HANSARD

Printed and Published by Nova Scotia Hansard Reporting Services

Mr. John MacDonell (Chairman)

Hon. Barry Barnet

Hon. Karen Casey

Mr. Patrick Dunn

Mr. Sterling Belliveau

Mr. Charles Parker

Mr. Wayne Gaudet

Mr. Leo Glavine

Mr. Harold Theriault

[Mr. Clarrie MacKinnon replaced Mr. Sterling Belliveau]

[Mr. Keith Colwell replaced Mr. Wayne Gaudet]

In Attendance:

Ms. Sherri Mitchell

Legislative Committee Clerk

Mr. Gordon Hebb

Chief Legislative Counsel

Nova Scotia Federation of Anglers and Hunters

Mr. Michael Pollard, President

Mr. Tony Rodgers, Executive Director

HALIFAX, TUESDAY, JUNE 17, 2008

STANDING COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES

9:00 A.M.

CHAIRMAN

Mr. John MacDonell

MR. CHAIRMAN: I want to thank the committee members for being here today, I appreciate that. I'd like to get this committee underway, only because I don't want to put too heavy a rush on our presenters. I'd like to have 10 minutes or so at the end of the presentation today to deal with some committee business in light of the fact that we aren't going to meet over the summer, so we do have some outstanding items that we definitely have to attend to.

The way we generally do this is the members of the committee will introduce themselves, and then we'll have the presenters introduce themselves for the committee and for recording purposes. Once you do that, the floor is yours and we usually try to have a little time, depending on the length of your presentation, so the members can ask you some questions.

[The committee members and witnesses introduced themselves.]

MR. TONY RODGERS: We've got a presentation that is before you. Mike is going to go through that and then we'd welcome any questions.

MR. MICHAEL POLLARD: To start, the Nova Scotia federation over the last while has had a slight change in focus, looking out toward the public, in that we've developed a theme of healthy lifestyle. Hunting and angling can contribute to a healthy lifestyle and we've flowed that over into some of our member organizations, such as ATV-ing: take the next step, get off your ATV, walk that last mile, don't damage the environment as much as you can if you're getting down to the edge of a bog or a lake on your ATV, and spend some of the time ATV-ing doing other forms of recreation - hiking, camping, fishing, whatever it is - get off the ATV and take the next step.

It was a bit of a challenge to get the ATV-ers to accept that position, but we're firmly on board and we're doing some good work with several of the departments to put that message forward into the public.

The other thing we're primarily engaged in at the present time is input into Voluntary Planning regarding the strategy for forests, minerals, parks and biodiversity in the Province of Nova Scotia. That's being headed up by Voluntary Planning doing their public consultations, and part of the presentation you have today will be going to them as a submission from the federation regarding things that we think should be done regarding those aspects and the development of the strategy on an ongoing basis.

Fundamentally, we believe that whatever strategies are developed in Nova Scotia regarding our forests and our biodiversity and our minerals, it should take into consideration the right of hunters and anglers to continue the enjoyment of their participation in the woods and in our waterways and that the strategies they develop for forestry and for mining shouldn't directly impact on those unless there's some consideration given to either alternative areas that hunting and angling can be done, or that all of the impact that happens in our environment in ecosystems is compensated by plans to put all of the infrastructure impacted back to its original shape. So if you have a mine, if you have clear-cutting in the forest, part of the plan before you implement that mining strategy would be a written document and outline saying how you're going to refurbish all of the area that you're impacting.

Let's take uranium mining for example; it's not the hole in the ground that causes the problem, it's the tailings and the water runoff into our watershed that affects all of our aquatic life and our ability to fish and angle in those streams. So we're suggesting that development take place in a manner where the economics are weighed against the ecological impact and that part of the revenue from that development be set aside in an escrow to replace and fix the damage caused by the development in the first place.

So we have a policy of do no harm - do no harm to the environment, do no harm to the infrastructure, do no harm to our biodiversity, and make sure you understand what harm you're causing before the development goes ahead. We're for economic development and prosperity in Nova Scotia, but we're for doing it in an organized manner that takes into consideration that things have to be repaired after they're damaged.

Presently, there are several studies done and I will just give you the results that we concur with in point form and then a position on what we think should take place regarding each one of the points. There has been a sharp and significant loss of old forests in Nova Scotia since the province's first major forest inventory in 1958. There have been no significant improvements whatsoever in age-class distribution in recent times and, in fact, there's a continuing shift to even younger and younger forests. We're harvesting trees that years ago were illegal to touch when you were doing forestry work. Stuff this small is being

chipped and sent for hog fuel to the mills. We're very specifically against that forest practice. We need some old-growth forest back in place.

Secondly, there has been an increase in the number of known forest-dependent species at risk in Nova Scotia. Once a particular application is designated for a piece of forest land, that application is conducted almost with total disregard to species that may exist in that area that you could put at risk by clear-cutting, and clear-cutting is the single largest application for forestry in Nova Scotia.

Thirdly, there has been an increase in the percentage of Nova Scotia's total land mass under protection from 8.1 to 8.5 per cent, and that's positive. However, it should be 12 per cent - 12 per cent has been recommended by the World Wildlife Federation and 12 per cent has been accepted by the province as a benchmark.

We were particularly disappointed when the government decided to take a pass on the Polletts Cove area, which met all of the province's criteria for a protected area. It's coastal, and it's very hard to get coastal land of any size in Nova Scotia because generally it is settled first, it's privately owned and it's now in small chunks. This was a large piece. It is unique in its ecosystem, it's in a unique area, it could have lent itself very, very well to ecotourism and other applications, and the province took a pass for the single reason that they couldn't get an assessment of value that met their budget. Not that the value wasn't appropriate, because somebody up and bought it, but the government couldn't get it to meet their budget. We had the position that of any piece of land that was available in Nova Scotia at that time, that piece should have been bought and it should have been put into the wilderness area classification.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Could you expand on that property a bit please? I'm not that familiar with it. So how large it was . . .

MR. POLLARD: It's around 2,000 hectares, is my understanding. It was going on the market for about $1.5 million. Their problem was trying to do an assessment. Land assessment is generally done in Nova Scotia by taking a look at all the land around it and finding out what this one sold for, what that one sold for, ergo this one should be somewhere around that. It's in such a unique area, right in back of Cheticamp and it's highland. So they couldn't come to an assessment where they could get near the $1.5 million. So a private individual, who won the lottery in Cape Breton, bought it. It will probably never become available again. It stretches from Pleasant Bay north to Cheticamp.

[9:15 a.m.]

HON. KAREN CASEY: Could I just ask a question as a follow-up to that? Are we saying that the purchase price exceeded the assessed value?

MR. POLLARD: The purchase price exceeded the assessed value. Our question to the government always is, when you're assessing something, are you buying or selling? It makes a huge difference.

Land in Nova Scotia is generally worth whatever somebody is willing to pay for it. Knowing that there were private bidders who were willing to pay that amount of money, the big discussion about assessment became fairly academic in a hurry. What we were hoping for was - it's on the books that we want to be at 12 per cent. It was a unique area; it was coastal; it met all of the criteria, except they couldn't make the budget work. We'd like to see a little bit more flexibility in imagination when that type of property becomes available.

Between 1998 and 2004 the rate of value-added forest products per cubic metre of wood harvested declined in Nova Scotia. Instead of getting more efficient, more effective, we're going backwards, giving it the second lowest ranking amongst all of the provinces in Canada. In other words, we get almost the lowest rate per cubic metre of wood harvested of any province in Canada. The reason is we clear-cut and we don't do anything with the wood except sell it for pulp, basically. You can get some sawlogs, you can get some stud wood, but what's happening is the size of the timber is reducing, which makes less logs per acre, so there are less logs, less stud wood, and we're ending up with pulp, pulp and pulp. Pulp has the lowest common denominator economically of any wood product out there.

MS. CASEY: Do you mind if I interrupt?

MR. POLLARD: No, any time.

MS. CASEY: While I think of the question, I think I should ask it. Has there not been a recent agreement with respect to value-added, which is designed to do exactly what you're suggesting has not happened, i.e., better use of the by-products for a value-added market in Nova Scotia?

MR. POLLARD: I don't know if there's an agreement, and if there is, I'm not sure who it is with, but the industry stands very firm on this item. The industry's position in Nova Scotia is, we will clear-cut everything that we can get our hands on in Nova Scotia, then we'll aerial spray it to kill the hardwood, and we're taking it all to the mill and if we can't use it for pulp, we'll burn it. That's the industry's stand through all of the meetings that I've gone to under Voluntary Planning where they're asking for public input, that's the position of the industry. So if there's an agreement, I'm unaware that the industry is certainly in on it.

MS. CASEY: And perhaps if I could - an agreement may not be the appropriate language, but I do know from a local businessman in my area, who is involved in the value-added business, that they are optimistic that there will be some changes in that. So I know

that there have been some discussions and some desire on the part of those small manufacturers to enhance the value-added market.

MR. POLLARD: We would look very favourably at that. It uses less wood in the same timeline, it increases the value of that wood, it creates more jobs. The existing industries' stand on that, as we understand it is, you need very, very large corporations harvesting wood in Nova Scotia to be economically viable. The small ones that will start up will look for government assistance, they'll run for a year or two and then they'll flop.

That's the position they have because in all honesty, they want all of the wood fibre they can possibly get. The problem is, we're giving it away at the lowest cost per cubic metre that we can possibly give.

The jobs per unit of biomass in the forest industry in Nova Scotia haven't increased since 2001, no increase whatsoever, and it looks like over the next while that may actually be reduced. So it is an area where value-added becomes extremely important. I think this committee understands that it is the small businesses in Nova Scotia that are making Nova Scotia's economy turn. There are more small businesses, by definition, than any other, and they contribute greatly. They are very entrepreneurial and I think of everything from Pictou Lodge development that's going on is private ownership, I think of the things going on at Digby Pines, I take a look at little industries like jam and jelly outlets that employ people full time, they're very productive and they work. But for some reason, the forest industry just isn't getting there in Nova Scotia.

What we're recommending to correct some of those situations in Nova Scotia are that we have greater incentives, tax, and silviculture to woodlot owners for investment in forest restoration directed at uneven-aged management. We, the Nova Scotia Federation of Anglers and Hunters, take the position that we must get out of monoculture growing - all one species, all one age. The only thing you can do with it once it reaches maturity is clear-cut the whole thing. It's a cycle you can't get out of if you keep the same forest practice today. Clear-cut it, spray it, one species comes to maturity, clear-cut it. Clear-cutting causes significant problems to our environment and to the bio-diversity that lives within that forest environment.

The second is a sharp reduction in the rate of unsustainable clear-cutting methods in the volume of wood harvested annually. Clear-cutting is a good, scientifically sound forest practice for particular areas, but it isn't a sound scientifically correct forest practice for 90 per cent of our forests in Nova Scotia. In fact, 90 per cent of our forests that are being harvested today in Nova Scotia are being harvested by the clear-cut method. Clear-cutting causes an increase in heat in the water, that heat is transferred to streams which increases the heat there - it affects our animals, our birds and it affects the biodiversity in that area. When you couple that with spraying on top of it, you get into a cycle that you can't get out of.

We believe there should be a development of a value-added forest strategy in Nova Scotia with a shift from volume based to value-added forest products - produce high-value wood products and increase the number of jobs per unit of wood harvested. It just makes common sense. Back the small industries to get into value-added forest products and increase your chance of being successful.

We have several large pulp and paper mills in the province - if they start to go like dominoes, it will have a phenomenal economic impact on the province. If you lose one small business, generally, another one pops up - spread the risk, especially with the global aspect of wood fibre coming available from Russia. Russia has the single-largest biomass of forest in the world and they're just starting to come on line. China is second, they're coming on line. They can make paper at one-tenth the price that we can.

Immediate protection of all remaining old-growth forests - stop cutting the little bit we have left. This province used to be covered with Acadian old-growth forest - mixed wood and it was a natural atmosphere for the biodiversity that we have. We have less than 1 per cent old-growth forest left in the province. Let's try to reverse that trend and at least stop cutting what we have.

We should monitor the full range of forest values and services and the full cost and benefits of associated harvest methods, to be counted and tracked in annual forest accounts in an ongoing forest management planning. In other words, get a forest inventory on the books and keep track of it so people can make intelligent decisions because right now, there are very few people that know what's going on with our forests, how much is being harvested, how it's being harvested and what impact that's having.

Have an adequate network of representative protected areas in Nova Scotia. Let's try to get to that 12 per cent as soon as we can, get them protected and look after them so that they can't continue to be degraded. We believe that the Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources should undertake the task of calculating provincial age-class distribution using a permanent sample plot data over a period of time. That can be used as the benchmark against the rest of the land.

All Crown land in the province allocated for harvest should be Forest Stewardship Council-certified. If you're going to take Crown land and make it available to large, multinational industries, at least you could have a standard against which they have to operate. The Forest Stewardship Council is recognized worldwide - just ask the forest industries to accept that as the method against which they're going to be benchmarked, and let them go to work in the woods.

Given the high rate of private ownership of forest land in Nova Scotia, which is 69 per cent at the present time, government policy will have to focus as much on incentives encouraging good stewardship on private land as it does in public land. If we put the

stewardship certification in place for Crown, it will give a benchmark for private landowners to live up to and can easily be segued into that particular area of ownership. We believe that until the government does it on Crown land with the large industries, it is not going to happen on private land. If you own a wood lot in Nova Scotia and you go to one of the large contractors to have it harvested, it will be clear-cut, period. It's easy, it's fast and it gives you more money right now - a hard formula to break.

Those are the main areas and there are six indicators in Nova Scotia that indicate that our forests are being over-harvested, they're being over-harvested with a method that's not user friendly to our bio-diversity, or to our streams and rivers and it's being done systematically right across our province. It impacts our ability to enjoy the outdoors. When you're walking through some woods and you come to an 800 hectare plot that has been completely clear-cut and there's nothing left on the ground, not even stub because it has all been taken for hog fuel, it's not very friendly. In the middle of the summer, it will be 10 degrees hotter than any of the land around it. If you sprayed it, there will virtually be no animals there to look at, to watch, to enjoy.

The other area that is not in the presentation is the impact that it seems to be having lately on our tourists. There are more indicators coming in from tourists in Nova Scotia saying, what happened to all your woods? We're cutting right down to the main arteries in the province right along the Trans Canada Highway and it's not the prettiest site that we want our tourists to see. The concern we have is that as that mass is being denuded of forest, that impacts our ability to enjoy hunting and angling in the province.

That is all we have as an overall presentation today. We will take any questions you might have.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I want to say thanks, very much. I'm chafing at the bit to engage you with some questions myself but I'm going to hold fire. I have Mr. Parker as number one on my list, Mr. Glavine, Mr. MacKinnon, Mr. Colwell, Minister Casey. . .

MR. HAROLD THERIAULT: And last but not least . . . (Laughter)

MR. CHAIRMAN: Certainly not least. (Laughter) Mr. Parker.

MR. CHARLES PARKER: Mr. Chairman, I guess we're all going to have a kick at the can here but anyway, Mr. Pollard, a very interesting presentation and I'm sure we'll hear from Mr. Rodgers in our conversations here as well. I was pleased to hear what you were saying about the sad state of our forests, I think it's being recognized more and more by Nova Scotians that we have some major problems here in Nova Scotia and certainly I think the Voluntary Planning has been hearing a lot of these same comments around the province; certainly the sessions that I was able to attend.

[9:30 a.m.]

I think it's recognized, we do need a better way of doing forestry in the province and it's time to stop what we have and move on to a more sustainable, environmentally friendly way of doing forestry in the province. Not only does it protect the environment, it protects the economy - we can create more jobs if we do more things right. So a lot of what you are saying is good news to my ears to hear that and it's important that all Nova Scotians are saying that it's time to change our forestry practices. It will protect our wildlife, it will protect our jobs, it will protect our environment.

I just wanted some clarification on a few points, either in your presentation or perhaps not. Forestry, first of all, you mentioned one part there - we are cutting trees that are only maybe two or three inches around, right down to kindling or toothpicks, I guess, I've heard that expression at times. At one time in this province we used to have an Act called the Small Tree Act, I think it was about up until 1965 that it was the law of the province that you weren't allowed to cut a tree under eight or 10 inches in diameter.

MR. RODGERS: I believe it was eight.

MR. PARKER: Eight inches, was it?

MR. RODGERS: I believe it was, yes.

MR. POLLARD: Or chest height.

MR. PARKER: And you had to give them permission to - yes, diameter, chest height, it was eight inches around or across. Do you see some benefit in looking at that type of legislation again that would disallow the cutting of very small trees?

MR. POLLARD: We believe that it's a fairly complex question in the sense that if you just limit the size of the tree without taking into consideration the forest practice - the way forestry is harvested today, it's large feller-bunchers that go in, they cut. The position is that if they can't cut it all as they're going through, they are going to smash it down anyway and then it gets wasted and lost. With the cost of energy today, the industry can't be economically efficient and competitive if they're not taking that out at the same time to use as hog fuel and displacing their costs.

I believe, and our association takes the position, that it has to be a holistic approach and take a look at the forest practices and what are you trying to get out of the forest. If you're still going in to cut that tree for saw log, but it's going to the mill and the only thing that gets out of there is what I can sell from the mill at a higher rate than what I can get for making pulp. So I take everything, job it back out to where it can go at the best price, but

everything comes off there. The other thing is, it's extremely hard to do selective cutting with a feller-buncher. You would have to go back to men in the woods, instead of large machines.

Our position is that some of these machines, depending on the time, if you're working in the woods and the consistency of the soil, are leaving scars on our landscape that will be there long, long after we are gone and that forest regenerates. We can take you to tracks of forest land that are now grown up in good eight- to 10-inch trees and the ruts are still there between the trees. They are scarring the landscape in an irreparable way and you just can't replace it. We need new forest practices - not necessarily just a single law, but if that's all we could get, we'd take it.

MR. PARKER: I hear you 100 per cent and we've all seen those pictures of deeply rutted forest and it's devastating the environment, to the wildlife in the area and it's long-lasting, unfortunately. I know there's going to be other members who have questions on forestry, so I'm going to switch to a couple of other topics.

I just want to be clear, I think I read it somewhere or heard you say about the moratorium on uranium mining. I think you mentioned somewhere that not only a moratorium on uranium mining but perhaps you had some thoughts on moratoriums on other types of mining - I thought I read that in there somewhere. First of all, do you want to see a moratorium in legislation for uranium mining, and what are your plans for other types of mining?

MR. POLLARD: This is where a single quotation can get you in really hot water, so I don't want to be misquoted and I don't want to misrepresent our organization. We are for economic development in Nova Scotia. As much as strip mining puts a chill up my back, strip mining is still going on in Cape Breton.

MR. PARKER: And in Pictou County.

MR. POLLARD: And in Pictou County. All we're suggesting is that before that mine is developed and you know you're going to do a strip mine and you know you're going to just put a scar on the landscape for a temporary period of time, escrow revenue against replacing that area back to its original form when you're done with the mine. We're not trying to stop development, what we're trying to do is stop the damage that development causes.

We aren't saying that there should be a moratorium on mining in Nova Scotia; in fact, we would take the position that there shouldn't be any moratoriums and it's not necessary for government to say you're not allowed to do anything. We think we should do it intelligently, we should look at our minerals as a resource that can bring benefit to the province and to the people in Nova Scotia, but repair the damage you do to the infrastructure when you're done.

MR. PARKER: Okay, another topic is around protected areas. Certainly I think many Nova Scotians agree that we'd like to see the 12 per cent goal reached by 2015, if not sooner, but I'm a little unclear on what "protected areas" means. I think we have a variety of monikers, I guess, on listing what they are - we have national parks; we have provincial parks; we have nature reserves; we have Nature Conservancy of Canada lands; nature trusts; we have a game sanctuary like the Liscomb Game Sanctuary as an example; wilderness protection areas; on goes the list . . .

MR. RODGERS: There's a list with the names.

MR. PARKER: Yes, and some of them protect wildlife and in some others you're allowed to hunt or trap, in others it is strictly forbidden, like in a national park or a provincial park - I guess I'm trying to figure out which one of those allows hunting or fishing or trapping and which ones do not.

MR. RODGERS: The national parks - you are correct, there is no hunting allowed in them. You're allowed to fish, if you buy one of their fishing licences as well as the provincial one. The wilderness protected areas, the 32 original ones - that goes back to 1998 - were set up to provide that protection and add to that 12 per cent that Mike talks about.

During the discussions at that particular time, I believe Don Downe was the Minister of Natural Resources, and he introduced that whole program and we had gone to him with the argument that angling, hunting and trapping should be continued in those areas. We worked on the argument that if, after 250 years of hunting and fishing and trapping in those areas, they were still deemed to be pristine enough to become part of the wilderness protected areas, then obviously we didn't do anything wrong in there. That has been granted to us - we're allowed to do our traditional hunting, angling and trapping in those areas.

There were certain restrictions, of course, put on ATVs and some of the access getting into some of those areas, but we're still allowed to do that. The parks, as DNR calls parks, would be the provincial parks like Dollar Lake, Porters Lake Provincial Park and places like that - of course there's no trapping or hunting allowed in any of those. And of course there are also a few - what do they call them? I missed the term right off the top of my head, they're . . .

MR. PARKER: Nature reserves?

MR. RODGERS: Nature reserves, thank you, and there's no hunting in those either, that's not permitted. So, as a hunter, you'd pretty much better have a look at the map of the area that you're going into and determine right up front if you're allowed to or not.

Of course there are other parts of land where you're not allowed to participate in hunting, too, and that's with respect to distances from schools and homes and playgrounds and golf courses and so on and so forth.

MR. PARKER: And game sanctuaries?

MR. RODGERS: Game sanctuaries, there is restricted hunting. Chignecto Game Sanctuary, for instance, that is for bowhunting only, during the regular firearm season. The Tobeatic Sanctuary allows for a one-week black powder - that's the old- fashioned, musket- type hunting for one week in there but, other than that, there's no hunting in the other sanctuaries.

MR. PARKER: Okay. Do I have time for one more question, Mr. Chairman, or not?

MR. CHAIRMAN: I think I'll let you have one more, but then I want to go to Mr. Glavine.

MR. PARKER: Okay. I want to follow up on trapping. I guess that has been a controversial topic in Nova Scotia in the last few years. Is the Trappers' Association of Nova Scotia a member of your group?

MR. RODGERS: Yes, they are.

MR. PARKER: Do you have a position as an overall - the Nova Scotia Federation of Anglers and Hunters - do you have a position on trapping?

MR. RODGERS: Our position on trapping is that it should be done in the legal fashion - that's basically it, as the rules applied through the Wildlife Act. The controversy that has come up over the past while has been with respect to pets getting caught up in traps and illegal setting of traps. If the trapper is at fault and he is setting his traps too close to property lines, or within areas that he is not allowed to, then the law should come upon him like anybody else and he should be charged for that. But with respect to pets running wild on the land and getting caught up in traps, that falls back to those pet owners to start controlling those particular animals. There has been a pretty good go-round between Natural Resources, David Morse - people who think there should be no traps in the woods - and the trappers, and I think they're coming to some agreements as to how this can be better handled.

The problem that we're dealing with very soon may be a lack of trappers, and I mean that's a serious problem - when these men and women who trap decide they're not going to trap any more, then government better be prepared to start doling out some money when problems hit, like increased populations of raccoons and other nuisance animals. Right now the trappers are controlling them. I had a recent discussion on, with the price of gas going up the way it is, whether trappers will want to maintain their traplines this coming Fall because

a trapline isn't sort of a string run through the woods, it's a highway, it's off Highway 118, or whatever the case may be, and many, many miles of driving to check on particular locations where the traps have been set.

We better be very careful we don't lose these folks, and it's unfortunate, too, that there doesn't seem to be enough young trappers getting into it. This isn't something you pick up overnight - you have to learn this from a skilled trapper. Animals are not easy to catch in a trap. It takes a very dedicated person to that particular skill set and I don't know if we're going to be dealing with huge problems in the future or not. There have been problems or examples of that in other areas of the country - the Town of Manitoba stopped all trapping within its boundaries and within two years of that they were shelling out millions of dollars for damage done to culverts where beavers had gone in, blocked the culverts, flooded the roads, the roads were gone, and they were begging the trappers to come back in and get rid of the beavers. So, you know, it may be nice for one group to say we don't like you, but certainly in their wisdom government has to look at the bigger picture and say these are a resource that we need.

MR. CHAIRMAN: That was a good question, Mr. Parker. You gained quite a bit of ground on that one.

Mr. Glavine.

MR. LEO GLAVINE: Mr. Chairman, I would say Mr. Parker and my colleague, the minister, have used up their time quite adequately here in different manners I would say. Thank you very much, Michael and Tony for coming in today. The thoughts and themes of your presentation brought back a lot of the areas I covered in teaching geography over the years - it's about 20 years ago I went to my first sustainability conference and so I know where you're coming from here.

One of the areas that I have put forth a bill before the Legislature on a couple of occasions is to increase the distance along watercourses and to allow for, you know, beyond the 20 metres, and I'm just wondering about your view of how you see practices and the impact on watercourses, because the information that I was using was, again, coming from a lot of the environmentalists and naturalists, people who spend a lot of time in our forests and see again some of the devastation that goes on along our watercourses and the impact on fish populations - so I'm just wondering if you would comment on that, please.

MR. RODGERS: Just before - the old wildlife and forestry guidelines that were around for quite a few years was a subject that we wanted changed into regulation and it was just in the past few years that we did get regulation changes and an expansion in some of those corridors you're talking about. It also allowed for a lot of other wildlife corridors going through certain areas, and widened the areas around streams, but certainly that could use another bit of discussion - I think those could be larger for sure.

Mike, would you like to add to that?

MR. POLLARD: A couple of things come to mind very quickly and one is that the trees that are left along waterways have root systems - they hold the biomass together, they hold the soil together, they stop erosion, they give shelter to the stream, they give shelter to the fish and animals that live along the stream, and I believe everyone in the industry and who has travelled in the woods understands that.

[9:45 a.m.]

The practice of reaching in is something that's going on in Nova Scotia. It's great to have rules. You have to enforce them. When somebody cuts down to a waterway, there should be repercussions for that contractor. We would like to see them a little wider, the buffers a little bigger. The more we protect our streams, although it is not part of the focus of Voluntary Planning right now, water is a more important resource right now than forests. Water is going to become more and more and more important. Everyone in Nova Scotia thinks we have an overabundance of water, try drinking out of the Dartmouth lakes.

But with regard to down to water areas, we think in terms of forests. The two largest clear-cuts in Nova Scotia are HRM and Sydney. The developers tell people who buy lots on a lake that they own right down to the lake or the stream. They cut right down to the lake; they sod it; they fertilize it; then they water it and let it run off into the lake, and they wonder why the lake is dead. We don't need just forest protection, we need waterway protection. We need it in the cities and we need it in the rural areas.

In HRM we are going to kill every one of our lakes if we don't address your issue. It is not just the guy who is out cutting pulp, it is the person who bought the property on the lake for that beautiful view - and the increased taxes - to then turn around and be able to kill that lake. Your problem, of course is, which person on the lake was the one who did it? I would suggest if they are all right down to the end of the lake, they all did it, but it's an area that we have to address in Nova Scotia because it is having real impact on the lakes that are around our city that most of our population are adjacent to. An excellent question, thank you.

MR. RODGERS: That's the sort of argument you will get back from the forestry companies, too, is that there are rules and regulations that they have to adhere to but a land developer doesn't. He just can go right forward and clear-cut what he wants right to the edge of whenever he feels like stopping, then he can stop. That is a concern to us as well. We don't want to sound like we are picking on the forestry industry. Unfortunately, they happen to be the ones who are right straight ahead of us.

MR. GLAVINE: Thank you very much for that endorsement because it is one that I will go back to the Legislature with in the Fall even more committed from some of the feedback that I have had on that issue.

In terms of the game sanctuary, it really behooves me to have any understanding as to why we allow the amount of cutting in those areas when we identify them as a place where we should be able to allow wildlife. I especially think of our limited areas for the mainland moose. At the same time, we don't seem to be getting the connection between a healthy habitat and an increase in population or even sustaining what we do have there now. It's a practice that DNR, in my view, just does not get. I am just wondering if you would comment on that importance and again, another way of shifting to12 per cent very easily.

MR. POLLARD: Very easily. An excellent question. Once again, it is going to get a little complex for you in a hurry in a sense that you have things coming before you right now that are being positioned as necessary, like alternative forms of energy. The alternative forms of energy that are being proposed are windmills. Windmills work really good on high plateaus and those are some of the ones that are being selected, but there has been absolutely no impact studies done on animals - birds and bats - but not animals. Your mainland moose population, which is an endangered species, requires the high plateaus to survive - no studies, no anything. We hope that you would take that into consideration as the alternative energy platform moves forward. They are asking for tracts of land. They are paying excellent amounts of money for them, but they are definitely going to impact our animal population. It's something you might want to look at.

The other is, if any of you could, take a quick drive through the Liscomb Game Sanctuary in the centre of the province, from Sheet Harbour up to Trafalgar. It's being clear-cut. The reason it is being clear-cut is that is the application we use for forestry in Nova Scotia. It's a game sanctuary. All we have to do is think that through to its logical conclusion and it really doesn't make a whole pile of sense. It's not necessarily that it shouldn't be harvested, but if you could do selective harvesting, you'd actually help the animals that are in there. But when you take a couple of hundred hectares and clear-cut it in a place that's a shelter for animals, you have to think about the forest practice that's in place.

We would concur with your points and suggest it's a holistic approach that has to be done by DNR in the way the forests are being managed in Nova Scotia as a whole.

MR. RODGERS: The original intent of sanctuaries, when they were first developed, was almost like they were expecting them to be spill-out pots of animals. In other words, nobody would be touching them in here and as the populations grew, they would spill over the edges and then populate the surrounding area. Of course, we know that's not going to happen and it will never happen. That's why I think when we talk about sanctuaries, we have to go in and look at what they are now calling them - they're not calling them sanctuaries, they're calling them forestry management areas. By doing that, that allows for other activities in there, such as cutting. Chignecto is not called the Chignecto Game Sanctuary anymore - it's the Chignecto Forest Management area or zone or something of that nature.

What's in a name? Well, you'll have to go and investigate that. That's the way they're dealing with those.

MR. GLAVINE: I guess I have time for at least one more, or maybe more. One of the areas that, as I've been looking at forestry and forest practice in the province, when you think of some of our other provinces and jurisdictions that have established an annual allowable harvest, it's something that I just cannot understand why in the 21^st Century we haven't endorsed that practice. It is so relevant to ensuring and moving towards sustainability in a much greater fashion than what we are.

I do have real concerns. I've looked at some of the satellite imagery out of the College of Geographic Sciences in Lawrencetown. To be quite honest, I have some real concerns looking out 20, 30, 40 years. Why we haven't moved to that, I mean, if we say we can calculate the forest inventory, then why aren't we just allowing so much per year? I'm just wondering if you would comment on that, please.

MR. POLLARD: I'm in an industry that employs 1,000 people and I'm in a small town in Nova Scotia. The position is, I can show you all the science in the world to show you that the biomass in Nova Scotia is sustainable. We believe you should understand that's given to you with a distinct bias. You have to hear both sides of the argument. We do not believe the present forest practices are sustainable in Nova Scotia. If you just take overlay maps, like you have done, take a look at Hants County and see what was there 10 years ago and what's there now - you'll see that the forest is being systematically replaced in Nova Scotia.

The other is monocultures. Monocultures are more susceptible to everything that's wrong with the forest that you can imagine. They don't accept biodiversity well, they are more prone to disease and insects. An example would be what's taking place in British Columbia right now. British Columbia and Alberta are about ready to go to war with each other over an insect that's attacking one particular species. They are at a point right now where one of the suggested forest practices that may be employed to help rid the problem is to burn - have a forest fire over 6,000 hectares of land. The biomass there would probably keep Stora going for a year.

What happens in monocultures is that you end up with very extreme ends of a forestry spectrum. Nova Scotia is heading for one major monoculture and we feel that's probably one of the worst things we could do. Make sure you have the diversity in your forest like you have in everything else - mixed species, mixed age - have that as your base and then take a look at the sustainability, the harvest year over year.

One of the problems of establishing that harvest goal is that we did not have a good forestry inventory to benchmark from, it hadn't been done. Until you know what you've got,

you don't know how much of it you're using. If you're using it and then keeping track, you can easily figure out whether what you're doing is sustainable.

So we would suggest a couple of things in concurrence with you and that is benchmark our inventory, keep track of that inventory on an ongoing basis, keep track of what's being harvested, and then you can manage that on a much better basis.

MR. GLAVINE: Thank you.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Glavine. I think you took one of Minister Casey's questions and time there.

MS. CASEY: I gave him my time. (Laughter) I want that on the record.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. MacKinnon.

MR. CLARRIE MACKINNON: Mr. Chairman, I'm very pleased that you're being so generous with the time this morning. It's great to have Tony and Mike here. I'm very pleased that Mike's roots are in McLellans Brook in the great riding of Pictou East. I believe that the most important thing going on today in the forestry is what Voluntary Planning is doing. One of the concerns I have with this process is that the recommendations will be a long time coming and there is a concern that the department may not make decisions until the final report is done and recommendations are in place and so on. It's going to be a long process. So what input have you had with this? I think it's a good process, but what input have you had and what are your comments on the process itself?

MR. RODGERS: We had an opportunity to meet with the entire panel from Voluntary Planning, before they went out, to talk to them about what we had on our minds. I had an hour with them and was able to go through a gamut of things that concerned us. The presentation that Mike has left with you today, as he mentioned earlier, is one similar to what we're going to be presenting to them. Mike has already been to two sessions?

MR. POLLARD: Three.

MR. RODGERS: Three sessions, and had a say at the round table. It's unfortunate the way it's set up, though, the way Voluntary Planning is doing it. Not all of the members of that panel are at all of the meetings, so they're missing some information. They may go to Pictou County and two or three of them are missing and there's a great idea there, but only a couple of them are getting it. Do you know what I mean?

It's unfortunate the way they have it set up. You have a couple of minutes to have your say and then they go into the round table discussions. It's too bad it wasn't a little bit more formal, something similar to this, where you could make a formal presentation or that

they actually went to larger groups and organizations that had a larger membership so that it would give them a little bit more time to talk about their particular issues, instead of comparing them to somebody who just wants to stand up and growl about one particular thing or another. It's format and that's the way they chose to go, but hopefully they will gain the information they need to make a good report.

MR. MACKINNON: One of the matters that you mentioned this morning on value added, I think is so important and the monoculture that you talked about and other provinces actually getting such great returns in relationship to the value and the jobs and so on, many times more than Nova Scotia in the per-resource unit. The returns are phenomenal in some provinces. One of the concerns that I have had in relationship to small business and rural economic development would, in fact, be that the provincial government, over the years, has had wage subsidy in relationship to the creation of 50 jobs and that has been, thankfully, reduced to 25 and it may even be reduced somewhat further. That doesn't do a lot for small business and I don't think we should have a one-shoe-fits-all. There has to be something there for rural economic development.

[10:00 a.m.]

As I've said so many times, farming, fishery and forestry should not be considered to be sunset industries. There is so much room for technology and innovation and value added. I'm wondering, would you support a lobby in relationship to getting a policy that actually fits rural Nova Scotia?

MR. POLLARD: Absolutely, especially where it applies to forest products and value added. The situation is that there are a lot of incentives available for larger business. The majority of small businesses in Nova Scotia are 10 people or less. If I want to start up a new business and it's only for four or five people and it's a wood shop but we're making very good quality products - it could be framing for pictures - the problem is if I'm only three or four people, it's all coming out of my pocket and I've got to make it economically viable to go. If we could just support small business to the same extent, same per capita as we do large businesses, I think we'd have a real impact on rural Nova Scotia and you would see all sorts of new industry - from vineyards, which are becoming very prevalent down in the Valley and some of the other areas of Nova Scotia, right through.

I think of a small company that was started up by a young lady in Wolfville called Tangled Garden. She started out by collecting plants from all around Nova Scotia and has made unique vinaigrettes, and jams and jellies. She has been in business now for almost 30 years and sometimes in the height of her season employs 10 or 15 people. She did it all on her own, an increment at a time. If, when the trouble happens in your growth phase or in your development, or you need to change your tooling in order to do something, if we could just give a little bit of a hand for small business, I think rural Nova Scotia could blossom. We

wouldn't have the problems that they have in Chile, for example, at the present time, where you've got 45 per cent of your total population of the country living in the city, or Mexico.

It's going to happen in Canada and it's going to happen in Nova Scotia if we don't do the development that's required in the rural parts of Nova Scotia. I'm not suggesting for a moment that we impact the cities, but we really need to keep some of those kids down on the farm.

MR. MACKINNON: You talked about the lack of flexibility and imagination in relationship to Polletts Cove. In Pictou County, Neenah Paper sold 500,000 acres to the Wagner group without any intervention by government whatsoever. There was an interest in the South Shore in relationship to land involving Bowater Mersey and certainly some purchases there, but to have 500,000 acres sold to a management group that was indicating on its Web site that it had interest not just in forest management but in future recreation and commercial housing and so on with that land, no intervention whatsoever. I find it very hard to swallow that there is an interest in some areas and not an interest perhaps in others.

We are at a point now where Neenah is being sold and the land is being sold separately and we could, in fact, be into another situation where the remaining, probably less than 500,000 acres, is still held by Neenah. Are you folks doing anything in relationship to those kinds of lobbies in relationship to . . .

MR. POLLARD: We're trying to.

MR. MACKINNON: I know it's part of the protection. Some commentary, if you would.

MR. POLLARD: All around the province, any time there's land available that we can get our hands on, leverage through other organizations, get it designated as a protected area or put it back into the hands of the government, that's our mandate. When you have a company coming into the province with the amount of resources and money that some of them do - for example, buying up the Neenah Paper lands, they're pretty hard to combat on a dollar to dollar basis because they are not, in our opinion, a forestry management company. They are a land speculation company.

What they're doing down in the Valley around Grants Lake, what they're doing in each area, they'll buy, they'll sell lots around the prime land along lakes and they're here for land speculation, in our opinion. I don't think it's in the best interests of Nova Scotia to see our forest lands going for that particular endeavour. Yes, we're going to fight that as much as we can, at every level we can, with every one of the clubs that belongs to our organization. We need to protect the forest land that we've got and we need to protect the forest land that we've got from poor practices. This, we believe, is one of the poorest practices out there.

MR. RODGERS: We first came in contact with Wagner from a phone call from a bear hunter. Bear hunting in Nova Scotia is over a baited site and if you're on Crown land, you go to a DNR office, they give you a permit to go there. If you're on private land, you go to the private landowner and they'll give you permission to be there.

In the case of this bear hunter, he had gone to Neenah Paper for years to bear hunt on their property. They charged him $25 to process the paperwork, which was quite reasonable. This time when he went, he found out that Neenah Paper didn't own the land anymore, it was owned by Wagners, so he tracked them down. The price for that bear site was $145 per hunter per site. So automatically right there that rang a bell with us, they're charging for hunting, basically, this is not paperwork involved, not for $145.

So we went online and did a little check on the Internet about Wagner and they are fighting hunters and that in the United States, they're putting gates across land, and I'm saying, oh my God, what are we getting into here, this could be a real mess. Then we heard what was happening in the Valley, our Kings County Wildlife Association brought that to us, and it's a great concern to us because as Mike just mentioned, they're not a forestry management company, they're strictly speculators and they don't know Nova Scotia from anywhere, they just know that there's land there, and it is worrisome to us.

MR. MACKINNON: I have a host of questions here but he's going to allow me one quick one, he says.

MR. POLLARD: We'll try to answer them quickly.

MR. MACKINNON: Coming in this morning, I was listening to the news and in Newfoundland and Labrador the federal Minister of Fisheries and Oceans was announcing a recreational fishery, or food fishery, allowing five cod per fish harvester aboard a vessel or 15 per boat. Do you have a stand on a recreational fishery, the ocean fishery, in Nova Scotia?

MR. RODGERS: We do. There are a lot of things going on with DFO right now with the types of regulations. They actually have a licence in Newfoundland, presently, and they are looking at, over the next couple of years, imposing that licence on Nova Scotians, New Brunswick, Quebec, P.E.I. and all of the Atlantic Region to have a licence. I'm not sure if it's going to be a free licence and they just want to monitor what the catch is, through the licence system, or whether there's going to be a charge. I know in Newfoundland there is a charge. Presently we don't have that. The bag limits are there, the number of cod you're allowed per - no, I don't think there's any cod allowed in our particular end down here, but certainly with other species.

We've had comment back to them, if they're going to open up this type of recreational licensing, then we want to make sure that all shellfish are on it, lobsters are on

it - that would be a nice one, to get a lobster licence - to make sure that it's all-inclusive, so that it would allow for change in bag limits and seasons and as things change.

We don't want to see any more licensing or any more licensing regimes placed upon us. Presently, if I was to show you the number of cards and permission slips that I have to do to fish, you'd think I'd need a backpack just to carry them around. Even to get into a small boat today you need an operator's manual, you need a hunting licence, you need your wildlife resources card, and on and on. We don't want another licence but I think it may be coming to us.

MR. MACKINNON: Thank you very much for your frank answer.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Colwell.

MR. COLWELL: Yes, thank you very much. I'd like to thank you both, gentlemen, for coming today. It's been very informative, as it always is, when we're talking to you.

We talked about the Liscomb Game Sanctuary, I spent a lot of time fishing the game sanctuary. You've been very polite about the clear-cutting, it's a war zone. It looks like someone flew over it with a bomber and blew it all to pieces. It's a mess. It's the worst thing I've ever seen and there is no way that the deer, or the moose in particular, are going to survive in that environment for very long. Plus, there are all kinds of logging roads put through it. It's a mess, just absolutely a mess, and it is something that has to be corrected. Unfortunately, with selective harvesting in that area, it could have really enhanced the area and still got some product out. I just want to put that on the list.

I have a funny story to tell you. I have a rabbit problem at home, and you talk about trappers, I will never make a trapper. I have a live trap and the rabbit ran through the live trap yesterday and he is still going and the trap is still there. I was going to relocate him to another area away from my home. I didn't want to hurt him. He is getting so tame now, he was up on my deck yesterday, but I don't want to see anything happen to him.

MR. POLLARD: Well, you don't want to be making a pet out of him either. That's against the law.

MR. COLWELL: No, no. No pet. (Interruption) I think so. And what really capped it off, my wife said it is really cute but she went and bought - I'm digressing here a little bit, but it is an issue about trapping - she bought some strawberry plants in little containers, beautiful ones in blossom and everything. We brought them home and set them in the garden beside other strawberry plants. We were in the house for 45 minutes, there were six of them in these pots and when we came back out they were all gone.

MR. POLLARD: Delicious.

MR. COLWELL: Mr. Rabbit had a nice snack. My wife was not very happy and she said we better set the live trap. She said, I don't want anything to happen to them. Anyway, I will never make a trapper but it is an issue. It's a serious issue and I know in my area there has been a lot of problem with beavers. We have a small dam where I live and every day the gaspereau are coming up and we go and pull out enough of the beaver dam that he made that day in the dam - a concrete dam - to let the gaspereau get through. It's an awful mess. A lot of them die right there on that spot for that reason. I have no reason to get rid of a beaver because it is nice to see him, too, but it is a problem.

So it is a real issue. It is a serious issue and it's good to see the wildlife coming back. I remember when I was a child, they sprayed with DDT. When I was fishing I would go and see all kinds of wildlife in the woods, all over the place and after they sprayed the DDT, you wouldn't see anything. You wouldn't see a bird, you wouldn't see a duck, you wouldn't see anything for years and years and years and they are finally coming back. Absolutely finally coming back. It has taken that long for them to come back. It is really a serious issue.

I want to talk about small business a bit. I was an entrepreneur before I got into this crazy business of politics. You are right, small business is the backbone of the province. Really, from operating a small business - I was in manufacturing, which is very capital intensive and very difficult. Fortunately, the business I was in - I was doing exporting and there was some help available from different levels of government, which I truly did appreciate. A lot of the things with small business that I am finding - I have a lot of people come to me who want to start a small business and the big issue is, they don't know how to run a business. When you sit down and explain to them what they have to do, they sort of look at you with a blank stare and say don't be so stupid, this isn't true. I know it's true because I lived through it. That is one of the biggest issues we have.

So someone can run an operation out of their garage with themselves and one other person. They do okay because they can sort of put the money in their pocket and buy what they want and when they run out of money they stop spending. But when the business gets bigger, to the point you have to do long-term investments and all the other things you have to do and then see what the benefit is going to be from that, or the detriment from it, and do marketing, it is very difficult. Most people don't have any idea in the world how to operate a business. Even people who are operating businesses don't know how to operate them to make money, because if you don't make money, you aren't in business long and it doesn't help the economy, it doesn't help you and it doesn't help the people working for you.

So that is part of an issue that we really have to look at. I don't know how you address that, I really don't know. It has been a really difficult thing for me. I have people coming all the time looking to start a small business. When you start looking at their business plan, they don't have one. The other problem I see, too, is some of these RDAs who are supposed to be doing this work, they don't have a clue either. I have seen some of the business plans they put together and it is horrendously bad, I mean it is bad. Allowing $25

a month for a telephone on a business plan put together by an RDA, well, if you are running a business and your telephone bill isn't $300 or $400 a month, you are not doing any business. It is that simple. So I mean just those simple things. I digress from this thing but it is all connected, all this stuff is connected.

When you talk about business, and I am intrigued by that, because normally when you think about a Nova Scotia Federation of Anglers and Hunters you don't think of business but it is all interconnected. What, in your opinion, besides what I think about it, but in your opinion, what do we need to do to help small business in this province so it will help all of us, so you'll have people who have the resources to go hunting and fishing and preserve our environment and make our province better, what do you think the key issue, from your standpoint, is with this?

[10:15 a.m.]

MR. POLLARD: The federation itself doesn't have a platform on this. However, being a small-businessman, being an entrepreneur, I would suggest that the thing we need in Nova Scotia is a mentorship program. Help me understand what it means to get into small business and half of the small businesses may not start. They may understand that they don't have a good business plan, that they're in love with their product, but no one else is. In other words, look realistically at your plan and then assist them to get into it. Understand the finances, understand that you have tax implications, understand that you have payroll and, for goodness sake, understand the difference between revenue and cash flow. People think if I could only get a government contract I've got it made. Well, if you want to wait for 90 days to get paid while you're paying all your employees and all your product. It's just the way it works, you've got to follow through it. Understanding your business, having a realistic business plan, finding out where you can get the capital to go through. You can get money if you have a good plan and the plan makes sense, but it's very hard to get money when you don't have a plan and all you have is an idea.

So if we could develop a mentorship program from a financial officer within government who lends assistance to business start-up to tell them what they need to do from a financial point of view, an operations manager who can tell them what they're getting into in order to go from raw material to market, the marketing side, in other words, a small group of people who could mentor an idea through the process to see whether or not that idea works. If you can put it together right and it's really a good idea, you can make it work. So our suggestion would be to have a mentorship program that's hands-on, instead of here's 16 brochures and you should be able to figure this out on your own.

MR. COLWELL: I couldn't agree more, and actually there was an organization in the province and I was one of the founders of that organization, Enterprise Forum for Nova Scotia, and since, it has dissolved, unfortunately, was business dealing with business. I recall calling several of my business colleagues and asking them if they would pay for a dinner and

share some of their business expertise with budding businesses, and they all said yes. My big problem came was when I didn't call them back. I get calls back and said, well, how come you haven't called us, how come we're not helping, and that was the answer I got. We did do a lot of things for business and some business we did discourage, and it worked well. It went on for quite awhile and it worked very, very well - but I find, and I don't want to digress on this because we're really talking about another thing.

Going back to clear-cutting, I know there are some parts of the forests that have to be clear-cut for obvious reasons, and some don't. How do you perceive that we can make it economically feasible - and I'm against clear-cutting, don't get me wrong here, I had a piece of property clear-cut and I literally cried over it because it was hurricane damage, I had no choice - to harvest the products that we have now rather than clear-cutting? How can we possibly do that? Because that's really the issue, if you could solve that issue, you would have the issue resolved.

MR. POLLARD: It comes down to the point of why do I as an individual go out and buy a $350,000 feller-buncher or harvester or forwarder or timberjack? It's because I'm by myself in the woods and I can run it 24 hours a day and I can harvest 150 cord per day. Now, I have the capital costs of a $350,000 machine, I have its maintenance and running and everything else, or I hire 10 men to work in the woods and coordinate that as a business. I don't want to do that because it's too hard. I'm getting no help. There's no incentive for me to hire 10 guys with power saws who don't work well on a really ugly rainy, snowy day. So it's easier for me to go that route when I know that the benchmark is I can clear-cut everything. The economics of what we're doing, and the employment opportunities of what we're doing will become obvious when you stop the forest application driving the industry. Because you allow clear-cutting, all of the rest of that falls into place. As soon as you say you can't, it becomes economically unviable to operate that way. If you want to put men back in the woods, there's one way to do it - stop clear-cutting. Men aren't efficient at clear-cutting, but they're really efficient at selective cutting. You can work that model, but as long as we have a policy of wholesale clear-cutting in the province, feller- bunchers, timberjacks and forwarders are the economic model.

So, the economic model works that way because of the forest practices, not the other way around, in our opinion.

MR. COLWELL: Just one last comment. Is my time up?

MR. CHAIRMAN: I've allowed almost everybody to take one last comment, so if you could make it quite brief, Mr. Colwell, that would be great.

MR. COLWELL: I'll try to do that. I agree with you and years ago, a cousin of mine ran a huge stud mill in New Brunswick. Actually, they hand harvested, selectively cut and they brought the full-length trees out; and when they were finished, there was absolutely no

scrap, absolutely nothing. Some went to pulp, some went to studs, some went to chips, some went to sawdust, everything was gone.

That, I think is the answer, to do something like that. Again, it's going to take a long time. How's that going to affect us when China can do this at 10 per cent of the cost? How can we compete?

MR. POLLARD: If you take a look at China, they're gearing up for industry, big industry. What they're going to do is compete on the global basis, on a large scale basis. That doesn't mean they're necessarily going to compete on value-added at this particular time. They're looking at the pulp and paper, paper industry, right around the world.

Unless our economies of scale differ in Nova Scotia from what they do at the present time, you can't compete because of where we're located. We don't grow trees very quickly here. You can grow trees in the Amazon basin in 25 per cent of the time, and the pulp produced is just as good. We need to use our quality forests for quality forest products.

If we don't foresee this happening, we believe what's going to happen within the next 10 years - not 25 - you're going to have a collapse of the pulp and paper industry in Nova Scotia, you're going to have massive economic problems and unemployment all at once. We've got to take our forest industry and disperse the wealth over a larger base of product. We have all our eggs in a fairly large, single basket at the present time. We have to start to diversify, diversify the forest products and spread the risk.

The risk right now is fairly grave for whatever government is in place 10 years from now, they're going to have some very serious issues that there is no short-term resolution for. This is an evolution, not a revolution. Take your time, diversify and spread the risk.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Colwell. Minister Casey.

MS. CASEY: My question should not take long for an answer, but it's related to the most recent fires we have had and the impact those have, or will have, on our wildlife. I'm assuming there will be some assessment done of that. What are your thoughts on that?

MR. RODGERS: There were a lot of animals dispersed from that fire. Unfortunately, there's a lot of animals that just can't get out - mice, moles and creatures of that smaller size, especially this time of the year with a lot of birds still nesting, they wouldn't have had a chance. I did hear of quite a few deer leaving that area and they will - bears I'm sure, they have the legs and the size to move right out of an area like that. It would be the smaller animals that would be impacted.

It'll be some time, I don't think DNR goes in and tries to do an assessment on that. They may have some idea of how many of these smaller animals there are per hectare in

Nova Scotia, but it won't take long after that fire, green growth starts to come back in and that land will be re-utilized by wildlife. I'm sure deer have already crossed through some areas, being moved around because of fire trucks and other things in that area forcing them around.

Animals are quite adaptable. They'll find their niche and move through it, but it's unfortunate these things happen.

MS. CASEY: Thank you.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Theriault.

MR. THERIAULT: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you Tony and Michael, it's very interesting. I think we could sit here all day and speak on this subject because there's probably even a lot more you haven't brought up. You could probably sum it up, though, pretty easy. There's an old saying that goes, only when the last fish is caught, only when the last tree is gone and only when the last river is poisoned, only then we will realize that we can't eat money, so you could probably sum it up that way at the end.

Anyway, you touched on mining, forestry and I just want to touch on mining. What do you think of what is going on across Canada, in the mining industry, of using the lakes to discharge the tailings and debris from mines?

MR. POLLARD: It should be criminal.

MR. RODGERS: We did that in Nova Scotia many years ago, as a matter of fact, I think there's a statement that Nova Scotia roads were paved with gold and that's because that's exactly what we did with our tailings, we made roads out of them. This is unfortunate because when it rained after that, the arsenic and other chemicals that were in those tailings ended up going into our brooks and streams. Mike is right, it's criminal to be dumping anything into any watercourse anywhere in Canada. It's something we just have to control and make sure that we have the rules and regulations in place to police that sort of thing.

MR. POLLARD: If I may, there's a mine in the Northwest Territories that has just been closed and is going through its reparation period. It's a hole in the ground. If you took Citadel Hill and turned it upside down, that would be about the size of hole you're looking at down to sea level. They have trucks there that carry 155 tons per load, they will run 24-hours-a-day, in tandem to each other, for the next four years, to fill the hole. They have a research project and young people out on the tundra picking plants and seeds so that once that hole is filled in, that will be re-seeded and brought back to its original condition before the mine was done. The tailings were all contained within an area that had a containment wall. We have to start thinking in those terms.

We can't keep contaminating the water, but our mineral resources can give significant economic development and prosperity to Nova Scotia. All we are suggesting is, do it right, put the conditions in place to the mining corporation that they can't damage the biosystems and ecosystems that they're working around and that the money must be on the table, in escrow, to repair the damage that's done through scarring the land by having the mine in place in the first place. It can be done, it's just economics, and it's part of the cost to the shareholders who are doing that.

If we took a look at forestry in the same way, I can give another 10 cents per share to my shareholders, like Exxon is doing at the present time - I'm not picking on them but you can do that - or you can pass that back to protect your environment. We're going to have to take some responsibility for the economic development in the province and do it right.

MR. THERIAULT: Thank you. I want to touch on forestry, I agree with you on value added and I'm going to give you an example in western Nova Scotia. We had a mill down there in the Weymouth area which recently closed. One of the reasons was the lack of product because it had been cleaned out pretty much. After the mill closed, we've been seeing truckload after truckload of wood leaving, a lot of hardwood, milled across the Bay and headed for Shelburne to leave this province. Some of it is coming to Truro, I believe, to be processed, so I'll give them that, but it's leaving the western area, that's for sure, a lot of it is leaving the province. Very few machines are doing this, very few people.

Right next door to it is a place called Lewis Mouldings, with three truckloads of wood coming to that every week, from up the road a ways, up in the Valley - pine. It's employing 80 to 100 people in that Lewis Mouldings. I mean it's just common sense, they're taking three truckloads of pine, keeping 80 to 100 people to work there a week. Three truckloads a week are doing this.

They're shipping it to Europe, they're even expanding on their markets, yet we're having all this mass wood leave by half a dozen people cutting it down with machinery, taking it to God knows where. It's not doing the area one bit of good.

MR. RODGERS: We split our hardwood and throw it in the fireplace and veneer logs are in demand all over the world, for flooring - we'd rather burn it.

MR. THERIAULT: But I see it every day down there. Why aren't we doing more with this hardwood and the softwood that is being taken away and destroyed? I really haven't got a question on that - you've already answered that question - but I have got a question on something you never brought up. I believe maybe I shouldn't bring it up but I'm going to bring it up. (Laughter)

MR. RODGERS: We'll see in a minute. (Laughter)

MR. THERIAULT: It's about the fishing and you never mentioned the wild salmon fishery. You talk about animals overrunning the prairies and in Manitoba, the beaver - you never mentioned the gopher out there, destroying the crops continuously. They had to put out, the federal government put out a big project out there, paid 80 per cent of them, I don't know how many millions they spent, to bring the gopher population down.

I want to ask you the question, what do you think of the wild salmon? When they leave these rivers - what few are left - and go across this Atlantic and come back in the Spring to do their thing, I want to know your thoughts on those few salmon trying to get down through those 8 million seals - our Atlantic gophers? I want to know your thought on that and then some of them seals need up to 40 pounds of fish a day, the smaller ones, down to 5 to 10 pounds. I want to know your thoughts and your vision of seeing those salmon trying to come through those seals, from the Grand Banks to the rivers of Nova Scotia.

MR. POLLARD: The seal herd has to be managed and it should be managed without all of the burden being put on Newfoundland and Labrador. There's a seal population in Sable Island - it is one of the areas in the North Atlantic where seals go in abundance to pup. We've got more seals right now basically than we have fish. They're right from inland, from the ponds right in the waterfronts, the harbours, everywhere and they don't eat hay, they don't eat kelp, they eat fish. If you have a salmon net out, for example, they are as lazy as everyone else. They'd rather eat them out of your net, because they don't have to chase them, than run around in the water and do that.

The population of seals has to be managed and we're not doing a very good job of it. It should be done. The only other area I would touch on is that there needs to be also an assessment for those few fish that are available that are coming back and could actually repopulate the streams of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. We've got very good salmon streams but when you're allowed to have a net three-quarters of the way across the mouth of a river, going from east to west, three-quarters, and 100 yards further up, going from west to east, east to west - they have to do like a giant slalom skiing to get into our waterways - I believe we're not doing things in the best interest of the Atlantic salmon recovery.

MR. RODGERS: I was just saying that over the last number of years I've had a number of reports from anglers finding seals very deep and far up rivers. They would be fishing in a pool and all of a sudden, boink, up popped a head and they're not chasing salmon up there - they are after trout as well, and any other species they can get.

Of course there's a myriad of creatures out there that rely on fish. If you wanted to get into a nice discussion on cormorant someday, I can send a few guys your way. It would be a long and lengthy one.

I would like a couple of minutes though, if I could, on - we're talking about different types of economics but I would like to talk about the economics of angling and hunting just for a minute; it's in the report but I think it's worthwhile stating. The activity of hunting in Nova Scotia is worth $35 million a year in spinoff. You may not think of that as an industry in itself but we feel it is. There are not too many businesses that are running around and producing that kind of generation.

Now, I notice there's a lot of it that's internal but by the same token there's $83 million in angling. That's guys out there like me, putting a little fly on the hook, and tossing it into the water. That's the kind of money that's being spent and I don't think you have to go very deep into Wal-Mart or Canadian Tire and just look at the raft of materials that they're selling to appease us in what we need. I think most of the time they make the stuff to catch us as opposed to the fish but that's another story.

Two years ago, the Department of Natural Resources decided to purge its list of hunters in Nova Scotia. They were looking at 0.25 million and they knew that that was a little bit too high so they changed the whole system and went from the traditional orange card to a wildlife resources card, made people reapply to find out exactly who was here. It was quite pleasant to find out that after the list was purged, of all the people who had either passed away, or moved out of the province and so on, there was still in the vicinity of 77,000 people in Nova Scotia who still maintain that they are hunters in the province who want to do that.

There are not too many activities in Nova Scotia that 77,000 people say they participate in. You're not going to find that in hockey players, basketball players, cyclists - none of them. As Mike mentioned at the beginning of our presentation, we are promoting this as a really lifelong, healthy activity. It's said of men that we change our toys about every four years - you know, we'll get into canoeing and into cross-country skiing, whatever the case may be - but once you become an angler or a hunter, it pretty much stays with you. If you get involved at a young age, it will stay and you can be a six-year-old or a 80-year-old, or a 90-year-old, and still participate in these activities.

The activities themselves - I brought a few brochures along that I'll leave with you - get into the calorie burns of these activities and what they really mean, and we don't require any infrastructure. I don't need a gymnasium, I don't need a hockey rink, I don't need you to clear-cut a small area to put a soccer field in. It's the woods and we would like to see the province do more in the promotion of these activities to get more and more people interested, or at least to introduce them to it. There are a few programs that we're associated with, like the Becoming an Outdoors-Woman program that's 10 years old now. It gives women an opportunity to shoot a gun, to set a trap, to learn about these sort of things on an introductory basis to see if they're willing or really want to get involved with it - a great promotional thing.

As you know, hunter education in Nova Scotia has been around since 1976. Our fatalities in the province are at the zero level because of that. Blaze orange clothing has a lot to do with it, too. So not only have we got a healthy activity, we've got a very safe activity. Regardless of what we're using in our hands as our tool to hunt with, the safety element is extremely high. I think in all of North America, the incidents of people being hurt in this sport are way below any of the sports I just mentioned a minute ago. So there's a lot of positive things here. It's just a matter of sometimes getting past the hump of a few of the antis that don't want anybody doing anything anyway and moving forward.

The Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture, inland fisheries in Nova Scotia, years ago hired a young lady by the name of Tara Marshall who has just done a bang-up job of promoting angling. She goes to schools, takes the kids, teaches them about the biodiversity of fish, fish habitat, how to fish, takes them on the water, and she has really created some monsters because now these kids are really rushing out to get their own stuff and participate. We would love to see that with DNR. Hopefully, some day they will do it. They certainly have hired staff to do a lot of other specialty things so we would like to see them get involved with that too. These activities are growing stronger in a lot of areas. The tools are changing a bit, there are more people interested in archery, bow hunting, as opposed to firearm hunting. But when we look at another part of the industry, we've taken a huge blow in Nova Scotia, as we have across the country, with respect to the loss of shops and stores that provided that equipment.

The federal gun control legislation just whipped us very badly on that particular front. There were 35 such places closed down in Nova Scotia, 35 small businesses. Guys who were selling firearms and ammunition and the odd bit of fishing tackle and that disappeared because of that legislation and the rule and impositions that were put on people. We'd dearly love to see none of that go forward anymore, but this is down the road now and we have to grow it again.

When you think about economics, I hope you keep those particular numbers in mind because that money is going into rural Nova Scotia. We're spending some in Halifax and Sydney but the bulk of it is ending up in the pockets of small businesses in rural Nova Scotia because that's where we stop to get gas, that's where we stop to buy a sandwich, pick up some pop, whatever the case may be - it's out there in rural Nova Scotia. Thank you.

MR. POLLARD: One other that we had, because we were talking about issues instead of beeping our own horn - last year across North America, there's an organization called Hunters for the Hungry. What hunters do is donate part of their catch of high-protein food. Protein is the hardest thing for soup kitchens and food banks and churches and organizations to get their hands on and it's the most expensive. This was started, it's two years old in Nova Scotia now and hunters in Nova Scotia are starting to donate to Feed Nova Scotia. Last year in North America, across the United States and Canada, the Hunters for the

Hungry donated how many meals? Two hundred and fifty million from the catch that they got and donated it to more needy people within the communities that they live in.

We're trying to do the conservation, we're trying to do things within our area of enjoyment and expertise and you will be forced to deal with some things taking place in Nova Scotia that have more global impacts and one of them will be seal management, one will be deer management. The cuter the animal, the more backlash you get from the public when it has to be managed. Nobody minds if you step on a cockroach, nobody minds if you kill a spider, but when it's a cute little while harp seal out on the ice, it all goes to hell in a handbasket very quickly.

We have a deer problem in Nova Scotia now; it's in the Bridgewater-Lunenburg area. Instead of the 20 deer per square mile, there's 300 and when you're going to see the problem surface is when people started getting killed on the highway with deer-related accidents. It's at its cusp now, all I'm suggesting is as part of the hunting and fishing fraternity, you have to realize animals need to be managed at certain times and that management means certain things. If they're breeding beyond their capacity to sustain themselves in an area, it has to be controlled, these might come forward to you. We would love to be able to give you guidance on a regular basis on some of those issues and we are certainly at your command.

MR. THERIAULT: Mike, there's no higher protein in the world than there is in seal meat. (Laughter) Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

MR. CHAIRMAN: You're welcome and in light of the deer comment, I'll say the buck stops here. (Laughter) I want to have a couple of minutes. For a little while, I thought I was listening to Ron Coleman from GPI Atlantic, so I'm thinking some of your numbers on the jobs per cubic metre of wood and so on probably came out of a GPI report?

[10:45 a.m.]

MR. POLLARD: Yes, we use their research for background to some of the positions. We have those positions, we didn't have the research money to conduct the research, so we have permission from GPI to use their background research.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I think it was probably in 2000, I might be wrong, but in 1999 I became the Natural Resources Critic for our caucus. I introduced a bill three times to ban clear-cutting. The thrust of that bill was that clear-cutting would really be used as a treatment, not as the pervasive harvesting practice.

If you had an insect infestation, Hurricane Juan, really the best way to improve a situation in the forest would have been to clear-cut. I think it was over 90 per cent, probably 97 per cent of the harvesting was clear-cutting. I used to have the numbers off the tip of my tongue, but I don't anymore, but the province basically has a policy - and I think it was

Minister Fage, perhaps, in budget estimates, when he was Minister of Natural Resources - that said we basically work on a 45-year rotation in the forests. Even if you consider it takes 100 years to grow a tree, which is what we used to talk about, and now with all we know about silviculture we can probably get that same mass faster, it kind of tends to indicate we're harvesting about twice as much as we should and that has real issues.

What you talk about contractors and their machinery, they have to put so much wood per second through that machine in order to pay for that machine. This occurred when the mills downloaded the cost. The mills used to own the machines and the contractors were their employees. Now the contractors are contractors and the mills don't own the machines, the contractors are on the hook for the machinery and the mill pays them. So the mill gets to say, we're only going to give you this much and that means you have to put that much volume through the machine. That is an issue.

The two things you really hit on, which I thought were quite accurate - one is the way we harvest, which is clear-cutting, but the other one is the volume issue. I don't really see a problem with setting an annual allowable cut. We're almost an island, you can count the trees. We can see these cod fish sticking up out of the ground, so you can pretty well determine that if you harvest at such a level - actually the numbers I crunched were with taking an average of 30 cord per acre, across the province, and the rest of the numbers were purely the province's numbers, the acreage we harvest, and all that - in about 19 years we could harvest it all and that was, I think, back in 1998, so we're 10 years along that road.

We definitely have to make some changes in terms of environment and so on, but if you look at the sustainability of the industry, there are some really serious issues we should deal with. I think Bob Bancroft, in light of Mr. Glavine's talk about legislation along watercourses protection, I think Bob Bancroft said about 300 feet down on the side of a stream was necessary for proper corridors for wildlife. I think if we were selective harvesting across the province, that would go a long way. You want to address the issue of reaching into those areas and pulling out.

I'm curious about what your thoughts might be around Hurricane Juan and that fire. I would think that was part of the problem for Hurricane Juan, it really did a lot of damage and my worry had always been, there were these areas that had never been harvested or cleaned up, and if there ever was a fire, it was going to be a tough one to fight. If you spend any time in the woods - and I would assume you two do - there are places now, old trails, where people are all over the country trying to avoid the blow-down for the area where Hurricane Juan had been, so I would think fighting fires in an area that had much downed wood would have been particularly difficult.

MR. POLLARD: Phenomenally difficult. The downed wood has been down for awhile, that's the first thing. Number two is that a lot of the stems aren't just blown over,

they're snapped off, they're broken. So you have a tangled mass that's almost impossible to get through in some areas.

However, you have extremely dry wood that's laying in abundance everywhere. I am not an expert on fire and how it works, but it is fairly indicative that if you have nice kindling laying around in any abundance and you get a fire going, it is going to be different than standing wood, which is green. You can get a forest fire going through pretty quickly where the shell is burned but the wood is still decent inside. That is not what took place here. If you go down and take a look, it is burned to the ground because it had fuel, really good fuel, on the ground, not standing. So I believe it could have contributed to the fire being as uncontainable as it was. The wind was certainly no help. So I believe there are a lot of different factors but any time you have an abundance of biomass on the ground that is dry, you can be in some serious trouble if you get a fire going.

MR. RODGERS: I believe though, John, that part of the problem there was that because of the longhorn beetle, a lot of that wood wasn't harvestable anyway because of the inability to move it out of the area. So it was leave it where it is because we are not going to spend money to do nothing with it.

MR. POLLARD: I think that became part of the problem.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I wonder if you want to summarize your presentation. I know we are not going to get to a second round. We do have some agenda items for the committee to deal with before we leave.

MR. RODGERS: I have a few brochures that I could start with.

MR. POLLARD: In summation, what we are saying is a position of do no harm, do our economic development, assist industry to be productive and economically viable but, as part of any business development plan, build in to that economics, the responsibility to keep our biodiversity intact, our ecosystems intact and our forests being sustainable on a long-term basis. Build the mines, do the harvesting, but replace it to its original form when you are done. We don't believe in more regulation. In fact, we believe in less but with strong guidelines that tell people how business must be done within our province. Replace it, fix it or mitigate it before you allow it to happen and build that into your business case on an ongoing basis and we will be in much better shape 15 to 20 years from now than we are at the present time.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Tony?

MR. RODGERS: I'm fine, John. I would like to thank the committee for hearing us today. As I pointed out to you, when we came in it was the year 2000, I think, that Bob

Bancroft and I appeared and we would like to come back a little sooner the next time perhaps. Keep us in mind.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Actually, well I'm not sure who the body will be who will be thinking about it, but for sure. I want to say, on behalf of the committee, thank you very much. It was very worthwhile, I have to tell you.

MR. RODGERS: Thank you, and as individual MLAs, if at any time there is a question that comes up about wildlife issues and hunting and fishing, please don't hesitate, just call. We will take your call and if we don't have the information readily available, we will certainly go track it down for you. But use us as a resource. We feel that we do have answers for you, it is just a matter of hearing the question.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Okay, we have two or three agenda items, which I think kind of go to where we will go in the Fall, for sure. The big one I want to deal with right now is around the request for DFO to come before this committee and, in particular, Nancy Hurlburt, Assistant Commissioner of the Coast Guard Maritimes. So I want to know from the Liberal members on the committee - I sent a letter to the Liberal Leader, Stephen McNeil, because this request had come from the Public Accounts Committee that he had sent to them on this issue. I have asked Mr. Hebb to come to the committee in case we have a question but there is a process around a subpoena. So the request to Mr. McNeil was that since it had come from him that a member of the Liberal caucus would present the certificate to the committee. I am just wondering, has there been any discussion with the Liberal caucus? Mr. Glavine, I understand you are chairman, from your other correspondence, so has there been any discussion on this issue? Does anybody from the Liberal caucus have the certificate to present?

MR. GLAVINE: We don't have it today but we definitely want to follow that course, that process. So we will take the next step to do that.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I am just thinking that had that happened, we could have been underway for the Fall, but now that won't happen until then. So do any members have any questions for Mr. Hebb around the process on that? Mr. Colwell.

MR. COLWELL: I just have a quick question. We have gone through this on other committees I am on. This Assistant Commissioner of the Coast Guard, is she in Nova Scotia?

MR. GLAVINE: Yes.

MR. COLWELL: Okay, in other words, we can get the subpoena to work. Good.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Parker.

MR. PARKER: I just wanted to ask, what is meant by a certificate? What does that mean? In order to bring a witness here, there has to be a certificate presented? What is that?

MR. GORDON HEBB: Rule 64(1) provides that a member has to provide a certificate indicating, and I will just read you the words of the rule, ". . . stating that the evidence to be obtained from such witness is, in his opinion, material and important and the Committee . . ." and well, that is what the certificate says that the committee votes on the issue.

MR. PARKER: Is it a letter or is it a piece of paper? I think of a certificate as . . .

MR. HEBB: There is no prescribed form. It just would be something in writing that would indicate that, in the member's opinion, who is signing the certificate, that the evidence to be obtained from that witness is, in that member's opinion, material and important.

MR. CHAIRMAN: That could just be a letter from one of the . . .

MR. HEBB: It could be a letter. I can assist if that is wished. It could be a document called a certificate. It could be something that would indicate that.

MR. MACKINNON: Mr. Chairman, I am wondering if the letter could, in fact, come in during the summer period, within the next couple of weeks type of thing and whether or not we could give our blessing to that letter in advance of receiving it. This particular issue should be addressed sooner rather than later. I think that if it is going to have to come before a committee meeting in September and not coming up until October or whatever, is there anything that we can do in anticipation of the letter coming in?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Glavine.

MR. GLAVINE: This is exactly what I was going to ask the chairman and Mr. Hebb about, as to whether or not we could expedite and facilitate that happening right now, through a letter with the correct legal presentation of it to be forwarded. This is an issue that the Premier has also expressed his concern about, and I think all Parties have been thinking about this particular issue and it is one that I think we should advance as quickly as possible.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I don't know that there is a problem with that. As far as I'm concerned, that is fine, if the committee is fine with that, unless Mr. Hebb says there is some . . .

MR HEBB: I think the certificate needs to be presented to the committee before the committee can vote on the question of whether to summons.

MR. MACKINNON: How long would it take to draft a certificate?

MR. GLAVINE: It may not be in the legalese but it wouldn't take very long.

MR. COLWELL: Maybe we could get Mr. Hebb to do us a copy right now of what the certificate should look like and one of us in the Liberal caucus could sign it.

MR. GLAVINE: I mean it is just a request. We feel that the information in province is relative for us to advance our case on to the federal government. That is, in essence, where we want to go with it.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Gordon.

MR. HEBB: There is also another issue and, of course, that is the ability of the committee to summon a federal official; and if the person is within the jurisdiction, the other requirement is really that you're summoning the person with respect to something which is within your jurisdiction. A federal official can't summons the person to question about things which are totally within federal jurisdiction, so I'm assuming that what you're proposing and questioning this person on does in some way relate to provincial jurisdiction.

The only case I know where this has arisen before is in Prince Edward Island, a few years ago, with respect to potatoes. There's no question that there's overlapping jurisdiction in agriculture. In that case the federal government did challenge the subpoena in the Prince Edward Island Supreme Court, and the court upheld the subpoena. But one thing the court said was, of course, there was no way of knowing in advance what questions were going to be asked, whether they were going to be questions that would be within provincial jurisdiction or federal jurisdiction, but just as long as there is something, you know, because I haven't been here and I don't know totally what your purpose is in bringing this witness before, but that is something that you should be considering.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Ms. Casey.

MS. CASEY: If I could just follow through on the process then, the first step is to get the certificate. The next step is for the committee to vote on that. The next step is for the witness to be summoned to appear before the committee. Is that all predicated on the fact that the information that that witness can bring is relevant to the question and/or that that person is the person who can deliver that information? If we need the information, we need to make sure that the person who we're summoning is the person who can deliver that information.

MR. HEBB: Yes.

MS. CASEY: Who makes that decision?

MR. CHAIRMAN: I think we passed that stage when the committee decided to do the subpoena. We've identified Ms. Hurlburt, in her role as the Assistant Commissioner, as

that person, so the committee has already gone down the road of wanting to do the subpoena. We're just talking about process at this stage. Mr. Hebb, you're right in the sense that it's difficult to know what the questions may be, but I think the thrust of Mr. McNeil's letter was around the loss of those two ships and the associated jobs in the province.

MR. GLAVINE: The jobs, the economic impact.

MR. CHAIRMAN: So that I think is the basis on which we want to proceed.

MR. GLAVINE: And the case, you know, that their placement here, in fact, has a more significant role than moving them to the current plan. Those are the three or four areas.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Okay, usually before we have a committee meeting, we have a planning meeting around agenda items, usually in the Fall. Mr. Hebb, if our committee meets on setting agenda for, you know- it's usually a shorter meeting - is that considered a meeting of the committee that we could vote on?

MR. HEBB: No, you're talking about a subcommittee?

MR. GLAVINE: No, the entire committee.

MR. HEBB: Oh, you're talking about the entire committee. Sorry, because other committees have a smaller group. (Interruption) No, no, if it's the entire committee, that's fine.

MR. CHAIRMAN: And I'm thinking that probably, since we can't move this faster than that . . .

MR. HEBB: Well, I will say, I mean someone was saying about certificate, I mean I can draft a certificate if you have other items to go on to.

MR. CHAIRMAN: We do actually. (Interruptions)

MR. HEBB: And what member is going to be signing the certificate?

MR. GLAVINE: I'll sign it.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Minister Casey has to leave by 11:15 a.m. The next item on our agenda, that I have anyway, is correspondence by Mr. Glavine. Mr. Glavine, do you want to address your correspondence to the committee. I think it's pretty evident where you're going with this.

MR. GLAVINE: Yes. The desire here is to bring the Federation of Agriculture or just even Select Nova Scotia representatives to the committee for the purpose of updating, seeing what Phase 2, this year, has been able to accomplish, and perhaps more important, their role for the future. If we're going to advance the local food economy and perhaps dovetail it with a Maritime effort, there has to be some plan and that's the desire for this, again. I think in the Fall, after the summer campaigns have gone on, what pick-up, what more developed as a result of.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I'm just a little unclear. You said Federation of Agriculture or Select Nova Scotia. My understanding was it was Select Nova Scotia.

MR. GLAVINE: Select Nova Scotia, yes, and sometimes we've had a tie-in with the federation but Select Nova Scotia as a stand-alone would be fine.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Okay. I'm not entirely sure about - there was a committee formed to head that up, prior to the government coming out with their plan, so I'm not sure if you're looking for staff people from the department on that, or those original committee members.

MR. GLAVINE: I think in this case here, there are still obviously government people, federation, and Select Nova Scotia has a director, so we could have that person. So I think getting a couple of different perspectives on this issue perhaps may have greater significance for the committee.

MR. CHAIRMAN: You're not thinking of those couple of different perspectives in the same presentation, you're not thinking of federation and Select Nova Scotia at the same time?

MR. GLAVINE: We could have it at the same time. Each one, stand alone, may not need the two hours, but bring them in together, I think, on the same day. We've done that before where we've brought in two groups but with the same topic area.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I guess to me the federation could respond to what they think has happened with Select Nova Scotia. I'm almost thinking that should be a separate presentation and let Select Nova Scotia kind of outline their program.

MR. GLAVINE: Sure, I mean the main objective here was to get, where is Select Nova Scotia as a vehicle of the government to promote the local food economy? What is their update position here? What is their go-forward thrust is what we want to get at.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. MacKinnon.

MR. MACKINNON: Certainly I want to go on record as strongly supporting that. I think it's extremely important and certainly our caucus was involved in the birthing of that, so we would support it fully, I'm sure.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Okay. If we look at committee business, I'm starting at the bottom of the list and working my way up. So, as far as the members are concerned, they would be glad to have Select Nova Scotia come forward. I'm not sure where that's going to fit in because there are a few other items that caucuses had presented, so maybe when we have our agenda setting meeting in September, we can try to decide to get that kind of right away, after the summer season, it might not be a bad idea. So we'll look at that . . .

MR. GLAVINE: In the Fall, actually, is fine, Mr. Chairman.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Okay, is the committee fine with that?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Agreed.

MR. CHAIRMAN: The first item on the list is correspondence by Ms.Gretchen Fitzgerald on behalf of Nova Scotia Mining Caucus, requesting an opportunity to make a presentation before the Resources Committee. So this is a request that came in ahead of Mr. Glavine's request. Mr. Parker.

MR. PARKER: I guess I just want to point out, or make it clear here, that the request actually is from the Nova Scotia Environmental Network. They happen to have a mining committee, or environment caucus, or whatever you call it; it's really from the Nova Scotia Environmental Network.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Okay. Anyway, they would like to make a presentation, I think in response to the Mining Association. So I was of the view that since we had had them, we didn't want to delay too long in hearing another side to that issue, so I think, I can only say if members would think about that when we have our agenda-setting meeting for the Fall and decide where we want to go with who ahead of whom, but hopefully we'll have one of those, I would like to think in September, and the agenda-setting meeting shouldn't be our only meeting, I'm thinking, for September. Is there any other item that any member has that they'd like to bring forward?

We'll just see how Mr. Hebb makes out here in the next minute.

Okay, the certificate has been tabled with the committee, so I just want the approval of the committee to move forward with the subpoena.

MR. THERIAULT: So moved.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

The motion is carried.

Thank you. The next thing we need is a date; in order to issue the subpoena we have to have a date. In talking to Sherri, the 16^th of September is what was proposed.

MR. GLAVINE: It has been on the books for some time and it would be nice to clear that one before the year starts with our agenda.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Is it agreed?

It is agreed.

That's a Tuesday, September 16^th at 9:00 a.m.

MR. PARKER: I move we adjourn.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Yes, I don't think we need a motion, but anyway, thank you very much. Have a good summer until I see you in September, if not before.

The committee is adjourned.

[The committee adjourned at 11:14 a.m. ]