[Page 131]
MR. CHAIRMAN: Order. Thank you very much. If we could, I think we do have a quorum, so we will begin. We have the Minister of Environment and Labour, Mark Parent.
Resolution E7 - Resolved, that a sum not exceeding $34,767 000 be granted to the Lieutenant Governor to defray expenses in respect of the Department of Environment and Labour, pursuant to the Estimate.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Minister, you have the floor. The time is 2:11 p.m.
HON. MARK PARENT: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Before I start my remarks I want to introduce, to my left, Laurie Bennett from the Department of Environment and Labour, and to my right is the deputy minister for the Department of Environment and Labour.
It's my honour to present to you, my colleagues, and to the people of Nova Scotia some preliminary details of this year's budget for the Department of Environment and Labour, and I want to say how proud I am to be minister of this department. We've accomplished many great things in 2006-2007 and I am certain that we'll build on these accomplishments in the coming fiscal year.
[Page 132]
The department's mandate, as you know, is to protect and promote the safety of people and property, a healthy environment, employment rights, consumer rights, public confidence in pension services and in the alcohol and gambling sectors. As you know, the Department of Environment and Labour has a very broad and diverse mandate. Fortunately, for me - and I say this with heartfelt conviction - we have a very talented and dedicated workforce in the department to help us deliver that mandate. They work in countless ways, every day, to protect the environment and human health in Nova Scotia. And in particular, Mr. Chairman, if I can just very briefly, although I'll have opportunity to do this, I'm sure, later in the year, but this will be the last occasion that the deputy minister is here at estimates, and I want to personally thank him for all the work he's done, not only for my department but for the Government of Nova Scotia and the people of Nova Scotia.
Today, we'll discuss only the highlights of our 2007-2008 budget, but I'm well aware that our past successes and ambitions for this year are the product of every one of our nearly 500 staff working throughout the province.
I want to mention very quickly one of the things that we're doing, the Competitiveness and Compliance Initiative, which is a $900,000 initiative, and this year we will continue to invest in the Competitiveness and Compliance Initiative. It's the department's response to the government's better regulation initiative and, because we are the major regulator in government, CCI - the Competitiveness and Compliance Initiative - sets the pace for better regulation. This initiative has made great progress, both for discreet accomplishments as well as for the creation of overarching policies and processes that are improving the way regulation is crafted and applied.
[2:15 p.m.]
Mr. Chairman, the initiative, both the better regulation and the CCI, which is the department's response to the better regulation, are viewed across Canada in terms of one of the innovative ways to deal with regulations in a way that simply doesn't act in a simplistic manner, but actually betters the regulatory process.
The second thing I want to talk about very quickly is an Environmental Home Assessment Program - a $1.5 million program - the program was introduced in late Fall and since that time we were able to do 400 assessments from Sydney to Yarmouth. The objectives of this program are very simple, yet valuable: to protect the health and well- being of Nova Scotia families and to protect the environment from the harmful effects of poorly maintained oil tanks and septic systems; to encourage homeowners to test their well water on a regular basis; and number three, which we all like, to save Nova Scotians money.
The third program I'll just touch upon is the Septage Treatment Facility Program, because the management of waste water doesn't stop with private septic systems. The septage removed from these tanks, Mr. Chairman, must be handled, stored and treated
[Page 133]
properly if our groundwater is to be protected, and that's why we spend $1.25 million in this fiscal year on the Septage Treatment Assistance Program whose purpose is to ensure construction, maintenance and operation of septic treatment facilities.
Since the government - and I know the people of Nova Scotia - want one of the cleanest and most sustainable environments in the world by the year 2020, we will be launching tomorrow, strategy that will protect our most important asset, which is our water. Water has become an increasingly important natural capital asset that needs to be managed and protected properly, and so building on our Drinking Water Strategy, which was launched in 2002, the purpose of this initiative is to develop a comprehensive approach to effectively manage water resources in Nova Scotia. We will spend $200,000 this fiscal year to start developing our strategy - a water strategy that will set out the priorities and principles of government in making water policy decisions. It will also provide a framework for the department's water programs and decisions related to complaints, permits, industrial approvals, and ministerial orders.
As part of our green plan commitment, consultations with Nova Scotians will take place over the next three years to develop a strategy that will address security and sustainability of our water supply. This will help protect our health, the health of our ecosystems, and ensure the long-term prosperity of our water- dependent industries. The end result, I hope and I'm sure, will be a comprehensive strategy that will protect our water and benefit each and every Nova Scotian.
Another program that I want to highlight in these brief remarks is our environmental health protection initiative well watering audit, which is a $212,000 program. Continuing with the theme to protect the health and safety of Nova Scotians, my department is part of a broader program to protect environmental health. We're all well aware of the connections now between health and the environment, and that you can't have proper health without a proper healthy environment, and so the environmental health protection program is a collaborative program of several departments including Health Promotion and Protection, where the secretariat for this program is actually located; Environment and Labour; and also Mr. Chairman, you yourself as Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, are involved in this program. Our part in the program is to ensure the safety of drinking water and consistent well water auditing programs that will ensure the construction of wells in Nova Scotia are built according to recognized standards.
In January I announced my approval of a large project that my government's been involved in and that our department's been overseeing and that is the environmental assessment of the Sydney Tar Ponds and the coke ovens remediation site. At that announcement, I assured the people of Sydney that my department will have the staff and the resources to effectively regulate a remediation project of that size and scope. I assured them then, and I assure the members of this committee now, that the cleanup is moving forward
[Page 134]
and my department will be there every step of the way to ensure environmental protection at all times.
This will be the largest remediation project that we've tried in Nova Scotia and we expect that expertise we gain in it will be a value in not only in providing employment for people in that area, but in providing expertise in remediation which can the be exported to other countries. I know that Cape Breton University and the First Nations in that area are looking very energetically at how they can take the expertise that's gained from the remediation program and use that to help other projects and to boost industry in the area. The Department of Environment and Labour will have an extra $201,200 added to our budget to hire staff to ensure that the Sydney Tar Ponds Agency is in compliance with the terms and conditions of approval set out in the Environment Act.
These are just a few budget highlights, but any estimates' discussion would be incomplete without referring to the ongoing work of our department because, as you know, the Workers' Compensation Board, the Department of Environment and Labour, the Workers' Advisers Program, and the Workers' Compensation Appeals Tribunal are partners in workplace safety and insurance system, and we're very involved as a department in that. We have a direct role in occupational safety and health and have some thirty-two occupational health and safety enforcement officers in our department - I'm pleased to say I rarely find them at their offices because they're out in the field where we want them to be, working with employees and working with employers alike to make our workplaces safer.
I was just speaking at one of the organizations that we work with, the Safety Nova Scotia organization celebrated their 25th anniversary this year and are recognized throughout the Atlantic Provinces, and they hold an annual conference - one of the leading conferences - to which all people come who are interested in helping worker safety. We have made great progress in that, moving from 10 accidents per 100 in 1985 down to 3 accidents per 100 in 2005, but we will not rest until we get that down even further.
As part of our strategy in that regard we are going to be unveiling soon, violence in the workplace regulations and a full plan to deal with violence in the workplace, which has become a problem that we are well aware of, and which other provinces are dealing with as well. Government will consider these regulations very, very shortly and I'll have more to say about that next week.
I'm also pleased to report that $100,000 and an additional full-time employee will be added to the Pensions Division to help implement the hardship provisions that the Legislature passed last year, if you remember. In addition in the Legislature and outside the Legislature, we have been approached several times about the solvency deficiency test for assessing the health of pension plans. So what we will be doing is hosting a one- or two- day symposium of leading experts in the area on solvency to try and come up with some sort of
[Page 135]
template that would help protect pension plans and also deal with the solvency deficiency issue.
I want to conclude just by talking about one major project and that's the recently announced Act Respecting Environmental Goals and Sustainable Prosperity. The bottom line is to have an internationally recognized sustainable environment - one of the cleanest and greenest in the world. You're well aware of the various goals we've set along the way to getting there, and I'm sure we'll have some discussion on that in the questions that follow. It's a major commitment on behalf of my department, on behalf of this government, and a major commitment on behalf of the people of Nova Scotia, because we know that without proper care for our environment our traditional measures of progress are illusionary. We envision then a province where health, economic prosperity, and environmental management go hand in hand. We believe in it, we know that Nova Scotians share that vision and we want, as a department, to be part of the leadership that helps in achieving it.
Thank you very much and I look forward to your questions.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Minister. The first line of questions will go to the Official Opposition.
The honourable member for Halifax Atlantic.
MS. MICHELE RAYMOND: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I really appreciate the opportunity to speak with the minister and with the consultation of his deputy. Thank you very much for being here.
I suppose the first thing that I should say is to commend you on the introduction of the Environmental Goals and Sustainable Prosperity Act. We are all, as Nova Scotians, very grateful to see this step forward, to see put into legislation some of the commitments which are so profoundly needed. The question that a lot of people have, however, is what exactly that looks like on the ground - what the details, which come from the regulations framed by the sustainability Act, will look like. That's perhaps why I'm going to end up turning a fair amount of my question time over to other members of my caucus colleagues who have individual questions concerning the environment in their own ridings.
That's something that I find in my role as Environment Critic - the trouble is that the environment is everywhere and, like politics, all environment is local, so these are the things we really do need to be addressing. With that in mind I think, as we were discussing the other night, one of the concerns that we have is even more than local environment, it is the question of local politics, local decisions, and what this Act actually is going to mean for municipalities who have so many of the decisions which have significant impact on the environment of this province.
[Page 136]
As you know, and as the national roundtable on the environment and economy has stated in great detail, a lot of the environmental issues in the country, and certainly in the province as well, are concerned with settlement with cities, with towns, with villages, with development patterns, with energy use, with water use, and with sewage disposal. When building is permitted, particularly I'm looking at building and development permits, sometimes what we find is that other levels of government are left to scramble to catch up, and I'm wondering just what you, as minister, see the impact of this new Act is going to be on the Municipal Government Act specifically?
MR. PARENT: That's a very good question because we - my department - work collaboratively with municipalities on a great many issues that deal with the environment. Municipalities in some senses, in my experience, are ahead of the province in promoting sustainable environments. For example, the Municipality of Wolfville and the Municipality of Antigonish have actively been working on sustainable prosperity plans, one through the national step program and the other using a model set out by the Worldwatch Institute.
The impact upon communities comes in two main areas, I would respond: One is in waste treatment - the municipalities are tasked with dealing with waste, they're the reason we're able to reach the lowest disposal rate per person in the country, and they're the ones who will be tasked to bring that disposal rate even lower. Now, we intend to help them and that's why the electronic waste program was unveiled, because this will help divert more from the waste stream so that their disposal rate can be down, and we assist them in every way we can. The other area is in the treatment of water - through the MRIF fund, through Service Nova Scotia and Municipal Relations, we have been very proactive in targeting a lot of that infrastructure money to help with green technologies and to help municipalities deal with the demands that are being placed upon them for safe, clean, drinking water and for proper treatment of their waste systems.
There are many different ways that we work collaboratively with the municipality and seek to help them to do their job, and I mentioned some of them in my opening remarks - the septage program system helps municipalities. So we work collaboratively, in partnership, with the municipalities, but those are the two main areas where I've had extensive discussions with municipalities on solid waste, and on both waste water and drinking water.
MS. RAYMOND: I'm just wondering when you say proactively targeting MRIF projects for green infrastructure, what does that actually look like from the province's point of view?
[2:30 p.m.]
MR. PARENT: Service Nova Scotia and Municipal Relations has funded all of the drinking water strategies and waste water treatments, and have assured us that more money
[Page 137]
is coming - they have given me a figure which I want to verify, but they have been very, very helpful in that regard. I know in my own riding for example, with Canning and Port Williams, which are villages that have had to buttress their water treatment facilities, that grants have been coming. I know that municipalities across the province have been receiving similar grants and that will continue to happen. In Canning and Port Williams, it was a total of $100,000 for each of the villages; in HRM it has been a lot higher. So the MRIF fund recognizes that, and almost 100 per cent of it has been going for green technologies.
MS. RAYMOND: Okay, so that's a more general proactive targeting I was wondering about. I guess that would bring me to one set of questions, which is about soil, and one of the issues of course that does come up with waste disposal and so on is that a lot of it does end up in landfill, in soil, and in groundwater. I am just wondering, specifically in the e-waste question, what are the interim provisions and are there remediation provisions for - there was a program before - previous known deposits, shall we say, of electronic waste? Is there any work being done on that?
MR. PARENT: For contaminated sites that include e-waste, but other sites as well or just e-waste?
MS. RAYMOND: No, let's say contaminated sites in general.
MR. PARENT: On all the old landfills, and there were about 100 of them back not that long ago - all of that material has been moved to the new second-generation landfill. There are seven in the province now.
In terms of beyond the landfill, the environmental amendments that we brought in last session will help us deal with contaminated sites more fully - old gas stations, et cetera, like that. All of the old dumping sites - which really, they were dumping sites - all of that material has been moved to the second-generation sites and the soil has been remediated and we hope to have an electronic system in place on contaminated sites so that people can check on the site on-line. That should be up and available very soon.
MS. RAYMOND: I know one of the sets of contaminated sites that were mentioned - well, first, two questions. One is, what progress has there been in the past year since that? Two, I think it was about three years ago that the Auditor General, in his report on the Department of Transportation and Public Works, and on parts of the Department of Natural Resources, mentioned in both cases that there were sites contaminated by oil from fleet vehicles. I'm wondering, what work has been done on those sites, specifically those government-owned sites?
MR. PARENT: I don't have the specifics for you at the time. I can get them to you, but generally, my department assures me we're pleased with what Natural Resources and
[Page 138]
Transportation and Public Works have been doing with regard to the sites that you mentioned. If you want more specific detail, we'll arrange to get that for you.
MS. RAYMOND: That would be great, actually. Oil contamination is one of those things that seems to be an ongoing question, certainly in the area of the city. I think we talked about this before, last year. I am unclear what the relationship is between contaminated soil which has been removed from a site and knowledge of where it eventually goes. What tracking provisions are there?
MR. PARENT: I know that's been an issue that we talked about last time, tracking contaminated soil to make sure it doesn't get dumped in some other place and then just move the problem from one place to another. Remediation is taken and we have various methods of doing that.
What we demand is that the soil be cleaned up at the site. Then, once it's cleaned up at the site, then where they take that soil once it's cleaned up, really, is up to the company that's done it, but they must clean up the soil. Say you have an oil well that's contaminated soil, so the soil gets cleaned up through various processes. There are different means of doing it. Once that soil is cleaned up, then it's clean soil and it can be used elsewhere.
Now, are you asking whether that clean soil should be tracked?
MS. RAYMOND: When soil is removed - I think soil is sometimes considered to be contaminated at the time it is removed from a site.
MR. PARENT: It's removed from sites, it's cleaned up at that site.
MS. RAYMOND: At the original site?
MR. PARENT: Yes.
MS. RAYMOND: Okay. I know there are numerous cases of domestic oil spills and so on and you're saying that the cleanup of the soil takes place there? So does that mean the soil then doesn't have to go anywhere?
MR. PARENT: If it's a big project, as I've said, it's cleaned up on-site. If it's a small householder, then there are various facilities throughout the province approved by us, where the soil is taken to and cleaned up there. Until it's cleaned up at the site, it's not allowed to be disposed of.
MS. RAYMOND: Okay, so you have a way of knowing that when it is removed from a smaller site, it does, in fact, get to the treatment facility - you don't know that for sure?
[Page 139]
MR. PARENT: Oh, we do know that, yes. The site professional who does the work is licensed by our department. If we find him in any of our auditing that the site professional is taking that soil and dumping it elsewhere rather than taking it to the remediation site - to the treatment facility which is licensed by us as well - then they'll have their licence revoked and can be charged. That's the auditing that we do on it.
MS. RAYMOND: That's the auditing, okay, yes. As you know, I've brought at least one case to your attention where it seems there may be some difficulty, because the person doing the auditing would appear to be the same person doing the clean-up.
MR. PARENT: We're looking into that case right now, and I think I may have sent you a note on that.
MS. RAYMOND: Yes, you did. But it does point to a larger problem, of course, when . . .
MR. PARENT: And it may well be that there are firms that take the easy way out in dealing with soil, in which case they'll have their licence revoked and be dealt with appropriately.
MS. RAYMOND: We'll have to count on the auditing project to do that. Going back, I guess, to the water questions, a little bit. One of the things that I'm a little unclear about, coming out of the new Environmental Goals and Sustainable Prosperity Act, is what exactly is meant by no net loss of wetlands and wetland function? Could you distinguish for me, the difference between wetland and wetland function and the no net loss, what that means? What I'm wondering about is, in other net loss provisions, in other Acts and so on, net loss can simply mean that if something is removed then it can be replaced elsewhere without necessarily a prescribed distance away, but the phrase no net loss of wetlands area and function, are there any kind of constraints on what is an appropriate way of ensuring that there is no net loss?
MR. PARENT: Right now we have a policy in place and putting it in legislation will enshrine that policy and make it firm. Clearly, no net loss means that if wetlands are affected for some reason, it has to be compensated for elsewhere but not just compensated - and I think this is what you're getting at - not just compensated for in some sort of simplistic way, but we have to be assured that the function the wetland served originally is reduplicated in the other. We know that wetlands are the lungs of the world and that they have special values. They have flood control values et cetera. All those sort of things are what's considered in the function. If you had no net loss per se, you could just have a hectare here for a hectare there, but that hectare there would not be serving the same function as the initial hectare in terms of flood control or migratory birds, habitat for wildlife. So that's why both of them are in there.
[Page 140]
MS. RAYMOND: Do you have any sense of what the compensating wetlands are going to look like? Are they going to be within the same watershed, within a geographic distance? Are they going to be - you're suggesting perhaps that they won't be broken up into a group of smaller ones - will they be within any particular distance of the original wetland?
MR. PARENT: I can't tell you all of those facts right now, but our department is very proactive and very rigorous in terms of wetlands because we have had many wetlands in previous years that have disappeared and we know, increasingly, the importance of wetlands, for their function in maintaining and purifying the environment and providing habitat for wildlife. So we will be very proactive and very rigorous in demanding that not only the size, but the function be maintained. But for me to say, will it be 100 metres away or 10 metres away? I can't say at this particular stage because each case is individual.
I think that you should take some comfort from the fact that we're not stating net loss, we're stating no net function loss, as well. The staff are very rigorous in maintaining this. We have one right now, for example, that we're dealing with, up in Bedford area. One of the few remaining wetlands in the city, which unfortunately most of them are filled in, and even before this legislation was brought in, our strict policies about wetlands came into play. It was grieved, we upheld. We went to appeal. The appeal was upheld because we consider wetlands to be very important. But for me to say exactly that any wetland that's disturbed, the mitigating wetland would have to be less than 10 metres. I can't say that right now.
The first point I need to make in wetlands is that if there's any possible way that wetland can be avoided being impacted on, that's the first thing that needs to be done. And it's only in those rare cases where they feel it can't be and they convince my department that it can't be, then we look at compensation.
MS. RAYMOND: Interesting, because there is one case I'm aware of, down the South Shore, where it would appear that a municipality has granted development permits for a piece of land which is essentially isolated by wetland. So what it means is that the developer has said, well, it's unavoidable that I infill this wetland in order to get road access to my property, for which I have a permit. So how does that work? How does that play out?
MR. PARENT: It's an interesting case that you refer to and my commitment to your colleague on it and my direction to the staff has been that once they impact the wetland, a stop work order is to be put on it. That sort of - what's that game where you put a pea under a cup and then switch your cups around and try to get . . .
MS. RAYMOND: Shell game.
MR. PARENT: Yes, that shell game - we're not fooled by it in any way and we don't allow that to happen. With that property, I've given express direction, according to our wetland policy, and talked to the inspector for the area as recently as yesterday, who assured
[Page 141]
me that he's in constant contact with the family and that if any wetland is removed or touched without them talking to the department, the stop worker order will be placed.
MS. RAYMOND: Great, I'm really pleased to hear that because I know there have been a lot of cases which don't necessarily come out of the Department of Environment and Labour, but where simply lack of coordination between departments has allowed things to happen. So I'm really pleased to hear that.
[2:45 p.m.]
That one actually is interesting to me too because it's a coastal wetland and I think we may have discussed this before and I'm just wondering if there has been any progress at all from the province's point of view, but more specifically from the Department of Environment and Labour's point of view, about the issue of coastal infilling. Now I realize that it's the Department of Natural Resources which officially takes jurisdiction over the land between the high and low water marks.
You know, under the Beaches Act, if things are designated then they're protected, but there are numerous cases and they're increasing all the time, as the value of property in the province increases and particularly the value of waterfront property, where what you get is people extending the useable part of their property by infilling the intertidal zone. I would imagine that the members of the Department of Environment and Labour - the staff and minister and so on - are very well aware of the ecological value of the intertidal zone and that's without even getting into the human functions and all the rest of it that that provides in terms of access. Probably well aware of it. Probably well aware of some of the specific and problematic cases that have been coming up in places like Lunenburg, Shelburne, North West Arm. Has there been any engagement of the Department of Environment and Labour, to this point, in the protection of the intertidal zone?
MR. PARENT: There's an innovative project - which if it was estimates for the Minister of Fisheries, you could ask him about - called the Provincial Ocean Network System that my department co-operates in, that's working on intertidal zones. But in addition to the water strategy that I'll be launching tomorrow, in the long run I wanted to look at the whole issue of water and it touches on the coastal zones in regard to climate change and rising sea levels. So there will be some work done on it in that regard, but the Provincial Ocean Network System that is led by the Department of Fisheries is doing some innovative work on that and we're co-operating with them. So you may want to, if you can grab the Chair after the meeting, you may want to ask him about that.
MS. RAYMOND: Okay. Thank you very much and I will be certainly looking forward to some real new regulation, or legislation ideally, coming forward to ensure that we don't continue to lose that and as you say, to ensure that we don't lose the coastal function as well, the function of the intertidal zone and the protection, the buffering zone, particularly
[Page 142]
in the area of climate change. I think I've mentioned to you before, my family comes from Bermuda, which is very low lying indeed and we're only too aware of just how important it is to protect what is between the high and low water marks.
The South Shore case then is not going to, presumably, run into being one of those ones that will be compensated by a restoration of some net wetland elsewhere? The case we were talking about, we can look forward to that wetland not being infilled and replaced by a wetland elsewhere in the province?
MR. PARENT: I've received no application and, as I said, my commitment here is that until there is an application, if they touch the wetland, there'll be a stop work order placed on any construction or road management or anything like that.
MS. RAYMOND: Great. I'm wondering if you can tell me anything - well, okay, another question sort of touching on the area of climate change, municipal affairs, all these details - energy use, planning and so on. One of the things that a number of my constituents certainly talk about and I think it's a problem throughout the province, as you would be aware, is that we have a number of older settlements. They're scattered around the province and increasingly, it's difficult for people to actually get access to services without taking their own vehicle or car pooling and so on.
That's true even within the larger municipalities. I'm thinking specifically of my own area, which is the Halifax Regional Municipality. Yes, it is a municipal function to provide public transit, but has the Department of Environment looked at setting any parameters around public transit and the density areas in which it really is required. That would be either in or out of the larger municipalities.
MR. PARENT: With regard to public transit, we're very supportive of it. That falls under the Minister of Energy - he made an announcement yesterday that you may have known about, hybrid buses for HRM. I'm hoping that some of our other larger transit systems, such as Kings, could move in that direction.
We need to move towards encouraging and helping more people to use public transit and that's a real challenge in the outlying areas, as you know. Whether we actually set parameters, as you say, that public transit has to be available will depend really upon finances. I'll be making an announcement along with the Minister of Environment federally sometime this week - it's supposed to be Monday, now it's Tuesday - and part of that announcement, I think, will allow some funding to be leveraged from the eco-trust that would help municipalities to use the money in ways they see fit. One of them could be in public transit.
MS. RAYMOND: But, it's pretty much as seen fit. Hybrid buses are fine as long as there are buses and where we don't have buses, we have single vehicle transportation and one
[Page 143]
can talk about educating and encouraging people to use public transit, but if it isn't there, all the education and encouragement in the world will simply do no good whatsoever. I would hope that there will, in fact, be some real decisions made about when population density actually reaches a point at which it makes sense to provide some level of public transit. It doesn't have to be all the big buses.
MR. PARENT: What I would like to see, if you're talking about dreaming, this only answers part of the problem because it maybe covers 60 to 70 per cent of the population, we'd still have 30 per cent to cover otherwise, but I would love to see some sort of system that operated from Bridgewater, Kentville, Truro and a ring around that would come in on buses that would run on a regular schedule to depots around HRM, where then they could move onto the HRM system. That's a dream of mine. Unfortunately the railways were pulled up so when people talk about rapid transit, not doing that.
I think that's a goal that we need to work at in those density centres to cut down on the number of commuters coming in. Increasingly, as HRM expands, many of the communities such as Truro, Bridgewater where my honourable colleague comes from, Kentville, myself, are becoming commuting neighbourhoods for jobs in HRM and bringing in their cars, so you need to provide some sort of system.
The key to that is providing enough flexibility and hours that people aren't stuck with one trip in at 8:00 a.m. and one back at 4:00 p.m., that there's some flexibility, which is also important in staggering traffic congestion. That's a dream of mine and I'll be pushing that, I can assure the member. Whether I'll be fortunate or not, I certainly am strengthened by this bill. If the members on either Party support it, that will give me some strength in pushing some of these projects forward because I'll be able to say we need to do this to meet these goals.
I'd appreciate your help in getting this bill through the House and through Law Amendments Committee because I think it will give that sort of impetus that is needed, not just to this government but to any government that is in place to say, listen, these are targets we have to meet and these are the things we have to do. That would be a vision of mine that I think is doable within those centres. We already have the Green Rider in communities, I assume they're in Truro and Bridgewater. I know they are in the Kentville area, Hantsport, that are van companies that provide van pools into the city to try and cut down on greenhouse gas use and also on the stress that it causes people to have to commute every day. So when we're talking about dreams, that is certainly a dream I'd like to put out there.
MS. RAYMOND: I'd like to ask you just a little bit more about process. One of the tools, of course, that the Department of Environment and Labour has at its disposal is that of environmental assessments. I know there is a lot of discussion in the public about the desire for environmental assessments to take place in various cases. Certainly there are a
[Page 144]
couple of questions around asphalt plants and so on, which apparently do not need an assessment, is that true?
MR. PARENT: No, the asphalt plant, if you're talking about Lafarge, it needed an environmental assessment when it began its operation to make cement. However, that assessment was given, that approval was given but if it is going to change the manner it's doing it, from using Bunker C and coal to using some other fuel, it would need an industrial approval change.
MS. RAYMOND: No, no, sorry, about actually building new asphalt plants. I understand that an asphalt plant does not require an assessment?
MR. PARENT: No, they need an environmental assessment.
MS. RAYMOND: Okay, I'm sorry, that's a misapprehension on my part. How many applications do you actually get for environmental assessment in the run of a year, do you have any idea?
MR. PARENT: We get 20 in a year and I just want to be clear, I said environmental assessment, I meant industrial approval for asphalt plants. The industrial approval process is, in many ways, as rigorous as the environmental assessment. There needs to be public consultation, et cetera. What it says is that asphalt plants can be - really by having to go through industrial approval, in a sense you made a decision that you will allow asphalt plants in the province. The question then becomes so if they're allowed in the province, they're an allowable activity, then they have to have industrial approval. That's as rigorous, in many ways, as an environmental assessment. We get 20 applications, is the answer.
MS. RAYMOND: Twenty in the course of a year.
MR. PARENT: Okay, so in environmental assessments it can range anywhere from eight to 22 - I gave you an average number of about 20. In industrial approvals we get many, many more than that.
MS. RAYMOND: That's what I was wondering, yes.
MR. PARENT: Those range in the hundreds, maybe thousands.
MS. RAYMOND: So what is the distinction, then, if the industrial approval is as rigorous as the environmental assessment, what do you see as the major distinction between them in how they're carried out - not in what their purpose is but in the actual execution of them?
[Page 145]
MR. PARENT: Well, from my experience, the actual purpose is very different but in actually how they're carried out there is not an awful lot of difference; the public consultation is the same, the period for them is roughly the same. Yes, there is more mandatory for the environmental assessments but the industrial approval is a fairly robust approval process that they have to go through as well. The environmental assessment, can this activity occur, yea or nay? Let's take Keltic, for example - there are many industrial approvals that that company will have to go through but the environmental assessment was given that it can go ahead, but unless it meets the conditions that we set out and then also along the way industrial approvals, then it will not proceed.
So really it's based upon the level of risk; if the risk is high, then the industrial approval is a very rigorous one; if the risk is low then - I mean it still fits the project but it would be a lower threshold. So with the industrial approval that's been on your mind and on the mind of my colleague here, the threshold is very high and the industrial approval will be a very rigorous process.
MS. RAYMOND: What is the status of that? I assume you're talking about Lafarge?
MR. PARENT: Yes, the status of that is that there's a draft report from Dalhousie University. I guess the status is, to go back just to refer, the RRFB has given a tender to Lafarge to deal with tires in the province. Currently my understanding is that those tires are being shipped out of the province to a cement kiln factory, I think, in Quebec. That may continue ad infinitum until RRFB gives another tender out for the disposal of used tires.
If, however, LaFarge wants to use those tires in a different way, such as using them for fuel for their kiln, they have to have an industrial approval. They have not yet made that application. I have a study that I have got out there proactively, anyway, from Dalhousie. There's a draft of that study in my office. I have not yet seen that draft but I understand they finished the study because I usually don't take a look at the draft until it's actually finished. The finished study should be in my hands at the start of next week, I hope, and I'll be able to make some sort of report back to you at that time. So I haven't seen the draft and once it's in a finished form, I will see it and I understand that could be as early as next week.
MS. RAYMOND: But you haven't yet received the IA application which, it is reasonable to expect, is coming?
[3:00 p.m.]
MR. PARENT: I haven't received any IA application and I only know what I read in the media and I'm not sure if Lafarge will go ahead with it at this stage. They seem to have, and the media had, a slightly different tone than originally, where they were going to proceed straightforward on it.
[Page 146]
It will take quite a bit of time. There's a couple of things, if they do move forward and it will take time for the application to come in, but the kiln right now in no way could even be considered at this stage so there would have to be quite a bit of money spent if they're going to go ahead. That's really jumping ahead of the process and I don't really want to do that but I have no indication of any application coming in now or in the near future.
MS. RAYMOND: There's another environmental assessment that is certainly on a lot of people's minds, too, and that's the whole question - or sorry, there's not an environmental assessment, but it is the whole question of the quarry at Digby Neck.
MR. PARENT: Just to give you the latest update on that, which I probably should have given the House because I knew about it yesterday when I responded, but I forgot, so I'll give it to you people first. There's a joint federal-provincial panel set up and they were to report by the end of February. They've asked for an extension, though, to do their work properly and I've granted them that.
MS. RAYMOND: Yes, they were actually - I thought that was one of the more egregious examples of environmental assessment proposal, or of proposals, that was something like a thousand . . .
MR. PARENT: From the company, you mean?
MS. RAYMOND: Yes.
MR. PARENT: So the panel has asked for more time and we granted it to them. I did the same thing with Keltic, Keltic asked for more time. We view that as standard because we want these panels to do a proper job and we certainly don't want the panel to feel that they're rushed into making some sort of decisions because of the time frame. So in Keltic, for example, there were about 7,000 pieces of paper that the committee had to go through. They asked for an extension, and it was granted. I know that wasn't viewed upon favourably by many residents in Guysborough but it is the stance of our department and my stance, as minister, that when we put the panels in place, we should resource them and give them the proper time to come up with wise decisions, and the panels only go in place basically for very difficult issues and questions. So they asked for 15 days and I granted them that. We expect that the document should be complete by the end of March and then public hearings will be held in late Spring or early summer 2007.
MS. RAYMOND: Without that panel, the Digby Neck thing would have needed an industrial approval?
MR. PARENT: No, it would have needed an environmental assessment, but what we've done is, and it was done by my predecessor, that is really at the highest level now - a joint federal-provincial panel.
[Page 147]
MS. RAYMOND: Yes, I understand that.
MR. PARENT: And it's looking at socio-economic factors as well as environmental factors, I understand. It has the respect from what I understand not only of - well, I'm not sure if it has the company's respect but I know it certainly has the respect of the department and the respect of the opponents who feel that the people who are on the panel are of top quality. So I assume it has the respect of the company as well and that's always a challenge for any panel. It is from what I understand one of the better panels out there. We always try to get the very best panels, but this is one that has people who have a high degree of expertise and so that's where that particular issue stands.
MS. RAYMOND: So pits and quarries under four hectares, right, that's without an environmental assessment of any kind?
MR. PARENT: We're busy right now with looking at regulations for pits and quarries under four hectares. We have a committee. I think there are about 20 people on it the last I looked at it and a bit of a briefing on that, I can certainly get our officials to fill you in further if you're interested, but it includes various individuals, municipal representatives too, and that should be coming forward - let me just check on the timelines. (Interruption) About May/June they'll be coming forward with some recommendations.
MS. RAYMOND: I'm just curious about that. I realize my time is probably running short but what - no, actually I'm going to switch, sorry, because my time is running short. This is a completely different question.
Of course, one of the other areas we haven't touched on is the whole question of the department's responsibility to deal with wilderness areas and protected areas. I know that the department has set the goal of attaining 12 per cent protection and so on by 2013, is it?
MR. PARENT: By 2015.
MS. RAYMOND: Oh, 2015, I'm sorry. One of the things, of course, has been the question of usage and what it means to have a protected area. There are different levels of protected areas and, of course, we've recently had the question around the use of ATVs and the minister's discretion, your ability to grant at discretion the right to use OHVs within wilderness areas. What are you feeling about this right now with respect to that?
MR. PARENT: I've stated publicly that as long as I'm Minister of Environment and Labour, I won't be granting recreational ATV-ing in the protected areas.
MS. RAYMOND: Would you be in a position to extend that though so that applies to the future protection under future ministers as well?
[Page 148]
MR. PARENT: At present, no.
MS. RAYMOND: No, okay. I guess these things change, yes, okay. I have another question and it's Environment. As I say, sometimes as an MLA I find it's bats, birds, mice, rats - what's the best way to get rid of mice? I appreciate (Interruption) I think it says get a cat. If your cat . . .
MR. PARENT: Well, before I got my cat, I had 19 mice caught in traps and mice poo all through - of course, this is before I got remarried so maybe that's why - but all through the linens and the silverware, and it was not a very pretty site, through my pots and pans, so after the cat came that solved the problem. So I mean I can only speak from my own experience that it's the best way to get rid of them.
Actually with bats, bats are a benefit and a lot of people in my area have bat houses. They tried that down in the Florida Keys. I was down there this summer and they had an area that was just a swamp there. They tried to bring in all the bats and the joke is that the mosquitos were so bad, they ate the bats. (Laughter) I know they aren't the nicest things to have in your house but they certainly are beneficial - the bats. So I wouldn't put them in the same category as mice.
MS. RAYMOND: I honestly will try. All right, because I will tell you that it's one of those things, being here, that you have to deal with all the time.
MR. PARENT: I understand. (Interruption) Yes, bubble gum can be effective too.
MS. RAYMOND: Okay, I think it's . . .
MR. CHAIRMAN: No, you have a little more yet. You're good until 3:24 p.m. It's 3:07 p.m.
MS. RAYMOND: Sorry, I thought it was 3:11 p.m. Okay, no problem. So a whole other bunch of things then.
The Medical Officer of Health, Robert Strang - do you find yourself referring cases to him very often and back and forth? I'm thinking about environmental contaminants.
MR. PARENT: We have the Medical Officer of Health and an environmental specialist named Anne Richards, then we use medical officers scattered throughout the provinces to help us in our work. I'm glad you asked that question because increasingly - and in fact the deputy pointed out to me - in all of the polling that shows the environment now is the number one issue or the number two issue, it's environment and health or health and environment. That's because the two are intimately connected to each other. So we have a specialist named Dr. Anne Richards for the province and then we work with the medical
[Page 149]
specialists. We also work with Mr. Strang as well but there is an environmental specialist called Anne Richards.
MS. RAYMOND: Okay, because I have a couple of areas of concern in my own riding, actually; one of which I think Dr. Strang has been involved and I don't know whether you're aware of it or not. There is some question as to materials that may - and you may not be aware of this because this is a federal area, but the Department of National Defence firefighting school appears to have been burying some of its firefighting materials back in the 1970s. I believe he's involved with that but I guess it's the Minister of Health I should ask about that, is that right?
MR. PARENT: Yes, anything on a federal property will be dealt with by Health Canada and Environment Canada. So if it's a federal property, they deal with it.
Again, I commend you on your question because one of the things that I referenced in my opening remarks was the Secretariat for Environmental Health. Now our piece of it right now really mainly deals with water, but we foresee that as a growing area that we wanted to facilitate environmental concerns with health and the interface between them. So I think it's about $900,000 the government put in the budget this year, parceled out through Agriculture and Fisheries, Environment and Labour and then the secretariat itself, which would be in Health Promotion and Protection.
MS. RAYMOND: Okay. The second area of concern that I have is one where there hasn't been any testing. I have raised it with your predecessor on a couple of occasions. There is an area of my riding, Weavers Lake in Harrietsfield, where there seems to be a lot of concern about the dumping of soils. I believe - and I don't know whether somebody here may not know - that on the shores of that is one of the places where the CNR roundhouse soils were deposited. I don't know if anybody is aware of that. The difficulty is to get . . .
MR. PARENT: The gentleman who just spoke to me, I'm sure you are aware of - Gerard MacLellan. We're not aware of it but we would be happy to look into it. So maybe afterwards you could just touch base with him.
MS. RAYMOND: Okay. Even getting groundwater testing in that area would be, but certainly we will look at the whole package around it.
I'm going to turn this over to my colleague at the moment, if that's all right.
MR. JOHN MACDONELL: Mr. Chairman, I don't know if you have to announce me or not for the record.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Yes, I do. Sorry about that.
[Page 150]
The honourable member for Hants East.
MR. MACDONELL: Thank you very much. I'm not sure if the people who are recording this would know that, just by my voice.
MR. PARENT: You have a distinctive voice, John.
MR. MACDONELL: Thank you. That's more to do with what I say, I think, than the fact that I say it, if that's what you mean.
I have a couple of things. I have people in my area, actually, farmers in particular, who are interested in biogas. Actually there are a few who are interested in windmills and they're thinking about ways to supplement their farming income. So I'm wondering if the province has looked at any other jurisdictions where this may be taking place and if they thought about incentive programs or any way to see whether there is some viability in bringing about any of these types of operations - pilot programs. Have you given any thought to that?
MR. PARENT: There is a federal program - a biofuel program - through the Department of Agriculture, federally, that I've been in contact with my colleague, Brooke Taylor, on because I actually have S.F. Rendering in my area that wants to move forward on biofuel in an agricultural area. There's also renewable fuels, $1 billion in the budget and we'll be announcing next week the Ecotrust money, parts of that might be accessible for biofuel projects, so I would encourage farmers.
I know the Federation of Agriculture has targeted this as one area that they see as being an area that could help reduce costs for farmers and make farming more profitable, so there are three different ways that it can be accessed through federal money. I would encourage you to talk to the Minister of Agriculture because the federal ministry has targeted this quite specifically as an area that they want to look at and I would hope that all the money in that regard wouldn't flow to the west, that some of it would flow east.
MR. MACDONELL: Well, I hope so too. I'm wondering what your understanding of the biofuel is - you said someone in your area was interested in biofuel?
[3:15 p.m.]
MR. PARENT: Yes, S.F. Rendering - he's looking at growing canola for biofuel. Right now they use all the used cooking oil across the Atlantic Provinces and turn it into fuel, so there are different ways. I do have some concerns, like ethanol, for example - corn production for ethanol, in my opinion, is not a very good method of producing ethanol. Its greenhouse gasses are not good and I think we need to be careful in renewables not just to latch onto every renewable. Certainly the federal government has targeted this and I know
[Page 151]
that Brooke is working with the federal government, so I'd encourage you to talk to him and, in his absence, I'm sure the acting Minister of Agriculture could give you more information.
MR. MACDONELL: Okay, I'll approach the acting minister and see what he can tell me. Yes, I have to share your concern on the fuel notion of using corn or ethanol, if that's the direction. Some reports indicate that there is more energy used in the production of it than we're getting out it, so that's a bit of an issue.
When you made your introductory statements, you talked about health and you said you can't have health without a healthy environment. So I'm curious as to how the burning of tires would fall into that kind of thinking. It seems to me that wouldn't be creating a very healthy environment.
MR. PARENT: When I tasked Dalhousie to make the study, one of the key areas I wanted to look at was the health effects and, if they haven't looked at the health effects properly, I'll ask them to go back and look at it more thoroughly.
MR. MACDONELL: So was that in regard to the burning of tires per se? Or is that in regard to whether or not the burning of tires would create any more pollutant than whatever fuel they were presently using?
MR. PARENT: Well, it would certainly be the latter because if it creates less health problems and pollution than what they're doing now, then I would expect that if the application was made, people would expect me to move in that direction. Certainly the burning of coal and bunker-C, we know, has health impacts and that's why we put it in our air quality emission standards to reduce by, I think, 25 per cent, sulphur content, mercury content, nitrogen oxide content.
We will never as human beings be at the place, I think, where whatever we do has no impact upon the environment - it's the question of managing that as safely as we can. So if the Dal study came back and we're able to prove scientifically that this is better for the health of people, then I would expect the people in the area who are concerned now would say by all means, let's change if Lafarge makes an application. But I guess my commitment to you is that that's one of the main areas I asked this study to look at and, if that is not looked at properly, I will be asking it to be looked at further.
MR. MACDONELL: I'm a little worried about repeating maybe what somebody else has asked you, but I'm curious - the $3 that's charged every time we buy tires, is that going to continue, are we still going to pay for the recycling of tires that are going to be burned?
MR. PARENT: Yes, that will continue. Most of that money - and I've stated this on various occasions - the vast bulk of it covers the pickup and transportation and the storage of those tires at a central warehouse. Tires are not, as opposed to, say, cardboard which can
[Page 152]
be sold on the open market, tires cannot be sold on the open market. They're a commodity that's not a benefit in any way, but in fact a liability.
In fact I understand - and again this is a bit of hearsay - that many of the companies would not bid on the RRFB proposal because there was no way of making it economically fit, and if we had a higher environmental fee on tires that that might change the water on the beans for them. But at $3 a tire, that's basically just covering picking them up and taking them to a central point. They're not an economic benefit in any way - on the open market, cardboard can be sold, but used tires are a liability.
MR. MACDONELL: I'm just curious - where's the central point that tires are picked up and hauled to because behind every gas station, every salvage yard, every place I can think of there are tires, so nobody is picking them up and hauling them to a central location.
MR. PARENT: We had a backlog of tires in Atlantic recycling, I forget - the ARR, there was a backlog of tires. We've fixed up the backlog of tires in salvage yards and are working on gas stations now.
MR. MACDONELL: Okay, so where is that?
MR. PARENT: It would be, I assume, near the Lafarge plant because then they truck them out. There are a couple of marshalling spots throughout the province - we can get them for you, the exact locations - and then they're shipped off to Quebec.
MR. MACDONELL: So they're shipping them out to Quebec. All right, what happened with that? How come we went to burning them if we're shipping them to Quebec? They don't want them anymore, or . . .
MR. PARENT: Well, we're not burning tires right now.
MR. MACDONELL: Well, I know that, but you're going down the road to burning them as far as I can tell, so . . .
MR. PARENT: RRFB, just to repeat - RRFB went to tender because ARR wasn't able to handle the tires under the process that they had been using. So RRFB went to tender and three companies tendered. The company that they awarded the tender to was Lafarge. The tender with Lafarge is that Lafarge takes these used tires; however to use them for tire-derived fuel at the Lafarge plant, they have to have an industrial approval. They haven't applied for that, and they haven't been granted that. So concurrently right now they are in various marshalling spots throughout the province, getting them and then trucking them up to their cement kiln in Quebec, where they do have approval to use them for tire-derived fuel.
[Page 153]
MR. MACDONELL: So isn't that a good solution for Nova Scotia, to keep sending them there?
MR. PARENT: It may be one possible solution. You would have to look at the greenhouse gases that are burned in transportation and factor that in, but basically that's a decision that Lafarge will have to make.
MR. MACDONELL: Lafarge will have to make a decision about sending them to Quebec or burning them here. Is that what you're saying?
MR. PARENT: Not the decision about burning them. They'll have the decision about continuing the practice there now since they won the tender, for the life of the tender, or if they want to use them here they'll have to demand industrial approval to change the approval that they were given, because they don't have the approval to use them - nobody does in the province.
MR. MACDONELL: That's interesting, thank you very much.
Can I ask you a question on the labour side? Workers' Compensation would come under your jurisdiction, and I have an individual - and I can give you more specifics on this - but anyway he came from the West, was injured I think in work there, so he wanted to apply for a hearing aid. On the application form, he has to give - you know, wherever he was in Calgary, or wherever that he had his hearing tested, and this is like 30 years ago, and he has no notion of where that would be, and we seem to have come to a stalemate about an incomplete application form, and I don't know how to get over it. He doesn't have the information to fill out the form.
MR. PARENT: We have an excellent customer relations person at WCB whom I work with all the time through my office, and I would recommend if you haven't, to talk to Tim McInnis. I would be happy to provide you with the phone number afterwards, and to call Mr. McInnis myself on your behalf if you want, but Tim is excellent on customer relations and his ability to work magic, as it were, with people who for some reason aren't fitting into the system properly or falling between the cracks is legendary. Everyone I know who deals with him finds that he treats them with ultimate respect. So, could you check with your constituent and then we could talk later about it?
MR. MACDONELL: Sure, that would be great.
MR. CHAIRMAN: The time allotted for the Opposition Party has elapsed. I now turn to the Liberal Party and the honourable member for Preston. You have one hour. At 4:25 p.m., you're done.
The honourable member for Preston.
[Page 154]
MR. KEITH COLWELL: Mr. Chairman, I've got a whole series of "all over the place" questions, so I apologize to your staff to start with.
MR. PARENT: You'll do the scattergun approach.
MR. COLWELL: Yes. One thing I'm going to ask you about first, I mentioned it in the late debate or the debate the other night, is solid plastics from manufacturing facilities that aren't your typical pop bottles, or stuff that you would have from a household, but solid plastics. Now a few years ago a friend of mine had a very small manufacturing operation and he had offcuts from plastic sheets and all kinds of different things - he knew exactly what the material was and could identify the materials and would even mark the materials, but come to find out he couldn't put it in the garbage and couldn't take it to the recycling depot; in other words he just simply couldn't get rid of it. Now, this was quite a substantial amount of stuff for a small operation. So I would like to know if that has changed or if there's a place where some of these big operations can actually take their plastic - or what are they doing with it?
MR. PARENT: It is a problem that you reference, Mr. Colwell - have I got it right? We had some fun earlier on names.
We banned them from the landfills, as you correctly identified, so what we work with is individual companies, to find a market for them. So if this company owner - and we work through RRFB. If you would like to speak to myself or to my staff later, we will work with the company to try and find a market, a way of recycling their product that would meet their needs. But it is difficult because they are banned from the landfill, but any company that's in that position, that has plastics to get rid of, we will work with them through the RRFB.
MR. COLWELL: The company has since closed. This was one of the problems, they had so much trouble getting rid of this stuff - not the total reason they closed, I wouldn't insinuate that, but it was a serious, serious problem. They tried contacting the department - actually talked up to the deputy minister, prior to your existing deputy minister being there - and were told, point-blank, that we don't know what we're going to do with this stuff.
Hopefully, that's changed since, it was a couple of years ago . . .
MR. PARENT: I can assure you that we would not leave a company in that position now. There have been some - well, anyway, I'll leave it at that.
MR. COLWELL: Can you give me some examples of how this has worked? Some of these companies are pretty large and . . .
MR. PARENT: Well, there's Interpolymer in Truro, and what they have done - they had plastic wrap, and they were shipping in cardboard cores to wrap this on - which cost
[Page 155]
them money - and they realized they could recycle their plastic and make plastic cores out of their own recycled plastic to wrap their cores on. Not only did they recycle their leftover plastic, but they also didn't have to buy the cardboard cores, so they saved money. There's one example.
MR. COLWELL: That's the kind of example I like to hear about because it's very, very positive.
That's fine with a company that's dealing with one type of plastic - it's very specific and you can invest in the equipment to do that. But a small manufacturer who might be dealing with polyethylene today and Teflon tomorrow, and something else the next day, and something else the next day and the next day, not enough of any one thing to get a process through, because you can bring a grinder in and pelletize it and you can sell it that way, as long as you know exactly what it is and it's all exactly the same material, and when I say exactly the same material, I use Deleron for example, there are probably 1,000 different types of Deleron - what does a small company like that do?
MR. PARENT: It's a good question you ask, Keith. Certainly we will look into that and see if there are some measures that we can meet for small companies. On the large system, as the example I gave, that worked well - but you're right, there is a problem there.
There's a study being done, I'm told, by the RRFB on markets for plastics. We'll get you a copy of that.
[3:30 p.m.]
MR. COLWELL: Okay, that would be good. The same guys that give the tire recycling to Lafarge to burn - I'm losing a little bit of confidence in the RRFB. Good people, but I know they have some problems getting rid of this stuff.
That's one question I had. Now I asked you in Question Period about the report on the tire burning that you commissioned to Dalhousie - which, by the way, I'm very pleased you and your department did that; I have a lot of faith in Dalhousie University and the scientists there. On March 21st, you told me you expected the study was going to be available, on March 21st actually. I'll just read what you said in the House: "Right now I have commissioned a study by Dalhousie. I understand the study is available as of this morning. I have not yet seen it. I will over the next few days take a look at it." And it says including the health concerns and stuff - you probably remember what you said, but I would assume that was a draft copy that you talking about at that time?
MR. PARENT: Yes, it's a draft copy, and the finished copy should be available Tuesday, next week, for me and I'll be seeing it at that stage. I haven't seen the draft copy yet. I know that my department officials have seen the draft copy and I've asked them to get
[Page 156]
the finished copy as quickly as possible, because I know everyone's eager to see what it says in there and I'm as eager as anyone else.
So, the draft copy was available on the date I gave you. I haven't seen it. I was told that ministers don't usually look at draft copies, so I haven't looked at it, but the finished copy should be out next week.
MR. COLWELL: Does your staff have a definite date for that?
MR. PARENT: Wednesday is the date we have now.
MR. COLWELL: Wednesday of next week, which would be the 4th of April? Is that correct? Yes - your staff is saying yes in the background. So that will be good.
Would it be possible to get a copy of the RFP that you put out to do the study? I would like to see what that requested.
MR. PARENT: Yes. I think we provided that to the critic for the NDP, the terms of reference. We'll give you that.
MR. COLWELL: Okay, I just like to see that because the terms of reference often influence what the outcome is. I ran a business for a long time and that's very tricky, you're going to learn very, very early.
Another question I have about tires: In the past, a long, long time ago when all this tire situation and discussions started about it, there were some people who claimed - and I stress only "claimed" - that they had a use for tires that was environmentally friendly. They weren't going to burn them or anything, and they couldn't get tires - the RRFB wouldn't give them to them. In other words, if they could go to a tire place and they could pick them up and take them and process them, whatever they were going to do with them, again after being approved by Environment or whatever the case might be, some kind of processing operation and then take those and sell them and make a profit on it and ultimately pay for the process - is that still the case?
MR. PARENT: Not that I'm aware of, and if it were the case I would certainly encourage RRFB to use that process. Used tires seem to be a problem everywhere in the world, so if there were some way in which tires could be recycled in an environmentally friendly fashion that was cost- effective, I'd be eager to know about it. I'm not aware of that.
In fact, the problem that RRFB has is that the tires are a liability. That's why the environmental fee is there, to help offset that to a certain degree. It was set quite awhile ago at $3 and that is barely sufficient to cover now the pickup and distribution of it. But I'd be happy if there's more information on that. I'd pass that on to RRFB.
[Page 157]
MR. COLWELL: I just wonder if that's a policy - maybe you could ask RRFB or staff could ask RRFB if that indeed is a policy?
MR. PARENT: How long ago . . .
MR. COLWELL: This would have been first, when the process was set up.
MR. PARENT: At one time, they were taking the tires and using nitrogen and freezing them and then smashing them and pelletizing them, but that was an extremely expensive process, and actually the production of nitrogen to freeze them was very heavy concentrated greenhouse gases, so that process became economically unfeasible.
MR. COLWELL: Again, this question - staff may have to go back for answers and, if they do, that's fine - has the RRFB looked at being really innovative with tires and see if there's some way they can actually - with the $3 they collect, and I realize some of that's for transportation, but in other resources they have, to see if they could take and help some other entrepreneur who may have a solution for this? To invest in equipment or whatever has to be done to get rid of some of these tires and make some money on them.
MR. PARENT: Yes, we're very open to suggestions on this, Keith. We have about one million tires that are produced, so that needs to be able to handle that volume. There are some technologies out there that can handle a very small amount of tires and recycle them, but the volume is what's needed and that's where we're having the problem - to handle the volume of tires. So any suggestions that would come, anything you hear of, we'd be delighted to hear about that.
At one time, we were using the pelletized tires for mats for cows to stand on and also for that artificial turf where the pelletized rubber is in, but it just became prohibitive - it wasn't economically feasible for companies to do that.
MR. COLWELL: Sometimes the solution to these things - as I say, I have an entrepreneurial background, so sometimes I look at things differently than perhaps some one in the bureaucracy would look at it, where they're used to having to follow the rules and do this and this is what you have to do today. I spent most of my life developing new products and new equipment and new processes, and there are a lot of people out there who do the same thing I used to do. Even if you could get rid of some of the tires in a process that could grow very rapidly if it was there and made available to entrepreneurs to do that sort of thing - and I'm not talking about not sensible, approaches, let's put it that way - I will be polite, approaches that would possibly get rid of maybe 5,000 tires.
Those are a lot of tires gone, and if someone could do that on a small basis and make an income for themselves, maybe in some rural part of Nova Scotia, and someone else did the same thing or a little bit different thing through different parts of the province.
[Page 158]
MR. PARENT: If that was the case, I would certainly encourage RRFB to break down the tender, if there was sufficient volume that maybe two operations could handle it. I know the entrepreneurial spirit support - we have a fund for new environmental technologies that we give out grants to companies to encourage them to be innovative and we are trying to do more and more of that. So spread the word and let us know of anything.
It's interesting, you talk about tires and innovation - I just go back to my childhood. They knew how to get rid of tires in Bolivia, they made sandals out of them - and bungee cords, which is a very innovative way to deal with them. In fact, I have one to keep a tarp on that works better than anything you could buy at the store here.
So, yes, innovation is important and sometimes we overlook things which is, I think, what lies behind your questioning. I will push RRFB on whether there are some innovative practices out there. I already have talked to them about it, if there are innovative practices out there that have been overlooked, and certainly there is that fund that is available to help with new environmental technologies and to encourage companies to be innovative.
MR. COLWELL: The other problem may be - if you are looking at 900,000 tires and some entrepreneur is looking at it and they imagine that pile growing in their yard somewhere that they aren't allowed to have there, and they are going to use 4,000 or 5,000 tires a year to start, or a couple of thousand, whatever the case may be - that's just too big to handle. So really what should be done is - and oftentimes government gets so big with these things, that you say, okay, there is only one person who can handle them and probably that's part of the process, although I don't agree with the deal with Lafarge. Even the burning of them in Quebec is a problem for us here - if the winds blow those contaminants here and, as you have said, the greenhouse gases to get them there.
If you break it down in little pieces or make it available in pieces - if you put your tender out and said, we want to get rid of 900,000 tires, give us a proposal for that but also if you can get rid of 100 tires or 1,000 tires, we will entertain that as part of the overall package, separate from some big company taking them all over. It would be so simple to do. If no one comes forward, you have lost nothing, and if someone does come forward, you might spur a new industry. It might be someone who is going to make blasting mats; it could be anything.
MR. PARENT: It's a good question. I have pushed this question in terms of buying local, and one of the things I was pleased to hear about in buying local is that instead of just the tenders going out in, say, the Capital Health District for meat, they go out now for beef, for pork and they have broken that down into the various meat products so that smaller companies can tender on them.
I take your remarks under advisement. I think that if the study proves that these cannot be used in a safe fashion - I don't know how long, Lafarge has the tender contract,
[Page 159]
how long is that for? I guess it's a five-year contract Lafarge has, which isn't going to make you happy, I know.
MR. COLWELL: Five years?
MR. PARENT: Five years, yes.
MR. COLWELL: That wasn't very carefully thought out. Anyway, so basically for five years Lafarge - best circumstance that we could have in Nova Scotia, which is horrible - they ship them to Quebec and burn them?
MR. PARENT: Yes. Anyway, it's a good point you make.
MR. COLWELL: So that is our best situation. Our worst situation, potentially, is that they will burn them here, or a large number of them here. You can't comment on that, I know, because you haven't got the study, so I will leave with no answer on that point.
It goes back, again - I have a lot of faith in the Resource Recovery Fund Board and what they do, but my faith is growing shorter and shorter, and my confidence is lapsing here because there are so many things it could be doing. I brought up before an issue that happened in my area, we have an illegal dump - well, it's not an illegal dump, it's a road with all kinds of garbage along the side of it. It cost the Province of Nova Scotia - the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal actually - $140,000 to clean it up about two or three years ago, and that's with all kinds of volunteer labour. If they wouldn't have had the volunteer labour, it probably would have been over $0.25 million to clean this one area up.
Now, the municipality doesn't make it easy for people to get rid of their garbage and I don't mean stuff that they don't want in the landfill or stuff they don't want recycled - that's another issue which I want to talk about in a minute, but they don't make it easy. They are limiting the number of garbage bags you can put out now, which there is a tendency to do that but if you are going to do that, you have to make it easier to recycle. So you have to have more things that you can recycle, because now, personally, I put out one bag of garbage for every blue bag, and the blue bag is solid full and the garbage bag is maybe half to three-quarters full. So we are going in the right direction. That's just me doing the stuff that you are supposed to be doing with recycling - and sometimes we slip, maybe put a piece of plastic in garbage that you shouldn't, but it would be very little - so we are going in the right direction.
The real answer to help the municipality is to make sure that we recycle almost everything, absolutely everything - and I don't think we are moving fast enough in that direction. I know it's on council to build these cells they have out here, which is another topic. It is several million dollars for the dump and if we can eliminate those things, the cost
[Page 160]
will save the taxpayers and the municipality a pile of money and also will eliminate the dump, which would be really nice.
[3:45 p.m.]
Has the department got anything really aggressive toward recycling more of the products or processing them in another way? I know the composting facility seems to work pretty good, but I won't buy any more compost in there because it is full of glass and plastics and all kinds of stuff, but the idea is good and it still has a lot of use. So it is a lot better than putting it in the dump.
MR. PARENT: Well basically our latest effort in that regard is the electronic waste recycling program. That program, as you know, was announced not that long ago because there are about 4.5 million kilograms of electronic waste products that are thrown in the landfills right now - and I know you are wanting this to move along a little faster than the one year, but we are quite enthusiastic about that program and we don't intend to stop there.
One of the things we are looking at with the other Ministers of Environment across Atlantic Canada beyond the electronic waste, which I don't think any other province has moved on yet in Atlantic Canada and it may well be that they follow our model - I hope so - but also our oil filters. Right now the oil is recycled, but the steel in the oil filter is just tossed into the garbage. So we need very much, as you say, to offer recycling opportunities and to be more aggressive and not just to rest on our laurels, but we are very, very proud of the e-waste program.
If you forgive me for boasting about it a little bit - because it was something I had a part in - most of the work was done before I got there clearly, but we had some interesting negotiations with industry and we were able to move further than any other province in terms of the range of products that will be handled. Those took some, I will just say, interesting negotiations that I was involved in personally, but we are very proud of that. So we will not only deal with the computer monitors and the large projects in Phase I, but Phase II will start to deal with cell phones and other products like that. And they have talked about it, but no other province has put time limits on when those will be dealt with, but we need to do more of that and we intend to do more of that.
As I said, e-waste is one; oil filters we've looked at as being another. Paint, we're already working at fairly aggressively and there are many other products that could be treated in that way, and we intend to move in that direction. To get the disposal rate down to the goals that are set out in the bill that I tabled is going to be challenging so we need, as you say - and I appreciate what you say, Keith several times - we need to make it as easy as possible for people because, if we don't, they'll just toss it in the woods. We need to provide for municipalities as much relief as possible by providing products that are recycled.
[Page 161]
So on both of those goals we're trying to make it as easy as possible, which is why in our Enviro-Depot program we have 60 sites throughout the province, geographically spread out, and we keep working at that very hard and are trying to get more products diverted in order to help the municipalities. The e-waste program is the latest one, but we won't stop there.
MR. COLWELL: I think I mentioned this to you before - I recently had my propane tank filled and I was over the 10 years and they wouldn't refill it. The guy asked, do you want to leave it here and my answer was of course, because I can't get rid of it anywhere else. So I went on to ask him - and it was just a guy filling the tanks - and he said they're 10 years here but in another country they're 20 years. He said they gather them up, get them refinished and they sell them and make money off of them. That's fine with me because I'm getting rid of a problem, but why hasn't the Resource Recovery Fund Board found out about this? They could take those to the Enviro-Depots and the Enviro-Depots can move them on and do whatever they have to do with them - it may be another business for someone in the province to employ a couple of people.
MR. PARENT: It's a good point. I'm informed that we work with the industry, so if the industry is willing to move in this direction we encourage and support them. I guess we don't want to hog all of the money from industry if they can make money on recycling, but there are also some concerns about insurance liabilities with anything that could be potentially explosive around the property, and that has been a concern that has been raised in terms of propane tanks.
We are not having a problem right now. The tank is taken back by the person you buy the tank from so it's not proving to be a problem, and if they can make some money on it then- although I'd like to see RRFB have as much money as possible, because they fund educational programs - personally I guess that may be a benefit to that industry and as long as it's not becoming a liability, where they're dumping tanks somewhere, then perhaps that system works fairly well. But there is some concern about liability.
But we do work with industry on - like the stewardship program, the electronic waste is very much an industry-led initiative, that we'll be working with them. They have to do the stewardship programs and I have to sign off on them, but they have full power to set fees; they will have a large say, we encourage them in will they set up their own collection system or use the RRFB - we're encouraging them of course to use the RRFB; and then the dismantling of them and how they're used. We're working with them through various projects.
New Directions has talked to me about various organizations that they work with across the province. One in New Minas for example - the Flower Cart - with people who are differently-abled and they would very much like to be able to be part of the process of the dismantling of these electronic products. That's the situation that happens in Saskatchewan
[Page 162]
and it works well and it provides employment across the province for individuals who might not be employable otherwise, so it gives them a sense of self-respect. But industry ultimately, because it is their plan, will be the ones who make that decision. We will put as much suasion on them as possible for that, so we do try and work with industry extensively in terms of recycling.
MR. COLWELL: There's another propane problem that hasn't been cured as far as I know, and it's the little tiny ones that you screw onto barbecues and other things. Lo and behold, a gentleman called me up in my riding and said he had seventy-five of them and can't get rid of them. I don't know how long he was collecting these. I think he had a little propane barbecue; I don't know what he was using them on - it doesn't matter but the point was, I started checking and I checked everywhere. You're not allowed to put them in the garbage, you're not allowed to put them in recycling, and you can't take them to the scrap yard because there's propane potentially in them and it could be explosive.
They would take the steel if you could give them a guarantee that all of the propane was out of them - and they will take the big ones once they're drained, and they'll crush them. There was no other place to put them, but he said he refused to dump them in the woods, he refused to do that. Thank goodness he said that, because they have a plastic bottom on them - they're all steel with a brass valve in them, I believe. So that is an issue that has to be addressed.
MR. PARENT: We'll have to get back to you on that. You've raise some very good questions there, Keith, and that's one of them. We're not sure, I know individuals have just tossed them in their garbage in the green bag, quite a few individuals.
MR. COLWELL: Well I hope they don't crush them and blow up the truck.
MR. PARENT: Yes. So we will get back to you on that, it's a very good question.
MR. COLWELL: I think pretty well everyone is getting rid of them, and if that hits that truck wrong and it's got the wrong concentration of propane left in it - if it hits the wrong place in that truck it could explode the truck, I would think.
MR. PARENT: We'll get back to you on that.
MR. COLWELL: So that's an occupational health and safety thing, for the garbageman, which goes beyond recycling.
So that's something I think that could probably be recycled too. Again if we can get some innovation here - go to a small company and say we've got this problem, what can you do to fix it for me? I know when I had my business, if you would have come with those little propane bottles it would have been a week and I would have had a solution on how to get all
[Page 163]
of the propane out of them and strip them down to get the plastic off of them so then you could take them to the scrap yard, if nothing more, and sell them for scrap to make some money.
There has been one really good thing that has happened - and I've mentioned this before, I think - that a refrigerator or a stove or anything with any steel in it is not a problem anymore. If you have one that you want to get rid of, I have some friends of mine who work and make their winter living off of collecting these things and taking them to the scrap yard. They're quite valuable for the steel in them, which is really positive I think. The other thing with those are though, and I think we talked about that briefly before, if you're moving away and you have to get rid of a fridge or stove, now, here in the regional municipality, they have a really good program for taking refrigerant out of refrigerators. You have to call and it takes up to two weeks to a month to get the guy to come and do it but it's free which is a good arrangement and even at that, waiting that time is not serious. I mean that's not a problem.
An individual is moving away who has to get rid of a fridge and a stove, maybe a dishwasher, because the people who bought their house don't want it, they put it out by the side of the road, which is illegal because you're not allowed to put your garbage out now before 7 a.m in the morning - everyone does it, but nobody gets fined very often unless someone complains. So you're moving away and it's the day after garbage day so it sits out there for two weeks and the garbage guy comes along and says, I'm only allowed to take one appliance, so he takes whatever and two appliances are left there. Two weeks go by, he goes back, one more appliance, so six weeks later, unless one of my friends come along or people in the community come along who figure they can sell these things, which hopefully happens first, it's gone.
Why can't that individual take these things to one of these Enviro-Depots? These things are not dangerous, even with the refrigerant in them. Then get the regional municipality to come and drain the refrigerant all in one spot, save them a lot of money, and then have the stuff trucked away, because it does have a value.
MR. PARENT: The Enviro-Depots are not really set up for those types of articles, so it's a good point you raise. The municipalities, say HRM, takes care of them but some municipalities don't. The problem in HRM comes specifically when someone is moving. I guess they could replace all of their appliances at once, but traditionally they don't. If they move and there are appliances then it does become a problem. I'll look into it and see if there's any solution to that, but off hand I have no answer to give you. But that would be, I think, fairly small and it would be mainly when people were moving and the appliances may be old, because traditionally I think - at least I know my practice. We replaced a stove and then a couple years later the fridge and so that wasn't a problem, but I could see a problem if someone's moving and their appliances, the person had brand new ones that they wanted and the person didn't want to move their old ones - that could become a problem.
[Page 164]
MR. COLWELL: Yes, I recently got rid of a wall oven - it actually worked - and I put it out by my roadside and two days later it was gone, but I wasn't allowed to really put it there when I did. Also I could have got a fine from the municipality for having it there.
MR. PARENT: I've done that, too. It's amazing what people will take.
MR. COLWELL: I think it's great. It is great if they can use it.
MR. PARENT: It's good, it's great entrepreneurial spirit.
MR. COLWELL: But you realize in the regional municipality that if you take that out of my yard, where it's out for garbage, you can get fined. You're not allowed to take it. So there are a whole lot of things here set up that are against ease of getting rid of garbage, and what could happen with that is the municipality takes it - hopefully they've got a good system of getting rid of it, I'm not convinced they have - but if they do have, someone could take and strip all the copper wire out of it and throw the rest in the woods even if they did take it. So, you know, there are all kinds of problems there. So if it went to a place like the Enviro-Depots and was processed - to strip a stove for instance, take the insulation out of it, the wire, and separate all the stuff - they wouldn't have to do it there, but somewhere to do that and you might be able to get a little business going for somebody doing these things.
MR. PARENT: The RRFB, I understand, is going to be looking at the recycling of white goods, appliances, in the future. So there may be a fix coming for that.
MR. COLWELL: Good, not soon enough as far as I'm concerned.
You just have to make it easy for people, and that's a problem. What I'm fighting with every day, and a lot of these questions come from illegal dumping - I have a tremendous problem with illegal dumping. We're just far enough out of the core of the city, it's a short little ride and you take and dump the stuff in the woods and you are rid of it. In the meantime, it could cause an environmental hazard. It depends on what they dump. It could be paint, it could be solvents, it could be old gasoline which is another problem, a lot of these things that are so difficult to do.
[4:00 p.m.]
For instance, in the regional municipality now, if you have household hazardous waste, if you have a spray bomb full of household cleaner, or a bottle of dishwashing detergent that you don't want to use for whatever reason - say, if you use it you get a rash on your hands - you've got to take that one Saturday, and it's not every Saturday, way out to the industrial park in Halifax and get rid of it. You're not allowed to do anything else with it. You can't take it to the Enviro-Depot. It's not really hazardous waste. You can't take it to the Enviro-Depot; you can't do anything with it.
[Page 165]
So let's say you live in Ecum Secum, at the far end of the community, it's a two- and- a-half to three-hour drive to this household hazardous waste facility that's open some Saturdays. It doesn't make sense; it simply doesn't make sense. So what do people do? Dump it down the drain, dump it in the yard, and then they put the container in the green bag with what's left in it, which you really aren't supposed to do either, and then they got a problem again.
MR. PARENT: A lot of that comes from economies of scale, as you know. I have the same problem with the pesticides in agriculture where leftover pesticides, which were never going to be used, had gone bad, and people were just dumping them in the woods. There is a program that's industry-led, and that we helped with in the past, and I think this past year we helped with again. Hopefully the industry will be able to cover the costs for them totally, but I made the same argument as you did - that, you know, it's far better putting a bit of government money if we have to than these things ending up in the woods where they're going to create long-term problems.
We also have to move aggressively in terms of industry - or the producers of these having a responsibility, extended producer responsibility. So that's something that we need, too, that people can't just sell products and then that's the end of their responsibility for the product, and that's what we were doing with e-waste.
I mean I agree with you on ease, but people I think have to take pride in their environment, and we need to make it as easy as possible, but people also have to be willing to put some effort into it. I know that that's an educational process. RRFB has a very good educational process in the schools to encourage children, and as they grow up it becomes sort of second nature to them, but once you do get outside the built-up cores it becomes far more tempting just to throw it in the woods, and that's the problem that you're talking about in your riding.
We'll take a look to see if maybe we can expand, but a lot of it is just economies of scale, you know, having places that can handle certain products. We can't have them everywhere because there's just not enough of that product to make it feasible, but certainly I'll push RRFB in that direction.
MR. COLWELL: Yes. The other thing is, again, we've got all these Enviro-Depots, and they are small businesspeople who are out there trying to make a living. Some of them I think do okay, but none of them really make very much money doing what they do. There's no reason at all that they couldn't be handling some of these, what we call household hazardous waste. Now, I'm not talking about dealing with gasoline or things that are explosive, but a lot of the things like household cleaners and stuff like that, as long as they're in a good tight container that they originally came in and things like that, there's no reason that they couldn't collect those in a closed-in container of some type that would be
[Page 166]
appropriate for that, and then maybe a couple times a year they come around and collect this material, so it's handled at the time and makes it easy for people.
It's not an issue where you get rid of it, and it would probably be a whole lot cheaper than what HRM does. HRM costs, by the way, if you set up - the household hazardous waste guys come, $10,000 a day for those Saturdays they have there, and ultimately the staff at HRM are totally responsible for what they do, not the contractors. So whoever wrote that contract didn't do a very good job, but that's another point. So if you can make those things easy for people to do, but safe - and I think it's easy to do. I don't think the RRFB really has a vision for anything that's sort of not the norm and maybe they're not tasked to do that now. Maybe they should be tasked to do that and find innovative ways to do these things.
Sometimes these innovative ways, actually people when they start working at these things will make money at it, so it won't cost the taxpayers anything, or RRFB anything - and sometimes it won't, but that's what they're there for, and that's why we pay deposits and that's why we do these things. Now, that's just my opinion.
MR. PARENT: And I appreciate that. I know for example, my executive assistant - her husband came back from Hawaii and because she's now working with me, although he would have done this anyway in the past because he's very interested in the environment, but he brought back a little jar which they passed on to RRFB. What it was, was crushed glass and they're using that as gravel in fills, et cetera, over in Hawaii because it's inert and it takes care of a problem that they were having there.
So any ideas that come, we certainly look at, and RRFB I know is active in various conferences and we're active as a department. In fact my secretary likes to tease - she came from Community Services and she says, your staff here are going to various conferences in Toronto, Ontario, and Newfoundland and Labrador, even down to the States, wherever. The reason why is because we're very interested in the department - in both Labour and Environment - in best practices. So any ideas like that, we will accept and pass on, encourage RRFB, encourage our department to use them, and so the little model of crushed glass - and that's how Hawaii deals with all their glass. They've turned it into a product because they don't have a lot of aggregate there that they can use. So now they've solved two problems in one, which is what you're getting at.
So I appreciate this and certainly I'll make sure RRFB gets a copy of the recordings of this procedure - these are recorded, aren't they, Mr. Chairman?
MR. CHAIRMAN: Yes.
MR. COLWELL: And overall I think RRFB is doing a pretty good job, don't get me wrong . . .
[Page 167]
MR. PARENT: I know you do.
MR. COLWELL: . . . it's just the fact that I think we've got to progress much faster with these things and we've got to really look at again - I can't stress enough - innovative ways to do these things and to really push forward and resolve these problems.
MR. PARENT: I was just determining, Keith, where the innovation fund was. I knew RRFB had one, but I didn't know if we had a similar one. But they have an environmental innovative fee and we will, as a department, do specific projects from time to time - so I'm sorry for talking while you were, but I was trying to get that in my mind as well.
MR. COLWELL: No problem. Just a question about those now that you mention it. How difficult is it for someone to access those funds? When I say that, I want to qualify it because I want to make sure that someone who is qualified to do the work gets the money, not just someone gets the money for some idea.
MR. PARENT: I've confirmed that it's a fairly simple process and the big projects or small projects qualify. It's not just for big projects, because that is often a problem that we have, that just big projects get money - but small, little projects, thousands of dollars, are eligible for this. If the project is innovative and deals with helping the environment, it gets funding, and the department will do specific ones as well that augment that.
MR. COLWELL: Okay, thank you.
Do you, as minister, or the department. have the ability - if you found that this burning of tires is really, really bad with the study you are having done, or any future study - to cancel the five- year contract with Lafarge?
MR. PARENT: The authority I have is to not let them use tires for tire-derived fuel if the study shows that, but in terms of the contractual arrangement they have with Lafarge, I have no authority to cancel that.
MR. COLWELL: Okay, that being the case, would it be possible to get a copy of the contract that Lafarge signed with RRFB?
MR. PARENT: Once the contract is fully signed, we'll get you a copy of it.
MR. COLWELL: When do you feel that will be?
MR. PARENT: Because they won the tender, as you know as a business person, they have a certain contractual right by law, but they haven't yet signed the contract. I don't know exactly when they will do that, but the moment they do I will get it to you.
[Page 168]
MR. COLWELL: Is there any possibility that since this contract hasn't been signed, that it won't be signed until this study is released and see if it is safe to burn tires even in Quebec? We're going to get some of the results of that, where they're burning them in Quebec now.
MR. PARENT: I'll check into that, Keith, I can't give you an answer right now.
MR. COLWELL: That's a very important question.
MR. PARENT: The RRFB is at arm's length, and as you know . . .
MR. COLWELL: I realize that.
MR. PARENT: . . . was set up by a previous government that you were part of. That's why we're in the situation we're in right now, in the sense that the RRFB has a perfect right to make decisions but because I have the authority as Minister of Environment and Labour on the industrial approvals, they can move towards awarding the contract for the use of tires but they can't award them for tire-derived fuel, in spite of the fact that RRFB clearly feels, because of studies they have done, that that would be a permissible activity. I want to respect the independence of RRFB so that's why I answered the way I did.
MR. COLWELL: And who ultimately does the RRFP report to?
MR. PARENT: Well ultimately I'm the sole shareholder of the RRFP, but they are set up as an arm's length enterprise, similar to the Workers' Compensation Board - well, slightly different than the Workers' Compensation Board, but they have an independence that has to be respected because we wanted political interference out of it, but ultimately to the Legislature, as WCB does, they report through me.
MR. COLWELL: The reason I ask that is that as the sole shareholder, you probably control something to this extent and I can understand why it was, and I know why it was set up the way it was and I think that's the proper way to do it. This is a very unusual situation here and it's unfortunate that it worked out this way. It would have been nice if someone had come along, so we could use all these tires and turn them into something that can be used, and I know that they did look at some other alternatives.
MR. PARENT: It's the question of independence and accountability, and trying to work those two together in a balance that works best for the citizens. You know all about that, and most of the time it works well. Sometimes the balance is off on one side or the other.
MR. COLWELL: Another thing, too, that I always thought might be interesting, because the municipalities - and I think this is a good idea - are encouraged to recycle and
[Page 169]
reuse and reduce and get the ratio of their garbage as compared to the recyclables, as high as they can, and they get a cash prize for doing that, let's say. I know, I have been there several times when RFB has come in with a pretty substantial cheque for the Halifax Regional Municipality, which was rather nice to see. It didn't nearly pay, not even a fraction or scratch the surface of what it costs to run the system they've got and that's a discussion for them, not us.
We go back to the illegal dumping - now the regional municipality typically has bylaw enforcement that can come out and say, clean your property up. So if you own a property here in the Halifax Regional Municipality and I take and dump my old tires and my old car and every other kind of junk that's possible and dump some oil on your property, bylaw enforcement comes along and says guess what, you've got to clean your property up. That's the way it works and that's the way it is.
Can we change it so that the RFB could - like the incident that happened that the province had to pay for, and luckily they did on this one particular road and they went a little bit further than they normally would do and I appreciate that they did do that, as a community does - why couldn't, instead of the municipality getting $3 million or $4 million, why didn't we take $140,000 off of that for this cleanup, that they did nothing to prevent, and took no real action to do that and it's within the regional municipality? They'd only have to do that once or twice and they'd get real tough with their bylaws and they'd be out there after people and charging people for illegal dumping.
[4:15 p.m.]
MR. PARENT: Yes, I remember you making the suggestion in the House, I listened with great interest. Again, that's a bit of a dance that you'd know something about with the municipalities and right now there are certain municipalities that are wanting to speak to me about the onerous task we put on them of taking care of solid waste.
I'd have to think very, very carefully about that because we have to work co-operatively with the municipalities in terms of the ways we set targets and goals. They're the ones who meet them and they have different ways of meeting them. We depend on that good sort of relationship, so I'd have to think very carefully about that one. I did listen with interest when you made the suggestion in the Legislature.
MR. COLWELL: I remember years and years ago - and it tells how old I am now - there was a police strike here in Halifax and people were setting fires downtown here, they were racing around with their cars and doing all kinds of stuff that wasn't acceptable. So that went on for three or four days and the RCMP was here and they just couldn't handle the situation because they didn't have enough resources to do it and they couldn't get them in here quick enough.
[Page 170]
I remember the story in the paper, the guy came in and he spun his tires and was not just a little bit but really caused a problem. So it was the first case that morning and he went in to see the judge and the RCMP was there and they explained the situation, a ticket and everything, and the guy started to talk about something and the judge said, $3,000 - do you want to do it in jail time or pay cash? There was no more burning downtown, there were no more problems downtown - that ended the problem. So that's why you use the analogy with the municipality. Now you can work towards that over a period of time and give them time - and I realize they do need time to work on bylaws and maybe laws that we would have to pass here to help them, to make illegal dumping a pretty serious offence. You only have to do it once, and it's rampant. I mean this is not just a little problem, this is a huge problem. Eventually something is going to happen with some of this stuff and it is going to cause some kind of an environmental disaster. It is going to get in somebody's well, or it is going to get into the water system, some of this junk, and whoever does it is just going to walk away. Anyway, that's just something to consider.
Okay, I'm going to switch now to the Workers' Compensation Board which, by the way, have been really good to deal with lately. I think they're going in the right direction and the complaints I have about the board - except for individual cases which I won't discuss here today of course, they seem to have turned over a new leaf. I remember when I was MLA many years ago, when someone came in with a workers' compensation problem I just knew that was it, we can forget this and go on to something else because you wouldn't get any information, co-operation or anything.
I can remember only one case in about a six-year period where we were successful with the Workers' Compensation Board, and I simply wrote a letter off to the Workers' Compensation Board and they said the person wasn't disabled - but they had received Canada Pension Disability and they got disability from and insurance company, so I just wrote them a letter and said how come these two people say they are disabled and you say they aren't and they approved it. I don't know if that affected it or not.
Anyway, back to chronic pain, how is that going? How far along are we with that? Is there any chance of an unfunded liability with that?
MR. PARENT: That was a concern of mine when I became - well, prior to becoming Minister of Environment and Labour, when Kerry Morash was the minister, because there was concern that the chronic pain would break the system, it would be so expensive.
We're on track, we're about $170 million, which is within what the projections were. I was just talking to the Chairman and to Nancy MacCready-Williams and they feel that they'll be able to wrap up the first part of the chronic pain and that they'll have been successful in dealing with it.
[Page 171]
We are, across Canada, one of the jurisdictions that are most generous in dealing with chronic pain. It was something that when the Supreme Court made their decision, of course, the Workers' Compensation Board had a lot of consternation about, and my department as well, because as you know the Workers' Compensation Board, the unfunded liability was about $400 million and climbing. It was a great concern and some of the larger companies were complaining the system was broke, they were going to pull out of the Workers' Compensation Board. So, as a result of that, the Dorsey report, lots of things, we set up a new governance structure with stakeholders and I understand the unfunded liability is now down, the last I heard it was about $350 million. So progress has been made and hopefully that will begin to flow back in both lower costs to employers and higher benefits to employees.
MR. COLWELL: Yes, and I really like the process they've gone through to penalize the unsafe employers, because I think that's part of the problem.
MR. PARENT: And that's what we've said. I was approached - sorry to interrupt, but I was approached by a big employer, which I won't name publicly, and a couple of times, and they said bring our Workers' Compensation Board payments down, you've got to do that or we'll leave the province and people will be out of work . My response has been - you know a lot of that, most of that, is in your hands; you bring down your accident rate and you'll bring down your payments. I think a lot of companies have gotten the message and realize that if they want to save on their bottom line, one way is to have fewer accidents and the WCB payments come down.
Also, there has been a shift in emphasis from dealing with the acute cases, which we still do, to trying to deal with prevention - similar to what's happened in the health system - and that has proved to be a benefit. I mentioned that in the early 80s it was 10 accidents per 100 employees - let me get that figure right, I had that in my mind, it just flows, but it has come from 10 per 100 down to 3 per 100. Yes, 10 lost-time accidents per 100 employees down to 3 per 100 employees, so we're moving in the right direction. We'll not be content until we bring that down, if we can, to zero and certainly will not be content until we bring down the fatality rate. The fatality rate, by the way, for this year is down substantially. So the fatality rate is coming down as well.
MR. COLWELL: That's good news. Over a longer period of time it will be better for everybody, especially the people who are getting hurt.
MR. PARENT: Some of the industries, as you know, Keith, were very high accident rates and the WCB really targeted them, worked with them, not just the stick but also worked with them to help them bring down their accident rates and it's been successful, as you mentioned.
MR. COLWELL: I have many more questions to ask.
[Page 172]
MR. CHAIRMAN: You have one minute.
MR. COLWELL: Okay. I just want to draw your attention to one thing. It's the mandate of the department. It says - and I don't know which page it's on here - but it says the mission of the department is to create a healthy environment. I would just ask you to consider that beyond anything else when you think about burning these tires and giving approval. That's all I would ask. Thank you.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Your time is elapsed.
The honourable member for Dartmouth South-Portland Valley, and the time is now 4:24 p.m.
MS. MARILYN MORE: Mr. Minister, I would like to ask a few questions regarding the environmental side of your responsibilities.
As you probably recognize, the former City of Dartmouth used to be called the City of Lakes, and waterways in Dartmouth have been critical to our past, or heritage. They are critical to the current quality of life, and they are a legacy that we want to leave for future generations. I have to say that since I was elected four years ago, a surprisingly high number of inquiries and concerns have come into my office about the integrity of waterways in the Dartmouth area. There have been concerns about lack of coordination; residents expressing concerns over water quality in a particular lake being directed back and forth among the three different levels of government; concerns about the lack of coordination and the lack of regular monitoring; and just a general sense that water quality in our waterways within our municipal region are deteriorating.
I had the opportunity to bring together a number of community organizations, local monitoring groups, interested citizens, and provincial organizations, last fall and we've had a second meeting. We created what we call DAWN, the Dartmouth Area Watersheds Network. I'm very pleased to say that it has been handed over and the coordinating group for DAWN is now a subcommittee operating under Clean Nova Scotia and they are providing considerable leadership and support to that initiative.
I am raising this because I think it's a prime example of how government and community and the voluntary sector can work together in communities on environmental concerns. So I'm just wondering - in the past it has been my impression that one of the main focuses of your department has just been sort of drinking water quality and some other areas. Now I realize that apparently tomorrow you are announcing a water strategy, but my chance to question you is today so my questions may be a little premature and you may not be able to answer them in entirety. I'm just wondering, does your current budget for Environment include new money that is going to broaden your interest and focus on protection of waterways in Nova Scotia?
[Page 173]
MR. PARENT: Absolutely. I do want to thank you, Marilyn, because when we spoke about it in the Legislature last year, I commended you on your question and commended you on the work that you are doing in your riding. I think it's somehow fitting that we are launching the water strategy in your riding tomorrow - and I think you got the invitation from me, handwritten.
MS. MORE: I did, and I'll be very pleased to.
MR. PARENT: There is $200,000 to be allotted this year, and we anticipate that will need to rise in order to do a proper water strategy, but we're getting started on it.
Water is the most valuable commodity we have out there, and we've taken it for granted. In 2002 we did the Drinking Water Strategy and now we feel that we're moving forward enough on that that we can launch a larger water strategy. I've said before to my colleagues and to the House that the effects of climate change when you look at it in water, in rainfall amounts, in melting ice caps, in rising sea levels, we need to get a handle on what is happening with our water system, on protecting it - not simply with drinking water, but beyond that. Your colleague raised the issue of intertidal coastal properties - and all that's going to be grist for the mill. One of the things the media have been very interested in is fees for bottled water, and that has certainly been something that has been of interest for the Canadian Ministers of Environment.
I was interested to see - we've been working on this water strategy, I've been promoting it ever since we chatted in the Legislature before that, and before that I'd been interested in it as well, but I was interested to see that the federal government is too, it has realized that water is one of the key components and has launched a National Water Strategy and there is some funding that, hopefully, we can access provincially to help augment what we're doing.
So, the figure is $200,000 for this year.
MS. MORE: That's province-wide, to develop a provincial strategy?
MR. PARENT: It will be - we're anticipating a three-year strategy. I'll be certainly going back to the Finance Minister for more money on it.
It's also competitive advantage - GPIAtlantic did a study on how much water is worth to the Province of Nova Scotia and I think came up - don't quote me on this one, but I think it was about $3 billion. Over three billion litres of water are extracted by Nova Scotians per day for various uses - drinking water, industrial uses, watering their lawns, all sorts of uses. And it's throughout the world, the estimates are by the year 2030 about - well, right now there are 400 million people who don't have proper access to water, and that's estimated to
[Page 174]
rise. The most alarmist figures I've seen are four billion and I'm sure that one's too high, but I know that it will be much higher than it is now.
[4:30 p.m.]
If you look in China right now, the Yellow River, the Yangtze River, the pollution; and you look in the United States, the Colorado River just ends now in the desert, it doesn't even reach the ocean. So water will become an increasingly important commodity, and particularly of interest in agriculture - and I'll shut up because I'm going on too long, I know, but water's something that I'm very, very interested in.
I'll just mention two things and then I'll be quiet, Marilyn, because it's your time to ask questions - one is in agriculture, and I think it may be the competitive advantage that will help sustain agriculture in the Valley, so it's very important to me. We've done a study on the aquifer in the Valley through federal funding - a $50,000 study on the volume of water and the discharge and the replenishment rate.
The other thing is I was listening to BBC News not long ago - I bought myself a satellite radio for Christmas, so I get to listen to BBC News - and a bulletin came on that Nepal had a $140 billion resource that India was willing to pay $140 billion for. So I perked up my ears thinking, have they discovered oil in Nepal? What's going on? It was water. So I want to thank you for the leadership you've shown, both locally and also raising the issue.
Another important example of co-operation that's a good model is one the deputy has worked on very, very hard and that's the Bras d'Or watershed system, where the five municipalities and the five First Nations have come together, and that's a very, very good model for Bras d' Or, which I guess means "shining waters". So with DAWN, which we're aware of and we've been participating in, and the Bras d'Or, there are some good ones out there.
MS. MORE: My time is almost up, and I just want to ask one last question - will there be any money in this year's budget for action by community groups, or are you anticipating adding that into next year's budget, because to be a truly collaborative model it's going to require all levels of government, including community groups, to work together?
MR. PARENT: Could I save a little suspense for tomorrow?
MS. MORE: Sure.
MR. PARENT: Good, thank you.
MS. MORE: At least I could get my concern and priority on the table today. Thank you very much, Mr. Minister, and thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[Page 175]
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, and we'll now go to the member for Bedford-Fall River-Beaver Bank.
MR. PERCY PARIS: You're close, Mr. Chairman, you're in the right church, but the wrong pew - Waverley-Fall River-Beaver Bank.
MR. CHAIRMAN: The honourable member for Waverley-Fall River-Beaver Bank, and the time is now 4:33 p.m.
MR. PARIS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Minister, I'm glad my colleague started off with water because that's where I would like to start; I would like to piggyback on her recent comments.
In the riding that I represent, the beautiful riding of Waverley-Fall River-Beaver Bank, we have numerous waterways - both surface water and underground water. I only mention that because we also have high residential development going on in the riding, which has had an effect on our waterways.
In Waverley-Fall River-Beaver Bank, because not all the residents in the riding have HRM water, city water, a lot of individuals draw water from the earth. That's their water source and what has happened is, I've got a concern with respect to the water table. Some of those residents who have been drawing water from natural sources for the last - well, for decades, for generation after generation. I don't know if this is because of the rapid development or what, but a lot of people are losing the water. A lot of people who had water, and it looked like there was an abundance of water, have now lost their water. They're without water. They have to have water trucked in, and they're hauling water themselves.
So my question is: For a riding such as mine, is there any type of monitoring that goes on by the Department of Environment and Labour with respect to the water table?
MR. PARENT: There are two answers to your question. I mentioned at the start, in the introductory comments, that we're putting $212,000 into well-assessment programs, which is available, and also in the Municipal Government Act I understand that municipalities now have the right to ask for hydrological assessments before a development is allowed to go ahead.
But certainly the problem that you mention is one that I've experienced too. I actually lived through it in New Minas when our well lost its water, that was back in the 1970s when I was going to divinity school, and wells were being lost all through because of the increase in population