HANSARD

Printed and Published by Nova Scotia Hansard Reporting Services

Mr. John MacDonell (Chairman)

Mr. William Dooks

Mr. William Langille

Mr. Gary Hines

Mr. Charles Parker

Ms. Joan Massey

Mr. Wayne Gaudet

Mr. Keith Colwell

Mr. Gerald Sampson

[Mr. William Dooks was replaced by Mr. Ronald Chisholm.]

[Mr. Wayne Gaudet was replaced by Mr. Russell MacKinnon.]

[Mr. Keith Colwell was replaced by Mr. Harold Theriault.]

In Attendance:

Ms. Mora Stevens

Legislative Committee Clerk

Aquaculture Association of Nova Scotia (AANS)

Mr. Brian Muise

Executive Director

Mr. Brian Blanchard

Secretary, General Manager Scotian Halibut Ltd.

Mr. Glen Brown

Past President, President Admiral Fish Farms

HALIFAX, TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 2004

STANDING COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES

9:00 A.M.

CHAIRMAN

Mr. John MacDonell

MR. CHAIRMAN (Mr. Russell MacKinnon): Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to today's meeting of the Standing Committee on Resources. Today our witnesses are representatives of the Aquaculture Association of Nova Scotia. With us, we have Mr. Brian Muise, Executive Director; Mr. Brian Blanchard, Secretary and General Manager of Scotian Halibut Limited; and Mr. Glen Brown, Past-President of the Association. The process is we'll allow our witnesses some opening comments, probably anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes, at the outside, and then we'll open up the floor for questions by individual members. Before we start, I'll ask the members to introduce themselves, starting on my left with Mr. Langille.

[The committee members introduced themselves.]

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Muise and colleagues, if you want to introduce yourselves personally, that will be fine, and then the floor is yours.

MR. BRIAN MUISE: Mr. Chairman, my name is Brian Muise. I'm the Executive Director of the Aquaculture Association of Nova Scotia.

MR. GLEN BROWN: My name is Glen Brown. I'm a Past-President of the Aquaculture Association of Nova Scotia and President of my own farming company, Admiral Fish Farms. I have a salmon site down in St. Mary's Bay and one in New Brunswick.

MR. BRIAN BLANCHARD: Brian Blanchard, General Manager of Scotian Halibut Limited and also the Secretary for the Aquaculture Association of Nova Scotia.

MR. MUISE: So we're set to roll. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for the opportunity to return to the standing committee once again. This will be my third time presenting. We haven't been here in about three years, I think. Quite a bit has changed in our association. I am now holding the position that Marli McNeil used to hold. After spending 30-some years in the industry, I decided to take a little kick at this office for a while to see how I do.

I had planned to do a PowerPoint presentation that will take maybe 15 minutes of your time, and then to hopefully hit all the big issues, give a little bit of a briefing, from our perspective, on each one of the issues, and then leading into the discussion. There's quite a bit to go through. The slides will go through fairly quickly; they're fairly self-explanatory. There's only a couple of diagrams on there, which I think are necessary. One is very simple, I understood it in a couple of minutes. There's only one other diagram in there for me to bother you with, resulting from about two years of hard work from the best minds in the Department of Fisheries and Agriculture and DFO, but it's very simple and it's important. I'll show you as we go through. With that, let's begin.

Let's jump right into who we are. This is a chart that we've been circulating for the last six, eight, 10 months as a result of the attack in the media by some environmental NGOs, one in particular called CAAR on the West Coast, accusing us of producing contaminated food and foisting contaminated food on the public in North America. Who we are - we are the folks who produce food that is so far down within the limits of safety that we thought we were basically invulnerable to attack. If you look at this, if you look at beef, milk, commercial seafood, there's not another food that beats us. The background levels of contamination in our industry have been declining for years and continue to decline. We thought we were safe.

We're the folks who learned a very hard lesson of failing to get the good news out to the public about our industry and our products. We're the folks who are just now learning to work effectively in that whole milieu of irrationality that characterizes today's media environment. We learned a tough lesson, and we're paying the price for that. Over the next 15 minutes, I would like to provide you with a more factual, more balanced, more science-based framework of what our industry is, what we do and where I think we're headed.

Who's the AANS? We've been here before. Most of you probably know who we are. We're a not-for-profit association of growers and suppliers and industry supporters. We have quite a few academics in our industry. We are an association controlled by growers. We made a very tactical decision several years ago whereby to be on the board of directors you had to be a producer, an actual farmer, in this province. That was a very distinct change from what we were in the past, a mix of science, academics, suppliers and growers.

We represent 85 per cent to 90 per cent of production in this province. The theme that we operate these days as the Aquaculture Association of Nova Scotia, is "We Grow Families, Too". That's to try to get people to realize that we're not a group of international corporate raiders, we're homegrown companies representing families, growing here in Nova Scotia. I've spent 35 years in this industry, I've raised my two daughters, and made my living in this industry here in Nova Scotia rather than leaving, all in aquaculture.

Along with the lobbying we do and the education, we are now running about $1.4 million worth of development projects in partnership with various agencies, such as Nova Scotia Agriculture and Fisheries, the National Research Council, DFO, ECBC, ACOA. This keeps us very busy. We have a very busy office. We represent six finfish species producers, producers of six types of shellfish species, and producers of marine plants. So we're a very broad-based industry.

The industry status, if I could just whip through this very quickly. The industry in Nova Scotia is now worth, at the farmgate in 2003, about $41 million. We've had our ups and downs over the years, but effectively, looking at a 20-year average, we've grown at about 16 per cent per year over the last 20 years. For comparative purposes, to give you some idea of where we stand, to put us in a context for you, marine salmonids, worth about $26.9 million, $27 million. That value is grown on about 270 hectares of land, of water, which is about one-third the size of the Halifax International Airport. When you want to consider the value of land use, I think we make a very significant contribution on a very insignificant amount of real estate. Shellfish generates about $1,000 per hectare annually.

We provide a little over 1,100 jobs in rural areas. These are direct employment in our industry. Our industry is characterized by higher levels of education than many other industry sectors, and we have a high proportion of youth and women in our industry. A number of the reasons for that is ours is a knowledge-intensive industry, using fairly advanced levels of technology and science as our basis.

The industry these days is characterized by a fair bit of consolidation within the mussel sector and within the finfish sector. I think there's a number of reasons, but primarily our industry sectors are maturing from the early development phases into a more mature, perhaps some people would say a more rational, industry organization. There's a lot of regional consolidation within the industry.

We're seeing very few new site approvals over the last few years, primarily because, I think, many of the sites that are more readily developed have been developed, and the new environmental assessment process has set up some very onerous hurdles that we have to overcome. We're working very closely in the process with provincial Agriculture and Fisheries, with DFO, with Environment Assessment Canada, CEAA, to try to meet the new standards and in fact help those agencies actually define what the standards are going to be under the new Canadian Environmental Assessment Act and the Species At Risk Act. We

are deeply involved in the process. It's a bit like trying to hit a moving target. We're involved in committee work to try to help define what the environmental targets are. It's time-consuming and it is one of the factors of this slowing down of the growth in our industry.

In the same light, one of our big concerns these days, and that we're working with provincially, and it relates directly to the approval process, is the renewal process whereby licences come up for renewal every 10 years or so. We're working to make sure that that process is not as onerous as the initial site approval process, so that companies that are up and operating can be assured that they can continue to do so.

The truth about food safety. Most of you have probably heard a great deal about PCBs in salmon in a media blitz here back in February, March, April of this year. Even at the worst of times, and I refer you back to that chart, our products were 20 times - not 20 per cent - below what is considered safe for human consumption by FDA and CFIA. Background levels continued to decline in our products due to very focused and deliberate action on our part and we maintain that the health benefits far outweigh any perceived risks.

There is a piece of material in your packages that we gave you, looking at information out of Harvard Medical School and Tufts University that says, there is a possibility of .001 per cent increase in cancer risk by consuming farmed salmon, as compared to a proven 30 per cent known reduction in coronary heart disease from consuming omega-3 fatty acids, which are in the salmon. So take it as you will, the anti-aquaculture media blitz, the feature they chose to attack us on was food safety and it was a complete red herring, as far as we're concerned. How effective it was is another issue, in the minds of consumers.

For more information I would refer you to an excellent Web site that our industry supports called www.salmonoftheamericas.com if you want to see a more detailed reading of our position on these issues.

Within our own industry we are heavily involved, and have been for the last number of years, in an on-farm food safety program and all the new traceability programs which are being demanded in North America to ensure free trade moving back and forth across the border with the U.S. We're working on these programs with the Canadian Aquaculture Industry Alliance, CAIA, our national industry organization.

To give you some idea of the hurdles we face, the agriculture community in Canada was given $80 million to help them with their on-farm food safety and food traceability programs. Would any of you like to guess how much we got from our federal lead agency? Zero dollars. Once again, as we have with the Species At Risk Act, with the Environmental Assessment Act, with our development, we footed the bill all the way, including all our on-farm food safety work and traceability.

Now I will back off from that a little, we got about $100,000 from the federal Department of Agriculture to help us deal with export products only. We have zero dollars to date, other than what we come up with ourselves, to deal with products for sale and development of sale in Canada.

Our truths about environmental impacts. Most of the negative impacts you've heard in the media were from countries with very low environmental standards. There are two articles I included from The Economist magazine in the handouts we gave you today which, I think, give a fairly balanced view of what our industry is globally. As they point out, what you hear in the media is often the worst case scenario. The one example I'll use is what has been thrown at us by several of the larger ENGOs in North America, the fact that our industry has been responsible for the decline of 30 per cent of the mangrove areas in the tropical parts of the world. In actual fact that 30 per cent figure was taken from the delta areas of Vietnam, the one single worst case scenario on the face of the Earth, and used to lambaste our industry with.

For those of you who know a little about history, can you imagine why Vietnam might be desperate to develop every bit of its agriculture and aquaculture potential? They are a country that has suffered 50 years of devastating war. We are not in that same situation, Canada has very strict environmental rules and regulations, all of which we have to follow and many of which we are helping to define under the Species At Risk Act and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act.

Every one of our farms have a mandatory environmental assessment before they are even allowed to be set up. Included in that process are environmental monitoring plans, which include terms of how often the farm has to be monitored and what those conditions are. They have set impact levels, what's an acceptable environmental impact and what's not with clearly defined environmental remediation actions.

I would like to make a claim here. Basically, the results of a great deal of environmental studies here in the east have shown that the impacts of our industry, including salmon farming, are very limited in both geographical extent or physical extent, and in duration. If you bear with me I will show you three very quick slides I got from the Nova Scotia Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, which show the details of their environmental monitoring process.

[9:15 a.m.]

Over the last three years the department has sampled 271 sites all around the Province of Nova Scotia. They had over 800 sediment cores; 40 different stations on finfish farms; 105 stations on shellfish farms; and did 126 reference stations, which means sites that do not contain farms but are adjacent to farm sites, to give us a background comparison. This is the only complicated chart I will show you, just to give you some indication of how this works.

This chart was derived after about two years of consultation between the senior environmental people, the scientists at Nova Scotia Agriculture and Fisheries, and the people at DFO habitat. The only reason I show this is to give you the idea that these are the factors that are viewed as being critical and potential habitat impacts that our industry could have. According to these potential impacts, the habitat sites are given three classifications: Type A, which is basically a normal, non-impacted habitat; Type B, where you will see some impacts from activity; and Type C, where impacts are fairly significant and calling for remediation action. On the critical slide I will show you in a minute, you will see these Types A, B and C.

The one factor that was chosen as probably the most critical is this business of production of sulfur gas. Whenever a heavy load of organic is put into an ocean environment, it can produce sulfides. So here are the results of the sampling station. These are all the background levels and these are most of the farms.

Some of these farms have been in operation for 27 years, keep that in mind, please. Of these, only five, possibly six - well that's a reference site - sites of the 271 sampled have shown that the environment has degraded through B, and one up to C. Of this, this represents only two farms, both of which are under active remediation at this time, as soon as the problems were discovered. These farms down here have been operating anywhere from 27 years to as recently as three or four years and still showing no impact, these are including salmon and mussel farms.

One of the most startling findings was the department also looked at farms that had grown up to 1.5 million fish and after three Summers, no detectable impact at all. In other words, the farm that produced 1.5 million fish per year for about seven years, once it was removed, returned to background levels within three Summers. Now I will ask you to compare that to any agricultural operation or a home lot. Let's say pick a nice piece of property on St. Margaret's Bay, pull the house off it, dig up the septic tank and take the road away from it, what do you think the recovery rate would be? Eighty, 100 years maybe by the time the forest returned to what it was. An agriculture field is the same thing. Planted back into native species you are looking at 80 to 100 years. Our farms can return to the natural environment within three operating seasons. We think the case is clearly made that our impacts are very limited in extent and limited in time duration.

One of the other moves we're making at this time, particularly in New Brunswick, is to something called multi-trophic aquaculture or poly-culture, whatever you want to call it, where you grow more than one species on a given site. What we were talking about a minute ago, environmental impacts, I was talking about the effects on the bottom habitat. What this multi-trophic aquaculture is attempting to address is any concerns that might be involved in dissolved nutrients, not non-sediment nutrients, nutrients like phosphates and nitrates that are dissolved. What this involves is setting up, in conjunction with salmon farms, shellfish farms and seaweed farms on the same site, whereby the shellfish is picking

up a lot of the suspended particulate matter and the marine plants are picking up the dissolved organic matter. So you're producing three crops.

It wasn't through lack of interest that it took 30 years to get to this, the permit to grow shellfish and finfish on the same site probably took 12 years to get through the regulatory system, because it was strictly banned out of concern that the shellfish would become contaminated by salmon and all these drugs and contaminants that are going into the water on salmon farms. It hasn't been true in the past, it's not true now, and all the early studies coming in at UNB, Saint John, are showing that there are no contaminants in these shellfish, they're perfectly edible. Shellfish grown within 10 feet of the sides of salmon cages are perfectly edible and perfectly healthy.

Contrary to this, and I'm not going to go to any extent on this, as part of your handout there's a presentation given by a gentleman by the name of Dun Gifford, who is the President of Old-ways Foundation Trust. This is a large trust down in the U.S., and basically these are the people who brought the Mediterranean diet to North America. They're a food issues network. These people are strongly in support of our industry and cannot understand why countries do not support our industry more favourably, because all the studies they've done in conjunction with Harvard University and Tufts University have shown that in many ways our industry is far more environmentally sustainable and economically sustainable than many other current industries. I have my sheets a little bit out of order here, but that's enough.

Current challenges. Our sectors right now, at this time, are struggling, particularly the salmon sector and the mussel sector, primarily because of the concerns over the exchange rate. As you know, the Canadian dollar has risen relative to the United States dollar by 17 per cent, 18 per cent over the last couple of years, and that, along with the competition in the commodity market from countries such as Chile, which have very active development programs in salmon, are causing serious backups and problems in the marketplace, particularly for salmon, resulting in decreasing profits, very marginal profits.

Many of our farms, right now, are in a marginal profit or a loss situation. They have been for several months now. The mussel industry is suffering from a similar sort of problem - I'll probably be taken to task for saying this, but - primarily through problems of their own making. We are here in the northeastern part of North America, next to one of the largest markets in the world, and we are accessing that market by decreasing prices. Us competing with P.E.I. competing with Newfoundland. The associations and the key producers, people who know what's going on, are actively trying to stop that downward cycle right now. The salmon one, as I say, is a bit different. That's international trade, international competition. The fresh mussel sector is a Canadian homegrown industry with homegrown problems. Add to that the media attacks by ENGOs, we're in a fairly negative environment right now.

In the mussel sector particularly, we're looking at problems with development incentives in neighbouring provinces whereby you get an influx of cash from government programs, you get a large standing crop built up with no market - so how are those groups, and I'll say it, particularly Newfoundland, it's no secret, we have open discussions about this, and it was in the industry, including with Newfoundland producers. They solved their

problems by simply dumping into the already-developed markets here in Halifax, Quebec City, Montreal and Toronto. Again, it's an over-supply situation, a short-term over-supply situation with poor planning in terms of market development.

Overriding all of this is a complete lack of national and provincial support programs. What we've been pushing for for several years is a national aquatic animal health program. Basically, all we're asking for and what we've been lobbying for for years is very simply a policy and a program similar to the agricultural policy framework, the federal-provincial-territorial coordinated program for agriculture development. As I said before, part of these programs provides funds for businesses and production sectors that are struggling to meet and keep up to date in a very rapidly-changing global market environment. We have access to none of those programs right now.

One of the biggest problems facing our industry right now is a lack of operating capital. Operating capital in our industry generally comes from personally guaranteed loans and profit. Again, it's high risk at this stage of the game because of market forces. Operating capital is hard to come by these days. It's highly risky.

Opportunities. Where do we see opportunities in our industry? Food safety. A huge opportunity, we think, particularly with the new requirements in North America for on-farm food safety and traceability. Ironically, two of the first initial trials that were done by the U.S. Customs on food safety and food imports were done on aquaculture products, both here in Nova Scotia. Under the new regulations a producer or a shipper of food, if faced with a question or an inquiry at the border, must provide an answer within four hours. So it's one up, one down. You have to be responsible for all the product that moves one step up from you in the supply chain and one step back. This is a no-brainer for our industry. Our industry generally retains ownership of its products right from the egg, right through to the juvenile stage, right through to the final product, and generally almost to the end market.

The two trials that were run, one was on shellfish - let me start with the finfish one. One finfish trial took place, a simulated food safety issue, and the grower who is not too far from here had his response back to the FDA in the United States within 38 minutes. One on shellfish took place down in southwestern Nova Scotia, the response was back in eight minutes. So this is a no-brainer for us, and we think it should be a sustainable, competitive advantage in the marketplace. We have single-product commodities, we don't do many advanced product blends, so traceability should be very simple for us and we should be able to make that into a positive, not a negative. Our environmental sustainability, if we can get our act together and start promoting this properly, that should be seen as a positive, not a negative.

Regional coordination. There's a fair bit of regional coordination going on these days in production and research, and it brings economies of scale into place, which hadn't existed there in the past. Primarily, the efforts of our association and the three other growers' associations in the region is to reduce inter-provincial competition among groups that are producing the same commodity, selling it in the same commodity markets. These are challenges facing us, and we are working on them as industry representatives and as associations.

What we see as the next big $100 million sector is what we're calling the marine whitefish sector, meaning the culture of cod and halibut. The culture of these two species is bogged down primarily because the engine that was to drive the next phase of development was to be the profits that were had in the salmon sector. Again, we do this ourselves; this is industry-financed. Because of the decline in profitability within the salmon sector and with the retrenchment of the sector into survival mode and with the insistence of that sector's bankers to no expansion and no risk, undertaking no additional risk at this time, both the cod and the halibut sectors are basically retrenched and hopefully will survive.

We have had two of the three leaders in the world in halibut production, in this region, one of which has already gone out of business and one of which is holding on by its fingernails right now; 10 years of development, knowledge and research, and it's just holding on. We hope they can make it through until the market cycle changes.

[9:30 a.m.]

The other big interest is in offshore farms. Much of the inshore area has been developed. Most of you are well aware of the fights that have been fought over the last few years, over multi-use of inshore waters. The interest now is to move into deeper offshore waters. There are very big engineering challenges to move out into open habitat, from storms, and there are a lot of logistical challenges in that; that will be a move that you'll see our industry undertake over the next time horizon, five, 10 to 15 years.

Something that is taking place here in Nova Scotia is a focus on land-based, high-value products. One area where we have been very successful is in our ability to employ water recirculation technologies, advanced science, advanced technical skills to provide smolts. We are one of the main suppliers of the big salmon farms in New Brunswick. We have some excellent land-based operations up along Cumberland County, Antigonish County and Pictou County, in the mountain areas where there is some good fresh water.

Current initiatives. Very quickly, with the province, our industry and association are working on improving and upgrading our environmental codes of practice, which are necessary under environmental assessments. Again, it's a bit like trying to hit a moving target, with the federal government trying to define the qualifications under the Species At Risk Act and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, trying to define levels and define

acceptable practices. We are working very closely with experts in those fields to try to upgrade our environmental code of practice, which we already have, and link it into a national code of practice which is being developed by CAIA.

At the provincial level we're working on upgrading an aquaculture strategy. We're working very closely with the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries to upgrade our somewhat outdated aquaculture strategy and encouraging them to continue their environmental monitoring program. The results, to date, have been very positive but I think this is the sort of critical information we need to substantiate our claims in public that we are a sustainable industry. As I say, about $1.4 million worth of development projects, including leading the initiative to try to address the big MSX outbreak in the Bras d'Or Lakes, along with addressing issues of tunicate infestation of farms, and some invasive species.

Regional projects. There's a regional mussel marketing initiative meeting very closely with the industry in New Brunswick, to look at new approaches to farm management in terms of minimizing environmental impacts, the healthy salmon program, that sort of thing. We have a regional network of researchers that meet to share outcomes and results of projects, and to make sure we're not duplicating.

Last, but not least, is public communication. Unfortunately, as I said before - and this may sound like an excuse but it's valid - because we are expected and have been paying our own way in everything we do, there's not a lot of money left for public communication but we realize that it has been an area in which we have been terribly remiss and there are initiatives afoot to fix that.

How can you folks help? There is no need to reinvent any wheels in this case, absolutely none. If we were to have a program in place such as the Agricultural Policy Framework, which provided things like loan guarantees, a level playing field in development programs, risk remediation, risk reduction, risk sharing that exists in agriculture, I think many of our problems would be resolvable. We would be able to get through this current market crunch in a much more sustainable way and our farms could come out more healthy, out the other side.

Please, if you want to help us push for a national aquatic animal health program and some sort of national development fund, national risk remediation, risk reduction programs, such as the agricultural framework, just go to the Agriculture and Agri-food Canada Web site, take a look at the Agricultural Policy Framework, it's all there, all defined. All we need to do is be included in that and many of our problems will be solved.

Conclusion. We would suggest that Nova Scotia needs aquaculture, it's good for the economy, it's good for our health, good for our environment, and good for our communities.

Just to leave you with a couple of quick thoughts, yesterday I went out to get a few groceries and I walked by the seafood counter at Sobeys. Forty per cent, nine out of 22 fresh species at Sobeys and Superstore are now aquaculture products and that's going to continue to increase. It seems to me it would be a very simple decision to make, that either we're going to be part of this process or we're going to drop it. We're going to produce more and more species and we're going replace displaced species from the wild fishery. Very simply, right now, at an absolute conservative level, we figure between $15 million to $20 million of retail sales every year, in Halifax alone, are aquaculture products. If we're not producing them, you're looking at $15 million to $20 million bleeding out of this city to buy products from somewhere else.

If I could leave you with one very clear thought and a challenge. Given that some of the faces around this table have been here for a number of years, and you folks, or your predecessors, have voted in favour of the agriculture policy framework which supports our agriculture industry - nationally and provincially - along with that went a very lengthy four or five year evaluation of the strategic position and the status of that industry. If you were involved in that process, what would have been your thought process, your conclusion, if a farmer came up to you and said, we have three species that are indigenous to Nova Scotia, they can be produced here cost effectively and more efficiently than they can be produced in the U.S., in a way that cannot be moved to Central Canada? No part of this agriculture product can be taken to Quebec or Southern Ontario, it can't be taken to the heartland of the U.S., we have a sustainable competitive advantage in Nova Scotia, we can produce these products and market them 52 weeks of the year, fresh off the farm. If someone in the Department of Agriculture had told you we had three products like that, what would have been your response? That's what we can do ladies and gentlemen, that's what we do right now with salmon, with rainbow trout, with blue mussels and with clams. Fifty-two weeks of the year we are in the marketplace with fresh farm produce and no one can beat us at it. Yet, past governments and current governments vacillate on their support for this industry because we're seen as maybe not quite as politically acceptable as many other sectors.

I will suggest to you that by voting - as you folks have or as previous governments have to support agriculture, seemingly unconditionally and that's necessary, God bless our farmers - for something that is safe, traditionally, while neglecting a new, innovative, knowledge-based industry that exists in rural Nova Scotia, with a 30 year successful history, I'm suggesting to you that you will be making a very critical, tactical error in your strategic planning for the economy of Nova Scotia. That is as simple as I can lay out our case, thank you.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Muise. I want to apologize for being late. I'm John MacDonell, chairman of the committee. I want to thank the member for Cape Breton West for sitting in as chairman. I want to say your last comments make a very good case, actually, for your industry. I'm one of the politicians who has been here a little while, since 1998, but I've heard you make presentations to this committee before. I have found them all

particularly interesting and I have a few questions. I'm not going to go to them until I have some of the other members ask questions.

The honourable member Colchester North.

MR. WILLIAM LANGILLE: Thanks for your presentation and I'll go on record as saying I fully support your farming efforts in the aquaculture field. I know myself, as a hobby, I raise rainbow and speckled trout - up to 10 pounds, by the way, for the rainbows. What's the market between the steelhead and the Atlantic salmon? I know the steelhead is a cousin to the Atlantic salmon. Well, steelhead is nothing but a rainbow trout that goes to the ocean and becomes a steelhead. What's the percentage here, of your market, of the two species?

MR. MUISE: Rainbow trout - I don't know what the actual production is, but it's very small compared to Atlantic salmon, primarily because the limiting factor on producing rainbow trout is the capacity to hold them in fresh water, so the move has been to move into seawater cages. Most of the good sites around New Brunswick and Nova Scotia that would be suitable to overwinter rainbow trout were found to be more profitable if you grew salmon. Now, given the changes in the recent market, I suspect that may not be the case. Saltwater-grown rainbow trout has been able to find its own niche market, but primarily it has been a matter of dedicating sites to salmon rather than trout. I suspect there may be a few salmon farmers around right now who are questioning the decision they made a few years ago.

The consumer does see a distinction. Those who know good fresh salmon and good trout know the difference. Most of my friends and I prefer smoked rainbow trout. We still think it's the market that is underdeveloped.

MR. LANGILLE: One of my concerns - well, I have a couple of concerns. I know that Norway is the largest producer, followed by Chile and Canada, I believe, in that order.

MR. MUISE: It's changed recently.

MR. LANGILLE: Chile, is it?

MR. MUISE: Chile has just gone crazy in the last few years. It's about 600,000 metric tonnes, which is bigger than our entire East Coast, Nova Scotia fishery, by the way.

MR. LANGILLE: I've been following the news in the last week, and I see that China is probably going to be a huge market for the Chilean salmon in the future, with their trade with China coming onstream. I often found that the New England States are our biggest consumer, where we ship. I know that Chile has dumped into the New England States, but I find it hard to think that us being next door to this huge market and Chile being so far away,

how they can undercut us so much - I'm thinking about the cost of shipping and everything. Can you just touch on that?

MR. BROWN: When it comes to gutted product and fresh product, we can compete with Chile in the northeast, for sure. A great deal of the product coming out of Chile is value added, it's frozen, and that's because of air freight and so forth. It is difficult for us to compete with them on that basis, but we do have an advantage and hopefully we'll always have the advantage of being close to the market with fresh product.

MR. LANGILLE: My last question, because we have to move on - I have a lot - I'm concerned about the halibut and cod. You said you're in a bit of difficulty, one has folded, a halibut farm, you only have one left. I remember years ago when I first went to the Agricultural College in Bible Hill they were experimenting. They had these little halibut there, and they were only a couple of inches long at that time. I thought that this was one area that would take off. I think you're having trouble marketing that, is it? I know it's an excellent product, your halibut fillets. What's the problem with the halibut?

MR. BLANCHARD: I guess I get to answer that one. The most significant problem is that the business of halibut farming in this province was based on hatchery production, primarily, with producing juveniles for other growers, because it's very difficult for small companies to do it all. To hit the ground running as a fully integrated company is very difficult. The idea of the alternative species is that it's part of a diversification program for Atlantic Canada, for existing salmon farms to diversify into other species. This is what the push since the early 1990s was, to provide alternative species. If we look at cod, cod can grow because of its antifreeze, it can go in places where superchill would normally kill a salmon, halibut was kind of like the Holy Grail of fish. Norway has invested in excess of $100 million in research and development, to try to figure out how to consistently produce halibut juveniles.

[9:45 a.m.]

Fortunately our company partnered with Iceland, who actually figured it out. In fact, 80 per cent of Norway's halibut juveniles come from Iceland. With all the effort Norway has put into it, Iceland, with about one-tenth of the money, was able to, through a very common-sense approach, figure out the life history of a hatchery. For our company, Scotian Halibut, we partnered with Iceland, and our hatchery is the second-largest producer of halibut in the world. Unfortunately our market was part of the diversification in the salmon industry, and that diversification was based on basically investment through profit. Where the salmon industry hasn't had any profit - well, most of the salmon industry, some has - over the last number of years, there are no resources for that diversification to happen. So it's a real Catch-22.

One hatchery was stuck with a substantial amount of inventory. Unfortunately, R & R, because of an accident through a storm, their operation was put out of business, but the economic climate is such that it's very difficult to dust yourself off and say, look, things are great, because things aren't great. The marketplace for selling those juveniles is very difficult. The cost of juveniles is high, because we're still small. As we get bigger, we can reduce the price of juveniles, and there are programs in New Brunswick to help foster that, but at the same time farms in New Brunswick, salmon farmers who are trying to diversify, just don't have the resources there to do it.

By comparison, if you look within agriculture, at the federal level, I believe the program is CAFI, it's similar to that, and it's a $240 million diversification fund that's available for farmers to move from one species or one crop into another, but because aquaculture is in Fisheries, no salmon farmer would be eligible for that program to help make this transition. So we have this constant difficulty of, well, we'd like to do it, but there's no profit within the industry, and then as soon as there's profit again, the banks are saying, we'll take every bit of that profit and build up your war chest again, and don't think about diversification.

So we've really been unable to break this cycle for the diversification to happen. This is really the issue that we're in, and it's the poor climate of the industry right now which is preventing cod, halibut, haddock even - Heritage had a very successful haddock program, but because of losses in the salmon sector, they were told to tighten up their books and anything that wasn't making a profit to cut. That was an eight-year development program, which is basically sitting on the back burner right now. That project, a New Brunswick farm, was employing five people here in Halifax at the National Research Council, at the hatchery, which was producing half of the fish for the farm.

We've seen losses within the marine sector right across the board, and we've been trying to stop it and it's just that there is no framework within Fisheries, or there is no support mechanism within Fisheries, to help any of us, but there are mechanisms within Agriculture which have been around for 50 years, which are there because we are farmers. Unfortunately we can have licence plates that say we're farmers, but when we knock on the Agriculture's door, they say, well, we'd really like to help you but you're in Fisheries and policy is policy. That's our stumbling block. We have to break this cycle. We need access to the support programs and the mechanisms that can make us viable.

If you look at the marine spaces, in our company alone we've spent in excess of $2 million in wages in Woods Harbour and Clark's Harbour over the last six years. That's a significant investment in rural Nova Scotia and yet when the chips are down and we need a little bit of help and a little bit of grace to help us through, everybody is turning around saying, well, we like what you're doing but there's nothing we can do to help, and that's the cycle we have to break.

MR. LANGILLE: Thank you.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Ms. Massey.

MS. JOAN MASSEY: My position as Environment Critic, I guess, will lead me down the path of where my questions will go this morning. When I went through the information in our package and then went on the Web site, there is definitely conflicting information, the pros and cons about your industry. There have been various communities in Nova Scotia that have said they don't want this industry in their community, they already have a viable industry - and let's say it's a lobster fishery.

You were talking about your PR problems with the issues revolving around salmon and the PCBs and this sort of thing. You are also concerned about the speed in which these proponents have to go through the environmental assessment program.

What I would like to get more context on would be your environmental monitoring program. Is that set and in place now, because it sounded to me this morning, by some of your comments, that you were talking about setting up impact levels and looking at remedial actions. It sounded to me like these were all in flux and that these things haven't been set in stone yet. So is this a work in progress and if it is, are you really focused or is the government focused on - I know you talked about core samples being taken, 800 sediment samples being taken - just the sediment, the problems within that, or the water, the oxygen levels, the effect on animals around the environment in which these farms are set up? I'll start with that.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Muise.

MR. MUISE: We're trying to throw a lot at you in very short order here but let me put it in this context. If you take a very narrow focus on what are environmental impacts, let me start by saying, absolutely, of course we're having an impact - we are having an impact on the environment by sitting here in this room and breathing, never mind the fact that we're in a building that we've already built and all the rest of it - with our outputs from our industry. But what is the extent of that impact? That's what we're trying to define.

When you say, is it a work in progress? Yes, it is, mostly because we've been under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act for five years now, or something and the Species at Risk Act has been two years. Despite the fact that people, such as yourselves, at the federal level can pass rules and regulations, actually interpreting those rules and regulations, what they mean on a day-to-day basis, what they mean in the field, is the subject of ongoing discussion right now.

That little table I showed you, defining the environmental parameters that our industry may impact, let's say, on the sediment, sediment was the most obvious one that was

chosen. That took almost two years of negotiating with the federal DFO Habitat to try to come up with what you think the impacts might be and what is measurable. That's why we focused on sediment.

There is a lot of discussion on the far-field effects, things like you're talking about, the change in oxygen level and/or dissolve matter, nutrients and that sort of thing. That is a whole other field and it is a concern, but we've taken the position that if our fish in the area are growing perfectly healthy, and if there's no indication that we're disrupting anything - if animals are coming by and swimming and living around our cages - then those are not a serious problem.

We monitor oxygen, we monitor temperatures, we monitor these sorts of things on a daily basis on our farms, because we are the first ones to suffer on these things. As I say, it is an ongoing process.

Now, with regard to how carved in stone these things are, Glen, maybe you could speak to this. Glen has had one of the most recent experiences under the full, new environmental assessment and the new approval process, when it comes down to defining impacts, and this is in the Digby Neck area.

MR. BROWN: Certainly, any new site that is brought into existence today, or any expansion to an existing site does go through a very specific environmental assessment, carried out by the lead agency, which is DFO Habitat. When any site is actually approved today, it does carry with it, under specific conditions, a specific environmental monitoring management program that that farm is instructed to carry out and report on on a regular basis.

I think the good news here is that in this province, over the years, there has not been any mandatory environmental monitoring until just recently, within the last two to three years. In conjunction with DFO, the provincial department has begun monitoring, but the fact that they have been able to come back with a good-news story in that the farms that have not had mandatory monitoring over this number of years, still are coming back with results that would say that the impact has been minimal. To me, that's the good-news part of this. New sites today always have an environmental monitoring program attached to them that is very specific.

MS. MASSEY: I'm hearing what you're saying but I'm not sure that I've gotten the answer. Are you telling me then that the testing is only done within the sediment? Is anything else being tested? I couldn't quite see that in the graph you showed there, if it was showing anything. You pointed out the sulphur levels, I think.

MR. MUISE: That was sulphites. That was just the one indicator.

MS. MASSEY: Can we get a real copy of that because I don't think it's in our binder?

MR. MUISE: No, I just had those as slides. We can get those, that stuff is available from the Nova Scotia Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, it's a public program. All that information is available to the public.

MS. MASSEY: If you have it at hand, it would probably be easier for you to get it. So how many other things are we testing for? When I was on-line last night I saw that there was a study done in B.C. in 2001 where in 48 per cent of the farms they had tested there were concentrations of copper and zinc that were above what government considered safe levels.

MR. MUISE: In which?

MS. MASSEY: Concentrations of copper and zinc that were at levels higher than the government considered safe. This was shown to cause damage to other organisms and seaweed and I can go on and on. You had mentioned there were programs underway that were going to be growing other organisms at the same time as you are farming these fish.

I'm just pointing out this is more information that is contrary to what I'm hearing said here this morning. I really want to focus on what is really being tested for. I know paints are used to clean these net cages . . .

MR. MUISE: No.

MS. MASSEY: We don't use that in Nova Scotia?

MR. MUISE: No.

MS. MASSEY: Inform me, then.

MR. MUISE: We can spend weeks on this.

MS. MASSEY: We have this morning.

MR. MUISE: Yes, we have this morning. Again, I don't know what study you are looking at. I just go by the studies that are being done here in Nova Scotia. Most of the material, if you find there is disturbance in the sediments, or deposition in the sediments, what we're looking at here is the ability for the environment to absorb those deposits, whatever is coming out, fish, waste, feed - though I must tell you that feed is not something you waste at 60 cents a pound or 54 cents a pound.

[10:00 a.m.]

Most of what you'll find there is what's contained in the fish food, and that's a subject of ongoing - that's how we address the issue of background PCBs, that sort of thing. You just try to clean up the food and you won't get these issues. You're talking about the specific case in B.C., and I can't address that, I don't know.

One of the things I can say - it's hard to put this into context, - is that many of the problems we see, many of these farms or many of the issues are almost site-specific. That's why they're doing so much testing, so many site testings. It relates to water characteristics of each site. That's why every single farm has to undergo that, because things are so different. We have gotten into problems, and there are two farm sites here that have problems on them. We have actually had farms abandoned because we had problems on them. That's resulting more from the issue of siting.

You referred to the lobster fishery, the lobster fishery is sacrosanct in this province. So the result of that is any new industry coming along, the only place you're going to get a permit to do anything else is in an area that's not designated lobster bottom, which means mud bottom, which means a depositional environment. So our industry, to date, has been specifically located in depositional environments, where you have limited water exchange, limited compared to areas that are not depositional, and right there, just biasing our efforts in locating our farms, because even though the fact that, let's say, a salmon farm can turn over between $95,000 and $100,000 worth of product a year, you're saying that that is not of value to displace a lobster fishery that may produce - I don't know, Junior, what would you get on a hectare of lobster? Would you get a dozen lobster a year? I don't know.

Anyway, there's all sorts of issues like that, but getting back, specific to the environmental issues, there's two ways of looking at the environment. You can either look at it in a broad context, about total inputs versus total outputs and total impact, or you can focus on it very specifically. Most of the complaints against our industry have done exactly the type of information you're getting, they focus on the area specifically under a cage and say that because there's a significant impact in this four hectares or two hectares, whatever an average farm is, they extrapolate, that that's now going to do that to the entire environment.

The good news in this study is that, yes, while there is an impact, and there can be an impact, that impact is confined; 15 to 20 feet out from those cage sites, you won't find that impact. You will not find it. This is not our data, this is someone else's data, this is the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries. It's what we've always known. If conditions were as bad as people portray them to be, then we would be the first to suffer. We've seen one farm in New Brunswick and two here in Nova Scotia abandoned, because if things start building up, if the environment can't absorb what wastes are coming, you start off-gassing. You'll get toxic gases coming off, and your farm is gone. Two of them have been removed, one in Little Narrows Pond - both in Cape Breton - and one in the Bras d'Or Lakes. Again, no tidal exchange and no oxygen.

We're not absolutely squeaky clean, of course we're having an impact. What we're struggling to do right now is trying to define the extent of that impact, the significance of that impact. To date we think the overwhelming evidence, if you look with an open mind and you don't focus in on the very specific, get yourself totally, absolutely drawn to the fact that on four hectares of land there is a disturbance that takes place, if you look at the total environmental impact, let's say in a bay, it's virtually negligible. That's what we're building on. I can't make it any simpler than that.

There's all kinds of specific things, as you say, maybe coppers. The only place you may find copper on a farm would be - there's still some copper in the wax, we use wax, it's a wax coating we put on our nets, not a paint . . .

MS. MASSEY: Is it perhaps from the paint that's used to paint these net cages?

MR. MUISE: It's not a paint, it's a wax.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Ms. Massey, I'm cutting you off.

MS. MASSEY: I wasn't talking, he was.

MR. MUISE: It's a wax material that has some copper in the background, because of its antifouling, and that's where it would come from. Basically that stuff is primarily inert. You don't find it bioaccumulates, to my knowledge. Again, when we start to get into the detail specifics, I have to go with the experts. I don't know.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Brown.

MR. BROWN: If I could just add to your question, just a bit, with regard to the other parameters besides the soil. I was part of the committee representing the Aquaculture Association of Nova Scotia that was part of developing the existing monitoring program that has been implemented. The Department of Agriculture and Fisheries was represented, DFO was represented, and the consulting agency that did the proposal for us and actually developed the program, a very reputable firm that has been involved in developing environmental monitoring programs for the pulp and paper industry and this type of thing, was made up of scientists from university, as well as DFO and so forth.

It was discussed, about what parameters are the best for us to use to monitor these sites. The water column parameters were discussed, but it was the consensus of the science in that body that the best way to determine whether or not the farm is having an impact was to look at the conditions of the bottom, the sediments. That's, in fact, why this program was developed as it was, and the actual water quality or the water column quality was put aside at the time in favour of the bottom sediment sampling.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Blanchard, you want to say something?

MR. BLANCHARD: One of the problems we have with electronic media is that the Web is full of information. I recently had a discussion with Ms. McDonough about aquaculture, and the information, and the question continually comes up, who do we believe? We have one Web site that says this, and we have one Web site that says that. The respect for peer review journals is becoming less and less because access to information and publication through electronic media is so quick that you don't need to wait for the four-month or eight-month peer review process for a scientific publication. It's a real problem for the scientific community now in that the delivery of information is happening so much faster than traditional scientific peer-reviewed, and that's where we have to have faith in the Department of Fisheries, the National Research Council, in the process that they go through.

To bring it back to a point, I finished school in the mid-1980s, I was a biologist. At the time, I got into aquaculture because I thought it was the environmentally right thing to do. Most of the people who work in our industry are biologists, we're not Harvard businessmen who see an opportunity to rape the environment for corporate benefit. We did it because we believed that this was a green thing to do. To this date, we still do. Most of us are biologists. In fact one of our problems is we don't have enough businessmen in our industry. We are farmers, the people we hire have gone to the Agricultural College. They don't teach us at the Agricultural College how to destroy the environment, they teach us to respect it. Fifty per cent, 60 per cent to 70 per cent of the people who work in our business are environmentalists, except we didn't have a soapbox or a box to stand on and say, hey - but we all respect the environment.

Mother Nature is how we make our living. If we disrespect Mother Nature, she will punish us to the extent that we can't even talk about today. If we don't look after our animals, they will die on us. If they die on us, we go out of business. In the last 15 to 20 years, farming practices have continually improved because Mother Nature was giving us the signals that you're making mistakes. Those mistakes precipitate in fish health problems.

So there's already a check and balance for our industry, which is the environment. If we don't respect the environment, we can't operate, and we can't make any money, we can't pay our employees, and we can't make any profit. That's what we do do, we farm for profit, the same way, hopefully, a potato farmer in P.E.I. farms for profit, because they have families to feed. That is the same thing that we do. So we do pay attention to the environment. I could give you 100 reasons and publications why we're really good for the environment, I can give you another 100 that say we're bad for the environment, but as a balanced approach, we're farmers, no different than anybody trying to grow a crop. So we have to respect the environment first.

I really do want to make that point clear, that we are biologists and we are environmentalists, and we work with Mother Nature to make sure that we can do it safely and profitably. If you don't respect Mother Nature, you will not be successful in this business.

The businesses that went out of business, predominantly on the West Coast, British Columbia, back in the mid-1980s, it was because they were trying to grow Pacific salmon like Atlantic salmon and there were a lot of mistakes made, they didn't respect the biology, there was overstocking, there was crowding, respect of the environment wasn't there, and a lot of mistakes were made.

Our industry is only 30 years old. How many industries reach maturity within 30 years? Hardly any. Farming of cows has been going on in this country for 400 years and there are still mistakes. We can't be expected to hit the ground perfectly, but it can be expected that we are doing our very best to be as good and respectful as we can possibly be. Really, you can go to the Web as much as you want, but the people who are doing it are true environmentalists.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Blanchard. You may have to apologize to Harvard businessmen but we appreciate your comments. Ms. Massey you may not get a question in the next Resources meeting. (Laughter)

The honourable member for Digby-Annapolis.

MR. HAROLD THERIAULT: As a commercial fisherman, I believe in growing fish. Much like when the buffalo hunters decided the buffalo were gone and they needed to grow cattle, we're no different in the commercial fishery. We've nearly wiped the oceans out on this Earth, the commercial fishery, trying to feed the population but we do have a choice. We can stop the population growth of this Earth or we have to grow more food - that is the choice we have. We know the commercial fishery can't stand it, we wiped the oceans out all around the world trying to feed the population.

I believe there is room for anything, you can do anything on this Earth in moderation. I believe what went on in New Brunswick 10 years ago, or whatever, went a little overboard and went too much with it, taking fishermen's bottom, taking people with ocean views up. I have said about the aquaculture industry, don't bother the commercial fishermen, stay off their bottom and that was mentioned. You got to the mud bottom where lobster fishermen don't work. You try to go to areas where people build million dollar homes and don't want to see cages in front of them along the beach. You try your best to do that and I think it can be done a lot in this province.

You talk about fish poop on the bottom, you hear a lot about it. Where did the hundreds of millions of pounds of fish that were in the ocean, on the shore, where did they poop? There were fish on the shore when I was a child 45 years ago, that your boat would run aground on. Pollock as long as this table. I'm sure they had offal along that shore everywhere, I'm pretty sure of that.

I have seen fishing weirs, herring weirs along the shore, hundreds of them, they're still there. I have seen them get so gurried inside with dead fish and scales that they wouldn't fish anymore, two or three feet deep at the bottom with bubbles coming up inside so the fish wouldn't go in, there were so many bubbles in them. I have seen us take old scallop drags and clean those weirs out so they would start fishing again. This was 40 or 50 years ago and the fish and lobster are still there, nothing has changed. There is room for aquaculture.

One question I want to ask, and I have heard a lot about this, why has it taken up to three years for an environmental assessment on an aquaculture site and up to $100,000 in costs? What is the province and federal government doing to try to promote this in moderation, to maybe pre-approve some sites so investors could come here and not mind investing in aquaculture in an approved site.

[10:15 a.m.]

If I had to try to go into an aquaculture business and give up three years of my life and $100,000 to get the site approved, personally, I would be in hard shape financially. Can you answer that?

MR. MUISE: To a point. Actually, I think I can answer it in a way that it may answer some of the questions that Joan was asking. It's a difficult one to approach and some people could interpret it as being a bit too loose and ill-defined - I think Joan used that term. In fact, here is how the process works.

The federal government passes two pieces of legislation, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act and the Species At Risk Act, then they charge their ground staff with going out and implementing those Acts. So what do you do when you're in a situation like us, where you are in the middle of a growth phase of your industry and you want to apply for an aquaculture site? What happens is you sit down with a group of reviewers from DFO, Environment Canada, or Nova Scotia Department of Environment; there are 11 to 13 different agencies that we deal with.

You submit here is what we want to do and you describe your farm. It goes through this committee and they come back and say, that's not complete enough, we want to see this and this go in there. We are farmers, we're not environmental experts, so you pay a consultant to do this. The consultant goes out, looks at all these parameters to submit another report to the federal-provincial agencies and they review it all - all the biologists, all the scientists, all the chemists - and say, that's good and that's good but now look at this, this and this. You go back to your consultant and you pay him and then he goes out and looks at that, that and that. You don't get a complete list up front and this is what I mean when I said we are helping and paying for the provincial and federal governments to define the process as we go, and we are absorbing the cost.

To the committee it is nothing more than a good critical review of the documents that they see in front of them. To us it is another hiring of that same consultant or another consultant to go back and do the actual field work, submit the samples and that goes on and on. That is why the process is costing - and I would say you're conservative at $150,000 - some of them have gone well above that and this is why I say, when we're stuck in a process, it's like trying to hit a moving target.

I would say it is generally true that those committees doing the environmental assessments are working on the precautionary principle and they're taking the most cautious approach and as I said, just coming up with that simple little table took over two years for the Department of Fisheries to get scientists to agree that those are probably the most key indicators to measure. All the while, our applicants and our farmers are out there paying to have these studies done and it's a frustrating process. We tend to feel that if this is a public exercise to protect the public commons, then surely to God the public should be contributing a little bit toward it and not have the expense all back on us. That is what I mean by it's an evolving process where, it's not carved in stone but it's getting better and more refined as we learn and there are all these feedback mechanisms.

All that information that has gone into the Department of Fisheries on all the site monitoring now goes back to those committees, they look at it and say, I guess these things, we were concerned about them but they're not happening, so let's eliminate those and let's look at these other parameters. It's an expensive, complicated and frustrating process that is hard to explain. It may sound a bit ad hoc but it's not, there is a tremendous amount of thought that goes into it.

Our complaint about the system is that we're paying the shot all along the way, that's our complaint. But at the end of this, as I said in my presentation, when we get through this I firmly believe that we will have a set of environmental standards and a monitoring program in place and compliance by our industry, that we can use as a positive selling point for our industry, but right now we're moving through. I deferred to Glen because he is much more articulate than I am in this because he has just been through the process. That is what I meant by - and some people could interpret that as being a bit ad hoc but it's certainly isn't. There is a tremendous amount of thought and cost that has gone into this. That is one of the reasons, Mr. Theriault, that this is taking so long. It's easier - I shouldn't say it's easier to pass laws - I don't mean to be dismissive that way but just because a law is passed doesn't mean the process is complete and that is what we're stuck in.

MR. THERIAULT: What about the government pre-approving sites? Why couldn't the provincial government go around this coastal area and work with communities and pre-approve these sites and then when an investor comes along who wants to go into aquaculture, pay that money right there to the government, what it costs to have that done, wouldn't that work much better that way for investors?

MR. MUISE: But that is being done. There is an experiment going on in Guysborough County doing just that and I think more of it could be done if the resources were available to do this kind of work. A model is being done up in Guysborough County.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Blanchard, do you want to say something?

MR. BLANCHARD: There are attempts. There are people who do believe in exactly what you are suggesting. Unfortunately, there are just as many people who don't believe in it within the system. I believe the reason why things take so long in the system right now is that there is a real deferral of responsibility because at some point in time, somebody needs to sign their name to a piece of paper that says yes, we are going to go ahead and do it and as soon as there is a problem with it, someone is rooting for that signature and they are going to put them up on the wall. I think this isn't just us, I think this is within government itself, there is this real, well, what due diligence do we need to do to make sure that we keep ourselves out of trouble and we do everything.

I think maybe we have gone a little overboard on it and it's contributed to a tremendous amount of extra paperwork. Again, if we look at how easy it is to generate paperwork these days with computers and technology, it's very easy to get a reply back and then sit there and then ask another couple of questions. This happens to the industry constantly. It only takes five minutes for someone to ask questions but it takes another two, three, four, five days for somebody to come up with those answers. It's just part of the process, I think, that exists within the government system right now. It's very easy to ask questions and defer making decisions by just, you know, we'll just ask some more questions and eventually either they go away or they stop.

But to get to the other side of it - and Mr. Chisholm certainly knows - with Canso it was recommended for a potential aquaculture park to put in place a site which is pre-licensed, per se, and if people want to come in - because we had these meetings in Canso and I was involved in some of the earlier stuff. The question is, well, if it's going to take two years to get a permit in Nova Scotia and it's going to take one year in New Brunswick to get a permit, where are you going? You aren't even going to start looking here in Nova Scotia.

In fact, because of our international partnership with Iceland, we were looking at doing some site work in New Brunswick and New Brunswick Business Inc. actively solicited our company with information regarding school systems, education programs, financing, the economy, taxes, everything and they had one person in their New Brunswick business development who was attached to our company to try to encourage them to come into New Brunswick. It was all about look, if you are going to bring families into the area, this is what we can do. This is the type of sports, this is the medical system that we have, this is per capita doctor information and they really actively go out. New Brunswick realizes that they have a $200 million a year industry and they promote it and they work really hard to get new investors in.

I think that if you pay attention to the media and the comments that they are making with regard to why we can't retain immigration in Nova Scotia, I would suggest it's very similar to why we can't attract new investment. We always say Nova Scotia is open to business but the reality is if you can do business another 100 miles away and it's a better business environment, then as a corporate investor you are going to go there. So we really need to, as a province, make this a better place. We should be promoting the fact that we have good school systems or good medical or that we have one of the smartest populations around but I don't think we follow through enough on that. The Canso area, with St. F.X. just up the street, the resources that are in there, the skills that are still there - but we are losing the skills - those are selling points and if we can come up with a mechanism that allows people to come in.

If you look at the Guysborough program which was set up, which was sort of a very similar program, let's see if we can just open it up and have a process where yes, you can do aquaculture within this area, you don't need to go through the whole two-year process, it's a fantastic way of moving things forward because the overall shift for farming is moving to the south coast of Newfoundland right now. They are standing over there saying, we are open for business, we will do whatever it takes to help get you here and get you set up. We are regionally competing with each other. Newfoundland just announced a loan guarantee program for farmers. We still don't have one in this province. That's big stuff.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Parker.

MR. CHARLES PARKER: Thanks, gentlemen, this has been an informative presentation so far, certainly learning quite a bit and it's good, I think, for us as MLAs to get that information. There are certainly a lot of positives around the aquaculture industry in Nova Scotia, good jobs in rural Nova Scotia and support for our rural communities. You have a good product, as we had the pleasure of sampling just the other night. So, as I said, there are a lot of positives but also, as you know, you have your critics and some of those critics are in our rural communities as well, who live near or close to an aquaculture site and I just want to ask you about how you address your critics on two or three particular issues.

I guess the first one, and this perhaps came to light in my riding in the Pictou area a few years ago where somebody wanted to establish a mussel farm in a community and the concern was over site pollution or lack of access for boating. They felt the harbour there would be hundreds or thousands of buoys in the harbour and that would be maybe what they would call site pollution or, like I said, access for recreational boating. Maybe I will get you to address that issue first. Is that something you hear very often or not?

MR. MUISE: We do hear that and, again, to put the whole thing in context, the media will give a lot of attention to issues like that when farms are first proposed but I think it is very fair to say it's factual, that once a farm is in and operating, most of the big concerns tend to disappear. You can count on probably one finger the vast majority of complaints that came

in after a farm is established. In your briefing document there, almost all of those complaints were focused on one individual farm. But, that said, these issues have to be addressed up front as part of the whole public hearing process and the environmental assessment process which also has a public hearing component.

The case you are talking about in particular, and specifically, I remember that. We were not asked to comment but I followed that case specifically and, again, that is a piece of shorefront that was heavily developed for cottages and used for recreational boating and I think the subsequent decision was to cut the farm down dramatically in size, if it was approved at all, I think.

MR. PARKER: It wasn't approved.

MR. MUISE: It wasn't approved at all, exactly. Yet the counter to that would be a case such as St. Anns Bay where the battle was fought, the same thing, all the same concerns were expressed but there you have a different situation. You have deeper water and the problem was solved simply by submerging the farm and putting it as a condition of licence that the farm would remain 17 feet below the surface at low tide. I stopped at St. Anns Look-off on the way back a week before last from home, up in Sydney, and I stopped at the look-off and everybody was up looking at the leaves. I couldn't find the farm. I couldn't find it.

Again, it's a siting issue and given the shallowness of say Tatamagouche Bay and that, I think that would be a challenge, and I think that alternative wouldn't be there. I think every proposed site has to be evaluated on the basis of its own merits. If the community decides that the farm is not to be there, then presumably the farm will not be there.

[10:30 a.m.]

MR. PARKER: What about the issue of harm to natural species - that's another one I've heard from constituents - trout or salmon or whatever in the natural environment? How do you address that one?

MR. MUISE: Again, this is addressed in the whole environmental impact assessment. Contrary to some of the information that you hear in the media, the case is not that clear in terms of any sort of impact. Let me put it this way, the case and the evidence for negative impacts of wild stocks on farm fish vis-a-vis disease transfer is fairly well established. The other way, not so clearly established. Some of the comments in the material we handed out, such as the escape of a million Atlantic salmon on the West Coast going to take over the habitat in B.C. - totally, absolutely false.

The federal government had a program going on at the turn of the last century where they deliberately planted Atlantic salmon on the West Coast for 30 years, and they never established themselves. Contrary, on this side, there have been programs to try to establish wild populations of rainbow trout. They never took; they just don't sustain. They're out of sync with the environment. They do not reproduce. So that's talking about habitat takeover, invasive species, that sort of thing. Those are being addressed.

With regard to disease, our industry deals with the disease issue in a much more holistic way than simply throwing antibiotics into a cage. Our industry focuses heavily on disease prevention with the use of immunization and not antibiotics. We make every effort to make sure all those fish going into cages are disease-free. It reduces the potential transmission of disease within farms, between farms, and between farm stock and wild stock. I think we've been very effective at that.

The third aspect of that, and the one that we've really been hammered with, is called genetic pollution. We're just coming into the end of the first year of a very major study that our industry is sponsoring along with the federal government to look at the impact of our industry on the inner Bay of Fundy stocks. There's a group of salmon rivers that are particularly vulnerable because of, primarily, habitat changes. They're coming down to a state where in some rivers there are six salmon. The finger was pointed at us, that someone found, up in Fundy National Park, salmon with European genes in them.

Well, rather than fighting this issue, we sat down with DFO scientists and Parks Canada scientists and initiated a several hundred thousand dollar study. Everyone put their information on the table. All our farmers made their farms wide open for examination to do genetic testing by the Research and Productivity Council in Fredericton, New Brunswick. I don't know what the sampling is up to now, but it's many thousands of samples. And guess what? None of those genes came from our farms. None. Those were either strays or those were early transplants done by the Department of Natural Resources in Maine, deliberately trying to establish salmon. It was not us, though the finger gets pointed at us.

MR. PARKER: The other issue - I know my time is running short here, Mr. Chairman, and it's already been mentioned here - is around critics or people who are very concerned about organic waste from fish farms. I think that was particularly true in the North West Cove area in Lunenburg County. So how do you answer critics who say there's a lot of organic pollution coming out of the farms?

MR. MUISE: All you can do is refer them to the science. That's all we can do, refer them to the science. There's a body of science being built up right here in the province, and if people choose to ignore that and choose to take a position anyway, we can't dissuade them. That's all we say, please make an objective decision, look at the science, look at what your inspection agencies are doing, look at what your own Department of Environment is doing,

and make a judgment based on that. That's all we ask. Don't take our word for it, look at the science, make science-based decisions.

MR. PARKER: One other short snapper. A few years ago there was a real scare in the aquaculture industry in the blue mussel contamination, and people actually died from that. Is the industry testing for that? What safeguards are in place?

MR. MUISE: I guess I'm the shellfish guy here. My background is shellfish. We've never - knock wood - had a case like that in Nova Scotia. That was specific to P.E.I. That showed some problems in the food inspection system, and that was fixed, fixed by way of more frequent sampling. We instituted, for a number of years, actual sampling of the phytoplankton itself as an early warning system, where we don't just wait to see if the product is contaminated, though we do that, we do that on a regular basis, we have farm sampling, but also actually monitoring the phytoplankton to see - we know now which are the toxic species, and as soon as those species start to rise, farms are given a warning, because they can peak very quickly, once you see the population starting to rise in the Spring or the Fall. The farms will generally shut down. You'll notice there hasn't been an incident like that - that was in 1987, and there hasn't been an incident like that since.

We get some little regional problems with a bit of diuretic shellfish poisoning. Again, for the very first time in history you have farmers out there in the water 24/7, and we're finding problems out there that we didn't know existed. We're discovering those problems, and we're suffering the consequences and we're paying for the resolution. You haven't seen incidences like that since, because there are early warning systems out there. Please be assured - I can't say nothing will ever happen again in the future, but I'm telling you that the monitoring programs that are going on right now make our shellfish one of the safest foods around.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Very short.

MR. BLANCHARD: The Canadian food inspection system is one of the safest in the world. To try to get a contaminated product into the system is almost impossible. We put so much effort, in this country, in food safety, it's spectacular. For a contaminated product to actually make it into the marketplace, make it through the system, it's very difficult. It's almost impossible these days.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. MacKinnon.

MR. RUSSELL MACKINNON: Mr. Chairman, I was listening to my colleague, the member for Digby-Annapolis, talking about how things have changed. I recall back 30 years ago, almost 40 years ago, when we ate lobsters, you'd have to go behind the house so the neighbours wouldn't see you eat them, because they were considered a poor man's food because they were on the bottom of the ocean and they would only eat what came from

above, the finfish and everything else. Today they're a delicacy. Even socialist alarmists eat them as well, surprisingly. (Laughter)

Things do change. Thirty years ago I fished in British Columbia and it was sockeye salmon we fished. I went three years ago to visit British Columbia and I wanted a good feed of sockeye salmon and I couldn't get it, all I could get was Atlantic salmon, grown by the means of aquaculture. So we have done quite well. Out of 400 farms, I believe, in Nova Scotia, we only had problems with two. That's 0.5 per cent. I think the evidence you've given us today is quite substantive.

The question I have is, what can the provincial government do to improve your situation, in terms of marketing, productivity, all other aspects with regard to the aquaculture industry? There seems to be a plea here that in fact you are being ignored to a certain extent. So could you give it to us in short form?

MR. BLANCHARD: Personally, I've been in this business for nearly 20 years, the single biggest thing this province can do is make a provision that allows aquaculture to be recognized under agriculture rules. That's it. The programs that exist in agriculture, if we, as aquaculturists, can be accepted as farmers, then 90 per cent of our problems will go. It's just policy.

MR. MACKINNON: Why is the provincial government refusing to do that?

MR. BLANCHARD: Because it's going to mean change. It's not so much that it's refusing, it's that agriculture is agriculture, and aquaculture is fisheries. There's more detailed answers, but I don't know why they're not changing. We are farmers. That's how simple it is, and it should be a striking committee or the government saying, from now on aquaculture is going to be recognized as farming and entitled to all the rights and privileges as agriculture.

MR. MACKINNON: Now, shifting the focus just slightly, with regard to the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans, that seems to carry the big stick, particularly in terms of approving sites, because otherwise you cannot export your product, unless the feds approve it. I recall having quite a battle, trying to get the sites between St. Peters and Port Morien approved, a couple of sites back in the early 1990s. It took, I believe, three and a half, almost four years before something was finally done, because of bureaucracy. Why isn't the federal government doing something to recognize, or has there been application made to the federal government, some submission by the aquaculture industry, whether it's just in Nova Scotia or all of Atlantic Canada, to have it recognized in the same vein?

MR. MUISE: After 30 years of us being around, looking for assistance, six, seven, eight years of having an Aquaculture Directorate in Ottawa, this was the result, Achieving the Vision, a document of how to grow our industry four times what it is today. It's a

wonderful document. The writer of this, Mr. Yves Bastien, has been hired by DFO to work in this department now with no particular funding put behind this, no programs. It's a wonderful document, a great read if you want to see how we see the future of our industry, but there's no money behind it. As I said before, when we went looking for assistance to our on-farm food safety and traceability, we got zero dollars. There's none.

It's a complicated issue. Even within our industry, we vacillate and we do not have full consensus on whether it's best to leave us housed with DFO or to go to Agriculture. The thought process goes something like, my God, if DFO was not at least compromised to allow us to exist, can you imagine if they came out full force against us, it would be over for us. They would fall back on their 100 per cent mandate to protect fish habitat and protect commercial fishing. We'd be gone in a minute. So at least we see, by being vested with DFO, at some point they're compromised in the fact they have to recognize our existence. So we're still vacillating back and forth.

Now, I want to make one quick statement here, I'll only take 30 seconds at the most. You made the comment about the salmon on the West Coast. We do not see ourselves in opposition or as competitors to wild salmon. When you look at the market, the capacity to serve the marketplace with the West Coast salmon right now, it's about 12 weeks. That's why you can't get sockeye and all the rest of it. It's a seasonal production, unless you want to buy frozen fish. We can service the industry 52 weeks of the year, again with a different product. We certainly do not see ourselves, in any way, in opposition to the industry.

I'm an avid fly fisherman, and nothing breaks my heart more than to see what's going on in the salmon industry here in the East, or on the West Coast. You could take every salmon farm out of Canada next week and you would not do one iota to improve the situation of the West Coast or the East Coast Atlantic salmon. I'm 100 per cent convinced of that and prepared to speak any time you want.

MR. MACKINNON: One short snapper, Mr. Chairman. Given the fact that you've outlined, in the opening remarks, with regard to the benefits in health, particularly with regard to coronary matters, I'm sure there are a lot of other factors. We were always taught, when we were growing up, that every week we had to eat fish because fish was supposed to be the brain food. Now I don't know, I may not have eaten enough, but we'll get past that. (Laughter)

Given that, I don't see the provincial government, or even the federal government for that matter, promoting aquaculture products, particularly in terms of Buy Nova Scotia. Maybe it's on TV every day or in the newspapers, whatever. I was so impressed when you gave the figures about Sobeys, the percentage. Is there anything that, provincially, can be done to further advance that cause, without taxing the aquaculture industry any further?

[10:45 a.m.]

MR. MUISE: We are probably 30 per cent of the way, or 25 per cent of the way, along on doing a regional mussel marketing initiative, to try to resolve the problems and getting people eating more mussels. That's just the first step in a number of programs that have to take place. You're going to hear a program announcement very shortly, to do the same thing for salmon. Again, it takes a lot of time with limited resources, but we're working with the marketing people at the Nova Scotia Department of Agriculture and Fisheries to do very much exactly what you're saying.

Now that the initial flurry of anti-aquaculture has died down for now, there is no point in trying to compete dollar for dollar. We had done our studies and were warned that we can't outspend these people. These people have huge, deep pockets and the big trust funds in the United States that they're tapping into and it's a trade issue, it's not an environmental issue. I can make a very sound case for the fact that what is going on is a trade issue, it's not an environmental or food safety issue funded out of the United States.

Yes, we haven't done enough of it, mostly because we've been fighting a battle of survival over the last few years. Now that that space of negative publicity is over, you are going to see several very focused initiatives to help the mussel sector and help the salmon sector. Salmon is going to be nationally and the mussel sector is going to be regional - we are leading that one, our association. The salmon one is much bigger, we're looking at millions of dollars required to address that issue and you'll see that happen.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Brown.

MR. BROWN: If I could just expound a bit in response to your question about what the province can do to help us. My answer to that would be give us a secure environment in which to do business. To expound on that just a little, one of the biggest problems that we face today is access to capital. The traditional banks are very timid of aquaculture. As most of you would know, traditional banks are not big risk takers, they want to be very secure before they will enter into the business.

One of the problems that we have is that a tenure of lease is not adequate in this province. In New Brunswick, leases are issued for 20 years and the banks take some security in that. In Nova Scotia, I believe it is 10 years and then five years at a time after that. So we just don't have the security from that point of view. Even groups like Farm Credit, today, are very timid of Nova Scotia and it has to do with that type of thing.

So if I could say two things, I would say extend the tenure of lease to a minimum of 20 years and number two, bring back the loan guarantee program for businesses that when assessed on a case-by-case basis, have merit and have a strong business case. We don't advocate just randomly giving money away or supporting businesses that don't have the

business case. When an individual or company does have a strong business case, I believe there is a role for the province to play to support, by way of a loan guarantee, that will then allow the traditional bank to come in and say, okay, now we have the security that we need to give you the operating line.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Hines.

MR. GARY HINES: Mr. Blanchard, you have a future when your industry is gone - and hopefully it never is - a national citizens coalition or some such body where you can be the spokesperson. You hit the nail right on the head. We expend so much energy and so many resources responding to NIMBY fear and emotion in terms of recognition of a good industry, that it's painful. I don't know what the solution is but I've been in government under two bodies, both provincial and municipal, and I took a stand on behalf of a community some time ago and I opposed the citizens because they were responding with fear and NIMBY emotion. Today we have a Class II C & D waste facility unlike anything in Canada that is ready to open, and the people have accepted it.

The only voice we had out there was the negative voice throughout that whole process. You guys are suffering from the same thing, as many industries suffer from that same thing. We, as governments and bureaucrats, have to respond to that element and that cuts your resources to a bare minimum.

I hear your request to have acceptance of the aquaculture, along with the agriculture program. I don't think that's the total solution but it certainly would be part of the solution, but I have a question.

The two things that I have had dealings with recently are: global warming and how it has affected the wild salmon industry in British Columbia; and also the dumping of ballast waters on our coasts. Have those two things posed a problem to you at this point or do you see them causing a problem?

MR. MUISE: Absolutely, and I think of a very specific case on that one. Our mussel farms on the South Shore are being plagued by tunicates, a fouling organism, a sea squirt, which are fouling the mussel farms. The big mussel farms on P.E.I. are having the same problem with species that are introduced and it appears to be in ballast water, it is a different type of tunicate, a much more vigorous, much tougher thing to remove. We conservatively figure it is costing our industry probably $5 million or $6 million a year right now and again, that came in on ballast water. There is strong evidence that the MSX outbreak that's going to completely decimate and wipe out the oysters in the Bras d'Or Lakes, as far as we know, over the next probably 15 to 20 years, looks as if it came in in ballast water. The green crab. Time and time again it is a huge issue. How you address that I don't know.

There is a wonderful homegrown technology, Paul Brodie, right here in Halifax, designed it and it will revolutionize the treatment of ballast water, having just worked toward trying to get it implemented. I sat down with the American Gypsum Company's chief manager and Paul Brodie, up at Eskasoni Fish & Wildlife Commission where the manager for American Gypsum basically banged his head on the table and said, I wish you had been here two years ago when we rebuilt four of our ships, we could have installed a system. It is a closed-loop system that was developed right here in Halifax, just waiting to be developed. The Navy is exploring it right now. There are solutions out there if we just believe we can find these things and implement them. That is a huge issue, that's a huge one.

Basically, I think, it seems to be that the federal thought process is that this will resolve itself over the 20 to 25 year lifespan of the existing commercial vessels. In the meantime there will continue to be problems and our coastal areas are going to be suffering from it. That's a huge one.

MR. HINES: And the global warming?

MR. MUISE: Again, my own personal opinion is that that is probably what is going on with salmon stocks here in Nova Scotia and B.C., that's number one, the warming of the waters. Number two - and I have a couple of slides I can show you, I hid a couple of slides - what is going on in Nova Scotia is with the waters warming and a decline in salmon, we're seeing the deliberate implant of chain pickerel and smallmouth bass in all our streams right now. So now, where salmon used to exist freely, you have declining populations, now they have two prime predators right in the streams cleaning up on these things.

You can go out anywhere in southwest Nova Scotia on an evening and pick up a half dozen chain pickerel, things that long, with mouths that big, now living in waters that used to produce trout and salmon. It's a problem, it's a serious, serious issue. We're taking the brunt of the criticism for the inner Bay of Fundy salmon, how many prosecutions have taken place for the deliberate transplanting of smallmouth bass and chain pickerel in Southern New Brunswick and Nova Scotia? How many charges have been laid in the last 20 years? Chain pickerel are now right up as far as the St. Mary's watershed and smallmouth bass are now into the Margaree river system, deliberately introduced. How many people have been prosecuted?

MR. HINES: None, probably.

MR. MUISE: No, because we can be managed from a desktop. The people who are deliberately importing foreign stocks, you have to have the resources to go out and chase these people, catch them and charge them. We can be managed from a desktop very successfully and that's what is going on.

MR. HINES: Thank you.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I'm really glad to see some of those NIMBY, negative environmentalists who are raising the concern of global warming, you're picking up on them, so I think that's good.

The honourable member for Guysborough-Sheet Harbour.

MR. RONALD CHISHOLM: Mr. Chairman, I don't have any questions but I just wanted to say that we talked about Canso and what is happening in Guysborough County. The RDA down there and team Guysborough have done a tremendous amount of work on defining sites or identifying new sites. They have one guy who is designated for aquaculture, who works with the development officer from the RDA, so there is a lot of work done.

It was a great presentation today and I think there are four sites - maybe a couple of smaller ones, as well - that you identified in your slide presentations from Guysborough County, and they are one of the major employers that we have down there now. We hope to identify more sites and be able to work with the industry to bring more sites on stream. Thank you.

MR. MUISE: If I could make one comment about that, that stretch from Clam Harbour east into Guysborough County, that whole archipelago of islands in there, I've had leases out there myself. If we could find some way of living amicably with the duck population out there, particularly the eiders and scoters, there is a tremendous potential to grow mussels out there, tremendous. If we could only find some way to put farms in there so they won't be completely harvested out by the ducks. You can't disturb these things and when we find a way to do that, then you will see some tremendous growth take place in less populated areas of the province and tremendous growth potential. But that is a solution waiting to happen.

MR. CHISHOLM: I had a meeting yesterday with Bruce Hancock with the Country Harbour Sea Farms, a mussel-growing operation in Country Harbour, and he was saying that the ducks were, it was just like a smorgasbord for them down there.

MR. MUISE: Yes, you're putting out bird feeders, is what you are doing. So we have to find a way around that through exclusion, netting or something. We will find a way.

MR. CHISHOLM: Thank you very much for the presentation.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Muise, I think I'm going to be out of time to ask any questions so I just wonder if you could make a clarification, please. You were talking about the deliberate introduction of pickerel and smallmouth bass. I live on the northern tip of Grand Lake and I'm well aware of those species. I'm very surprised, actually, just in the last couple of years to see the pickerel there. Anyway, my question is really around, I think, Mr.

Langille had a concern that you were indicating that the government deliberately introduced them. I think it wasn't your intention.

MR. MUISE: Again, I told you I'm an avid fly-fisherman so I hang out in places where people like to tell stories. It's not proven, no one has been charged, no one has been convicted yet, but it's sort of a wink and a nudge that oh yeah, so and so with a live well on his boat has just transplanted fish up into Lake Ainslie. People know who is doing it. The way the laws work in this province, fishermen are allowed to have live wells in their boats with aeration systems, that sort of thing, because turnarounds that take place, you have to bring the fish in live and they have to be live released. That fisherman can drive away with his boat on this trailer and go all over Nova Scotia and there is nothing illegal about him having those fish live in that live well. If you want to prosecute the individual for dumping, you have to be there and catch them in the act of dumping those fish from the live well into waters where those species don't exist. It's a huge challenge. I don't know how it could ever be managed but this is a problem. This is a resource problem. Now, turn it into an opportunity. It's now classified as a recreational fish.

So I guess when certain individuals go along and they keep a little club in their back pocket and every chain pickerel they catch they bop on the head and throw them in the woods, they are probably breaking the law but it happens.

MR. CHAIRMAN: But you are stating that this is not done by the province, this is done by . . .

MR. MUISE: No, no, this is done deliberately by certain recreational fishers. No, it is not a provincial policy. Sorry, I didn't mean to leave that . . .

MR. CHAIRMAN: No, I didn't think that.

MR. MUISE: This is taken from the province's Web site. I don't know if any of you are familiar but those two little things that are being eaten by this thing, those are both salmonids, those are trout or salmon. I don't know if that was just ironic or circumstance.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I would like to give you a minute to sum up if you would like.

MR. MUISE: Again, thank you very much for the opportunity to present here. We will come back any time. I love spending the evening sweating out in anticipation of what you folks are going to ask. I always like a chance to beat the drum for our industry and if I could leave you with the challenges exactly as I said. Think about the context of what we are doing. Think about our products in light of what you would do if this was an agricultural product, fully sustainable. We can produce 52 weeks of the year, farm fresh, habitat that we can turn around and rehabilitate the habitat in three seasons. Think about it. How would you

vote if this was a new type of apple or if this was a new type of cabbage. Please, that is all we ask. Think about us in that context.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I want to thank you very much for your presentation and for your time. Definitely, there is a lot of information that the committee will take from what you said so thanks again.

MR. MUISE: Thank you very much.

MR. CHAIRMAN: We are adjourned, members of the committee.

[The committee adjourned at 11:00 a.m.]