HANSARD

Printed and Published by Nova Scotia Hansard Reporting Services

Mr. Harold Theriault, Chairman

Mr. Alfred MacLeod

Mr. Sterling Belliveau

Mr. Clarrie MacKinnon

In Attendance:

Ms. Rhonda Neatt

Legislative Committee Clerk

Mr. Keith Colwell

MLA for Preston

Partnership for Sustainable Development of Digby Neck and Island Society

Mr. Kemp Stanton, Chair

Mr. Don Mullin, Vice-Chair

Mr. Andy Moir, Public Affairs

Roman">[Page 1]

HALIFAX, TUESDAY, MAY 22, 2007

STANDING COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES

SUBCOMMITTEE ON FISHERIES

9:00 A.M.

CHAIRMAN

Mr. Harold Theriault

MR. CHAIRMAN: We will get this meeting underway. I want to thank you for coming this morning. This is our second subcommittee meeting that we've held. We've set up this subcommittee through the winter to handle some of the overload on the Resources Committee because the Resources Committee was packed full, so the subcommittee fills in. What we take from this subcommittee today, we will take it back to the full Resources Committee for recommendations and whatever takes place.

With that, we'll start the introductions around the table. We have two hours here this morning. As you can see, there's only three of us here on the committee, you can take your time and do your presentation, whatever time you like. After that, there will be questions put forward.

With that, we will start with introductions.

[The committee members introduced themselves.]

MR. DON MULLIN: I am Don Mullin and I am the Vice-Chair of this long thing called the Partnership for Sustainable Development Digby Neck and Island Society, commonly known as the Stop the Quarry Group, that's the subdivision. On my right is Kemp Stanton, a resident of Whale Cove, a third or fourth or eighth generation lobster fisherman. To my left is Andy Moir, he is our Coordinator of Public Affairs or Chairman of Public Affairs or whatever handle you give him that particular day.

I'd like to thank very much, Mr. Theriault, for arranging this, and the two MLAs in attendance. We certainly won't use the full two hours for our presentation because I fear that might bore you and not leave the opportunity for some questions, which might reflect your own concerns or interests and allow us to expand upon the presentation that we're making.

We'll just start with a few slides, and I don't know, it is kind of like - telling you about the beauty of the place is trying to explain Niagara Falls by saying it is a large body of water coming over a cliff. You just can't explain the beauty of the place if you haven't been there. We'll try and convey a bit of the uniqueness, and invite you to come down any time and realize, as we do, why it is such a special place that we're trying to protect.

So, this proposed quarry, which goes back now a little over five years since the first permit was issued for a 3.9-hectare site, which later morphed into a 150-hectare site to extract 100 million tons of basalt over the next 50 years. The area, of course, is this spit of land called the Digby Neck, which is about a mile and a half wide, on average, overlooking both the Bay of Fundy and Saint Marys Bay. About halfway down the Neck is a beautiful little traditional fishing village called Little River, tranquil, very, very beautiful properties there. Within less than a kilometre, as the crow flies, of that, is the Bay of Fundy. On the side of that Bay of Fundy they want to extract this 2 million tons of basalt, annually, and ship it to New Jersey for concrete products and roadbed material and so forth.

This is actually the spit of land itself, and you can see the narrowness of it. It is truly quite a small piece of land when you view it from the air, and to take a huge chunk out of that threatens us with a third ferry to service that area. So what we're fighting to protect is a unique, natural, resource-based community, scenic, tranquil, relatively pristine and traditional in its occupations and family structures and way of life.

We have, of course, beautiful scenery, we have, represented by the lobster traps, the traditional fishing industry, although we had groundfish until recently, we don't have them in great numbers anymore. The picture on the right illustrates the cleanliness of our area. You can put out your white sheets and you can put out your fish to dry, not contaminating either of them. You notice on the top right it is quite well-known, it is the natural formation of our Balancing Rock, a very popular tourist attraction, partly because it is free, I suppose.

In the upper centre is a natural formation of basalt, and that's on Dartmouth Point, which is on Long Island, and it's a kilometre or so walk, a nature walk down to it, and tourists just love going there because it is rugged, but there's nothing there except beauty, natural beauty. You are looking into Saint Marys Bay and these unusual rock formations, and you may see sea birds or fishing vessels but you won't see anything else. People escape to places like that because there are very few places in the world left that you can escape to, be by yourself and be one with nature.

Of course, whale-watching is an extremely popular ecotourist activity. We have a lot of repeat customers, they come down and they experience it and they simply have to come back. They come back year after year and they continue to go out whale-watching. The seasonal regularity of laying in and hauling up your lobster traps, it's certainly a major employer but it's also indicative, I think, of an unusual way of life. People keep saying, well why do they have all these strange things in their yard - not that they're ugly, they're lobster traps, where do you want to keep them. They just represent what we are down there. Okay, that's what we call our pretty picture show, now let's get into some of the substance.

For most of us on the Neck and Islands, the question of whether or not we should have a quarry is really a no-brainer. Of course, you'd expect people from the area to be opposed to it. Who wants a quarry in their back yard, or a garbage dump? The argument has been boiled down to the environment versus jobs, but that's a false argument. The two are intertwined, but you can't look at them as opposites or opponents, that it is one or the other. Every job created has some impact on the environment, whether good or bad.

First, you have to look at the environmental impact on its own, no matter whether the project is going to create 34 jobs, 3400 jobs, 34,000 jobs, environmental impact has to take into account issues as broad as, can the state of the earth sustain such a project, to such minutia as will dust particles created by activity on the site destroy the habitat of a rare and endangered plant? So all between the broad, broad picture and the very, very narrow issues, environmental issues have to be looked at.

So between the broad strokes and the smallest considerations are hundreds, if not thousands, of variables to be considered when measuring the environmental impact. Then, you have the economics of the project. How much tax revenue will it generate for the municipality, the province and the Government of Canada? In doing so you have to look at the number of jobs created, you have to look at what impact those jobs will have on the economy. You also have to look at the nature of the project itself, does it fit in with the rest of the economy of the area or will it be in conflict? Will the jobs created add to the total number of jobs or will the very existence of the new project cause job and revenue losses in the already existing economy?

Let's look at a couple of the many of hundreds of environmental impacts the proposed quarry in Digby Neck will have globally, nationally, provincially and locally. Greenhouse gas, quite a popular topic these days, we are all aware of the crisis facing the world over greenhouse gas and climate change. As politicians, you are being called upon to do something about it, to show leadership in what the public consistently says is the number one issue. So what will this project do on the greenhouse gas front?

The Environmental Impact Statement, a 3,300 page document prepared for the developer, or as we like to call them, the proponent, would indicate that more than 80,000 tons of greenhouse gas would be released annually from the site. That is 4 million tons

during the life of the project, in fact, this is a conservative estimate because the proponent has not included greenhouse gases emitted by bulk carriers, by vehicles visiting the site to bring supplies or to provide services, vehicles used by employees, or the emissions released by Nova Scotia Power in meeting the increased demand for electricity or in installing new lines between Digby and Little River to carry the increased electrical load.

The EIS, Environmental Impact Statement, also noticed that carbon monoxide also can be released during blasting operations, but they provided no estimate of such emissions or what if any mitigation would be attempted.

We have all heard about climate change and the role greenhouse gas has played in climate change, but we have a hard time relating to greenhouse gas figures. In the case of 4 million tons of carbon dioxide, we need to use some reference points to get a handle on the amount we are talking about.

Given that the company says it will create 34 jobs, but only 28.77 person-year jobs, since most jobs will be for 10 months a year, that means that 139,034 tons of greenhouse gas will be created for every job over the next 50 years. Put another way, each year, every job will spew 2,781 tons of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. That is about 618 times what the average Canadian produces and the average Canadian should be ashamed of how much they produce compared to other parts of the world.

It is estimated that the average Canadian is responsible for creating 4.5 tons of greenhouse gas a year, so what we are talking about is the equivalent of plunking down 17,777 jobs, or people, in Little River. It currently has probably 200 to 250 people, so it is essentially exploding that population, if they were engaged in normal activity, by 17,777 people.

[9:15 a.m.]

Mitigation, we have heard about mitigation of greenhouse gas, you may have heard of carbon sequestration. That essentially involves storing the carbon underground or at the bottom of an ocean where it can be kept out of the atmosphere. That is not a solution. That is an expensive way of delaying dealing with the problem and I wouldn't want to think of the ecosystem impact in the long term of sequestering carbon monoxide on the floor of the ocean because you are fooling with an ecosystem of the effects of which mixing it with carbon dioxide is simply not known, so it is a silly suggestion.

Solutions involve reducing emissions or converting carbon dioxide to oxygen. Nature does the latter and in terms of nature's mitigation, trees are carbon dioxide converters, they represent a sustainable resource and they work. According to a University of California study one mature tree absorbs 21.7 kilograms of carbon dioxide a year, so Bilcon would have to plant 3,354,000-plus trees, and that is mature trees, to mitigate the damage they will do to

the atmosphere. Roughly 3.5 million mature trees would have to be planted to absorb the carbon dioxide and therefore eliminate the damage to the environment.

Let's talk money. The federal Conservatives in their recently introduced climate change and air quality plan calculate the cost of damage of a ton of greenhouse gas is between $20 and $35. Using these numbers, you can determine that a conservative estimate - pardon the pun - of the cost to the environment during the life of the project would be between $80 million and $140 million to the Canadian public from damage to the environment - for 29 full-time equivalent jobs? It would be cheaper to pay the workers to stay home and avoid the environmental damage. We could pay each person $55,172 and change not to work and still come out equal.

The second issue, invasive species, in the past 10 years we have learned of tunicates devastating oyster and mussel beds in P.E.I.; green crabs spreading into Nova Scotia and wrecking havoc; black spot disease affecting lobster; and MSX affecting shellfish in the Gulf of Maine. We can even regard damage to the trout fishing as a result of introducing pickerel to lakes in Atlantic Canada as an example of invasive species. The list goes on and on. Invasive species are those that are not native to an area and have established themselves in a new area and cause damage to habitat, to other species, to the economy, and so forth.

The introduction of invasive species to the water off Whites Point is a very distinct possibility, and the result could be disastrous. Thousands of tons of water are loaded as ballast water to stabililze empty ships. In this case, these thousands of tons will be loaded from one of the filthiest areas of the U.S. Eastern Seaboard. The proponent says ballast water is not a problem; it will hire reputable shipping companies that will follow government regulations - and I would be glad to answer questions on how full of holes these regulations are if you have questions later.

Bilcon's own experts have identified three classes of invasive species that are found in Raritan Bay, the body of water just off Amboy, New Jersey, which is where the basalt would be shipped to. This is where the ships would take on ballast water for the return trip. The three classes of invasive species are algae, invertebrates, and pathogens parasites.

Dealing first with algae - all algae can have serious consequences, although brown tides that can cause significant losses of various shellfish species and eelgrass beds may be the most likely to establish in the Whites Point area, or more likely in the upper regions of the Bay of Fundy or the Annapolis Basin. Of the five algal species identified in Raritan Bay, the survival potential for waters in the Bay of Fundy are uncertain - I underline "uncertain" and I'm going to use that word purposefully - for all because it hasn't been studied. We simply don't know whether those species will survive when transmitted, whether they'll establish themselves and multiply and live here.

Of the invertebrates - these consist of varieties of ascidians, crustaceans and mollusks. It is noted that the invertebrate species of greatest concern for Whites Point area is the Asian shore crab, as it has already successfully colonized the northeast region of the U.S. coast. Of the eight species of invertebrates in Raritan Bay, the potential for transfer to Whites Point area is unknown because it hasn't been studied.

Pathogens parasites - little is known about the potential introduction of these little beasties through ballast water. DFO, for example, doesn't know with any certainty the risk of introducing the parasitic sea crab, but states simply that precautions, unstated, in nature should be taken to avoid such an occurrence - that's little cause for comfort in my view. Of the seven identified pathogens parasites identified in the New York-New Jersey area, the potential for transmission and re-establishment at the Whites Point area is rated low for two species, a qualified low for one other, and unknown for four species.

The consultant hired by Bilcon to carry out the study on invasive species concluded its report by saying that "the greatest immediate concern for the Whites Point ecosystem and fishing community would be the potential introduction of the pathogen responsible for the mass lobster mortalities observed in the Long Sound area in 1999. Evaluating this risk is, however, very difficult given the current status of the research on the issue." Given the critical importance of the lobster industry in particular - and the fishing industry generally - to the area, that's a chilling conclusion that they don't know.

It is a near certainty that millions of tons of filthy ballast water will be released in the Bay of Fundy waters during the proposed 50 years of the project - water containing at least 20 known harmful species. Who could, with a clear conscience, argue that this is an acceptable risk, given the potential devastating effects that could occur? I would hope I could say none of us would - I would also hope the same could be said of any political Party or any political decision-making process.

The third issue, blasting, and specifically the effects of blasting on marine mammals. DFO's own scientists have stated the following conclusions. It is considered unlikely that blasting would result in physical effects on marine mammals, endangered or otherwise, beyond 500 metres. However, there is a high level of uncertainty associated with this conclusion. DFO scientists, they are not sure. They go on to say that subtle effects on marine mammals are expected to extend beyond 2500 metres from the blast site. However, these are not expected to result in overall changes to the distribution of the population or other population-scale impacts. There is a moderate level of uncertainty associated with this conclusion - DFO scientists' words: "moderate level of uncertainty." In other words, there's no proof to show that a proposed action will not lead to serious or irreversible environmental damage. And that's a phrase that I'm going to hit upon later - "will not lead to serious or irreversible environmental damage."

Bilcon says it will not blast when endangered whales are within 2,500 metres of shore. They plan to have somebody watching for whales with a pair of binoculars. Their plan does not take into account that whales spend only 5 per cent of their lives on the surface, so the chance of spotting a whale are only about 1 in 20, under ideal circumstances - add a bit of chop and the chance of spotting a whale goes down considerably.

They subsequently amended it and they say they're going to send out a work boat with a person to verify whether there are whales in the area if a ship's captain reports to the authority in Saint John that monitors those things - if a ship's captain on the way in or out says they've seen endangered whales, they'll report it and they'll send out a little boat to see whether they can spot it to verify it. I'm not comfortable that all whales will be spotted and therefore protected.

There are literally hundreds of other environmental concerns I could address, and I'd be happy to do so if you have any questions. I must, however, mention one more which should be of particular concern to this fisheries subcommittee, and I want to take a moment to talk about the impact on fishing.

This is a very complex issue and cannot be covered in detail today. Herring are known to be light averse. The industrial, navigational and safety lighting to be used in the proposed project are likely to affect navigational and migratory paths of schools of herring and may affect any shoreline weir - that's netting for catching herring for those who don't live in the area or are unfamiliar with it.

Blasting has been shown to have harmful effects on fish, particularly on species with a swim bladder. In fairness to the proponent, the setback distances from the shoreline and the staggered nature of the blast will probably minimize any shock damage to fish; however, contaminated runoff from the site, particulate matter - commonly known as dust - and invasive species released in ballast water are but three threats to the fishery. Shipping is unlikely to have a major impact on fishing other than a substantial impact on lobster harvesting in the immediate area, where traps will need to be removed from the inbound-outbound route from the shipping lane and the ship's turning radius area.

Increased shipping will, however, add to ocean noise levels, and science is unclear as to the effects of ocean noise levels on fish stocks. The risk of ship-whale strikes will increase with 100 additional passages through the Bay of Fundy annually with a Panamax-sized container ship. Increased turbidity of the water off Whites Point will be created by the propellers and bow thrusters of the ships.

It is anticipated that this could affect fish and lobster habitat due to siltation changes, at least in the intertide period. There will be a loss of habitat due to the installation of mooring dolphins and securing lines and structures. The proponent states this loss will be offset by creating habitat on the pillars, dolphins, and by submersing concrete structures on

the ocean floor, commonly known as huts. A recent report - in fact it was last week or the week before - of Halifax Harbour's efforts to build lobster habitat using concrete structures revealed that they failed to do so, but they did create habitat for some plant life and smaller fish stock. The proponent has been chastised by DFO for stating that the habitat compensation plan they submitted has been approved by the department, and it hasn't been.

Finally, there is a real cause for concern about our lucrative lobster fishery. Not only will there be a reduction in the habitat that can be harvested due to the space required for shipping lanes and ships turning, but - and listen to this one - the effects of blasting on lobsters is unknown. The proponent admits that little, if any, research has been done on the topic and tries to give us comfort by reporting the results of seismic testing on snow crab.

Gentlemen, that is just bad science. You cannot extrapolate results across species just because they are both crustaceans, and you can't compare the results of different types of sound, seismic versus blasting. Even if you could, the damage found to the eggs and fertility of crabs should certainly sound alarms about the effects on lobster. How is the company planning to mitigate, minimize, or reduce the damage it does to the fishery? It will compensate lobster fishermen for gear they have lost due to fishing, but not for lost time - and it will be up to the fishermen to prove to a committee, appointed by the company, that their gear was lost due to company activities.

One final, brief point on the environmental side of this debate - it is called the precautionary principle. Canada has adopted it as official policy. In essence it says if you don't know if something you do might cause harm, but it could conceivably cause harm, then you don't do it. There are many aspects of this project where the science is either unclear or just doesn't exist. The effects of importing 17 of 20 invasive species in ballast water, the lack of scientific evidence of the effects of sound on marine mammals, the lack of science on the effects of blasting on lobsters are three major unknowns.

The precautionary principle as interpreted by the review panel states that "it is the Proponent's responsibility to show proof that its actions will not cause serious or irreversible damage to the environment." The proponent cannot do so, and the project therefore should not be permitted.

I would like to turn for a minute to the economic impact side of this issue, on the issue of profitability. Bilcon of Nova Scotia registered itself as an unlimited liability corporation - I'm not sure if you understand the implications, but there are certain tax implications of being an unlimited liability corporation. They report themselves to be owned by Clayton Concrete of New Jersey, however, they also claim to be a sole subsidiary of something called Bilcon of Delaware which acts as a holding company, which has no other assets but simply acts as a holding company for Bilcon of Delaware.

[9:30 a.m.]

It is entirely conceivable that Bilcon of Delaware could lease out all of the equipment, could lease out consulting services and other services such as accounting, thereby reducing Bilcon of Nova Scotia's paper profits essentially to zero. It is theoretically possible - I don't know if that is their intention. I have asked them why they have an unlimited liability corporation and I have received no answers. I say the threat exists that Bilcon of Nova Scotia may never show substantial profit, so you won't get revenues from royalties because it is no longer deemed to be a mineral, but you may never receive the tax revenue either.

Municipal taxes - a presentation to the Digby Board of Trade approximately three and a half years ago had Mr. Buxton saying the company would be paying $400,000 a year in municipal taxes. I challenge that and I challenged that publicly in the Digby Courier - complete silence, as with every other challenge I think I have ever made to Bilcon when I have confronted their numbers or their statements.

Discussions at the municipal, district, and regional levels failed to find any official who would confirm the $400,000 stated municipal taxes. Both the district and regional assessment offices clearly stated that not only had no assessment been done, but that none would be done until construction was completed. The taxes would then be determined by applying the applicable municipal tax rate to the assessed value.

My investigation of the Porcupine quarry at Aults Cove revealed that municipal taxes would probably be substantially less than half the stated amount, perhaps $120,000 a year versus $400,000 a year, but even that is based on conjecture as to what the assessed value of that property will be. So the $400,000 is a figment of the proponent's imagination and is simply a part of the PR gesture to try to sell this project to the community.

Jobs, jobs, jobs - that's the mantra we've heard for the last year, in particular, from the proponent. Let's look at the real argument. At the moment the company is promising to create 34 jobs - not all 12-month-a-year jobs - that's down from the 60 or so jobs that were originally promised and the 34, as I said, aren't really full-time jobs. The company plans to operate with a full staff only 40 weeks of the year. They haven't outlined how many positions will be needed during the 12 weeks of the year that they will be down for maintenance. So we may be talking about the equivalent of 29 full-time jobs.

The company had also been promising lots of locally created jobs during the construction phase, anticipated to last a year. Now it seems they will be contracting out the entire construction of the marine terminal, saying that it's technical work and they don't have the competence to oversee the construction of the terminal; they also say they will be contracting out parts of the land-based quarry construction work. So the 85 jobs promised to locals during the pre-quarry operation seem to be disappearing. We don't know how many local people may be employed by these contractors, but there's certainly no assurance,

because Bilcon is not going to be doing the hiring and the supervising of the construction of either the marine terminal or the land-based activities.

I mentioned earlier that when assessing the economic impact we also have to look at whether the project fits in with the local economy, or is in conflict with it. First, the company promises to hire local - where is it going to get trained welders? Probably from already established industries such as the boat building and repair firms in Digby or on the Acadian Shore - companies, I might add, that are struggling to keep the trained staff they have from going to much higher-paying jobs in Alberta. So the very existence of this quarry is going to put more demand on the already stressed local market for skilled labour. Either the company will have to bring in skilled labour from outside the area or it will have to raid local employers already struggling to keep their labour force.

Tourism is the second most important industry in our area - what about the existence of the quarry? This area, particularly Long and Brier Islands, has spent much of the past two decades or more building capacity for tourism, particularly ecotourism, and promoting this as a tourist destination. During this period, whale-watching has exploded as an activity and has been the major tourist attraction to the area.

Additional attractions have been developed such as the Balancing Rock, and additional attractions are being pursued such as the Bay of Fundy Discovery Centre that, after four years of hard work, is close to being realized. The Nature Conservancy of Canada owns a substantial portion of Brier Island where a nature preserve is maintained. The Neck and Islands are on a major North American flyway, and migratory birds have made this one of the best birdwatching areas in Canada.

The vast majority of residents who are involved with the tourist sector believe that industrial development of the type represented by the proposed quarry are completely incompatible with the image of this area as a relatively pristine, quiet, natural area that offers a wonderful escape from overdeveloped, polluted and built environments.

The proponent has argued that because the quarry will not be seen from the highway, and because tourists will not be aware of the industrial site before they visit the area, it will have no impact on tourism. At one point the proponent pointed out that the payroll of quarry workers would be equal to the income earned by tourism sector workers - inferring, I guess, that even if tourism died there would be no net economic loss to the area.

Recently the proponent has been pointing to examples of other locations where tourists are exposed to quarries - Cancun, Mexico; Vancouver Island; Cape Breton - and they argue that there has not been a negative impact. However, absolutely no evidence has been provided to support this contention. By the way, the panel has already pointed out that the site would be highly visible by anyone out on the water, which we consider our second

highway in the area, which includes many of the whale-watching excursions and any cruise ships headed for either Digby or Saint John.

I want to make a brief statement on an ongoing contest on the CBC called the Seven Wonders of Canada. The Bay of Fundy is right at the top of the voting. At my last visit to the site, it was tied for the highest rated Wonder of Canada. It was tied with a location in northern Ontario, with 8 per cent of the total votes, so even Niagara Falls, the Rockies, Canadian hockey - all were less popular in the Canadian view as wonders - some not natural. The rock in Thunder Bay, the Sleeping Giant in Thunder Bay and the Bay of Fundy seemed to be headed for number one or two position out of 52, which are the final list of Canadian scenic wonders. I think that bodes very highly in the Canadian mind of the uniqueness and specialness of the Bay of Fundy and its ecosystem, which are threatened.

The very fact that we will undoubtedly be one of the top seven can't miss. It has to be marketed and it has to be a real drawing card for us in the area of tourism opportunities. It is pretty hard to sell the Bay as a natural Wonder of Canada if you have to ask people to turn a blind eye to the destruction you've allowed to the coastline, not to mention the very real possibility that you could allow the ruin of a vital ecosystem.

Yes, I hear you argue that the place needs jobs, and so it does. First, we have to preserve and nurture the jobs we already have in the fishery, in tourism, in sustainable forestry; then we have to create more sustainable jobs and they are being created. Five years ago there wasn't a restaurant in Freeport. Because of a local initiative, Lavena's Catch was born. It is now listed in Where to Eat in Canada. If you visit the area, you'll do yourself a great disservice if you don't go there and have the pan haddock. It buys exclusively local product and it employs up to 14 people during the summer months.

Take a look at the work Rollie Swift, from Westport, is doing. He has developed an automatic lobster banding machine that has won praise at trade shows from Halifax to California. When he goes into production, he could be employing as many as 10 local people. By the way, his lobster banding machine can easily be modified to band fresh cut vegetables such as cauliflower and carrots. He has already had interest in this machine from growers around the world. Or look at June Swift and Barb Watson, they saw all of the local tourism people going as far as Halifax to have their brochures printed and they said, why can't we do that on the Island? With the help of the Freeport Community Development Association, they are now in business. Two local jobs created and as their business grows, they will probably hire more people.

At the end of Digby Neck, a new wind generator just went up. The potential for more and the jobs that go with them is great. Tidal power is now on the front burner; the passage between Digby Neck and Long Island is one of the prime candidates for development. There is real opportunity.

The point is, we can exploit our resources without destroying them. We are not a dying community, as the company would have us believe; we are a changing community, one that is adapting to new economic realities. We want to thrive the way we always have, exploiting our skills and resources without destroying them. This quarry is in conflict with our way of life and with our economy. It doesn't make environmental sense and, more importantly, it doesn't make economic sense, or vice versa, because it doesn't make sense in either direction.

Several weeks ago, Premier MacDonald announced that every program would be looked at through an environmental or green lens. All we ask is that the environmental lens be used honestly and objectively. The project stands no chance of passing an examination if that occurs. Thank you, I'll take any questions.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Don. We'll go around. Mr. Clarrie MacKinnon.

MR. CLARRIE MACKINNON: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I'm very, very pleased that we have these folks with us today. Before asking some questions, I must give you a little bouquet, as the member down there, because we have been kept pretty well informed by you, but we've never had any detail like we've gotten this morning, so I certainly do appreciate that.

I have a series of questions and I probably will have to get a second turn to get them in. Some of these questions may seem a little probing and negative, but we have to bring out from our guests the full information. Now this quarry here that is shown, is that a basalt quarry and where is the photo taken?

MR. MULLIN: Andy, I think, didn't you pluck that one?

MR. ANDY MOIR: Yes. This is not a basalt quarry but it is actually a picture from the quarry magazine and I can't remember the exact name of it, I can get that for you. It talks about this being a quarry of equivalent size to what is proposed for Whites Cove and what the picture is on the one that Bilcon says it looks like is taken from the material they presented in the EIS and that the picture on top, of course, is what it looks like right now.

MR. MACKINNON: But we don't know whether that's a third world quarry or where it is?

MR. MOIR: I can't tell you that, no.

MR. MACKINNON: Can we go back to the photo that actually shows the aerial?

MR. MOIR: That one there?

MR. MACKINNON: Yes. Can someone point out exactly where this facility would be constructed?

MR. MOIR: Kemp, can you do that? Isn't that, yes, I think that's the cleared area?

MR. KEMP STANTON: That isn't the area. I would say that that picture was probably taken from the St. Marys Bay side of Digby Neck and the quarry will go on the Bay of Fundy side. It was just taken to demonstrate the narrowness of the neck of land, it wasn't to demonstrate - that is the average width of Digby Neck, it wasn't taken to represent where the quarry would actually sit.

MR. MULLIN: I believe that is between Sandy Cove and Whale Cove or Mink Cove, so it's only three kilometres, perhaps, east of the proposed site.

MR. MACKINNON: The map of the area itself, is there whale watching directly in Little Harbour? Is there an operator in Little Harbour?

MR. MULLIN: There is. It is not the most common area. To the west of that, between sort of Brier Island and Long Island, northward out toward Grand Manan and to the east, because in terms of the right whales, they tend to be on the east side of Grand Manan. Certainly, everywhere, you will find the minkes and the humpbacks, but a little predominantly, a bit more to the west than directly in front of Whites Cove. They certainly do go there.

MR. MOIR: If I could just point out, there are several whale watchers who leave from right here and earlier in the season, for instance, there is a woman named Shelley Barnaby, who will be doing a presentation when the public hearings come up. She has worked for Brier Island's Whale and Seabird Cruises since 1984 or something like that, she will be presenting data on where they see all of the whales. Earlier in the season, in particular, they quite often will steam up past East Ferry and up toward Whale Cove. She is also going to be presenting data on where they actually see the whales in the non-whale watching season.

[9:45 a.m.]

I just want to make the point that it is important for tourism that there be whales there, but more important to me is that whether there are tour boats out there looking at the whales or not, protecting the species is the important thing. Even though a lot of boats don't necessarily go up towards Whale Cove during the height of the whale season, because there are more whales offshore, there are still a huge number of whales out there and it is not just during the summer season. Just the other day, there were three humpbacks spotted off of Whale Cove; there are a lot of minkes up there right now just off where the proposed site is, so there are whales there all of the time. Whether there are whale boats there or not doesn't matter a whole lot, it is protecting the species that is the absolutely important thing.

MR. STANTON: I fish the area and if you look at Bilcon's material, you will see that they have a concentration of whales down here and they have a concentration of whales here. That tells you nothing about the distribution of whales in the Bay of Fundy because the only people reporting whale sightings are whale watchers - whale watchers in business, within three hours get those people out there, get them to see the whales and get them back ashore. The whale watchers are based here, here and here. When one whale watcher goes out, there's an area here where there's always a few whales. He knows he can spot a whale there no matter what. Once somebody in the morning spots a whale there, every whale watcher goes out and watches some whales. So those whales are reported maybe 200 times that day.

If there were 50 whales up here, there are no whale watchers there so they don't get reported. So sightings of whales tells you where the whale watchers have seen them. It doesn't necessarily tell you where the majority of the whales were. It's wherever that first whale watcher spotted a whale that day. They can make more money by going straight to that whale and straight back and then they don't have to burn the extra fuel or the extra time. So when you're looking at charts, be sure you know what you're looking at. You're looking at the sightings of whales by whale watchers.

You're not necessarily looking at the distribution of the whales in the area and if you take and put a quarry here and it's noisy - I herring fish along that shore, and if it's noisy at night, or even if there's a heavy swell on the shore, those herring won't come on the shore. They come on the shore after dark to feed. If you've got a noise going there all day long, they go to different areas away from the noise so they can come in early in the evening and they go out. They aren't going to stay in a noisy area. If you remove the herring and their droppings, you also remove a lot of the krill, so there's no reason for whales to come back any more.

So whether the quarry actually bothers the whales or not, if it drives their food away, within two years there's going to be no whales out. You haven't harmed the whales exactly, it's sort of like save the whale campaign. You save the whales, but give out quota to catch the krill and the whales starve to death. A lot of people truly think when they adopt a whale they're doing a really good thing. If they would adopt some krill, it would be nice.

MR. MACKINNON: Just a question about the regulations in relationship to ballast, I'm concerned about the discharge of ballast because I think we have - I hope that our regulations have been tightened up somewhat, but you said that you would expand on that.

MR. MULLIN: Yes, they were tightened up and that responsibility was shifted to, I believe it's now the Ministry of Fisheries, I believe, but anyway, in the last year it has changed. The regulations have changed so there's no longer a guideline. There used to be a guideline as to whether or not you discharged ballast water and it had to be, I think it was 250 nautical miles offshore and now it has to be in a water depth of 2,000 metres or greater. However, there's still discretion. The ship's captain calls and asks for authority to not comply

with the regulation, before guidelines, now regulation. The guideline is not enforceable, regulations are enforceable. It sounds like a strengthening.

However, if the captain feels that the ship, or the crew, or the cargo, are at risk due to high seas or operating conditions break down in the vessel, whatever, they can request an exclusion from the requirement to dump. Well, those who have operated on the Bay of Fundy realize how swells can come up, how storms can come up, how they may not have been predicted, and it is impossible to imagine that there would not be occasions during the year when unanticipated storms would come up and that might make a ship's captain worry about the safety of the crew and the ship if they were to stop and do a ballast water exchange, particularly if they're doing a release and take on as opposed to a flow-through, because there are two kinds of ballast water exchange. If they were doing a dumping and bringing on, then at the period at which the ballast water has been dumped, before they bring new ballast water on, the ship would be very vulnerable to heavy swells.

So I can see that there will undoubtedly be times when the ship is going to request authority to not comply with regulations, besides which they are not within the 250 nautical miles of the shoreline because of the route that they're taking. They would have to go way out of their way, which they are not going to do.

Now the other improvement is that the ship's captain must maintain a log of their ballast water management. So what? That's just a paper trail of whether they did or did not drop ballast water, where they dropped it, where they took it on. Yes, it allows you to determine whether or not a ballast water exchange was done, but it's not very helpful in getting rid of the beasties, particularly if they don't dump them. Also, estimates of ballast water exchange, depending on the nature of the exchange, whether it is dump and take on, or flow-through. Flow-through takes a lot longer, because it is sort of a trickling out and trickling in of water over a sustained distance and, therefore, over the long term, all of the water is supposedly exchanged with new water. It is not likely to be used because of the relatively short distance they are travelling here.

The amount of ballast water that actually is pumped and replaced, estimates from experts range from 80 per cent to 98 per cent, so it leaves you either 2 per cent or 20 per cent of the original ballast water that isn't gotten rid of, and certain ballast water is not pumpable because it is in areas where the pumps simply can't extract the ballast water.

Finally, the holds of ballast water are an important vector for certain invasive species. They come in on the hulls, rather than in the ballast water, and there is no mechanism for monitoring that and there are no regulations regarding it. It really frightens me where the water is coming from, that is filthy. New Jersey is a heavily industrialized state and they have not been very friendly to their ocean environment, they have used it as a dumping ground for their industrial wastes. I think the regulations are a step forward, but they are certainly no guarantee that we are not going to import millions of tons of ballast water over the 50 years.

MR. MACKINNON: Are there any regulations in the U.S. in relationship to intake of ballast? It doesn't make sense to take ballast water from Raritan Bay in New Jersey, right? Are there no regulations? Are you aware of anything?

MR. STANTON: As long as it's not being moved to another place in the United States, there are no regulations. If they were shipping water, ballast water from here to there, their regulations would cover it, but as far as taking their water and taking it somewhere else outside their country, their regulations don't apply.

Another thing that you may want to realize is, if these ships have to exchange their ballast water in 2,000 metres of water or more, the only place during their journey they enter water that deep is where New York City dumps its garbage. So any new ballast water they would be taking on would come from over top of where New York City has dumped its garbage for the last 100 years.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Excuse me, Mr. MacKinnon, we'll come back to you in the second round.

Mr. Colwell.

MR. KEITH COLWELL: Thank you very much. It is with great interest that I've listened to your presentation. It was well prepared and well put forward. It sounds very familiar to what Mr. Theriault does to us almost weekly in our caucus meetings, and his support for your position on this. I want to thank him for keeping it in the forefront of our minds. I'm the Environment Critic for our Party, and the issues you brought about the environment are very, very interesting.

I want to pursue a little bit further this ballast water, because that's a real concern. We've seen all kinds of invasive species. You talked about the little green crabs, and we have a tremendous problem with those in Chezzetcook in the clam flats now, and there's no real solution for them. The ballast water, was there ever any consideration in the proponent's proposal that they might put a treatment plant in to take the water off this and treat it and then dump it back in again, anything like that?

MR. MULLIN: No, unfortunately, there was absolutely nothing. We raised this issue early about ballast water and invasive species, and the proponent immediately distanced themselves from the issue by simply saying that they would hire qualified shippers and they would ensure that any existing regulations were complied with. So, in other words, it's not my responsibility. That is exactly what they said, or implied, it is not our responsibility. Our answer is, you wouldn't be bringing in the ballast water if you didn't have a quarry there so, come on, you can't just wipe your hands of it because it is integral to the project, taking out the ore and bringing in ballast water, unless you are bringing in other things as ballast,

wouldn't exist and therefore it is integral to the project and must be considered. They simply said - I think, realizing it was a problem, simply said - but it's not our problem.

MR. COLWELL: It doesn't surprise me any because it is easy to say we will get someone to follow regulations. What are the regulations? Who are they imposed by? What are you looking for? There are all kinds of questions that answers. How do you feel your organization is doing with the battle?

MR. MULLIN: Our organization?

MR. COLWELL: Yes.

MR. MULLIN: Well, I don't know if they were planning on a war of attrition, if they were, they have partly succeeded. They have certainly worn out a whole bunch of us old people with a five-year battle and a tremendous cost. It probably cost us well in excess of $100,000 over the past five years and if you look at the size of our community, you would say that's one hell of a thing that you guys have done, to raise $100,000 to wage this battle for this long.

In terms of how have we possibly influenced the final verdict, I would certainly say we have increased our chances from if we had laid down at the beginning, but have other issues, which is the whole basis on which review panels make their decisions and recommendations. Are we able to influence that process? I'm afraid we are not able to influence this as much as we feel we would like, which is why we have come here, because in the final analysis, regardless of what the review panel says to the provincial government and to the federal government, whether they recommend or do not recommend, the final decision becomes the two levels of government. We need to make you aware of your responsibility in the political process to weigh what the panel says and the basis on which they say it. If you want, I can explore that but that will take a bit of time. It's a complex issue. The issue of an environmental assessment is not as fair a process as it would appear to be on the surface.

MR. MOIR: If I could just add a couple of things to that. It has been a tremendous wear on the community itself. When you think of the time, energy and money that has gone into fighting this battle when there are so many other positive things that we could have been doing. For instance, I live in Freeport; our fire hall is condemned by the fire marshal. If we could take part of that $100,000 that has been raised to fight something that should have never started in the first place and use that to do things like help out our volunteer fire departments up and down the Neck, or doing other community projects, that would be really important.

So there is a cost there because, as you all know, in small communities, there is a limited group of volunteers who do anything and when so much energy has to go into

fighting something like this, that energy doesn't go into helping out the home and school, raising funds for that or raising funds for all of the other things that little communities depend entirely on volunteers to do. So it has had an enormous cost in terms of the energy of those communities.

[10:00 a.m.]

On the other hand, when I look at what happened during the scoping session of this project, the scoping session is when the panel sort of said, what questions do you want answered? At the end of that, they said they have never, in the history of environmental panels, seen so many people turn out to say their piece on an issue such as this. We are now in the process of gearing up for the public hearings which are going to start on June 16^th. Part of that is sort of ramping up people to get there and say their piece again. People are tired of the fight but yes, they are coming out. I have heard from literally hundreds of people, not just from the Neck and Islands but from Yarmouth, to Halifax, to Wolfville, to Cape Breton, who plan to come to those hearings and say no, we don't want this project. We don't want it because it doesn't make sense for Nova Scotians. It doesn't make economic sense.

So there is still energy there and there is still a fight to be fought and people are coming out to do it along with all sorts of non-government organizations. We aren't the only group that is fighting this. There are all sorts of groups such as the Ecology Action Centre, the Sierra Club, the Council of Canadians, CARP, there is a whole list of people who are going to be showing up at these hearings to go through all of the reasons why this doesn't make sense. We've just taken a couple of examples, but there is a whole long, long, long list of environmental issues that have to be looked at and these various groups are sort of divvying those up amongst themselves to do the technical presentations to the panel as well.

Yes, it has cost us. It has cost us dearly, but people feel strongly about this fight and will continue to fight.

MR. STANTON: If I could just add to that, you may not realize that most of the traditional community on Digby Neck are fishermen. Back when I went to school, in our schools on Digby Neck, you weren't allowed to draw a picture of the water or a boat because they wanted to discourage you from being a dirty old fisherman like your father was. We've gotten that all through our life, us fishermen. We're not experts at anything, we're just fishermen. They don't even list us as businesses in this process, we're just fishermen.

A lot of people on the Neck, especially the fishermen and their wives, just won't go and have people make fun of them anymore at these meetings. They just don't want to be ignored. Do you know what the company's definition of insignificant is? That's something local on Digby Neck. If the effect doesn't go any further than the Head of the Neck, or any further than the end of the Islands, in this report, it is considered insignificant.

When we asked, how about the village that used to be at Whites Cove, they told us no one of any significance ever lived there and nothing of any historical significance ever took place there. It was just fishing. If you kind of look at Nova Scotia and Canada, boys, it wasn't really the fur industry that made this place, it was fishing. If they can hire an archeologist to come and tell us that nothing that happened at Whites Cove was of any historical significance, and anything that happens in the local area that's bad, is by definition insignificant; it doesn't become significant until its effects are regional or national.

If the representatives from the government have kind of always looked down on these people, the education community has always looked down on these people and then you have companies from the United States that will come along and tell you no matter what we do to you, you are insignificant and so is the place you live in, it kind of makes me think that if we look at it this way: right now, that company wants something from our government and it wants something from us. So now is the time that it's going to treat us the best it ever treats us. If the best it can come up with is that anything that happens to us and all of us are insignificant anyway, look out once they get the permit.

Then they don't have to pay attention to us anymore, or you either, because we remember the Digby Wharf when the federal government sent the Minister of Environment down and the company said you're not setting foot on that wharf. If you want to look at it, you get in a boat and go around it, but you can't set foot on it. Ask Junior if that's the truth. If they can do that to the federal Minister of Environment, who's going to get on that property to see whether things are being run right? If the Minister of Environment can't get on one of these properties, I'm sure not going to be able to get on there and look for you to see whether things are being done right. You think you're going to get one of the Department of Environment lower-downs to risk his career by going on that site and having to fight through the courts? Tough luck.

This is what you have for a bunch of people who are down there looking at going to these meetings and being made fun of and being ignored again. There's still dozens of them, last time hundreds of them went, so it's serious to us.

MR. COLWELL: I can tell you for a fact, any time I've dealt with fishermen, which I have most of my life, they're not insignificant and any business deals I've ever entered into, I want to make sure I count my fingers in and on the way out.

MR. STANTON: Well, I'll give you an example. Now, I give all politicians hell but do you know how us fishermen - I live in the village closest to and that will be most affected by this, do you know how we found out about this quarry business? Gordon Balser came down when he was Minister of Fisheries, we had him come down to help fix our wharf. He told us we weren't getting no money to fix our wharf because we could fish from the wharf that was being put in for the quarry.

That's the first time we ever heard tell of it. When we found out, we're not allowed on that property and it isn't a wharf that our boats would lay to anyway, but he told us we weren't getting no money to fix up. He hadn't bothered to really look into it seriously. He just took Buxton's word for it that there was no need to do anything for the fishermen, we're going to take care of it, but when it was looked into, you know - we can't all blame you, but sometimes the information you get - these fellows have full-time lawyers and stuff hired to go talk to you people. I had to take a day off from lobstering, with only a few day left in our season, to come down here. I have to lose part of my living to do this, but they're being paid full-time to do this, they're professionals, and they can get through a door easier than I can.

MR. MULLIN: To reinforce the notion of insignificance, the Environmental Impact Statement is 3,030 pages long. There were so many issues raised by that, that the proponent had to issue a 1,700 page report addressing some of the concerns. However, approximately 300 individuals expressed their concerns about the Environmental Impact Statement as did a number, perhaps half a dozen federal government departments, and about half a dozen environmental non-government organizations. In the 1,700 page report that the proponent subsequently issued, not one single individual's concerns were even addressed in a token fashion. Only one non-governmental organization, environmental or community organization, was paid attention to at all.

In other words, I made perhaps 100 observations and concerns, some minor and some certainly not minor - navigational risks to small craft, for example, created by the marine terminal - ignored. Why? Because it was submitted by me. If I had submitted it as part of the Partnership for Sustainable Development, it would have been addressed. No other community or environmental organization except the Partnership even got acknowledged as expressing legitimate concerns. If they're ignoring my concerns now, like Kemp says, what are they going to do later?

MR. COLWELL: I would agree with you on that because now, when they're trying to get something from us, they're there to do everything they can to make sure they get it and once they get it, then there will be a whole different issue and you wouldn't be having these discussions any more that would mean anything. It's important and when you talk about insignificant fishermen, it's one of the biggest economic generators in this province. That quarry, no matter how much they take out of there, would never even come anywhere near to what the revenues are from fishery and the positive impact that it has all over rural communities.

The other thing with the rural communities, too, to me it's very important to maintain them as much as we can the way they are because our communities are shrinking in rural Nova Scotia. If we don't do things to maintain them, the things you're doing now with tourism and the other things are making it very viable and sustainable economic development, the best kind you could possibly do as well as protecting our environment. When you add this big corporation coming in from outside of Canada, in particular, it raises

concerns for me. It's positive now, too, to see the community standing up and saying, look, we're not going to tolerate this any more. If you're going to come do business in our communities, it has to be an environmentally sound thing to do and it has got to be overall good for our community.

I can see government - and we don't make decisions on what happens as Opposition members - we can push the government and try to get them to see the light and hopefully help communities. I can see more and more, as I work more and more with the environmental issues - at one time people didn't understand what was going on, but one thing I will say now, as your group and many groups I have met with, you research the things, even though it's a tremendous cost to you personally, a tremendous cost to the community, as has already been outlined, and you get your facts and get the facts right.

Some of the research that has been done on some of the projects that I have been associated with and working with is incredible, just incredible, and probably more informed than the Department of Environment and Labour is locally. We have some good people, quite honestly, in the Department of Environment and Labour here. Again, you can only do so much with the resources your are given. I think there needs to be more resources put there, and to work with the communities more closely on these issues to ensure that we are protected.

As far as I'm concerned, a fisherman is not insignificant - my family, years ago, was in the fishing industry in a big way and I lost a lot of my great uncles at sea.

As you have gone through that process, has the local Department of Environment and Labour been helpful? Have they given you information? Have they met with you when you requested it? Have they done the things that you feel that, really, as a Nova Scotian, you would have the right to experience?

MR. MULLIN: I think, in fairness, we haven't relied much on the Department of Environment and Labour to assist us. We did, however, have a large release of siltation approximately three years ago - I believe it was April three years ago - it was a Friday evening, and I called every government department that I thought might have an interest in it, and there was no answer. So I called the local detachment of the Coast Guard and they said that they would certainly act upon it Monday morning and track down whatever ministry would be investigating or following up on it. I believe they went out to see if they could see it. It had been reported by a lobster fisherman about a mile or so offshore.

It took repeated requests and roughly two weeks before an inspector came. The inspector, if I recall, was the fellow who got his career in jeopardy because he actually showed one of our people a copy of the report - because it was a confidential thing and he wasn't supposed to show it - it, in fact, established that there had been, but two weeks later, if you understand the Bay, the tides, what would be left? However, I heard recently that on

the south shore of St. Marys Bay, the effects were seen some weeks later in terms of unusual siltation patterns that had washed completely through the Neck and over on the shore - so did the Department of Environment and Labour help us much in that case?

[10:15 a.m.]

MR. STANTON: I can say, personally, before I became involved with this, when they were drilling the bore holes I went up after they were done - they drilled them in the middle of the road, and it was a public highway, so there was some of the core left there, the remains of the material that had come out of the hole, and I was concerned about it. I took some of that, and I took one of the pieces of core and I took it to Middleton to the Department of Environment and Labour. I asked them if they would please analyze this to see what might be in it. Well, he said, it's rock. Well, I said, it's supposed to be basalt for this quarry. Yes, but he said it's rock. I asked could he analyze it to find out what may be in it because they are going to be crushing it, washing it, and something from it, heavy metals, could be going out in the bay. He said it is not our responsibility or not our concern what may or may not be in that rock.

So if they didn't want to know - nobody can tell me or explain to me what the chemical composition of basalt is. There is no definition. It's rock. If there is copper running through it, which there is in that area, and we know because there was a copper mine on Long Island at one time, and copper paint is what I paint the bottom of my boat with to keep marine life from growing on it, and if you are crushing rock, piling it up and washing it in water that has blast residue, which is nitrogen, so you have nitric acid and you are washing your rock in nitric acid, it has to leach the copper out. They are inspecting this water for suspended solids, but copper is not a suspended solid, it is a metal and if they release it into the bay, and it will kill marine life on the bottom of my boat - that's the way I explained it to the fellow at the Environment office. He said go see the Department of Fisheries, once it enters the water it is their responsibility.

MR. MULLIN: A final thing on this - there was an accidental release of fly rock. What that means is there was a piece of rock that went where it shouldn't have gone when they blasted on the tip of Long Island about three years ago. It went over and hit the satellite receiver of a residence within 200 metres, and also a piece landed on a picnic table where a couple had been sitting short minutes before.

When I investigated with the Department of Environment people in Yarmouth I was basically given the runaround for a long time. I was given a name and the person just kept putting me off and putting me off - I couldn't even get her to identify who the contractor was who set the explosive. Suddenly it transformed from a Department of Environment issue to a Department of Labour issue in Middleton and I gave up on it. There was no indication that they were going to investigate, there was no indication that they were going to possibly

lay charges, there was no investigation as to whether a permit had been issued. I just hit a blank wall, and I said they are not going to help us.

MR. MOIR: I think that is one of the real concerns we have, and we haven't even addressed some of the regulatory stuff here, but throughout the EIS the company says we will follow the regulations. The question is: Who is going to be there to enforce them? We can all tell you many, many stories of trying to get hold of some government department to actually venture down the Neck to investigate something, and it never happens or it happens two weeks later.

We are really concerned as well about, if this thing should go ahead, who is going to enforce all of these regulations that the company says it is going to handle? For the people who live close by, the company says its sound level, for instance, will be below or at provincial regulations. The only people who are monitoring that, who have the actual machines, is going to be the company. They are not going to give that to Kemp or me or anybody else, and trying to get hold of somebody to come down from the department to monitor loud sounds - whoever that is, they are not going to be there. The nearest office might be in Halifax, so this company will basically be allowed to do what it can and then apologize later if they are caught.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. MacLeod had to leave the room and it is his turn next. I'm going to ask two questions that I picked up on. There is one I haven't picked up on, but there is one I have.

The first question. You mentioned a loss of gear to fishermen, that they would be compensated because of ship activities. Once a shipping lane is established with the Department of Transport and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, if you go inside that shipping lane with gear, I believe you are liable for your own gear - do you know anything about that?

MR. STANTON: Our gear, in order to be recognized as gear properly set has to be set with a radar reflector. Anything that does not have a radar reflector on it is not recognized - ships don't have to pay any attention to it because they can't see it on their radar. In the size boats we fish, in that area if you are fishing single traps, it is totally unreasonable to expect us to put a radar reflector on that, so there will be no compensation that way. Besides that, the company gets to choose how much - they haven't announced it yet - they are putting out the set amount of money each year for compensation for fishermen, they throw it on the table and we can fight over it. They don't say how much it will be or what it will be for, but there is a certain amount of money every year set aside. If they destroy twice as much gear next year as they did this year you get the same amount of compensation put on the table and you get to fight over it.

Another thing is that that's only from ship activity. Now when you look at their plans, when they're going to be monitoring whales they're going to have a 2,500- metre safety zone set up around Whites Cove, that if there's a right whale in that area, they won't blast. To mark this zone they are going to put buoys out there, so their observer can see how far away it is, then they're going to put intermediate buoys inside that.

Well, if they put these big buoys there, I can't set traps in that area because my trap lines will get snarled with their buoys, and I haven't got the gear aboard my boat to lift one of those buoys. So basically, six to eight square kilometres off Whites Cove, you just can't fish traps there or you're going to lose them.

Now nobody is going to compensate us for the area of fishing we lost, they are just going to compensate us if we want to put radar reflectors and stuff on all our buoys, so basically we're going to lose 15 to 20 per cent of our fishing area and we can lose a lot of gear and we'll probably end up in court trying to get some money from them - we'll never get it because the regulation says that you've got to have radar reflectors. We fished that area - I still take my father fishing with me, he is 82 years old, he goes every day and he has fished there for 62 years. He didn't have to do that.

A few years ago we were asked to make sacrifices - they wanted to save the whales so they moved the shipping lanes five kilometres towards us, from the New Brunswick side. Well that took up some of our fishing area, but we thought we'll be good, we'll take the sacrifice, we'll take the chance on losing gear and not getting compensated for it just to save those whales, but we aren't going to let them run another shipping lane from that into Whites Cove, 754 - foot ships, if they have to tow that ship in there with a tug in bad weather, with an 800-foot hawser between the two, it's going to take every cussed bit of gear in that area.

If they don't have tugs there in bad weather, I wouldn't want to try to land a ship there on full tides - you can ask Junior if I'm lying to you - on full tides, on a tidal point, the tide swirls. You don't bring a ship up straight into the tide. First the tide will hit it from this side, then there'll be another swirl of tide and it'll hit it from that side. A ship of that weight, coming up to 36-inch steel pylons, she hits it at half a knot, she's going to knock them over. Of course if she knocks them over, they'll come right up through the bottom of her.

Where's the nearest tug? Four hours away in Saint John. If she hits, with the tides we have, there's no possibility of containing the pollution from it; it will go, and within 24 hours it'll be 16 miles down the shore and it'll be 16 miles up the shore because that's the tidal movement, and it'll be in Saint Marys Bay, too, and there's no way to hold it.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you. One more question before I pass it over to Mr. MacLeod. We know this basalt rock goes from Cape Split to Brier Island on this shore and I believe there's a lot of basalt rock on the American shore, below the Grand Manan Island,

probably close to New Jersey. I don't know how far this basalt runs over there, maybe you do. If there is basalt rock on the American shore, why are they here after our basalt rock?

MR. MOIR: It's cheaper and easier is the simple answer to that. There hasn't been a new quarry opened up in New Jersey - and there's all sorts of basalt in New Jersey - since . . .

MR. MULLIN: Since 1975, I believe.

MR. MOIR: Since 1975, and for a couple of reasons: one is environmental regulations are actually stronger in New Jersey than they are here; and secondly, it is a matter of cost. They are not allowed to blast along their shore so they would have to blast inland if they could open up a quarry, which means they would have to truck material which is a lot more expensive than bringing in a post-Panamax ship to the shores of Nova Scotia and using a marine terminal to load it and take it directly to New Jersey.

Also there's all sorts of basalt in New York, in Maine, along that coastline, but the environmental regulations are stronger there than they are here in terms of allowing blasting on coastline areas. Land is cheaper here; it's easy to pick up the land. So that's a factor in the decision. One of the things that the panel asked the proponent to do was they were required to look at alternatives to this site, to this quarry and this site - what else could you do other than put a quarry in this particular site? They actually asked the company two or three times for that information. At the end of the day the company told the panel, we're not going to tell you that because, yes, we have looked at other sites here in Nova Scotia and elsewhere but we consider that proprietary information and it's none of your business - now I'm paraphrasing there, but essentially that's what it boiled down to.

So we don't know the answer from the company's point of view as to what other sites they looked at and why they decided on this one. Part of it's speculation on our point, but we expect it has a whole lot to do with environmental regulations and economics.

The other part of your question, about basalt up and down the North Mountain. Well, yes, it's the same basalt and obviously the concern is that this quarry will come nowhere close to meeting the demand for crushed basalt in New Jersey, New York or the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. So our fear - and I think it's a legitimate fear - is once this quarry gets up and operating and it has the infrastructure there for the marine terminal, then it becomes a whole lot easier and economical for other quarries to start along the North Mountain. The basalt is there and they can get it cheap, and then the issue becomes how do they ship it out - rather than building marine terminals all up and down the coast, they can easily use barges to ship that to the marine terminal that would exist at Whites Cove and use that to ship out to other places.

So, yes, there is reason to believe that when they start looking at the cost of the basalt that they're taking out of Digby Neck that other companies will come in, or this company will say let's pick up on some of this other basalt that is so readily available and so close to the markets and so cheap to get out of there.

MR. MULLIN: They have admitted that this is place is attractive because of the lack of coastal zone management regulations, and also they've used the word non-unionized labour force - they're saying it's going to cost us less to hire people, so we can not only exploit the environment, we can exploit the workers. It's a no-brainer for them. They make a lot of money.

MR. STANTON: Another thing that you have to consider is that if this quarry goes ahead and if they've done this extensive marine environmental study, then the next company that wants to put up a marine terminal or something doesn't have to do it again. It's already been done. So once you give permission for this one, it becomes ten times easier if they want to do one anywhere along the North Mountain. They no longer have to do a full environmental impact study; they just have to change the names on the one they've done.

[10:30 a.m.]

Besides that, we know that a company named Bilcon of Delaware, which is somewhere in this bunch of Delaware companies, has been buying up land around the quarry site. So basically the company owns a slice of Digby Neck, clear across from one shore to the other, and they're buying every other piece of land around that that they can possibly get their hands on, not all in the same company name, but when you look into the company records they're all connected to Clayton Concrete, and this company has already gone through - what was it? - it was Global Quarries when it started . . .

MR. MULLIN: Nova Stone.

MR.STANTON: Nova Stone. Every time they get into a little bit of trouble on something - now they're Bilcon of Nova Scotia because they got a little bit of bad publicity when they were these other companies, and overnight it just all changed into another company.

So if you're planning on prosecuting them for something they do wrong or anything, the next day you may find that that company no longer exists. The permits and everything have just been moved.

I know it sounds as if I am paranoid, but you people have had to deal with these regulations before, you know what happens when they hire a lawyer and you try to match them. They're a multi-billion dollar company, they can out-lawyer us here in Nova Scotia. They probably have enough staff of lawyers on hand to keep you in court for the 50 years of

this project, and they've leased the land for 90 years. It's only supposed to be a 50-year quarry, the lease says that they can import or export other products.

The only thing us fishermen in the area know of that they would want to import, if you send a ship down the East Coast of the United States with rock and bring that back empty, you aren't making a lot of money. But, if you could figure a way that say you had oil and stuff left over at this quarry, you'd just get a toxic waste permit to hold it on the site for awhile, then if you want to load your ship full of garbage from the States and bring it back and put it in the hole you're making, can your committee stop them?

Once they get somebody in government to give them a hazardous materials storage - because there's going to be grease, oils, oil spills and when they clean this stuff up, if they store it on-site legally, they have to have a permit to store hazardous materials. Why bring the ship back all the way from New Jersey empty? The same terminal that loads the rock can then unload the ship too, you know.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. MacLeod

MR. ALFRED MACLEOD: I first want to apologize for being late, I drove from Cape Breton this morning and I came through all four seasons, I even had snow for a little bit, so I do apologize for being late.

I just wanted to relay a couple of things; as Mr. Colwell has said, there are no insignificant fishermen, there are no insignificant people in Nova Scotia, as far as I know. There are certainly no insignificant places and I just wanted to reiterate what's been said because every place, regardless of where it is, is important and if you live there, then it's even more important. I live in a very small community and I'm surrounded by fishermen, actually. At 4:00 a.m. when I got up, my son was just getting ready to go out, our lobster season opened a week ago, so he's out on the ocean somewhere today.

I have to be honest, I've learned a lot today. I've heard about the Digby quarry but until I saw your presentation today, I didn't know a whole lot about the facts. I come from an area where I'm not unfamiliar with environmental studies and hazards because we live close to where the tar ponds are. So I've had some experience with some of that environmental impact and the studies. I've also had some experience with how long it takes to get something and how convoluted it can get.

You mentioned earlier that this is going now on five years - is that right?

MR. STANTON: This isn't the first one.

MR. MOIR: This is the second big fight we've had about a quarry on the Neck.

MR. STANTON: Twelve years ago on an adjacent property they tried to build a quarry on that.

MR. MOIR: The same players, at least some of the same people were involved.

MR. MULLIN: They went away because they realized it was going to be a fight and they weren't ready at that time so they spent the time, I guess, getting their ducks lined up and getting properties identified and understanding the battles that they would have to get into and aligning themselves with people with deeper pockets.

MR. STANTON: Also, incidentally, in that period, somehow the salt got de-listed as a mineral so there are no longer royalties to be paid on it. When the original quarry was to go ahead, it was still considered a mineral so they would have had to pay royalties. Somewhere in the middle there, it wasn't a mineral any more, it was just rock. So this group of people have never given up the land that they bought for the original and it's time to try again.

MR. MACLEOD: You say the environmental impact study is coming up.

MR. MULLIN: It has been published.

MR. MACLEOD: That's the 3,300 page document and the 1,700 page rebuttal?

MR. MULLIN: That's the 3,300 page document and then the second one was called response, which addressed the questions raised by government departments and one non-government environmental organization and ignored everybody else's.

MR. MACLEOD: So what is coming up on June 17^th?

MR. MULLIN: That is when the panel visits, unfortunately, only one community, which is Digby, and have invited, in the first week, representatives from various federal government departments and provincial government departments to come and speak on issues such as the socio-economic impact, the hydrogeological impact and marine impact. So they are selective. They are not going to be addressing certain environmental concerns because they don't naturally line up with certain departments and that will be the first week.

The second week of hearings will involve allowing members of non-government environmental organizations or individuals, community groups, whatever, to voice their opinions, concerns, support for the quarry. That is expected to take the second week, after which they have up to 90 days to render a decision and issue a report to the two levels of government for approval or rejection of the recommendations. They have the authority to recommend rejection. They have the authority to recommend approval without condition or

they have, which is usually the exercised option, to approve with conditions and the conditions can be very lengthy.

I think the LNG plant had something in the neighbourhood of 59 conditions but to go back to Andy's point, 59 conditions don't mean a damn if you don't have the enforcement mechanism, if you don't have the inspection regime. When you allow the company to self-report on compliance, that's the fox looking after the chicken coop, people. That's the situation we have ourselves in, is we are so resource shy, we don't have time to follow up, nor do we have the enforcement structure, nor do the courts easily or readily entertain environmental issues. They don't want to deal with them. They are too messy. When it costs more to get a blasting permit than it costs to pay a blasting fine, that's the tail wagging the dog.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Maybe we could have another question apiece and then we will give you a few minutes to wrap up at the end.

Mr. MacKinnon.

MR. MACKINNON: Mr. Chairman, I, too, would like to make a comment in relationship to the insignificance of fish harvesters and the insignificance of communities. I find that very disturbing. I spent over 30 years in the private and public sectors of the fishing industry and certainly some of the sharpest people I've ever met in my life have been on the water. I have also gone fishing out of communities like Bay St. Lawrence and Pleasant Bay all the way through to Seal Island, which you can't get much - Yarmouth County, Seal Island. I had a house out there for quite a few years.

In relationship to Westport, I went fishing on a herring seiner out of Westport one time and got my leg smashed up but I also have some good experiences out of Westport as well. I spent some time on Charlie MacDormand's boat one time squid jigging and we had quite a night of that out of Westport.

Getting to the question end of things, I have a fundamental concern. I'm wondering, is there any local investment in Clayton, Bilcon of Nova Scotia? Do we know the actual structure of that company? Recently we have had experiences in my riding with Greenbrier of Oswego, Oregon, and you know Mexico became more valuable. We have Moirs on the other side of the harbour with now Mexican interests and so on. I know this is a resource-based scenario and certainly the basalt is there and they want it.

Anyhow, a comment in relationship to that and also the royalty. Don, you sort of mentioned the royalty level wasn't known. I sort of got that impression that we didn't know how much royalty would be (Interruption) Okay, and Kemp had mentioned it was zero.

MR. MULLIN: It had been at one time, classified as a mineral and it was declassified. Even if it were a mineral, it would be - all minerals are modest in terms of generating. It's portions of pennies per ton for any of these class of minerals. So it would not generate sufficient to make it a lot more economically viable than it is now and it's not economically that attractive now. So it is a rather minor point but it's nevertheless a point, which makes Nova Scotia more attractive than some other jurisdiction where parts of pennies per ton might be levied as royalties.

MR. MACKINNON: The company structure, do we know, Clayton Concrete.

MR. MULLIN: The company structure is unknown. Clayton Concrete has divisions, Clayton Block, Florida Sand and Stone. It's a hydra. Every time you check one leg, you find it's sprung another side leg. The only thing that's common is the four directors are always, Clayton, Clayton, Clayton and Clayton. And this Bilcon of Nova Scotia is really a one - well, it has a director on the South Shore. The Claytons are involved with that. Mr. Buxton is a citizen of Nova Scotia, out of Annapolis Royal and he was the project manager, but he's not planning to be the quarry manager. That's a man by the name of Mr. John Wall, who is being brought up from New Jersey. We've already been told to track the money, to see where the money is coming from, to see whether the political influences or the lobbying is there. It's a privately traded company, it's amorphous, it's fog.

MR. MOIR: It's very difficult to trace because it is a privately held company. So a lot of the standard records that you would go after don't exist on this company. It's sort of like trying to figure out what the Irvings own.

MR. STANTON: Before they changed the name and before the offices moved to Digby, its office was listed in the same building that the marine society that operates the wharf in Digby were registered in. It's a group of lawyers. The suites in that building, it's all lawyers and we know what trouble it is to deal with the Digby Wharf.

A couple more things and then I'll stop talking, but they should really be said. When they set up a community liaison committee to get local people's input - the government told them to set it up so they did - we sort of didn't know whether we should go or whether we shouldn't, and whether we should co-operate or whether we shouldn't. When we finally dug down and found their terms of reference, the CLC committee was to facilitate the building of a quarry - not find out whether it was advisable or nothing - to go to a community to get their opinions when your whole operation, the idea of it is to facilitate the building of the quarry. It wasn't to find out anything, it was to facilitate it.

[10:45 a.m.]

I don't know whether people realize what an impact this will have on a small piece of Digby Neck - 35,000 tons of explosives over fifty years. That's between 70 million and

100 million pounds of explosives, two pounds of explosives every minute for the next fifty years on average, and the company claims that in some of these blasts there will be 50,000 pounds of explosives in the ground at one time. They won't all go off at the same time, they'll go off in 1,000 pound - it's like the biggest American bomber dropping his whole load, that is what it amounts to, but anyway the company claims that over fifty years, 35,000 tons of explosives are expected to have no cumulative effects on the environment whatsoever. So it will just be like they set off one blast - the effect of it won't accumulate over a period of time.

Well, I don't know whether you people here know it or not, but when a lobster lays its eggs, they're on the body, and so the lobster can be there on the bottom - and nobody knows what this blast will do to eggs - and when they hatch they float to the surface as larva, and they stay there for six to ten weeks. They have six to ten chances of being blasted as larva as they drift back and forth. The company says the reason that this will not affect American lobsters is because American lobsters don't have the swim bladder, but as a larva they do - they float at the surface.

They have never looked into anything but commercial species. This is supposed to be an ecosystem approach. All right, who looked at the sand lance on the bottom? Who looked at the little sand fleas, just the little queer critters that live on the bottom, and who looked at mussels? Do you know that on the bottom of the ocean after a period of time, when there are small rocks and pieces of shells, when you haul a piece of that bottom up you can hold it up and it's almost like a rug - there are critters that glue this mat together and it sits on the bottom and that's why every time a tide runs the whole mess isn't stirred up. What's it going to do to the critters that hold the bottom together? If you kill them, the rocks and stuff are no longer together, and besides that you've got a ship coming out of there with a force from its propellers that will roll 20-ton boulders over the bottom.

Now, this stuff that holds all your silt is still on bottom and this mat, that's going to roll that up like you wouldn't believe, but the Fisheries Department said the only thing that they could figure out that this would bother is where the 36-inch pieces of pipe were going to be drilled into the bottom. That was the only place it would affect - the bottom of our ocean. They kind of forgot that you have to have a 100-ton block of cement to hook your moorings to. They take up a big space on the bottom, and if you've got this big sucker rolling boulders back and forth across the bottom - where do they get these Department of Fisheries, are they from Saskatchewan?

Don't they realize that a ship trying to take off - a ship is unmanoeuvrable almost, below two knots, so it has to get underway quick, and if there are 40,000 tons of rock aboard that ship and he's trying to get underway in a hurry and he hauls that sucker in gear and gives it everything she's got, you're going to roll the bottom. The Fisheries Department - no, they don't recognize that at all, there's just going to be these 36- inch holes. Sorry, I go on a little, but you get the idea.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much. How about one more question? Mr. Colwell, please.

MR. COLWELL: Yes, and before you answer, I want to ask all my question. Before I got re-elected to the Legislature, I was on regional council here in Halifax - and that's not a recommendation outside of Halifax, I know, but the regional council has a lot of authority. Actually if you had co-operation from a regional council, they could rezone that property, and unless the province overrode it, which they can do, which is not very likely, but you could basically eliminate this quarry. Have you pursued that, and is there any co-operation at all from the regional council and your local mayor?

MR. MULLIN: I can address that. The issue has come up before council, a vote was taken roughly three years ago. The majority of council opposed the quarry - it's on public record. I approached the warden and asked him why wouldn't they consider a zoning thing that might prevent it, and he got back to me saying that they had consulted legal counsel and they were unwilling to get into the legal battles that might ensue were they to do that.

There is a second issue - the Municipality of Digby went to the Union of Nova Scotia Municipalities and made a motion and it was passed by the majority, if not unanimously, by the UNSM to lobby the provincial government to give each municipality greater voice or control over pits and quarries. That has been in committee, gone nowhere for now three or four years. There is a tremendous cynicism about government, especially in our community where it is perceived that government has allowed the fisheries to be destroyed - you talk about consulting with the Department of Environment, we're in a hostile or really bad environment for that.

MR. COLWELL: Sending it to the Union of Nova Scotia Municipalities is a good move, but it is totally political by your local council, that is all it is, it really carries no weight. The real issue is - and I can tell you after being on council here in Halifax, we did some really weird things I thought at the time, and we never got sued by anybody. The recourse is to go to the Utility and Review Board if you feel a decision is not correct and appeal it there within 30 days that it is done. Basically, your mayor and your council has the authority and the ability now to move forward with rezoning, and the way to do it properly is to go through community consultation.

If your whole community in the whole area that that council represents says we want to do a development plan for our community and go through public consultation which would include the people who want to come in a do this quarry and all the other businesses, all the people in the community, everybody, and come up with a plan, I think you could redirect this thing and eliminate it. It is a whole lot cheaper and a whole lot easier - not that I'm discouraging you because you should continue with what you are doing, do not stop what you are doing - than what you have already been faced with. If you eliminate it that way it would at least make the company more cautious about what they are going to do and make

them think twice again about this. There is a process you have to go through to do that and your council has to initiate it, but they can initiate it very easily if you put the pressure on them.

MR. MOIR: I don't think that that's going to happen. There are no zoning laws in the Municipality of Digby, they have gone through a process just to try to deal with mink ranching and some zoning around that and that has created a huge can of worms. The municipality takes the position that if we do anything now under NAFTA the company will be able to sue us for lost profits that they would have made had this quarry been approved by the process.

Essentially, at this point, where we are just weeks away from the public hearings and we are probably within months of a decision being made by government, to us the best option to stop this thing is to explain the realities of the project to the politicians who are ultimately going to make the decision, or bring pressure to bear on the Cabinet members who are going to make this decision. That is what we think is achievable given the resources that we have.

In the best of all possible worlds I would love it if the Municipality of Digby would say time out guys, this is wrong and we're going to bring in zoning bylaws. Is it going to happen? No, we have been down that road with municipal council and at a certain point you say that's not a fight worth fighting. This is more realistic to try and achieve this. I wish personally that we'd had that five years ago when we first approached council, when we first heard about this quarry, and since then, every time you approach it it is not going to go anyplace, so this is a more realistic approach.

At the end of the day, council isn't going to make the decision on this, it's going to be the provincial government and the federal government. We have to depend on our politicians, folks such as you, to basically say now is the time to walk the walk rather than talking the talk about the environment. Here is an opportunity for you people to say no, we are not going to allow 80,000 tons a year of greenhouse gases to be spewed into the environment for no net gain for the municipality or the province or the Government of Canada, and certainly for the people of Nova Scotia and the rest of the world. Either take the issue seriously about greenhouse gas and say no, this doesn't justify what it is going to cost us to the environment, or you say well yes, but those 29 jobs are important so let's live with the consequences of that.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much. We have just two or three minutes left, maybe you would like to have a closing statement?

MR. MULLIN: Yes, I will try. We mentioned greenhouse gases, and Andy has just said it, invasive species - we need to reiterate - are a tremendous threat. We've talked about the potential loss of ecotourism businesses and the changed perception of that as an

ecotourist destination. We haven't talked about groundwater and the possible loss of it - if we lose it, we'll lose an equivalent number of jobs because our local fish plant won't have the fresh water, so they'll have to close down, cancelling out the 34 jobs created by the quarry.

We haven't talked about something that the Government of Nova Scotia thinks important enough to put in its Environment Act, which is the enjoyment of life or property. In 4,700 pages of documentation, the words "enjoyment of life" probably appeared never - not once - so there's no acknowledgment on the part of the proponent that they are potentially going to destroy some community values and community cohesion or harmony.

We didn't discuss safety. The safety to fishermen who use the area, the safety to the community from things like fly rock, we haven't talked about those. Those are environmental concerns that we simply don't have time to address in a relatively short meeting.

We also haven't talked about a concern I alluded to, that there's an atmosphere of somewhat distrust in government, based on what has happened to the traditional fishery industry. We haven't expressed our concern, that since 2003 no projects have been turned down for the province based on environmental assessments, not a single one - 33 projects have been approved with conditions, never have they not accepted the recommendation of the environmental assessment. Environmental assessments, by their nature, are scientific, meaning that any effect in the universe, scientists believe could be mitigated.

You can't mitigate communities, and when you hurt communities - you can mitigate species loss, you can't mitigate ecosystems and you can't mitigate community damage.

Now, unfortunately, there's a bias in environmental assessment that is likely to result in their giving approval to this project with 100 or more conditions, because that's the nature of the environmental assessment process and this bias. Don't be fooled by it, just because they produce 5,000 pages of what appears to be technical documents produced by experts, it isn't. When a Joe like me can punch 100 holes in an environmental assessment and the proponent can't address them, it's not rocket science. The problem is the departments don't have the expertise and the time to review those to the level that some idiot like me who spent the last five years of his life doing.

[11:00 a.m.]

I haven't had the wool pulled over my eyes, and I'm asking the politicians - don't allow the wool to be pulled over your eyes by fancy documentation by so-called experts, by deep pockets, think about the reality of preserving our environment, protecting our communities and standing up for the small people who have fought so hard for five years. Thank you.

MR. STANTON: Just let me say one thing, Junior. There is a possibility of a loss to you. Now you don't look at it that way, but if you never turn down a project no matter how bad the local people think it is, and you never seem to listen to the little people, it's getting to the stage where - when I went around and asked the local fishermen, I said come on, we've got to fight this, it can't go ahead. They all agreed, oh yes, it's a terrible, terrible thing. What the hell's the good? They're going to do to us what they're going to do us anyway - they always have, they always will. Sooner or later somebody has to stand up to one of the worst of these projects. Maybe there might be some of them that are okay to go ahead with mitigation, but somewhere along the line somebody in authority has got to stand up and say now look, this just can't go ahead.

Can you imagine how much that will empower your communities? Those people who have said for the past ten years, the goddamn government won't do anything for us anyway. It will make life a little bit harder for you if you let these people, by Jeez there's a group that fought and won. You will get a different type of response when you come into a room. When you come into a room - and I don't know most of you people and I think Junior is a good man - 99 per cent of the time when you come into the room with a bunch of people, they look at you, ya, here they come again, there must be an election coming. Just do something because it's right, not because it's going to get you elected, just because it's right.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much, and thank you Kemp, Don and Andy. I think this was quite an eye-opener today to some of my colleagues, and like Keith said earlier, I have been bringing it up, that's for sure. Today, I think, really opened the eyes. I think probably this is a good opener for what is going to happen on June 16^th in Digby, which is going to go on for two weeks. As you say, it's going to take two weeks to get all this out and what you have worked for the last five years of doing, it will certainly take a couple of weeks, that for sure, minimum. Hopefully it will all turn out for the good, for the good of this province, for the Digby area, and for the good of everything. That's all I'm hoping for.

So with that, I make a motion that this meeting be closed.

[The committee adjourned at 11:03 a.m.]