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HALIFAX, FRIDAY, APRIL 30, 2004
SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE HOUSE ON SUPPLY
9:26 A.M.
CHAIRMAN
Mr. Mark Parent
MR. CHAIRMAN: Let's bring this committee to order. It's 9:26 a.m. The Liberal Party has 15 minutes left. Russell MacKinnon was leading off with the questions. The MLA for Victoria-The Lakes will pick up for the last 15 minutes.
The honourable member for Victoria-The Lakes.
MR. GERALD SAMPSON: Mr. Minister, as you're aware, the spreading of biosolids is quite a controversial issue in the area that I represent, having an area north and an area south of where biosolids are spread or disposed of. I will begin by thanking you for the extension that was given. I hope that the meeting we had a week or so ago had some input on the fact of your decision to extend the moratorium or the deadline for another two weeks. The spreading of biosolids, with the information that we have today on contaminants and the dangers of it - maybe you could explain the process the government is expecting is do in neutralizing the dangerous substances that are contained in the biosolids, before it's allowing it to be spread on the land?
MR. CHAIRMAN: The honourable Minister of Environment and Labour.
HON. KERRY MORASH: I certainly appreciate the question. I guess it's no surprise that biosolids comes up as we go through these estimates. It's been an important part to the media, and it's been discussed at some length. Certainly I can tell you that the department has been working just about full-strength on it since January, when the moratorium was imposed. At that point in time we undertook to look at all the legislation and regulations that there are out there concerning this. We pretty well did an exhaustive North American search to see what best practices were out there, to see how we could improve on our guidelines. As you're aware, we put those guidelines out for public review and have received some submissions and comments that have been very helpful as we move through this.
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It certainly is a topic that brings a great amount of emotion to bear. We've looked at all the science, and we have developed guidelines that we believe would allow for the safe spreading of biosolids at this point in time. However, there are still a lot of issues with municipalities. There's a tremendous amount of education that has to be done. One of the challenges that I mentioned, probably to my colleagues and perhaps to you, as well, when we met to discuss this issue, was the amount of education that is necessary in the Province of Nova Scotia, and everywhere, to ensure that people are fully aware of all the facts and all the issues, what the processes involve and how we can move forward to ensure people are safe, and also to use this product, which is going to become more prominent as we get through the Halifax Harbour solution and as we better take care of our environment in the future.
[9:30 a.m.]
MR. GERALD SAMPSON: Mr. Minister, one of the complaints that was passed on to me when I was asked about the treatment of the biosolids was, do you know what the treatment is, and I said no. Well, it's only going to be the use of lime and that's all they're going to do with it before it's spread. Is there more of an in-depth treatment of the septic sludge before it gets spread onto the properties?
MR. MORASH: The treatment, currently, for the biosolids is the sewage is broken down to some extent, just because of the nature of the holding system that it comes from. We lime it or put in adequate amounts of lime to bring the pH up to 12 for a period of at least two hours. Then extensive testing is done to ensure that we have treated and neutralized the material, so that it can be used in the future.
MR. GERALD SAMPSON: I refer to the new treatment plant that was built in Baddeck, during my tenure there, where it's capable of neutralizing what goes into the plant, but we took an additional step and created another segment of the plant that will dewater the sludge, which they tell me will cause it to turn into a product, something similar to peat moss, easier for transportation. We do have a permit there to transport it out to the landfill and put it in the licensed compost pile that's there. Is there going to be some kind of process put in place, that in the transportation of this, that that will be the case, or will it basically be transformed into liquid form?
MR. MORASH: Currently, we're looking at all new technology that's out there or existing technology that seems to be functioning. Certainly, discussions with municipalities are ongoing, because they're an intricate part in any kind of a move forward in this. We also have been talking with the septage pumpers, making sure that they're aware of what's out there. Certainly there are some things on the market now in the province, and the province is relatively small, so I think it's fair to say that most of the people involved would be aware of the technology. They're working with the department, and we're trying to ensure that everybody is up to date.
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There are some dewatering systems out there that seem to be working very well. There are also some infrastructure costs associated with that. Again, discussions with the municipalities would get us through those things. There are options out there that are very appealing and, at this point in time, are being explored. We would hope to be able to move forward in partnerships and in conjunction with municipalities to treat this material in the best possible way.
The other thing to point out would be that things are always changing, technology is always changing, so we look forward to moving in whatever direction, whatever technology comes that improves the system, improves the process and allows us to handle the material more efficiently, and certainly in a manner that would be most acceptable to the general public.
MR. GERALD SAMPSON: Dealing with solid waste, the province has moved toward generation-two landfill sites, very expensive but that seems to be the rule of thumb, the way that they're going to go. I did propose at one time, just locally, that instead of a generation two, a generation one and a half for the sake of facts and figures and, I suppose, modern terminology. I know that in the area I did represent, we only generated 3 per cent of all the solid waste in Cape Breton Island. North of Smokey, the area in particular where the municipality has thousands of acres of property, I thought that if we had permission to create, as I said, a generation one and a half, simply because there's a tremendous amount of fireclay there, I thought if we were to clear off an area, line it with 6 or 8 or 10 feet, whatever, the Department of Environment said - and if anybody knows fireclay, something will either stay there forever or it will evaporate, there's no seepage with fireclay.
I thought with the push to eliminate, and get your numbers up in recycling, it would be a lot safer to have a landfill site like that, with your organics removed and your recyclables removed. Basically what you would be putting into that site would be inert, rather than having the extreme cost of liners and ponds to monitor the leachate or whatever. Using that analogy, that didn't come about. One of the previous Ministers of Environment thought that was a good idea, because everything that's being done is done for the betterment of the municipalities, but the cost is extreme.
When you only generate a small amount - I suppose you could always use the argument that any amount is too much, but you're never going to get 100 per cent. With most of the organics removed and the recyclables, what I was thinking of here was - I believe Victoria County, right now, and maybe other sections of Cape Breton, are going to transport their solid waste to Guysborough County, because a generation two landfill just isn't in the ballpark. It's an $8 million facility that the municipalities just couldn't afford to build or to operate and maintain.
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I was wondering, rather than having two or three or four or five sites around, in different areas, for small dumping, did the government ever give thought to the fact that maybe, since we have a central area in a generation-two landfill, maybe we could have a central area for the collection of septic sludge. It would be rather expensive for the small operators to transport that to a central area, but something in the similar way to where they go around and they collect the milk from farms with tanker trunks, and then one large, massive tanker trunk will take that to a central dairy to be processed.
You could have a large tanker truck that could go and pick up from these operators and transport it, if there's a generation-two landfill being built in Guysborough, or wherever, maybe adjacent to that there could be a large septic sludge area that would take the sludge, treat it, dewater it and then make it okay to spread it on the property. I was just wondering if the province had given any idea or thought to something like that.
MR. MORASH: I found it intriguing since I've been involved with the department. I really never thought I would see the day where we would have municipalities actually competing for solid waste, and that's currently what's going on in the province. Certainly the second-generation landfill has prompted that. These are expensive operations to build, and they also have an amount of cost associated with the operations that's significant.
Currently, 15 of our 18 municipal landfills in the province that don't meet our new guidelines, and we're expecting them to meet our guidelines by the 31st of 2005. There has been a 10-year window in here for people to get ready but, of course, right now, with the decision-making process of how much material is going to go to each region, and we actually have municipalities competing for the same solid waste at this point in time, which has caused me to have some interesting discussions with some of the municipalities and some of the councillors at some of the meetings I've gone to, because so much hinges on their decision-making process, on knowing how much material they have or if they can actually get enough to justify the operation of one of these landfills.
I think we all agree, for sure, that our job is to move forward and make sure that we have landfills that have adequate leachate collection, adequate protection for the environment. Again, as we were talking about the biosolids with these second-generation landfills, there have been a number of municipalities that are very interested in putting in sewage lagoons and incorporating that as part of the parcel as they build. Right now we're working with the municipalities, but there are some financial decisions that they need to make with regard to this infrastructure and the infrastructure costs associated with it. It certainly appears to be cost-effective to try to run them in conjunction or in close proximity.
We will be regionalizing, for all intents and purposes, the second-generation landfills, just because there is a considerable amount of material that they need and, if my memory serves me, it's around 80,000 tons a year. So now we have everybody out there crunching their numbers, counting their numbers, to make sure that they can get their 80,000 tons to
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make things financially viable. I've been to a few meetings where there have been some exceptional business plans put forward. They've been dealing with the department on a regular and ongoing basis. This a business and a business decision, as you would appreciate, and it is actually big business for a lot of the smaller municipalities. It's a financial decision that they have to take very seriously, and they have to make sure they have all their homework done.
MR. GERALD SAMPSON: Mr. Minister, what I would hope is that any mistakes that were made in the past would be corrected in the future. I go back to the transportation of solid waste, and I refer again to north of Smokey, because that's the area that I'm familiar with, and it takes 13 truckloads of aluminum cans, to transport them to Sydney, to have them baled in Sydney, to make one tractor-trailer load of baled aluminum to ship. So we have 13 tractor-trailers coming up, and as I said the rules have caused us to be like Ernie and Bert, we're trucking air. We're quite capable of crushing those cans there and bale them, north of Smokey, and when you have a tractor-trailer load - I know they have to be scanned, well, that would make a job in the rural areas, somebody else would be scanning them - and when we have a truckload we could ship it. As simple as that.
So what I'm thinking of is looking at it on a business scale, on an economy of scale, cut the cost wherever you can for municipalities, but also do the best job possible for the remediation of the biosolids, the same way we do for the landfill. Let's not let history repeat itself, but move forward and make a good business case. In the end we have a good, viable, safe product that can be reused again, and eliminate any impact on water sources or groundwater, and turn a negative into a positive for the public.
MR. MORASH: I understand the reason for trucking the cans, not compacted, is for accounting purposes, to make sure that the proper count is made and that the product . . .
MR. GERALD SAMPSON: Yes, but, Mr. Minister, surely once a bale of cans was counted, once or twice, give or take a handful of cans either way, the machine is going to bale them up, and that's going to be it. Anyway, I use that analogy, and I would like to see the septic sludge turned into a positive product without an extreme cost, because we're paying a contractor for 13 trips. And two and a half hours on one of those old windy roads, two and a half hours from Baddeck - if you had to take it to Truro, some people would think that was crazy, well, two and a half hours on the Trans-Canada and you would be in Truro, but two and a half hours from north of Smokey with a big truck on a windy old road, you're not even into Sydney by that time.
[9:45 a.m.]
MR. CHAIRMAN: Our time for the Liberal caucus has finished. We will come back to them after the NDP caucus.
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The honourable member for Cape Breton Centre.
MR. FRANK CORBETT: Before I ask my first question, if the minister wants to respond to the member, I have no difficulty with that. If not, I will get into my line of questioning.
MR. MORASH: Just quickly on the sewage lagoons and things like that, again it's the economy of scale, and some of this dewatering equipment is certainly very substantial and very costly. Again, everybody is looking at the types of centralization, where we can have some economies of scale and look into those things. We're certainly exploring all those things, and don't want to not look at every possible avenue as we move along. Of course there are a lot of variables in the whole system, which make it a little more challenging, but also we have a lot of talented people out there in the municipalities who are looking at the best possible ways and what will work.
I guess I'm not trying to imply at all that we can't make improvements as we move forward. Our goal is to try to improve whatever we find that is not at its best possible level of performance, and we'll continue to do that. We certainly appreciate your comments.
MR. CORBETT: Mr. Minister, it's good to see you this morning, and it's good to see your staff - they're still smiling. That tells me that they are a really good staff or the air quality in here is really bad. (Laughter)
Mr. Minister, I want to continue in some of the areas that we talked about last night, particularly around occupational health and safety issues. Through the course of one of my questions I brought up the New Waterford Consolidated Hospital and the associated problems there with air quality and, indeed, whether you agree with me or not, I think I tried to make my point last night on air quality regs, and I believe that none of the air is stale, but the regs are stale because it's taking so long.
In all seriousness, can you - and I appreciate this may be going over old ground - take me chronologically through the events at the New Waterford Consolidated Hospital, when you were informed, what role the Occupational Health and Safety Committee played in that up until the report was issued?
MR. MORASH: Yes, I can do that. We have some information that will get us through that. I will just start out by saying that I know there was an issue in the department, that everyone expected that the Occupational Health and Safety Division was in on ground level. I believe there was a question in the House, directed at me, that I forwarded along to the Minister of Health last Fall. It was an internal issue initially, where we had experts from the Department of Health and through the hospital who were looking at the air quality and the issues associated with that.
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There was a point in time where we were contacted, as I understand, and became involved. However, you can appreciate that the material, because of the detail needed on air quality, the information that we would look for was the same information that the Department of Health was capable and qualified to be able to produce at that point in time. So when we were contacted, certainly all the tests that we would have suggested had been looked at by the Department of Health, and they had brought in their experts, as well.
MR. CORBETT: Mr. Minister, I'm trying to narrow it down. It appears that at some point the OSH Committee working there, there may have been a breakdown. Are you satisfied with how that OSH Committee worked? If not, is there anything set in place that would make that committee more responsive?
MR. MORASH: I haven't had direct discussions with the committee. I believe from an internal aspect they were very active and involved and responsive to a problem that has been very difficult to isolate and determine the root cause and the source, and that seems to have been one of the ongoing issues with this. If somebody could have put their finger directly on what it was and when it was, we could have taken the remedial steps, but it has held on and we've had certainly experts in the field who have come in.
The health authority hired an occupational hygienist to do the environmental testing and we had other independent parties conduct audits on indoor air quality, air quality investigation, metal air analysis, air quality testing of the laboratory and X-ray departments, the laundry and air ventilation reports, water and material investigation reports and, in addition, Environmental Laboratory Services did a water analysis and all these results were within the normal limits, including the air quality testing results and biological exposure indices. This was a challenging one, as I know you're aware. We really, you know everybody who was involved was having problems. I guess the determination as to whether the joint committee acted, and I don't know, I'm not sure, they certainly acted properly when we were involved - whether you think we were involved soon enough, I guess maybe is the question.
MR. CORBETT: Well, that's part of it. At the other side of it too, it appears, upon reading documents, whether it's the actual OHS Committee from the hospital, or the larger group from the DHA, it appears that the investigative style led to maybe some of the problems being exacerbated inasmuch - I guess the analogy would appear to be that if the police came upon an accident and there was a body on the side of the road and the car sped off and they went and chased the car for speeding and didn't attend to the body and so it was almost split, that clearly when you look at some of the reports that they really, at early points, the management of the building didn't go down the road of air quality soon enough as part of their investigation.
They almost ran to heavy metals and said, okay, and leaving this whole piece over here, not really sitting down at that time and saying all these things look especially quite frustrating in a hospital atmosphere, for them not to think headaches, blurred vision, logy-
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ness, all this stuff, that's probably as much associated with bad air quality than any kind of direct heavy metals. So I guess, has your department looked into the fact that the investigation was so unbalanced that we could have prevented some of the illness had we taken a step back and looked at it in its fullness?
MR. MORASH: My understanding is that the preliminary investigation didn't cite air quality as an issue, but there was medical evidence which led them to look at the heavy metal issue and that certainly did focus things. Now the studies that took place, the joint committee was involved in those and I guess I can say with some experience that in order for outside experts to come in and have credibility in a workforce, you really have to have people from your joint committee, people who are on the floor and know the aspects of the workplace, a company assist, be involved with the people who are taking the samples, doing the sampling and, of course, you know the tests go off to the labs and then we need to have the results interpreted to us.
However, the joint committee was involved in those tests as they took place, which is proper and what has to happen just from a good safety program within any kind of a facility. It does appear that the medical evidence led in the direction that was taken and that was because they did identify heavy metal issues with regard to some sampling and, of course, I suspect, as we all would, once you notice a thing, you would concentrate on that and try to think that that was the problem and fix it. However, the preliminary air quality reports didn't red flag anything or indicate that there was an issue there at that point in time.
MR. CORBETT: I guess a couple of things, when you're looking at a 40-year-old building, you know it has all the aspects of a potentially sick building - its age, its design, the materials used. Indeed, the idea of cross-ventilation is opening two doors - and I don't mean to be flip when I say that, but at a point in time that was perfectly acceptable. But what's really frustrating here too, Mr. Minister, is that there are still a number of employees who cannot return to work because of illness. Yet they sit there, they don't have access to LTD, and right now they have no access to WCB. So what we're having is you're saying a report that indicated that exposure to heavy metals, we know there's exposure to poor air because of air quality and lack of proper air exchange, so can you tell me why these employees are off sick and can't avail themselves of benefits from workers' compensation?
MR. MORASH: My information here says that we have 31 workers' compensation claims that have been received from workers at the New Waterford Consolidated Hospital and that we have four workers who remain off work claiming metal intoxication from their work environment and, if you don't mind, I will go through some of this just so that we have the information.
MR. CORBETT: No problem.
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MR. MORASH: Now there have been no decisions on these claims from the WCB at this point in time and, as you can appreciate, they're very complex claims because we're still gathering medical information on this, and the WCB continues to gather information that would assist in the adjudicating of the claims. There are two aspects here. We have information that we're trying to gather, so the WCB doesn't currently have all the testing data that they need to adjudicate the claims, so there has been a request sent by the WCB to the New Waterford Consolidated Hospital requesting the missing information and the data and that's ongoing as we're speaking.
MR. CORBETT: When was that request put forward, Mr. Minister?
MR. MORASH: Also the Ontario Workers' Clinic is in the province this week. They've come down to do some testing and we will be able to provide, hopefully, that information that we're looking for.
MR. CORBETT: Okay, but you were saying when you sent off to the New Waterford Consolidated Hospital, or as the bigger umbrella, the district health authority for Cape Breton, they're the ones that are going to supply, from Dr. Haynes, whom I believe is coming in from Ontario - is that right, are they going to use Dr. Haynes' information to form part of their decision on whether to pay these affected employees' compensation?
MR. MORASH: There have been some other independent assessments that have taken place; this will be an additional one. So this will be part of the package that helps determine.
MR. CORBETT: It will be part.
MR. MORASH: Part of.
MR. CORBETT: Okay, then when we're talking about "part", and this has been a point of contention between quite a few people. If an employee has heavy metals in their body and they want to pursue a form of chelation therapy, will the board recognize chelation therapy as an appropriate therapy?
MR. MORASH: I guess, as you can appreciate, that's something that I can't answer right now. I can check with the board.
MR. CORBETT: Would you undertake to do that?
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[10:00 a.m.]
MR. MORASH: Yes, we will check with the board - and this is also new to the board, as you can appreciate. I don't know of any chelation therapy that has been approved by WCB in the past, but there certainly could be cases if it has been medically recognized that that was the proper treatment for some type of an exposure.
MR. CORBETT: So what I want to get to is you mentioned about the fairly large numbers of people who are affected and some have returned to work and some have failed to return to work because of their illnesses. My real fear is some of the ones who return to work because what we have sometimes in this system is we push people back to work because they have to pay their bills. It doesn't make them any less sick, it doesn't make them any better, but they're at work and people say well, there was nothing wrong with you anyway, look, you're back here. But they're only back there because of pure economics - it's either work or starve.
I'm quite frustrated with the board in its position around these because it's fine to say we need all the i's dotted and the t's crossed, but these are sick people who at some point were not paid benefits. People tell me they have contacted the board and the board has said we're looking into it. I mean there has to be a greater urgency from the board - we all know Dr. Haynes wouldn't be here if it wasn't a rollout from Dr. Smith's report when the union sat down with management of the DHA and said here's an expert we can all agree on and the three parties agreed on it, and they went out, a little late, but nonetheless he's here. It seemed the board was quite willing to sit on the sideline and say we have nothing on our books to cover this - tough luck - just keep sending us more information.
I guess, Mr. Minister, what I'm saying is at what point - like a former CEO of WCB has been trying to tell me that they're not a welfare agency and they're not a social net agency, they're an insurance company, but they're also an insurance company with a unique position that they're a no-fault insurance company and I guess I wanted to say barring the hard work of the workers themselves, the people who represent them and the DHA, there has been absolutely nothing substantive done by the board to help these workers - so if I'm wrong, can you enlighten me to what they've done to help make these workers whole again and get them the financial rewards that they deserve?
MR. MORASH: At this point in time, I really can't enlighten you because I haven't been directly involved or don't have any information on that, but I would endeavour to go back to the board and ask for a status on this issue and make you aware of what the status is, to confirm where we are with regard to these individuals because they certainly, you know we all appreciate they're very important and we want to do certainly whatever we can within the legislative limits for them. So we'll endeavour to do that and get back to you with the status at this time.
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MR. CORBETT: Mr. Minister, I appreciate the undertaking. The other side of this is that it appears - and it depends on which day of the week it is - that the board is treating this, for want of a better term, as a class action. They're taking all of these employees and saying, okay, this is almost like you were all caught in a period of time and we're going to do this, I mean it would be similar as your background. If there was a major accident at a mill and they said, okay, a boiler had exploded and we're now going to, and that was on April 29th, treat everyone and get them through the system.
Well, it perplexes me that they're doing this because you know better than I do that air quality, people have different tolerances - I mean, if we go back to the mining thing of the wet lung versus the dry lung and so on - so why are they keeping all these people who file over here as opposed to saying Mr. or Mrs. X applied on this date and this is where we're pulling it through. Why is everybody being held out?
MR. MORASH: Certainly they would look at claims individually and I was thinking, as you were talking, that if we can get a status report of where they are that may be beneficial, but each individual would be assessed within the board, but there is this common thread throughout of what the issue is and what the cause is, and of course the reason we're discussing this is because we've had expert upon expert come in and not be able to pinpoint a source or have the types of linkages that we normally have associated with workers' compensation claims, and we would be very hopeful that somebody will be able to determine something. But at this point in time it doesn't appear that it's going to be easy and it doesn't appear that it's going to be quick, although we still have additional experts looking and people are taking this very seriously, so I am hopeful that we can find the source, eliminate the issue and, of course, each of the individuals has to be assessed individually as well as we go forward.
MR. CORBETT: I appreciate a couple of things, I certainly know it has not been quick, and I hope they're being reasonable, but it still seems extremely frustrating. If you just think of it, Mr. Minister, a lineup of 30-some people, and they're all being held out - and, again, as I think we could probably appreciate without seeing the files in front of us, that there would be varying degrees from maybe getting the odd headache at work to not being able to return to work, chronic fatigue syndrome, something like that, so I guess I will ask you again why is it that the board is not pursuing these on an individual basis and saying, like if these people don't avail themselves of Dr. Haynes, then what you're in effect saying is they're not going to get any resolve because they have decided not to go to Dr. Haynes. Are they being ordered (a) by the board to go to Dr. Haynes and (b) if they don't go to Dr. Haynes, can they still be considered for workers' compensation benefits?
MR. MORASH: Regardless of who they go to, they certainly would be considered for Workers' Compensation benefits.
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MR. CORBETT: Not necessarily, Mr. Minister, I beg to differ. I mean I've got files upon files of people in my office who have been refused WCB benefits because of what their board doctor says, so I mean I think that's a fairly important piece of the puzzle if the board is forcing them to see somebody.
MR. MORASH: The board certainly has their own physicians that they use, as you're well aware. However, we're also both well aware that it's additional new information generally from a specialist or an expert in the field that helps build the case for the individual to look through the appeal process, to look for added benefits or the beginning of benefits. With what's going on now, I would certainly encourage all individuals to make themselves available for any discussions or any assessment with any of the experts who are currently working on-site to ensure that the best possible case is built and the most information is passed along to the WCB. The Workers' Compensation Board is also on new ground from the point of view that this isn't something that has occurred before. There isn't an easy road map as to the direction to go and they're also trying to build their cases to ensure that they have the adequate information to make proper decisions under the rules and guidelines that they have.
MR. CORBETT: Mr. Minister, I'm going to be closing in a moment and sharing my time with the member for Dartmouth East. I just want to go on the record, I guess just a couple of moments with you, I know the Third Party is quite loud in their call for a public inquiry into what happened at the New Waterford Consolidated Hospital. I want to say to you publicly that I'm not a particularly big supporter of that. I believe, and you know from time to time we'll disagree on the investigative process, but I think that we're headed in the direction - and hopefully it's sooner - and we all have the same common goal, and that is that those who are ill from the workplace, that they're made whole again and they become productive workers.
I don't think anybody willfully went out and tried to hurt these people, I think it was an accident by every definition of what an accident in the workplace is. I take the position that - as I mentioned to you yesterday about some of the Occupational Health and Safety regulations that are still out there - 26 people died at Westray, we had an inquiry, and still most of those recommendations haven't been enforced, haven't been brought to regulation. So I really think that when we have a party speaking of we've got to have a public inquiry, it's more flash than any kind of meat on the plate.
I have confidence in your department that you will do the right thing. I would like to be able to say I have the same confidence in WCB, but I can't. And with those few words, I want to thank you, Mr. Minister, for coming here. I want to thank your staff for their excellent co-operation whenever I've asked the assistance of your department. I haven't always agreed with it, but they've always been more than helpful, and I appreciate their forthrightness with getting you the proper information when I asked you questions that may
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not have been right at your fingertips. So, I appreciate your openness, and your staff. With that said, I will turn it over to my colleague, the member for Dartmouth East.
MR. CHAIRMAN: The honourable member for Dartmouth East.
MS. JOAN MASSEY: I'm going to try to tie my questions to the green plan and the first part of my questions will be more monetary and on the estimates, and then I'm going to move on to more policy kinds of questions.
I would like to first say that I was disappointed in the Budget Speech because I don't think the word "environment" was in there even once. When I looked at the Budget Speech, I saw that there was a lot of talk about health care, but the government doesn't seem to be making the connection that what's happening in the environment is having an effect on the health of the people who live in Nova Scotia, and it will continue to do so far into the future.
I have had a lot of input from people around the province on the green plan and some of their comments and some of my feelings were that the plan itself was disheartening to say the least. People felt that where there should have been commitments to stronger regulations and firm enforcement, there were only promises to do things like promote, encourage and lead by example. Generally, the identification of responsibilities, timetables and compliance were only covered in a very sketchy fashion. It wasn't really tied to the Environment Act in any particular way, it was all over the place. There were feelings that not enough public consultation was done around that whole process and that it should have been followed by strong regulations, timetables, and they should have identified responsibilities to follow through with those commitments. My first question is . . .
MR. CHAIRMAN: Excuse me a second, can you bring your microphone in a little closer. Some are having trouble hearing. Thank you.
MS. MASSEY: Office of the Minister and Deputy Minister, on Page 9.3, went from $287,000 in the 2003-04 estimate to $425,000 in the 2004-05, which is an approximate increase of $140,000. Could you tell me, is this increase due to the issues that we're going to be facing in the very near future, for example, on biosolids, water quality issues, inspections and assessment? So what I'm looking for you to tell me is have you hired more staff to look after these issues or is this just a pay increase for certain people already there?
[10:15 a.m.]
MR. MORASH: We've increased staff. It's probably very important to point out that we have a deputy minister and an assistant deputy minister in the department, or we will as of January 1st, and this was an outgoing recommendation by the previous deputy minister - we had some discussion on this yesterday - who, I can attest was working very, very hard and had a lot of issues. As you can appreciate, our department seems to have a number of, I guess
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you would call them hot issues, issues that are certainly very demanding and we felt that this was a benefit to the department, to have some senior management in place and ensure that there was additional manpower to be able to discuss the issues and make sure that we can move forward in a timely fashion and that we certainly aren't holding anything up with regard to just a shortage of actual hours in the day. So by joining the two departments, we've got Labour and Environment, which are quite diverse, we've meshed them together, and certainly I think realize that there's additional staff that was required in order to be able to fulfill our mandate to the best of our ability.
MS. MASSEY: So can you tell me how many additional staff were added?
MR. MORASH: In total full-time equivalents, we really are I think less than one. We've added an assistant deputy minister. We will be adding secretarial services to support that and we also have a special assistant to the minister. Also there was an injection of $70,000 into Communications because they had been underfunded.
MS. MASSEY: That was my next question. You must have read my mind. Okay, that was my next question actually. So I'm wondering if that is a reflection of the needs that I've heard from communities across the province, that they aren't really being communicated with, and although the green plan does talk a lot about communicating, a lot of people across the province are feeling that they aren't being communicated with - for example, folks down in Digby Neck, and then a lot of people around the seismic blasting issue where I actually heard from people from as far away as California and England and all across the world who were quite concerned with that, but that issue continued to move forward.
My third question is, under the Policy, Administration, on Page 9.3, that has decreased by $200,000, if I'm correct, and I have a concern there because we have not written any policy or legislation on certain very important issues that our province faces, such as species at risk and climate change. It's a little concerning to me that we would take money out of that department, so perhaps I'm wrong in assuming that?
MR. MORASH: That's actually a very good question because what we had was a one-time injection for the insurance file, to do the work that needed to be done there last year. So if we go back an additional year, we have the same amount of money in for policy development that we had. So this was a one-time bump, the work was done, and it has reverted back to its original levels.
MS. MASSEY: Is that section, that department going to be, do you know, looking at drawing up and putting forward a new policy for those kinds of issues - species at risk and climate change, emission control, effluent control, those types of things?
MR. MORASH: If you don't mind, I will start with those - species at risk belongs to DNR, however . . .
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MS. MASSEY: Sure.
MR. MORASH: . . . our policy people would certainly be involved with them as well. We do work as closely as possible, but that would fall directly with the responsibility of DNR and the climate change would fall with the Energy Department, and again we'd be consulted and having discussions with them.
MS. MASSEY: Exactly, and that's sort of a whole issue with my critic area. It seems it's all over the place, it's Energy, it's the Department of Natural Resources, it's Environment and Labour, so all these things sort of intertwine, and I'm hoping what I am hearing today is that your department works very closely with these other two departments because all these issues tend to come together and create either problems or benefits for Nova Scotians.
MR. MORASH: Yes, we're there, I guess, to work with everybody. There are certainly improvements you can always make in communications as you move forward and unlike you with regard to the amount of places that you have to go for information, it really does take a road map and it takes some time to realize just exactly who the contact person is in order to get that information. It's challenging at first, I guess is the way to put it and I'm sure, especially from the point of view of your responsibilities, I guess, if there's anything that we can ever do when you call and ask about these things, we'll give you whatever information we possibly can and give you briefings to help you understand, because we're really all in this together, to try to do what we can to improve the environment. That's important to both of us to make sure that we do the best while we're here.
MS. MASSEY: On Page 9.9, Information and Business Services, Research, I believe there's an increase of roughly $100,000 in 2004-05. What type of research does that department carry out, can you give me just a short idea? For example, you mentioned earlier this morning with biosolids that you had looked at the science. What exactly do you mean when you say, looked at the science? Do we actually have people in a profession within the department who actually have a scientific background with enough knowledge to know when they're looking at this information, what information is the best and where we should go?
MR. MORASH: We certainly would have a number of staff who would be considered experts in their field working on these things, and we have hydrogeologists and engineers and others, and of course we wouldn't limit ourselves to the department at all either. If there's someplace where we needed additional expertise, we certainly have the ability and the budget to be able to go out and ask for that information, and on a contract basis have people provide us with third-party, independent information that would help us determine our path forward.
MS. MASSEY: I believe when you're talking about different experts, I continue to receive a lot of communication from various people and organizations. Is it true that the province does not have a certified limnologist on staff? There's a large concern I know even just within Dartmouth, let's say, the City of Lakes, that our lakes are in a pretty bad state
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right now and continue to be degraded and I'm sure other areas in the province are facing the same sort of thing. Is this something that the department is looking seriously at hiring?
MR. MORASH: We certainly at this point in time have hydrogeologists on staff, who do certainly a large portion of what an applied limnologist would do as is my understanding. Certainly if the need arose, we'd have that ability to be able to go out and contract with someone for those kinds of services, but at the current time our staff complement with hydrogeologists and other people who work in that field we feel is adequate to take care of the issues that have been coming up. Water quality is certainly a huge issue within the Province of Nova Scotia and it will continue to be in the forefront and our job is to make sure that it is, but at this point in time, we do not have an applied limnologist on staff and we don't have any plans at this point in time to hire one. However, if we require those services we would find somebody and get them to do that type of work for us.
MS. MASSEY: Thank you. Is the province looking at any kind of an overall survey of our lakes in the province and health of our lakes and what we should be doing to protect them, especially with building a lot of developments around our lakes, it does have a huge impact. I'm just wondering, what are the plans for the future?
MR. MORASH: I guess that the plans are to protect the lakes. There are a lot of things that we do within the department that formulate and go along with that, water quality - drinking water quality is one thing, you have to have your source water as clean as possible before it makes it to the drinking water stream, and of course our sewage installation people who are trained throughout the province to ensure that we have proper systems around water courses of all types: lakes and rivers and oceans. We have some old systems out there and we're constantly working with people who have some older systems, trying to help them upgrade, working with some communities to try to collect and in some cases we were able to help them access some funding to be able to do that.
I guess our plan is to protect waterways and watercourses within the province, with all aspects of the department's resources, as well as with other departments that have responsibilities for lakes and waterways as well. We work in conjunction with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, as well as being in close contact with the federal government on a lot of these issues, and certainly they're always there as a source of advice and a source of research abilities as well.
Overall, the department's job is to protect the environment and certainly lakes fall in that and we would be doing everything that's reasonably practical to try to ensure that the water quality is improving in some of the lakes where we've identified issues and we've identified sources. Of course, we all know some examples of pollutants that are getting into lakes and I'm thinking mostly from the sewage or septic issues that we're working on, on a daily and monthly basis, to try to clean things up and better improve the quality of the water.
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MS. MASSEY: On Page 9.7, Environmental Monitoring and Compliance, there's been a decrease by $300,000 from 2003-04. I think I heard you say yesterday morning or yesterday afternoon, something about new fees. Are we going to be recovering that through new fees, or is this through administration?
MR. MORASH: This would be similar to the others, yes, there are some new fees and those fees come into the department and are used for that exercise within the department, so the money is still there and is constant for us to continue to do what we were doing, but these additional fees have come in to offset our costs and therefore it looks like a reduction in the budget, but it actually is a reduction in the amount of money that we're actually spending.
We would be, as you would call it, subsidized by the people who are paying these new user fees and they're paying for the monitoring that we do and it's under the pollute-or-pay principle that we are monitoring their activities and therefore we believe that they should be paying for these activities which gives both parties good information, as well as the federal government and others, with information on what we are monitoring and what results we're getting so that we can look at different types of programs or perhaps new programs that have to come in to mitigate and reduce the overall, I guess, particulates and others that go into the atmosphere.
MS. MASSEY: Are these fees additions to fees, like have you topped the fees up or are these some new fees, for example, to control emissions from, say, Nova Scotia Power or Imperial Oil or effluents? Are there going to be fees involving effluents from industries?
[10:30 a.m.]
MR. MORASH: We have industrial air emission fees, watercourse alteration fees, contaminated site fees and some administration fees that are new, they add up to $524,000 for these additional new fees, and then there were also the cost of living fee increases in the other regimes of the fees that we charge in the department at a rate of about 6.5 per cent. So pre-existing fees went up by 6.5 per cent and, as I noted, there are some new ones that were substantial.
MS. MASSEY: Are we going to be doing more monitoring in the future? They're new fees, so you're expecting you're going to be levying these fees. So I'm expecting then that if there's going to be more monitoring going on, isn't that going to be a cost to the department if we have to go out and monitor, say, our 22 lagoons and Aerotech and all these septic waste sites and so on and so forth?
MR. MORASH: Some of our new fees as the watercourse alteration - it is a partial recovery. It's something that we've not charged before, but there was a cost to the inspection and the audit program for watercourse alteration. So that's a new fee, but that's actually just recovering what we did. We provide a lot of services where there aren't cost recoveries and
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it's understandable, you know, we're there to try to make sure that things are done properly, but we're not there to penalize people who are doing it properly. Now, unfortunately, it becomes necessary at some point in time to try to recover some of the fees that you incur just by doing your inspections and having your staff out doing the work, so that we do have a number of those that are cost recovery that we have just begun recovering those costs.
MS. MASSEY: If I could go back to the emission fee, could you just go into more detail for me on that? I'm not sure exactly . . .
MR. MORASH: Yes, I can. If you don't mind, I'll just give you some information from here. There are tiered fees for Nova Scotia companies producing sulphur dioxide, particulate matter and other gaseous emissions above certain thresholds. So the fees will cover the cost of services necessary to manage air quality in Nova Scotia, including maintaining and upgrading air monitoring networks, and I've come to find out that air monitoring equipment is extremely expensive to buy and extremely expensive to maintain although I guess when you're looking at what it performs, it's probably very cost effective in doing a good job for us.
Air shed management planning, policy development and research studies, so we have over 70 companies that have been identified as necessary to pay these fees and as far as I can tell, I've had very little opposition with regard to the introduction of these. It's not something that surprised many people. It was something that they realize that in this day and age there's going to have to be a monitoring program in place that's very extensive and that certainly the people who are producing the particulate that you want to monitor are going to be the bearers of the costs and certainly there were increased costs to Nova Scotia Power and other related companies, but Nova Scotia Power would be the largest increase, certainly to them, because of their business and because of the amount of coal that they burn to produce the electricity and I do have some general numbers with regard to fees if you were interested.
MS. MASSEY: I would love to have a copy of that later on. If that would be possible, that would be great. Are these fees then a reflection of the government moving forward perhaps on putting enough - it's a fee, but let's call it an incentive for industries or power generating plants to move to renewable energy sources because I'm not sure, you know, and have we based these fees on other places in the world that are putting these fees forward to make companies become more energy efficient and move to renewable sources?
MR. MORASH: I guess the short answer would be yes. I mean there's certainly incentive if you have to pay an additional fee because of your emissions, that you're going to work diligently to reduce your emissions and stop paying that fee. That is money that you would rather spend in operations than spend sending to us for a monitoring program. We did do extensive research on what other people, or other provinces, other jurisdictions do in this type of situation. So this would be after doing, pretty well, I guess, a worldwide with the Web - you do a worldwide look at what everybody else is doing and what's going on and
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determining what our costs were and what fit here and what was acceptable, but there's no question that we will have some incentive to these individual companies to try to reduce their emissions.
However, I must say that the companies in this province are working very, very hard at trying to reduce these already. We have the proper mindset and the proper regulatory framework that - I don't want to leave you with the impression that these companies aren't trying to do better because they certainly are and right now the fees are designed to move some of these people who are having the emissions to the energy strategy targets. So there are some targets that people are working for and I understand that British Columbia and New Brunswick would have similar types of fees as to what we have imposed. So this is not, I guess, a shocking situation for Canada.
MS. MASSEY: Page 9.8, Environmental Assessment, the costs there are to be eliminated and will actually generate $21,000. So, therefore, the total recovery is expected to be about $340,000. Is that totally through increased fees, there has been no change in staffing, and my other question in regard to that is, are we going to move towards Class II environmental assessment capabilities, are you going to put any suggestions in that we get an environmental assessment board ready and available to do a Class II environmental assessment since one hasn't been done for six years?
MR. MORASH: On the first one certainly, it was the introduction of the tiered fees on the industrial air emissions that made the difference with regard to the numbers and the budget issue. Certainly with regard to the Class II environmental assessments, we can put a board together, you know, to do a Class II assessment and we're currently in the process of putting a board together for the panel review that is going to take place and that would be the one at the quarry up at Whites Cove. So that process is ongoing and we've been dealing with the federal government and names have been submitted and I'm not sure of the exact time frame on that, but we will in the quite near future come up with the panel that will be reviewing that and they'll have a time frame and that certainly will be communicated so everybody is aware, and from my point of view the sooner the better. However, these things do take some time as we work through and develop what has to be done.
MS. MASSEY: Mr. Minister, I would like to just go into a bit more detail on the environmental assessment part of your department. The vast majority of registrations under the Environmental Assessment Regulations do get approved, including projects that do have a heavy impact on our environment. I don't know if this is an appropriate question, but how many registrations actually were turned down, say, last year?
MR. MORASH: I don't know if we have that. It looks like we may have that. If we don't, we'll get it for you. (Interruption) With regard to environmental assessments, we did not turn down any last year. I think we had in the ballpark of 10 to 12. One of the reasons for that is that we worked with the proponent before the actual environmental assessment begins,
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so they typically will develop a draft, work with the department, work through the issues that come up through the draft plan, and a lot of time and effort goes in prior to the submission, so that we have ironed out some of the wrinkles and some of the issues.
The other thing to keep in mind is that when these are approved, there are always terms and conditions on these. So we have the ability to put terms and conditions that we deem appropriate, and some can be quite restrictive. So we have control as we go forward to ensure that they are meeting our requirements, and also if we assess, at a future date, that they're not able to, there's always the remedial action that we can take and remove an industrial permit or things like that to ensure that we have people working. But there's a lot of work done behind the scenes.
Certainly companies appreciate how important these things are to their business-planning processes. They don't just bounce in and say, here, we need this approved and the clock starts ticking. They'll make sure that they have everything up to speed and up to our requirements. I can tell you that our staff works very diligently with a lot of the proponents that come in. There are massive - and I mean massive - amounts of information that come into the department with regard to these things. It's gone over with a fine-tooth comb, and then we look at what can be done, what needs to be done and make the decision at that point in time.
MS. MASSEY: We know that Nova Scotia Power is planning on adding another generator to its Tufts Cove station, and there have been a lot of people who have been against letting Nova Scotia Power go through with that without doing a Class II environmental assessment, by adding that other generator on. But your department continues to allow that to go through. Why is that?
MR. MORASH: I think I've been asked a few questions before on that. The decision for that to be a Class I was made back on January 8, 2004. This is an extension, but I think the one thing that is important to appreciate is that we have a Class I environmental undertaking. It's still a very significant environmental assessment. We don't take that lightly. A Class I is something where we'll take a look at this expansion. It is on the existing facility. There certainly are understandable allowances that you can make for an addition with regard to a greenfield site, where someone is going to start something completely new and they don't have the infrastructure in place, they don't have the monitoring systems in place.
A lot of things would have to be reviewed, and we wouldn't have any comfort level if it was out in a greenfield site. However, we know where this is going. We know their monitoring systems. We know their environmental programs. We know what they have done in the past. We have their track record. We have a working relationship with the individuals who would be involved in this. For those reasons, we are confident that a Class I undertaking will adequately address all the issues and concerns that are out there. We appreciate that there
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are people who believe that we should do a more extensive and exhaustive study of this; however, this is still an exhaustive and extensive study that we're doing.
The environmental assessments, we take them very seriously. They are a document - we ensure that all the experts in our department, as well as others in the field, as well as the proponents send in to us, and all this information gets reviewed, and we make sure that they meet the requirements within the Environment Act and move forward from there.
[10:45 a.m.]
MR. CHAIRMAN: We've reached the end of the NDP time for questions. We will now move on to the Liberal caucus.
The honourable member for Preston.
MR. KEITH COLWELL: Mr. Chairman, I have some specific questions, to start off today, on the commercial diving industry, and the fact that Nova Scotia is the only province in the country that doesn't have either regulations in place or proposed regulations in place. I believe the only other one that's even considering proposed regulations at this point is Manitoba. Everyone else has regulations in place. How far along, and what is the status of the Province of Nova Scotia with these regulations at the present time?
MR. MORASH: I guess we've talked a bit about regulations. One of the first sets of regulations that I reviewed when I became minister was the diving regulations. One of the reasons was that I had some previous exposure from the point of view that we were looking for some guidance, where I used to work, for diving activities. They weren't as abundant or as clear, and we were in a bit of a specialty situation. So when I came to the department, that was the one set of regulations that I wanted to review and find out the location, or just where it was.
We've reviewed those, we've had discussions with the sea urchin divers or the representative groups, and we've also had discussions with the large diving groups. We're coming up with regulations, we want to be able to cover the professional diver. We also want to be able to cover the aquaculture industry. They have some unique situations. Unfortunately, as I'm sure we're all aware, they have some significant hazards in that industry that have proven that there have been some fatalities.
We are working towards coming up with usable regulations that would help educate and keep people safe. We are continuing dialogue with the different stakeholders, trying to come up with the descriptive regulations that would help out. Now in the meantime, we certainly are in contact with those stakeholder organizations, giving whatever information we possibly can to assist them in being able to work safely. They are in progress currently, and we've worked along through those. We're committed to completing these. There have been
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a number of individuals from across Canada who have been monitoring our progress and taking a look at what we're doing. So we've had some discussions with them as well.
There are some general regulations in place that apply to the diving industry currently, but they also apply to every other organization in the province. We had a provincial working group that produced a report in 1998, and we also have been working with, as I said, the representatives from the different industries to try to come up with the best possible regulations. We can adopt a code of practice currently, so we can impose some guidelines and codes of practice in the interim while we're working through this, but our intention is to complete these guidelines or these regulations and to get them out to industry.
MR. COLWELL: You indicated the sea urchin industry in Nova Scotia has been concerned about the regulations. It's my understanding that Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island, which both have a sea urchin industry, have adopted the national standards and not watered the regulations down whatsoever to accommodate one industry, an industry, by the way, that a gentleman was killed in in March 2003. What's the difference between Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island?
MR. MORASH: The urchin divers in the province have indicated that they aren't able to comply with the CSA standards that were adopted, and that there are some details that they want to work out to better fit their industry. Also, as I understand, Newfoundland is having some issues with their regulations, as well. One of the challenges that we have is coming up with good regulations, that the minute it goes out it doesn't have to come back and be revamped because we overlooked some group and we've imposed something on them that is detrimental to their ability to perform their work. With that, you balance off making sure that you have regulation out there to ensure health and safety for the divers. There have been ongoing discussions; however, they haven't been accepted in this province as they have been in others.
MR. COLWELL: Again, if you look at the Newfoundland standards, they use CSA Z275.4-97 Competency Standard for Diving Operations, and they also use CSA Z275.2-92 Occupational Safety Code for Diving Operations. Right in the regulations it states that the standard applied to in Section 1(a) takes effect 24 months after the publication in the Gazette. And Section 1(b), which is the diving operations, takes effect six months afterwards. So both of those give quite a bit of time to get people up to speed.
Are you telling me, because some organization here can't qualify under a CSA standard or some other standard that Nova Scotia may put in place, that you're going to lower the standards, when someone's life is on the line? Is that what you're telling me?
MR. MORASH: No, I'm telling you we're trying to work with all the stakeholders involved to come up with the best possible regulations. If there are issues that we can work on and come up with an equivalency level of protection for that stakeholder group, we will
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work towards that to protect the employees, but also to come up with a standard or a regulation that is acceptable by the stakeholder groups.
MR. COLWELL: Maybe someone in your department can tell me why we have to change the regulations, when there's a national standard. I believe CSA 275.4 and possibly CSA 275.2 have been nationally recognized by the Canadian Standards Council. It's the only national standard used in the country, and you're going to water that down? Is that what you're telling me? I can't believe that.
MR. MORASH: We would actually be looking at - as I said, this equivalency -working with the stakeholder groups to come up with a level of safety, equal to but perhaps not exactly the same wording as you would find in the CSA standard. Some of the training requirements and these types of things, there's full agreement that people have to be trained.
Some of the issues that the sea urchin divers have brought to our attention have to do with standby people, who would be at the surface when they're diving, and the CSA standard, as I understand it, requires a lifeline, similar to firefighting. There are some indications where people who are on a lifeline are more concerned for their safety, getting their lifeline caught around the propellor of a boat or around some sort of obstacle on the bottom, that being a concern for their own personal safety. There are some of these issues that certainly are legitimate concerns that we want to work through, to make sure that they have the level of safety that they deserve.
MR. COLWELL: So you're telling me that because someone is complaining they might have to use a lifeline that Nova Scotia is going to rewrite the Canadian standard regulations to accommodate somebody. Now what happens if somebody doesn't go with a lifeline and they died or had a very serious accident, if Nova Scotia didn't adopt the nationally-accepted standard, and that person dies, because you buckled to somebody who just doesn't want to do what the standard says and we write the standard around that?
MR. MORASH: We are currently working with them, and they're putting forth some issues with regard to such things as pony bottles, which are the small air bottles that you would use in the event of an emergency, and that would be a standard operating procedure if you were going diving, also with regard to a recall procedure, to be able to have divers report to the surface on some interval, so that you could track and maintain their whereabouts.
Again, this is an equivalency type of system that we're looking at, so that we would have an equivalent level of safety to the CSA standard; however, it may not require the exact same terminology of the CSA standards. We're not looking at diminishing the level of safety, by any means, we're looking at solving problems that have been identified in the industry with an equivalent level of safety apparatus or procedure, so that we can ensure that the regulations that we come up with are comparable with the CSA standard.
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MR. COLWELL: Why go to all that effort when you have a standard that's nationally recognized, and if you look at Prince Edward Island's, it was very similar. The sea urchin operation, aquaculture sites, commercial diving, recreational diving, their standard states, and I will read it, because this is so straightforward. Their Occupational Health and Safety Act says, "The employer shall ensure that all underwater diving operations meet the CA Standard Z275.2, Occupational Safety Code for Diving Operations." That's their regulation.
Now it's exactly the same as Nova Scotia. Aren't Nova Scotia divers as competent as they are in Prince Edward Island? I highly doubt it, we would probably be more competent because we probably do more commercial-type work in Nova Scotia than they do in P.E.I. at the present time and there are probably more divers. Why would you want to change the regulations from a Canadian standard down to something that's going to be different?
MR. MORASH: With regard to the first part, on competency, I would certainly hope that all the divers who are in the water are competent. I've been a sport diver for a number of years, and it's something that you really can't take any chances with. You're in a confined space that's very unforgiving, and you have to make sure that your practices and procedures are where they should be. Our department has had discussions with Newfoundland, and they are having the same problem, after they initiated the regulation citing the CA standard, that we are going through now. So they have an industry that is having great difficulties complying with the rule that's been imposed upon them. Now they're looking at ways to work through that.
Our goal is to try to work through those situations prior to putting the regulations in place but, again, maintaining an equivalency level of safety, after consultation with the stakeholders and consultation with the diving experts and the people who do this for a living. They have a vested interest in ensuring that they're safe, and they also have a vested interest in ensuring that they can do this and it's practical under the experiences that they go through when they're doing their diving in whatever type of commercial diving it might be.
MR. COLWELL: Yesterday we talked about the North Sea, and you said the North Sea wasn't as harsh an environment as Nova Scotia. How many divers died in the North Sea - this is some information your staff should know right off hand - before regulations were brought in place?
[11:00 a.m.]
MR. MORASH: I'm not sure that's something that we have at our fingertips. We can research that and, I'm not sure, do you have that answer?
MR. COLWELL: Yes, I do.
MR. MORASH: We don't have that at this point in time.
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MR. COLWELL: Well, that really astonishes me because here you're talking about doing regulations, watering down or modifying regulations, and it appears that maybe some of the people don't have the training. It sounds like some of the people don't have the training that they should have to be in commercial diving or even some other type of diving. I'm going to give you the number here because it's quite shocking and this is an environment, you told me yesterday in this meeting, that's not as harsh as Nova Scotia - those were your exact words here yesterday - and 58 people died in the North Sea before they put regulations in place. How many have died since then, can your staff tell me that, since the regulations were put in place?
MR. MORASH: I suspect if we didn't have the first number, we don't have the second.
MR. COLWELL: Well, I'm shocked. The answer is, and I'm going to tell you the answer and if your staff is looking at this stuff, they should bloody well do the research - excuse me, it makes me really upset. I will withdraw that.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Could you withdraw that?
MR. COLWELL: Yes, I will, sorry about that. There hasn't been a serious accident or a death in the North Sea since the proper regulations have been put in place and Nova Scotia is talking about accommodating a few people who figure they can't make the requirements. If that's the case, why doesn't the Department of Labour in conjunction with the Department of Education put some training programs on to get these people up to scratch in time so they can do the work?
MR. MORASH: Now, there is a differentiation between the offshore divers and the divers that we are working with currently. With regard to offshore, there are standards that are acceptable and used in the North Sea as well as in our offshore and they certainly have some very stringent regulations and requirements and training. I'm certainly not an expert in what those all are, but I know they take this very seriously and when you think that you're out in the North Atlantic bouncing around doing some things with heavy equipment, that's certainly a very dangerous position and condition to be in. Our issue is with the inshore and the very shallow water divers and not that that's any less hazardous, but they do have some unique issues that we are trying to resolve with them to ensure that they can work safely in the field in which they are employed.
MR. COLWELL: I realize they're two different things, but they're very similar. It's the same kind of occupation and the same thing going on. If you look at the North Sea with no serious accidents and no deaths in the industry - and that goes back to probably the mid-1970s, early 1980s, when these regulations were put in place - that's a long time, but in Nova Scotia, those same guys who want to have probably some changes so they can work in the shallow water, what are you going to tell Mr. Chadwick Zinck's family who died on an
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aquaculture site, which probably wasn't a dive maybe more than 25-feet deep, I'm just guessing - in Northwest Cove on August 19th and then also Steven Moore's family, the sea urchin diver - now, he was probably a bit deeper - in March 2003? No regulations in place. If the regulations were in place, based on what's happening in the North Sea and offshore Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and everywhere else, probably these gentlemen wouldn't have died and that's really the point I'm getting to.
MR. MORASH: You know we are currently prosecuting some of the groups or individuals that you're talking about. So we do have some legislative requirements currently in place that are there for the protection of these employees and I would probably go on record at this time, you know, all accidents are preventable and our job is to ensure that all accidents are prevented. That is no small task because of the variables that are out there but, you know, the department's job, my job, your job, is to make sure that we work together to do everything we can to prevent any kind of an injury in the workplace or otherwise in this province, and these regulations will be going forward. They're not purposely stalled by any means, but there are some issues that we're trying to work through so that we can come out with the best possible piece of legislation, or piece of regulation, and trying to ensure maximum compliance is the other part with any regulation or legislation that comes up.
You can make the regulation, you can send the regulation out, but if you have a portion of an industry that doesn't recognize or can't possibly abide by it, we've got the regulation but we don't have the compliance for the safety. So we want to come up with something so that we can, hopefully, ensure the compliance and make sure that we have the best possible level of safety and prevent those types of accidents that you're talking about because they aren't acceptable in this province and they certainly aren't acceptable to the department or myself and we will be doing everything that we can to try to ensure those don't occur in the future.
MR. COLWELL: I realize that and I appreciate that, too, and I know it's a difficult job to prevent accidents. I do appreciate the work that the department is doing in that area and I have no argument there. This particular topic though, it's really hard to believe after just saying that and meaning that - and I know you mean that, that you want to prevent accidents - that regulations haven't been put in place. Without the regulations in place and knowing full well that you had two people die last year and I don't know, I didn't do the research in years before that to see how many other people either got serious injuries, or compensable injuries, or died, in the diving industry in Nova Scotia, but the province knows these regulations have to be in place.
Even a place like Alberta that doesn't have the coastline we have with the potential of accidents has regulations in place and it just makes you wonder. Now, are we, as taxpayers in this province, responsible for every diving accident after this when we know that we should have these regulations in place and they're not in place, even though your staff may figure they're not perfect, but at least something in place that we can say here's what you have to
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operate to? Now, you say you're a recreational diver, I'm not, but from what I understand you can take probably a 22-hour course with two to four open-water dives and you're a recreational diver under the regulations at the present time. So if I take a diving course, don't know a thing about it, and then get my bottles filled and I show up on an aquaculture site and say I can dive now and I'm going to work on your system or I can dive for sea urchins, there's something wrong with that picture.
MR. MORASH: Well, we are planning to have presentations made to us by the sea urchin industry, actually very soon, within the month, and then move forward with these regulations at that point in time. I don't want to leave you with the impression that this is going to continue and go on, you know, forever. This is a process that we've worked through and we will try to come up with the best possible solution for the parties involved, but it is important that these regulations go forward and we will endeavour to move them forward as quickly as we can.
MR. COLWELL: What deadline have you got for putting these regulations in place, because with two deaths in this industry in less than a year, I would think this would be one of the top priorities the Department of Environment and Labour has, to get these regulations in place and get regulations in place that will do the job. Now, from what I understand, this has been looked at since 1997. So I mean we're getting close to 10 years on this and how many more people are going to die before the regulations are in place?
MR. MORASH: We are moving forward with these and, you know, our intention is to have diving regulations completed as soon as possible. I would be hopeful that they would be within this calendar year. At this point in time we don't have a firm deadline, but I can assure you that this is important and we appreciate that our department's responsibility is to ensure that we have up-to-date regulations and legislation that assists the prevention programs within the province and we will be moving forward with these regulations.
MR. COLWELL: Are you consulting with anybody but the sea urchin people? Those are the only people you've mentioned.
MR. MORASH: Yes, I guess it would be the commercial divers and a number of others. (Interruption) Yes, there have also been some other issues with some small diving operations and larger diving operations, but those issues, the same as this process we're going through, have been resolved at this point in time. So it wasn't just the urchin divers who had some issues with regard to the standard that we're looking for a different mechanism to be able to provide an adequate level of safety. So we have worked through those with the other stakeholder groups and we're just, I guess, completing and finishing up now with the sea urchin divers.
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MR. COLWELL: Now, if foreign divers come to work here, what standard do they have to work under, say a diver who normally works in the U.S., or Europe, or someplace outside of Canada, who we will assume are hopefully qualified?
MR. MORASH: If they were diving under our jurisdiction, they would abide by our rules and regulations.
MR. COLWELL: And there are none?
MR. MORASH: Well, currently there are practices with regard to diving in the province that people would be required to work under.
MR. COLWELL: Are those under regulation or Act?
MR. MORASH: We currently do have a code of practice for sea urchin divers that has been in force since 1996 and that was imposed upon them. So there is a code of practice out there now for safe standards for them to abide by. So those codes of practice would be the same rules that anybody moving in from, I guess internationally, who came in to do work would abide by as well and we can cover that under the general duty clause of the Occupational Health and Safety Act. We can impose codes of practice and we can impose rules that we anticipate will ensure a higher level of safety within the industry. We have done that in the past and will continue to do that.
MR. COLWELL: Yes, if they've got a code of practice and for the sea urchin industry, evidently it's not working too good because we have a death in the industry. So I think those practices must be slack. They've got to be slack. I mean 1996, they've had seven years between 1996 and 2003 to get their people trained and in place and all those codes of practice done. So either the code of practice must be no good or the diver wasn't following the code. What are your comments on that?
MR. MORASH: The codes of practice are certainly codes of practice that are imposed upon individual companies or individual divers and there is certainly a need to update the code of practice with deeper water diving and then other issues that take place, and that's why we are moving towards the regulation because that would be consistent and cover all aspects of the diving industry in the province and give us a uniform set of regulations to abide by and work by. So we are moving towards that regulation and it is necessary and needed.
MR. COLWELL: There are organizations that train recreational divers. Our record is saying that the training that they do is not sufficient for commercial diving. Yet I believe - and I would ask your staff to verify this because I don't want to put any wrong information out there - that at least either Steven Moore or Chadwick Zinck was a recreational diver doing commercial work.
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MR. MORASH: Those cases are currently being prosecuted and it's for that reason I would prefer not to be discussing it here in an open forum, but I can tell you that there were issues with regard to training associated with those cases and that will be explored as we move forward and there should be information that would be made available in the due course of the prosecution process.
MR. COLWELL: I appreciate that and I appreciate the amount of information you gave me on that already. I won't ask any more questions on that particular topic as it may jeopardize the case and we don't want to see that happen, but the point I'm making with this is, here's a code of practice that was in place and imposed on an industry - I'm trying to search for the words here so I don't get tangled up with what you're trying to do in court. I can assume that it wasn't followed because I'm not part of the court case and if my assumption is right or wrong, it's even more urgent to put in a really strict set of rules for diving such as the Canadian standards, the standards that are proposed and used in the CSA Z275.4 and Z275.2.
[11:15 a.m.]
An even bigger reason to move forward quicker - and, again, separate from this - this court case you have going on, that should, even after the court case is finished, hopefully give you more ammunition to move forward quickly and it gives less credibility, as far as I'm concerned, to organizations such as sea urchin organizations, which I've got no fight with or anything, they're trying to do the best they can, I realize that, but coming forward and saying we can't do this and can't do that when they've got deaths in their industry and their regulations aren't as tough as they should be even though it was imposed on them by government, which I'm glad to see it was, and anything else for safety reasons that the minister or department may feel is appropriate that could be put in place in this particular instance to protect the lives of people and make sure we don't have accidents.
So what are your comments on that? I mean you've said several times about the sea urchin people and they seem to be the holdup in this whole thing, or appear to be the holdup, yet their safety record is less than satisfactory. Why the holdup then?
MR. MORASH: Well, I guess they are the last group that we're working through some of these issues that have been brought up and, as I mentioned, there were some issues with the larger diving companies and the smaller diving companies as well. We have dealt with those and worked through those. Now we're working through with the sea urchin industry and as soon as we complete that, we'll be able to move forward with the regulations.
MR. COLWELL: Under the present regulations here in Nova Scotia - and I mean regulations and Act, not just an agreement with somebody - if I go out and become a recreational diver today and if I meet all the requirements for a recreational diver and the organizations that will train me would say I don't have sufficient training to be a commercial
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diver and I show up at your aquaculture site and say I can check your net for you, is there anything preventing me from doing that today under the Act or regulations - I don't mean an agreement, but under the Act or regulations?
MR. MORASH: Yes, your employer would be responsible to ensure that employees are safe to perform the jobs that they're asked to do and that's a general sort of clause, but that would mean that you have to be capable, qualified and competent to be able to go in and do that type of diving work and, you know, your qualifications would be in question, but it would be your employer's responsibility to ensure that you're safe and certainly it would be your responsibility to refuse something if you felt it was unsafe.
MR. COLWELL: So I'm an employer, I've got an aquaculture site, I don't know anything about diving, I don't know anything about divers and a guy shows up, my site has got recreational divers, and he says I'm a diver because that's mostly what people say when they're divers, I'm a diver. I ran a manufacturing business and everybody is a welder, very few welders who really can do anything, but there are all kinds of them out there who can weld.
MR. MORASH: I can weld.
MR. COLWELL: Yes, I can very poorly, too, but I wouldn't build it into something that someone's life would depend on. So I show up at the site, I'm a diver and I show up with my tanks and everything, all my gear, I look like I'm a professional, and as far as I'm concerned as an employer, yes, this guy is a diver. He says he is, he has all the gear, he must be. Any certifications that he has to show the employer to prove that he has done this stuff?
MR. MORASH: I guess right now there's a great deal of onus put on operators or owners of businesses, because, similar to the gentleman - and you made the comparison, so if you don't mind, I'll continue along - there are a lot of people out there who can weld but I can tell you that you don't want me welding your trailer hitch or anything else that would be structural.
The same thing, there are a lot of people out there who can dive, but the owner has a responsibility to ensure and do the due diligence to make sure that this gentleman - look at what qualifications they have, what experience they have, what additional training they have. Also, when you look at some of the diving applications that there are in this province - people who used to go inside of power generating stations when they're closed down, to check intake valves, which are sort of a specialized thing in themselves, it's not like going out in 20 feet of water to check the bottom of a boat - the employer has the responsibility to make sure it's a contractual agreement that this gentleman or lady can do the job that's being asked of them.
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If there's any concern or any question that someone doesn't have the proper qualification, or they don't have the abilities to be able to do that, it's the employer who is responsible for that employee, when you send them into the water or when you ask them to weld up a product that you know may - if the structural integrity fails, it will fall back to the welder, but it would also fall back to the employer.
There's a lot of legal responsibility out there now on owners of businesses when they're hiring people. This isn't a bad thing; however, it's a time-consuming thing, and it means that operators have to certainly be more diligent and better trained themselves, they have to be more experienced in all aspects of the business, and they have to ensure that the people who are going to be working for them can do that job safely. It will come down to the owner/operator making the call that this individual has shown up, he has proper quality gear, tanks have been inspected, he knows what he's doing, he's shown me proof of training, he's given me an outline of his experience, and he and I have talked and I believe that he can follow the rules of the road and perform this function for me safely.
It's a two-part harmony, as we move along with regard to all types of actions or safety-related businesses that take place. Owner/operators are responsible to ensure that the people they put to work, they are taking care of their safety.
MR. COLWELL: That raises some questions. And you didn't answer my question about what certifications I, as a diver, would have to bring to you, as an employer, so that you would be comfortable. You went around some of the things, such as the tanks and all that stuff, but actual documentation that I am qualified to do these things? It also raises the issue, we're coming up shortly with workers' compensation which could add 40 cents per $100 of assessment under the rate for employers in Nova Scotia.
These types of accidents that happened in the past, I'm sure, haven't helped that situation any. Also, the liability insurance that the companies have to have, if you have no requirement, presently, that I have to have this documentation. It's the same as me coming to wire your house. When I'm done wiring your house, you better move out because chances are you're not going to collect your insurance and your house is probably going to burn down, because I'm not capable of wiring a house. It's the same thing, but it's a lot more serious because - I shouldn't say it's more serious, it's more directly, immediately serious for the potential of death or a serious accident by the person actually doing the work.
It would be the same as you and I going out on a power pole up there and grabbing onto the big lines and saying we're going to cut this one or fix this one or put that one together, that's what diving is like, as far as I understand. If you do those things and you grab that wire, you're dead or you're blown all to pieces. In diving other horrible things happen to you. So as an employer, here I am, so you show up and you say, yes, I'm a diver, you've dived for a few years and probably could go on my site, an aquaculture site, and you say, yes, I've been diving now for 10 years, don't tell me that the only thing you've done is steal
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lobsters off the bottom - you don't do that, I know - or getting scallops on Sunday. You go with a couple of buddies and you just have a nice day, which is one of the nice things to do when you're a commercial diver, as long as it's legal, of course.
But you've been at it for 10 years, so I look at it and say, that's pretty good, you were trained by this organization, which I might have heard of, and that sounds good, all the tanks are inspected and everything, and I don't have a clue about diving in your aquaculture site. So then you're responsible for that. Don't you think you have to start taking some of this onus off the employers and make it so that they can say, okay, here's the documentation you have to have, such as they would need under the CSA requirements, the national standards, that bang, they know if they have a diver who's qualified to that, he's got a document that's either a forged document, which very rarely ever happens in the trades, or it's real. Then I have a guy here I know can do the job. It's that simple.
MR. MORASH: To answer your first question - which I apologize, I didn't answer before - there really is no card or specification that someone is going to present to you to say that I am an aquaculture diver and I'm competent and capable at this point in time. What you've run through is what a responsible employer would do. You would ask what certification do you have, what experience do you have, and those types of things. You would try to determine, make your own mind up that somebody was capable to be able to do the job for you.
We certainly have put a lot of responsibility on employers. We also have a lot of responsibility on the employee. Certainly the employee who is going diving for you has a great deal at stake, as we've discussed in previous conversations here. I believe that the issue of the regulations is to clarify and make it easier for us to determine what the liabilities are and what the responsibilities are, but the liabilities won't be reduced from owner/operators of aquaculture sites with a new CSA standard or anything like that. However, it may help them work through and find qualified divers who can come in and do some things that would assist them.
There's always going to be, and there probably will continue to be even more responsibility on owners and operators to be more aware of all the trades that they would employ, and in this case we would consider a diver a tradesman, like a welder or a pipefitter or anyone else. You may have people who actually have their trades papers and qualifications, and if the operator of the site doesn't consider them competent, wouldn't allow them to continue. I don't have any specific examples, but you would have the responsibility if you hired a qualified electrician and you didn't believe that this individual was doing work up to the standards that you believe acceptable to stop him from doing the work and remove him from the job, and ensure that somebody else came in to do that work.
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That's not an easy task to put before an employer. But that's where we are now with regard to responsibilities. Most employers do that anyway. They need to ensure that they have good quality work, they need to ensure that they're in business for a long period of time, they need to ensure their reputation, and they will build up a working relationship with divers and whatever other trade they might be working with. I guess if we look at it in a general aspect of this, to be able to do it safely, to be able to do it productively, to be able to do it efficiently, as an employer, an employer has to make a profit at some point in time in order to continue. So being efficient and being safe, making sure there aren't any work delays because, as an example, you hire somebody who doesn't really have all the qualifications that they should and they've spent a lot of time trying to put their gear together or trying to get ready, that's not efficient for anybody.
The employer will always be responsible for ensuring that people can do work safely on their site. They have a big part to play - I guess a huge part to play - to ensure that we eliminate these accidents that we were talking about earlier, and making sure that we don't have fatalities at work sites.
MR. COLWELL: I agree, the employer ultimately has to be responsible, as well, and I would never like to see that removed. Once you remove that, all kinds of strange things happen, as we've seen years and years ago. I never want to go back to that state, and I don't think we ever will. But the point is, the employer, in this case, appears to not have the opportunity for the best business practices. He doesn't have an avenue to come along and say, okay, you have to be certified to this because the government regulations say this. It also protects the employer.
[11:30 a.m.]
So, if the regulation said you had to be a diver to the CSA 275 standard, then I know when that diver shows up at my facility and he has that documentation, that is the minimum standard that he has worked to and been trained to, so as an employer, I feel a lot more comfortable hiring this person, as does my insurance company, as does the Workers' Compensation Board, because they know I'm hiring qualified people. If that diver comes to me and says, look, I need a lifeline and I need a support diver on the surface, and I don't supply these things and refuse to supply these things, well, I should be charged as much as the diver is and the diver should refuse to work. You could probably look around in this province and you will probably find four or five divers who would work in those conditions anyway, foolishly, but they would, even if the standards were in place. Then the responsibility is back on me and the diver who does that, because he doesn't insist on it.
But without those tools in place, you're not accomplishing your best safety hazard prevention, you're not going to make a profit, although you may make a profit shortly but you won't for long, and you're not managing your company very well. So, the people who employ divers really need to have this in place for their protection, for the protection of their
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employees, and for the protection of their businesses. These ones that are in court, I don't know what the penalties will be for the people who may be held responsible for this, and I don't want you to comment on that because it is in court. But that's far more catastrophic to that company, whatever it is, and I'm sure the people who are in court must be emotional wrecks besides the financial situation, to think that they let this slide through.
The question, at the end of the day, will be, when this is all settled and the court has settled everything, would either one of these people be alive today if the CSA standard had been in place and followed? That is really the question. I know you can't answer that with a court case pending, but that's a question I pose just sort of to the industry not to the department because I don't want you to answer any of these questions that will harm this court case in any way. I just had to say that, and I won't pursue it any further.
MR. MORASH: I would just like to say that these regulations are certainly important to the department as well, and we are working towards completion and having them out so that employers and employees and everybody can benefit from the guidance and the direction and, hopefully, it will simplify some of the things that are out there now, that life is complicated enough, if we can get some regulations in people's hands to assist them, that's our goal, and to get them out there as soon as we possibly can.
MR. COLWELL: Well, I'm going to draw a comparison with this, although it's not a fair comparison because what I'm going to talk about isn't a life and death situation. The regulations for divers is a life and death situation. This is not maybe, it's for real. I put a quality assurance system in place in my business, and it took me two years to get the staff to buy into it. It was painful, I fought it all the way with my customers, and said I didn't want to do this, and probably the same way as some of the industry may be doing with these types of regulations. But I can tell you, once that was in place, it was very expensive to put in place, very difficult to train the people, I had no place I could send the people to get them trained, we had to train them internally, with limited resources, and no real way to do it. I couldn't go to the community college and say, here, train my people to do this process, because we had to write the manual ourselves.
Now since then it's gone to ISO 9000, so it's a little bit easier but it's still difficult. And that's not a life and death situation. It was very painful for the company, but do you know, at the end of the day, what happened? I can tell you what happened, it took two years to do this, at great expense and great aggravation - it was unbelievable aggravation - the company made more money, the problem with rejects going out of the shop were gone to zero, absolutely zero rejects going out of the business. And my customer satisfaction went up unbelievably. The market improved, and everything happened. Those are the kinds of things that happen.
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Now, if someone would have told me that two years before that started, I would have laughed at them, I probably would have thrown them out of my office and said get lost, but the truth of the matter was, when you work to these regulations, they're painful to put in place, first, the people who don't put them in place deserve to be left behind, they literally deserve to be left behind, and we shouldn't cater to those kinds of people, especially when people's lives are at stake and there's a possibility that someone could die because someone is foolish enough or not educated enough or not wise enough, whatever term you want to put on it, that this really needs to be done to protect the people in the industry and the industry itself and the province and the taxpayers of the province. Would you agree or disagree with that? Comments?
MR. MORASH: I guess my comments would be, first, to congratulate you on putting in the system, and I think you should make sure you let everybody know, as I expect you are. These processes do work, they tend to be somewhat painful, initially, to get started, but when you have something that's developed in-house, manuals that are written in-house, employees who are involved in the process, you have all the ingredients to success and additional productivity. Ideally, that's the way we would like to see all safety programs and all safety systems that are employed throughout the province in a similar-type way, because you have the buy-in, you have people who appreciate and understand why it is their employer wants them to do things in certain ways.
As we look, just from a safety aspect and customer satisfaction going up, it means that people aren't getting hurt. So these are extremely good systems. We certainly encourage people, and will do everything we can to ensure that we help employers and employees have the tools to provide that level of protection for people in the province.
MR. COLWELL: We talked yesterday, some, about the difficulties with regulations and getting offshore oil exploration in place, and we had quite a good discussion, I thought, yesterday about that. I appreciate your comments and the information you provided. But it seems strange that here's the Offshore Petroleum Board that has agreed on the Canadian standards for diving, no problem. They can't agree on a lot of other things, and there are reasons for that, I realize that. But that's one thing they've agreed on, and they've agreed on that because of the record in the North Sea, where there have been no serious accidents and there have been no deaths in the industry.
So it begs the question, if they can agree on that, why doesn't the Province of Nova Scotia learn from their wisdom and say, these guys are really, probably the elite of the elite when it comes to diving, because they're doing saturation dives and all the other things that are extremely dangerous - if you're decompressing someone and you make a little mistake with the mixture or a little mistake with timing, someone is permanently destroyed, they're either dead or they're basically the same as a vegetable. That hasn't happened, because these standards have been followed. So why is the province so, number one, slow getting these things in place, and, number two, listening to people in an industry that has had deaths, who
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want to water the system down and really don't operate to that high level of efficiency and demand for safety? The industry can only work with that high level of safety.
Now, it's already been proven here, and you drew the conclusion before, that the industry, if it's commercial, it's different. Yes, it's different, they have their act together, these other guys don't. In 2003, we had two deaths. Two deaths in Nova Scotia, two people died for nothing, absolutely for no reason, they died. If the regulations had been in place - I'm saying this, I know the department can't because you have a lawsuit - it's very possible these people would be alive today.
Why doesn't the department say, the devil with you guys, let's put this regulation in place, and do like the other provinces have done all across the country? The Offshore Petroleum Board has done it. Put these things in place and make some provision for them to get trained, make some provision, some time so that they can get things done. I'm not proposing that you want to bankrupt every company that's working on this. But give them time and put the elements in place.
Instead of discussing watering the regulations, the national standards down, why don't you say to these guys, look, we know you have some issues, let's address the issues, so we can make you fit the standards we're going to put in place, and give them time to do that, resources or whatever they need to do that, to make sure that the industry doesn't suffer? I don't want to see the industry suffer either. These two deaths have made the industry suffer a whole lot more than putting these regulations in place, financially, credibility, everything else.
MR. MORASH: I agree, and we are moving forward to get those regulations in place, because they are important. They are needed and necessary, and we will be moving forward to have those regulations in place for the industry.
MR. COLWELL: I'm going to ask you for a commitment now, and you can say yes or no. This is not a difficult one, this one - I'm going to ask you for another one, too, which you probably won't give me right away. Would you commit - and I know, as a minister, you're very open to dealing with the stakeholder groups and these things, and I truly do appreciate that - to a meeting of all the stakeholders at one time - and when I say all the stakeholders, stakeholder representatives - so that you can discuss this issue, so the commercial guys and the sea urchin guys and the recreation people, whoever represents them - and I don't mean 400 people showing up, but proper representation from each industry - to talk about these issues and sort of see if you can flush it out, that maybe one of the industries can help the other industry resolve some of these problems? Would you commit to doing that within, say, a very short time? I will leave the time to you, because I know your schedule has to be really hectic. But give me a time.
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MR. MORASH: We, in the department, have been doing that, but I think you make a very good point of some of the smaller groups or some of the people benefiting from the experiences of the larger ones. This is an industry and a group, and they all need to be working and communicating together. I know they compete on certain projects, but they all need to be working together to ensure that they transfer best practices, even once regulations are met, there are still best practices that are developed within, similar to the manual that you talked about designing. I'm sure that information would be shared freely, so that we could improve the overall safety of the operation for everybody who is involved. We have been meeting with the stakeholders, we will continue to meet with the stakeholders, and I'm certainly open to meeting with any of them at any time that we can arrange to discuss these issues.
MR. COLWELL: I think it's an important enough issue that I think your personal attention, not every day on this of course because I know you have so many things you work on, with one meeting, perhaps, to start this process off with the representatives of the stakeholders. As I said, I don't want to see 200 people there, yelling and screaming, that's not the idea of this. The idea is to save people's lives and create a safe environment. Maybe seven or 10 - I don't know what the number is - of the stakeholders with your personal attention to this, because I think this issue is that important. I know you realize that as well.
MR. MORASH: I would suggest that, perhaps, we could even have one meeting when we launch the regulations. I'm trying to get to the finish point as fast as we possibly can. But I'm not opposed to meeting with people at any point in time to discuss this. I'm certainly no expert in the field, but I guess I can talk, just because there's some background that I've had and some exposure. I would certainly be willing to talk to anybody who has issues or problems with regard to these regulations, and do anything I could to help work through them to speed up the development of these regulations, and to get these regulations out for industry use.
MR. COLWELL: Would you commit, then, to having your staff convene a meeting of the stakeholders - because they would know who the stakeholders are - with yourself, to see if we can't get this resolved sooner rather than later?
MR. MORASH: There is a working group that we have been dealing with, as we move forward with these regulations. We certainly can have the working group back to discuss this. I would commit that we would do that.
[11:45 a.m.]
MR. COLWELL: Yes, and the working group really represents all the industry, there's nobody left out in the working group?
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MR. MORASH: We can get you the information on the stakeholders who are involved in the working group, so that you're aware. If there's someone you don't feel is represented or if they're under-represented, we can discuss that.
MR. COLWELL: I would really appreciate that. That would be great. You will commit to personally meet with the working group, as well?
MR. MORASH: Sure.
MR. COLWELL: Just once, to sort of - I know you're very serious about this, I'm not indicating at all that you're not trying to get this resolved. I know it's a complex issue. I just want to see it move forward as quickly as possible, so we don't have any more deaths. That's really what I'm after here, at the end of the day.
MR. MORASH: And I appreciate your comments, as well. This is important, and we both appreciate that. Together, we can develop better regulations than if we're not working together.
MR. CHAIRMAN: We now move to the government caucus. Any questions? To the NDP, the Official Opposition.
The honourable member for Dartmouth East.
MS. JOAN MASSEY: Mr. Chairman, before I start my questions, I would like to say thank you to your department for extending the moratorium on applying biosolids to land. You extended it until May 15th, so I think that's a step in the right direction. Surprisingly enough, my first question will be on biosolids. You spoke this morning and I think you did mention, when a colleague from the Liberal side was talking about biosolids education. How much funding will be allocated, from your department, towards educating the permit holder on how to spread these biosolids and such?
MR. MORASH: How much money? We really don't have a dollar figure on that, but our staff are available and would deal with the permit holder on an individual basis, with as much time as necessary to ensure that they know what the permit requires, what stipulations are in there, what's in the guidelines that would be attached to the permit. We would just deal with them in that way, but we don't really put a dollar figure on that. It's as much time as it takes. They also have an open line through to the regional offices. I know in my short time here that they get lots of calls and give out lots of information with regard to any issues. We would just make staff available to whatever level the proponent would need.
MS. MASSEY: I realize that staff would be available, if that's what you're saying, but I have to wonder if this is going to be something that could perhaps be spread over 4,000 acres of land in Nova Scotia. I'm not sure how many more lagoons will come forward
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because of Aerotech going into operation. I do envision a lot of data collection, a lot of people trying to figure the guidelines out, follow them, specifically. I do foresee a lot more inspections. So, I can't see how this is not going to incur extra costs for your department down the road.
MR. MORASH: I did mention the education portion when we were together earlier. I probably should clarify a bit on that. We certainly need to educate the people who are going to be working in the process and will be directly involved, and staff will work with them. The education for stakeholder groups seems to be a very prominent issue that is there and we need to address that. Staff would make presentations to municipalities, we would make presentations to community groups, we would make presentations to individuals; however, it's more effective and efficient if we could get some people together, just from staff time.
I think the one thing that we have to look at, if you look at responding to complaints, responding to phone calls, responding to e-mails, that takes a lot of time. If we can refocus the complaint response into educational activity, I don't believe that there will be an excessive amount of additional time required by staff. Now, there is a transition period in there when the e-mails are still coming in before we get where we need to be, but with extended public consultation, I don't think that we can communicate with the public on this issue too much. I think we need to develop some, I suppose there are already consultation processes in place, we don't have anything particularly formalized at this point in time except to say I'm committed and the department's committed to make sure that we have discussions on an ongoing basis on this that will continue along as we move forward.
As we talked this morning about dewatering and other types of infrastructure that might come on stream in more areas, there's going to be additional discussions needed to make sure that the public is fully aware of what we're doing, fully aware of what the product is, what the product is going to be used for, and this is something that I believe through continuing to update the public in the technology currently and future technology that we'll be able to work to a solution on this because it's a complex problem, as you know, that everybody appreciates isn't going to go away. We have to manage it and we have to work diligently to communicate with everybody how we're going to manage the problem because our management strategies, I'm sure, will change in the years ahead as we deal with this issue.
MS. MASSEY: I would like to continue to look at the point of inspection. These are just guidelines and, therefore, they're not really enforceable because they're guidelines. They're not regulations, they're not legislation. This morning you mentioned when you were speaking, I believe, I don't want to misquote you, but that your department looked at legislation across North America and when you say you looked at legislation, I'm wondering why did you not draw up legislation, or at least regulations, for the spreading of biosolids and instead just do some guidelines?
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MR. MORASH: We do have an answer for that actually. It was well thought out within the department and when the guidelines are attached to the applications that are out there now, they're enforceable by law. So these guidelines when cited by the department are law, are enforceable, you can be charged for not abiding by them. We also appreciate that with ongoing consultation, which we plan to initiate and continue as the months go by, that there may be emerging information that would cause us to want to improve our guidelines and we would be able to improve these guidelines and attach them to the permits quite readily and easily as we move along and this would be a very public process.
People would know what was coming, but rather than make the regulations knowing that we still have more work to do, you know, this is rather a moving target at this point in time and will be over the next number of years, so that was the logic and the thought behind that, but they are enforceable by law. They are equal to a regulation when they are attached to a permit that says you must abide by these guidelines. So the lawyers are happy that we can do everything we need to do with these guidelines.
MS. MASSEY: Right now there are various communities in Nova Scotia that are having problems with lagoons and sewage disposal companies and this relates back to the whole issue of inspection. It seems to me that what I'm hearing is that, for example, the folks in Crowdis Mountain, Cape Breton, their experience with George's Vacuum Septic Disposal Company and those lagoons overflowing, and then the other example was citizens in the Truro area who have had a problem with the lagoon there receiving waste from abattoirs and rendering plants, and what I'm hearing from these communities is that it was only because of their diligence in being out there and videotaping specific things and collecting information, doing the testing on their own, that the issues were brought forward to your department and I do have a concern that perhaps maybe we don't have enough inspectors on staff. So what is the problem there when we have to rely on communities to police these lagoons and storage facilities?
MR. MORASH: That's a very good point. We've always depended upon the public to assist us with our enforcement or monitoring of the province and we do a risk-based analysis and use our resources as wisely as we possibly can with regard to what areas need to be inspected and others, but I guess I can tell you on a number of occasions I've had photographs and e-mails that have come to me directly and it has been very helpful actually. In one case it was a roll of film which we weren't sure what was on it until we had it developed, but the public is out there and they're better educated now about what the rules are and they're more diligent with regard to watching what people are doing in their community and they have always been a source of information for us and, you know, thankfully they are out there and there are people who are willing to take the time and do good work, pass it along to us so that we can proceed from there. So we're very appreciative of that. If anything, we expect more of that in the future and I believe that that's a working partnership even though it's a rather loose working partnership that has worked well for everybody involved and will continue along in the future.
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MS. MASSEY: Certainly I respect those communities for doing whatever they can to protect their community from the issues that revolve around sludge and biosolids. However, I'm wondering if, you know, right now we only have, I believe my numbers could be wrong, 22 privately-owned septic lagoons and seven municipal lagoons. My concern is if we can't control what's going on in these facilities now and there are only 22 plus seven and we're relying so heavily on community involvement, we're going down a road that we really don't want to go down, that could lead us int