. DFO is 95 per cent a regulatory body when it comes to aquaculture. They admit that themselves, the deputy minister mentioned it at a conference in P.E.I. recently. They are looking at regulation of the industry. When they see an area where there seems to be less regulation or less interest in the industry, then it is natural for them to get more involved.
There has been resistance in the other provinces. In New Brunswick, for instance, where the government is incredibly supportive of the industry, they have just told DFO, we have an MOU, these are your responsibilities, you do it. These are our responsibilities, we will do it; leasing licensing is our responsibility and you stay out of it. That certainly hasn't happened here. There is that opportunity that has been presented to them.
MR. MUISE: If I could just make one addition to that, again to perhaps educate you folks, one of the comments you often hear from the federal departments is that federal regulations and policies are applied universally. There is nothing further from the truth. I can tell you that right now, and I can sit here and cite case after case where the exact same federal department, even within the same jurisdiction - let's say Scotia-Fundy, that overlaps parts of Newfoundland, coming down into Nova Scotia, over to P.E.I. and up into New Brunswick - different policies are applied, completely different in case after case. This is one you will always hear, about environmental assessments, about habitat issues, about all those sorts of things. I would like to go on record saying that it is categorically nonsense. They are applied at random based very much upon local opinion. If you want evidence of that, we could provide evidence of that.
MR. BOUDREAU: The opposition to the industry, do you feel the individual environmentalists and environmental groups are major competitors, are they the opposing factor here, or is it normally the local community itself?
MR. MUISE: It depends on the instance. When you talk about aquaculture, it is like saying agriculture. Again, you have to start breaking it out, are we talking about chicken farming, pig farming, organic farming, all those sorts of things. In my own case, mussel farming, we were just weeks away from getting organic certification for our product, which means completely pollution-free, pesticide-free, all those sorts of things, met all those standards. We have a very good relationship with the people at the Organic Growers Association. I remember one time even the Ecology Action Centre called shellfish farming the type of sustainable business we want. It depends on the issue and it depends on the group.
Do we see them as opponents? We see them in terms of public lobby. We are very often head to head in trying to sway the public. When it comes right down to discussing issues, we are very comfortable, and we get along well on some issues. Again, this whole environmental side of things is growing and becoming more elaborate. Those folks are trying to define their own terms, as are we. It is not an easy answer, it is situational. We haven't seen
a lot of the larger environmental groups come out against our industry here; there are some local concerns, local opposition.
The issues are more local in terms of the people right around an individual bay, their concerns about what may happen to their property, that sort of thing. It is not very straightforward and each case seems to be different. It depends on the scale. If you are going in with a very large proposal, it seems to attract a lot more attention, as it should, as compared to some.
Again, does the person come from within your own community or is it someone from the outside? We are seeing more and more people from outside the community. As businesses are consolidating, ownership is coming into the hands of people who are not necessarily from that community, so there are concerns expressed there. That is a public relations issue that we address as well. It is not very straightforward, Mr. Boudreau.
MR. BOUDREAU: When an application is made for an operation, are you made aware?
MS. MACNEIL: No.
MR. MUISE: Are we made aware . . .
MR. BOUDREAU: If I applied for an application in Cape Breton, would your association be made aware of that?
MR. MUISE: No.
MR. BOUDREAU: So you are not consulted on it or . . .
MR. MUISE: No.
MR. BOUDREAU: One of the things I would like just for information purposes, there was a licence issued in my community, a rural area, just a short while ago. The residents in the community, there were 18 or 20 of them, went berserk. They didn't have any knowledge whatsoever of this operation, they were not consulted, there was no communication either by the government agencies or the developer. Once the developer sat down and discussed the development with the residents, they didn't have a problem with it, but they got kind of paranoid because they thought they were getting something pulled over their eyes, people were trying to hide something.
[10:30 a.m.]
I think public awareness and education, as Mrs. Baillie indicated, is a very important part here, at least in my neck of the woods. We were talking a lot about growing, but isn't processing a very important part? Is that a separate entity?
MR. MUISE: No, you are right, we sort of neglected that aspect of the whole business. We just sort of lumped that in under spin-off jobs. Once our business becomes established, the product often ends up moving through traditional channels, by sub-leasing various fish plants, that sort of thing, and on the South Shore we are talking finfish. Most of our shellfish owners tend to ship through just two or three dedicated plants which were set up within our industry, so less traditional channels. Again, there is a combination but yes, that is where the jobs really start happening. We can produce a million pounds of mussels - the three of us on our farm - which in turn can turn around and create five jobs in the processing plant. You are absolutely right, it is another aspect that we tend to ignore.
MR. BOUDREAU: It is fair to say that this industry does have a fair impact on the employment levels in the province.
MR. MUISE: Absolutely. I think the last time we checked we were looking at somewhere between 300 people to 500 people employed in this industry now.
MS. MACNEIL: Right now 1,100 people are employed and that is either full-time, or part-time positions longer than six months. There is not as much seasonal work as there used to be because more operations are going year-round to meet the market demand.
MR. BOUDREAU: After the initial issuing of a licence, there is still a process in place, inspections, there is a follow-up, the department continues to stay involved in that operation, is that correct?
MR. MUISE: Yes.
MR. BOUDREAU: As you indicated before, Mr. Muise, after the issuance of the licence itself, they very rarely have any operating problem with the individual sites.
MR. MUISE: Usually by the time a site is located people get to know one another and you don't go through government agencies anymore, you pick up the phone and you call the person directly involved in the farm. Again, we have been a bit harsh on the governments here, but I have a very good relationship with some of the extension people in the provincial Department of Fisheries and you will hear about problems ahead of time. If somebody does call in a complaint, the people at the Department of Fisheries will call and say, we got a call from so and so, could you please go have a talk with them, so they are very good that way. I just wish they had more resources to get out and give us a hand in the field.
On a one-to-one basis, this is how our industry grew, despite the official policies and things. Our industry has grown on a personal basis, personal cooperation within the industry, cooperation in the communities, cooperation with the department, wherever we can. We were trying to make our points here about the difficulty in growing the business but at the same time, at a personal level, once these businesses are established, they become workable and very sustainable.
MR. BOUDREAU: My final question is, how can this committee help you?
MR. MUISE: For one thing, help us expedite that process with the environmental assessment. Please try to get the federal departments involved to finish their internal disputes or debates, whatever is going on, and come out with some solid recommendations on the criteria we have to meet; that is a big one right now. With regard to the process for reviewing - especially with the public input - of licences and applications, please help us set up a structure that is more fact based than emotion based and highly emotional, highly politicized. Again, we are more than willing to make the effort, as you say, we don't like to see applications land on a community's head without prior consultation. I think that would be a bit of an exception, the process does sort of encourage people to get out and do the work ahead of time, that is for sure, that sort of thing.
Where else could you help immediately? I am not particularly concerned about financing per se, we have been able to access financing. I have been able to access financing myself through my own business and my own resources. Again, the playing field is much more level now than it has been in the past. You have to realize that all through the 1980's and the early 1990's our neighbours were providing direct financial assistance to people competing in the same market place. Now, within the last four years or five years, that playing field has been levelled in a particular way where no new monies are coming in.
I think you can appreciate it, if you are a business operator and somebody gave you a 60 per cent grant to put up all your buildings, all your capital equipment, it is the gift that keeps on giving. For the life of those assets, you still have a competitive advantage over me. We are still struggling in that environment with regard to our neighbours. That has sort of levelled out. But, you know, we survive and we are still going.
MS. MACNEIL: There are a couple of other things. I don't believe this province has ever recognized aquaculture as a legitimate industry. We were not even mentioned in the government's blue book. We went through it, word for word, but there is no mention of the industry in there. The debate should be over by now. We have been growing fish in Nova Scotia since the early 1850's. We have been doing it commercially for 30-some years. It is time to say, this is an industry and deserving of some recognition.
There is no development policy within the government. As I said earlier, this has nothing to do with a particular Party. We have had several Parties in, back and forth, and there has never really been that sustained growth. I believe several Premiers ago, there was a discussion of $35 million - long before my time. We never saw it. It never happened.
As Brian said, money is not the issue, it is that support system that is there. I guess I have been here almost 5.5 years working with the association. When we started, there were four extension workers whose job it was to help the growers to look at emerging technologies, to keep all that under scrutiny so that the best and the newest information was available. We have one now and that person also does just about everything else. The aquaculture division has lost that technical expertise but we seem to have more paper people.
I realize the government is trying to get leaner and more efficient, and every business person applauds that type of effort but that doesn't mean that you cannot look strategically at certain divisions and say, really, we don't have what we need in that division, some sort of commitment.There is no commitment on the part of government in this province - again, there has never been - to developing an industry.
We certainly hoped, when the Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture and the Department of Agriculture merged, we would see synergies created between the people who look after terrestrial farming and the people who look after fish farming. That certainly has not occurred yet. I am sure you have all been made aware of the new structure. Fisheries is here and agriculture is here. Aquaculture is not a fishery and it is not agriculture, it is something in between and we really need access to all of those sorts of issues.
On the federal side, for instance, we are looking at access to the types of programs that are available to terrestrial farmers like income stabilization, crop insurance, compensation for eradication of stocks and those sorts of things. Nothing like that exists for aquaculture. We had a case last year where the virus, infectious salmon anaemia, was found in Nova Scotia. In New Brunswick, when that was found, the fish were destroyed and the farmers were compensated for it. In Nova Scotia, there was no compensation and the fish farmer had to endure the loss on his own.
We are trying to grow an industry that has to compete in a world market but we start off with a couple of black marks against us. On the other hand, as Brian mentioned, there are people who have been doing it in this province for a long time, in spite of what may have come and what may not have been done to support them. We have some of the best and brightest. We have this resource in the province that we are wasting.
Everybody wants to see development in rural areas and coastal areas. Aquaculture cannot replace any of the traditional fisheries. It never should have even been thought that it could. But it can complement what is already going on in these communities and it can
expand on people's opportunities to stay there and earn good livings, as we have seen in Charlotte County, New Brunswick.
MR. MUISE: If I could add another point where you folks could help directly. It has always been a policy in this province, since the Aquaculture Act first came in back in the early 1980's, that this province will not hand out monies for direct production subsidies or capital subsidies, that sort of thing, but we will give you strong legislation. And they did. The Aquaculture Act came in, one of the first Acts in North America. Under that Act, we could - once we went through the licence and lease process - we had our leases for 20 years in 10 year renewals. Amendments to the Act several years ago then reduced that renewal time down to five years. So it was a hang back of your lease period.
Again, I keep getting back to the Environmental Assessment Act and the removal of a long-standing licence from a company out in St. Margarets Bay. When their licence came up for renewal, it wasn't 24 hours later, our banker started saying - we have been financing ourselves - well, given that the province now goes through a full review process when your leases are renewed, and then they are going to cut them back to five years, we are now going to cut our long-term financing back to the term of your lease so that you don't get 20 year capital money anymore, you get 5 year capital money. Have you ever tried to run a business with 5 year capital money when your amortization and your equipment is 10 years and 12 years?
Do you see what I mean now? You get a whittling back of legislative support. Where we were disadvantaged in the past by lack of financial support, we are now being disadvantaged by this type of legislative whittling back the basis of our existence, our financing, our ability to finance ourselves. If you want to help, there is the place.
We are all ready trying to meet with the Canadian Bankers Association to try to take a hard look at just what these policies mean and just our financial situation. We had tried to get a meeting here in the fall but, things being what they are, we are very busy. It hasn't happened.
Those are the types of issues, those are the types of cumulative impediments that keep cropping up that we have to address constantly in our business.
MS. MACNEIL: Just as an aside to that, the Farm Credit Corporation, which has come into Nova Scotia in the last couple of years and has become, probably, the major financier of most farm activities, has just been ordered not to lend any more money in Nova Scotia until a total review of the policies in Nova Scotia is undertaken by their national headquarters. The bottom line is that they don't feel there is enough security in the industry.
If you remove that financier, these much talked about, much publicized failures of large corporations that have had a lot of government money pumped into them, every time one of those things happen, another bank decides they are not interested in aquaculture. If we lose the Farm Credit Corp., quite honestly, there will be a number of business failures very quickly.
MR. MUISE: It was the Farm Credit Corp. and ACOA that allowed me to set up my last business for the last seven years, six years. Without them, there is no way I would have ever been able to entertain getting involved in this business.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Okay, thank you. We are going to have to move right along there. Kerry Morash.
MR. KERRY MORASH: I am kind of interested in the insurance in your business. As you have said, a jack-knife can make quite a difference in your profits in a very short period of time. I am kind of wondering, who would insure you and what kind of insurances you can get for the different types of aquaculture activities that take place, and just some general information on that line?
MS. MACNEIL: There are two major insurance providers: one out of New Brunswick and one here out of Halifax. They provide insurance for accidental loss, maybe due to weather; to deliberate loss, as Brian mentioned in this case we were talking about; and to mechanical failures. It is an expensive insurance to purchase and it is required if you have financing. It is expensive but you have to have it. The banks require it. ACOA, for instance, if you are borrowing money from ACOA, they would require it.
There is no insurance in place at the present time for specific diseases. For instance, we mentioned the infectious salmon anaemia virus that really devastated the New Brunswick industry a couple of years ago. There are no insurance programs available. Well, let me rephrase that. Insurance is possible for those but they are at such a rate that it is not worthwhile to buy it. Normally, the deductible is 20 per cent of the loss. Insurance is necessary and important but certainly not going to replace all of the loss, as it doesn't in most people's personal insurance either.
MR. MORASH: Okay, thank you.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Okay. We have a few more questions. I will ask that you just ask one quick question, if you would, please. The first one on the list is Mr. Chipman.
MR. CHIPMAN: Yes, I won't take very long. I was just reading some information in the book I was provided here. They talked about the amount of food or wild fish used to produce so many tons of harvestable fish. There is talk about lice, food colouring and it goes on and on. This is by a reporter. Do you feel the media has portrayed your industry fairly?
Certainly they haven't here. This guy has a cottage, obviously, on St. Margarets Bay.
MR. MUISE: Yes.
MR. CHIPMAN: But, you know, people read this sort of thing and, automatically, they say, well, these are dangerous, we don't want them. I guess that is my question, have you been treated fairly by the media?
MR. MUISE: Generally, as fairly as, maybe, any other industry. When they sense a controversy, they tend to inflame the controversy.
MR. CHIPMAN: Let's not say treated, let's say portrayed.
MR. MUISE: Portrayed? They have certainly portrayed one side of our industry, completely ignoring the fact that most of those products are already used in agriculture, including feed colourants, all that sort of thing, they are totally natural feed colourants. It is the same thing used for colouring eggs, egg yolks. It is the exact same stuff. We come under all the same regulations as agriculture, plus an additional regulation.
Again, I take that back on ourselves, too. We have not had the resources, nor, maybe, the basic understanding. Most of us are farmers. We don't know how to play the publicity game. We have obviously failed at it. We keep going on facts and facts are not what the public want. They want emotion issues, that sort of thing. I guess, from a public relations standpoint, we have dropped the ball, as well. As a general statement, I would say, no, we have not been treated in a balanced way, certainly, by the media.
I can give you a very quick example of one case with Costas Halavrezos on Regular Noon, a widely listened-to CBC program. I remember an interview. I was driving down to a course I was teaching in Shelburne and listening to an interview where he interviewed - it was like the arts group in Annapolis Royal. He was asking what they were doing and they talked about the various things going on in the arts community in Annapolis Royal. How do you get your funding? What type of issues do you get involved in? Well, we were strongly against aquaculture development in the Annapolis Basin. We led that lobby because we didn't want the environmental degradation. How were you funded? Well, Saturday night we are having a salmon dinner as a fund-raiser. He said, well, where did you get the salmon? From New Brunswick.
People don't make the connection. As long as it is not in my backyard. There hasn't been wild-caught salmon, East Coast salmon available in 18 years in this province. They were using aquaculture salmon for fund-raising dinners to fight aquaculture. Like I say, it is a misconception out there, not thinking the issue through. Costas was aware and he made a comment about it.
MR. CHIPMAN: Right. The infectious salmon anaemia in New Brunswick, was that paid for by the federal or provincial government?
MS. MACNEIL: Both.
MR. MUISE: Yes.
MR. CHIPMAN: But they didn't pay anything here?
MS. MACNEIL: No.
MR. CHIPMAN: It's odd, isn't it?
MS. MACNEIL: No, it is not odd. This is the norm. The provincial government in New Brunswick went to Ottawa, sought out different sources of funding, found one that would be appropriate. It was actually the emergency funding under DND. It is the same fund that looked after the ice storm victims in Quebec. There was money there. They just determined that this was an emergency for this industry. Funding was put in place so that if you had to destroy your fish, either because they were sick or they were trying to prevent the spread, you were compensated for it.
In Nova Scotia, when ISA was discovered - it was discovered subclinically and that means it was not actually the disease but the virus had been discovered - the association immediately took the lead and organized an international workshop. They brought all the experts in from Norway and Scotland where they were already dealing with ISA, and people from New Brunswick because they had gained a lot of experience, and said, okay, what do we do? How do we prevent this from becoming the disaster it was in New Brunswick? There were several issues that were indicated but one was, if you find it, even subclinically, you destroy the fish.
The day after that workshop, the experts that were brought in were brought in to meet with the Deputy Minister of Fisheries at the time and his comment was, the salmon industry in Nova Scotia is not worth as much as blood worms. Therefore, we are not putting any money into it. That was the development decision in Nova Scotia - it is not worth it. Unfortunately, we get that a lot.
MR. MUISE: So if I could step in here and bring our conversation around full force, now that you have had two hours of us haranguing you and, hopefully, educating you, you asked the question, why has the industry grown so slowly here?
The industry in Nova Scotia has grown so slowly because it is not a good environment in which to risk capital. The successful businesses in Nova Scotia - as is my own - the ones that have been around here for 10 or 15 years borrow money and invest money very
cautiously. They employ a high level of sweat equity. Now, you can only grow a business so quickly on sweat equity. You can grow a business a lot faster by investing capital equipment, that sort of thing. This has not been a good environment. Nova Scotia has not been a good place to invest capital. It has been a wonderful place to invest sweat equity in local communities and grow little businesses very slowly and very cautiously, always keeping your head down, being very careful of what is coming.
There is your answer, it was a bit premature for me to throw that out an hour and one-half ago. Keep your head down and watch your business very carefully, and don't borrow too much money.
MR. CHIPMAN: But it is no more risky here than it would be in the State of Maine or wherever, would it?
MS. MACNEIL: It is riskier because the support systems aren't in place.
MR. CHIPMAN: But not because of disease.
MR. MUISE: No, it is because you are on your own. You rise and fall on your own.
MR. EPSTEIN: The industry in New Brunswick seems to be quite large compared with what we have in Nova Scotia. At the same time, in New Brunswick, they have also had some problems. They had the ISA virus that you talked about in which more than 1 million fish were destroyed, and they have had sea lice outbreaks, and I think they have also had fairly significant discharges of nitrogen and phosphorous coming from the aquaculture establishments. What I wonder is whether the industry here has had any of these problems, and if so, what has been the nature of the problems? If you haven't, what accounts for the differences between here and New Brunswick?
MS. MACNEIL: The industry in New Brunswick is pretty well concentrated in a very small geographic area. It is like sending your kids to day care, if one kid has a cold, everybody is going to get it. There has been that problem; if there is a problem on one site, it tends to become magnified.
In Nova Scotia, our industry is incredibly far apart. It is a small industry, less than 1 per cent of our coastline is used. There hasn't been the push that there has been in New Brunswick to start up a lot of farms. On the physical side, we haven't had the same types of issues. We have had one case of full-blown ISA. Interestingly enough this is a strange little virus; records have been found of this virus over 100 years old. It is not an aquaculture virus, it just happens that this time around aquaculture was the culprit. In this one farm, the strain we had in Nova Scotia was not the same strain they had in New Brunswick, so some other vector brought it here as opposed to whatever brought it to New Brunswick. It was
contained, it was dealt with, and we go on. We are very vigilant in watching for it because we know how devastating it can be.
The fact that the farms are so widely spaced and very small in terms of the scale of farms in New Brunswick or in British Columbia, we haven't tended to have the same problems. We certainly haven't tended to have the same output problems, again, because of size and the way our farms are sited.
MR. EPSTEIN: Do your members use the pesticide salmosin?
MR. MUISE: No, it has never been used. The last pesticide against sea lice was used here five, six years ago, now, six seasons ago, and that was in one instance in Cape Breton, used once. We don't have the number of problems, our farms are more broadly dispersed. That was the last treatment for sea lice that I was aware of. I just finished doing an environmental review for the federal Department of the Environment as part of my contracting work, and some of the facts revealed show dramatic differences between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
MR. EPSTEIN: So you don't use pesticides here?
MR. MUISE: Pesticides, no. Vaccines are used regularly. This is one of the reasons we don't have many disease outbreaks, that sort of thing. There were very few cases of even antibiotics being used, and that is always done under prescription from the provincial vet. There is no self-prescription going on in this industry, not the way it is in many other industries.
MR. EPSTEIN: So if we were to do a coastal zone planning exercise here, we should keep in mind the New Brunswick experience of having too many too close together.
MR. MUISE: Exactly. If I could just add something, you mentioned two specific elements, nitrogen and phosphorous. Phosphorous is usually the first limiting element in fresh waters and nitrogen is usually the first limiting nutrient in sea waters. Of course, our industry has been lambasted as being, my God, you are putting nitrogen and phosphorous into the environment. DFO has been against us, and some environmental concerns have been expressed.
Interestingly enough, working in my office last night, listening to CBC, one of the feature articles was on a new solution being proposed by DFO and the University of B.C. They found their waters out there are limited in nitrogen and phosphorous, so they have a large-scale program now inputting slow-released nitrogen and phosphorous fertilizers into their freshwater systems.
These are value judgements people are making. There is very little science at the basis of many of these things. This is the point we are trying to get to here. Please, let's all get together, make our value judgements about what is acceptable, and then keep on going, and go from there. Please, let's not just keep hopping all over the place. We are the pariahs of the coastal zone, yet it is okay, DFO says, when we do it in the freshwater system because we see it as solving another problem, we want more salmon and trout in our freshwater streams.
MR. EPSTEIN: It is not a value judgement if there is an algae bloom.
MR. MUISE: That is what they are trying to do, they are trying to stimulate algae in order to feed the invertebrate species within the streams so the fish can feed.
MR. EPSTEIN: But not a bloom. The whole point about bloom is that it is problematic for the other organisms there because you end up robbing the whole system of oxygen.
MR. MUISE: When you get to the point blooms are so excessive that they actually collapse upon themselves, they use up nutrients, and in the rotting process, the decompensation process, they rob oxygen. Yes, of course that is a concern. Has it happened? I don't think it has happened anywhere.
MR. JOHN MACDONELL: I will try to roll these eight questions into one.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Just one question, please.
MR. JOHN MACDONELL: I am a little bit intrigued. What I know about shellfish is that they are filter feeders, if I am right. You had mentioned about the lobster being scavengers and flourishing around some of the finfish pens.
MR. MUISE: The shellfish farms as well; mussel farms are tremendous habitats for lobster.
MR. JOHN MACDONELL: That is what I wanted to ask. I wanted you to, if you could, tell me the impacts, positive as well as negative, of the industry environmentally, some of the good things that have happened, but also some of the things that you have to be aware of. I know Howard has touched on those.
MR. MUISE: If I could address that one first. I ran a mussel farm, and for 30 years I have been working on mussels. I am always amazed, when you pick up a mussel sock, the amount of life that lives on that, anywhere from marine invertebrates to shrimp larvae. It creates a natural reef. We actually put a proposal together about a year or so ago to hire a couple of students - we couldn't get funding for it - to look at that. You are essentially putting a natural reef in place, which has an incredible level of biodiversity. It is just amazing.
My partner was always getting on my back about when I would stop to look at the gear to see what was on it. The idea was to get the mussels aboard and get on with it. They are basically artificial reefs, if you want to look at shellfish farms. So there is that positive aspect.
Again, value judgement, I also had criticism thrown at us from Environment Canada, saying, well, that is an interruption of natural energy flows, whatever nutrients would be going somewhere else and looking after something else. It is that whole business of seeing natural production versus humans as somehow unnatural. You get into that. I don't see humans as unnatural, I see us as part of the whole thing. As long as we don't shoot ourselves in the foot as we go along. It depends on your point of view. I see that as very positive.
The other side of shellfish farming, one of the reasons, I suggest - and there is no scientific evidence of this yet - why Mahone Bay is such an incredible producer of mussels, and certainly in Prince Edward Island, is because of the nutrient run-offs from shoreline development. In Prince Edward Island it is nutrient run-off from agriculture enterprises. The mussel farms in Prince Edward Island and in Mahone Bay, I would say, fall on the amelioration part; we are removing the nutrients, as Mr. Epstein pointed out, which can create dangers of excessive algae blooms. Mussel farms can remove 150 tons of that very easily.
It depends on which side of the fence, what value you put on that. I say we are an amelioration process, not a pollution process. Certainly, the closer you get to a potato farm in P.E.I., the more mussels you can grow per hectare.
MR. JOHN MACDONELL: Do we grow mussels with finfish?
MR. MUISE: No, the regulations prohibit it now because there is fear of cross-contamination or something coming out of the fish, maybe ecoli. I am not talking about sewage ecoli but naturally occurring bacteria that grow on organic surfaces getting into the shellfish. You are asking very difficult questions when you want to get down to coming up with conclusive answers on it. Most of what we are talking about here with environmental concerns and such is at a very fairly superficial level, it is motherhood. Of course you don't want to destroy the environment, yet we drive cars, fly airplanes, build houses and bulldoze the shorefront around Mahone Bay.
I lost a mussel lease in Mahone Bay, by the way, because of public lobbying. The shorefront owner nearby did not want me there, so on Tuesday afternoon my application was turned down, Thursday afternoon three crews arrived on the island by boat, drove through our mussel farm and clear-cut the island so the guy could put a house on it. On the spot where I wanted to put the mussel lease, he put a 60 foot wharf out with creosote timbers. So, forgive me, these are not environmental issues that we are fighting, these are aesthetics, these are value judgements that people are making and we are losing the public battle. So we will stand at any time on environmental issues.
[11:00 a.m.]
Something else positive, not looking at the economic positive side, that almost goes without saying, there are 500 or 700 direct jobs plus all kinds of spin-offs and it comes right into the city here. I had one of the candidates of the last provincial election who, when he found out what I did - I am an aquaculture consultant, I am also an active producer, I live just across the bridge and have probably, in the last 30 years, spent $2.5 million to $3 million at Rainbow Net & Rigging, one company in Burnside Industrial Park. So our industry doesn't just impact small local communities, our suppliers are here, in town - this individual, Frank Cameron, was very shocked that aquaculture had an impact in the riding he was hoping to represent, so there are those types of impacts.
Coming in from the airport two years ago from a vacation, I ended up in a commuter van coming in and the guys in back were obviously a bunch of roughnecks heading from Texas out to the oil development off Sable Island. They were talking about mussels and had been told they had to eat mussels when they got here, lobster and Nova Scotia mussels. That is the type of reputation we are building here, we are known for good, fresh seafood. There was no prompting from me, this took place in the back and I turned around and introduced myself to these guys.
Our industry was supplying mussels to the offshore oil rigs, they were used as biological monitors. If you put mussels down under the rig, they would take up any pollutants that were there, so they are good in situ monitoring sources. When the guys would order them they wouldn't order 500 pounds of mussels, they would order 2,000 pounds at a time and we would ship two of the big grey boxes out. Of course, 500 pounds went under the rig and the rest went into the kitchen for supper and they loved them. That is the type of stuff that is going on, if you want a positive image.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Those are the kinds of stories that should get out.
MR. MUISE: Exactly and we failed at that, at tooting our own horns.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you so much. We were a bit harsh on government and governments are, I guess, cautious and shouldn't approve and fund development proposals of any kind that are not economically sound, obviously. I do, however, feel that safety and environmental issues must be addressed with respect to every industry and also through the input of all sources. Only then can we successfully create an industry with full potential capabilities, I believe.
Ms. MacNeil and Mr. Muise, in spite of the obstacles you have presented us, I wish you and your industry much success and growth, and hopefully with more kindness and understanding from governments as you assume your rightful place as a major resource-based
industry in Nova Scotia. It has been a most informative session for me and I think all members would agree and I thank you again.
MR. MUISE: Thank you.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I will ask committee members to stay for a moment, if they would, to discuss our next agenda. Perhaps we will just move into that, I think on two occasions we have requested input from your caucuses for upcoming presenters and we have not received any feedback. So I am going to plead with you to come up with some proposals to take back to our meeting on November 28th, which will have to be an organizational meeting. Would that be agreeable to all three Parties? Okay, agreed then, we will discuss our future at that time.
One other thing, was there any feedback on the annual report? The annual report was sent out to all members and is everyone satisfied with it? I read it and I thought it was wonderful. I think Darlene deserves a big hand for a job well done. Thank you, Darlene. (Applause)
MRS. DARLENE HENRY (Legislative Committee Clerk): I need signatures on this to sign it off so I can send it out.
MR. CHAIRMAN: So we can do that. Will you pass it around for signatures, please.
MR. BOUDREAU: Mr. Chairman, just before we close I would just like to put it on record that Mr. MacAskill asked me to express his disappointment for not being here. He was held back at a meeting in his constituency this morning.
MR. CHAIRMAN: That is fine, thank you.
The meeting is adjourned.
[The committee adjourned at 11:07 a.m.]