Bill No. 24 - Fisheries and Coastal Resources Act - 2nd Reading

CLAUDIA CHENDER » : I'm glad to hear my new colleague, who speaks from experience, voice his concerns. We also have some concerns about this bill, and part of what I want to start with is the ways in which these amendments do not address what we saw the Progressive Conservatives campaign on in the recent election. What I'm broadly referring to here is the recognition by the Progressive Conservatives on the campaign trail that in many places in Nova Scotia there is a limited social licence for open-net pen fish farms.

My colleague expressed the contentiousness at these hearings and the big feelings on both sides of this, but again, on the campaign trail, this government promised to review licensing and even led the public to believe that a moratorium on new open-net pen fish farming licences was a possibility. I'll table that document where that's laid out.

What we have here is a significant first step, I believe, in the opposite direction. We all know in this House that often if you're around for a little while, you'll talk to a minister and say - this would often happen in the now-Department of Public Works - I really want changes to this Act, and they'll say, wait until the Act is opened up, and once the Act is opened up, maybe we can fix it.

The Act is opened up here, and yet we see nothing either that the Progressive Conservatives campaigned on or that people have expressed interest to us about with this particular legislation. The goal of these amendments, far from a thoughtful consideration around this social licence piece, is to speed up the process. We realize there are all kinds of applications that will come, but again, as my colleague from the Liberal Party just spoke to, the minister must realize that this is a big red flag for communities that are going to be attending these more contentious hearings and who are opposed, in particular, to siting open-net pen fish farms in their waters.

While it makes sense to enlarge the board, we share the concern around single-member hearings. It doesn't seem to make any sense, particularly when the minister himself, when he just started this second reading, mentioned the notion of enlarging the board so there are sufficient members for hearings. It is our opinion that one does not seem to be a sufficient number of members for a hearing.

The Progressive Conservatives themselves have frequently said that the amount of influence and power the minister has in the approval process has been a long-term concern of the PC Party. That's also in the document I just tabled, but again, that concern is not reflected here, because it is the minister who is in charge of appointing board members, term limits, the chair. That chair will be authorized to decide on the composition of panels and the outcomes of the applications. Again, I would reiterate the concern about the appearance - not the actual, but possible appearance of undue influence on a board that must steadfastly remain non-political in order to be effective.

The Progressive Conservatives have also frequently stated, as we heard today, that the recommendations of the Doelle-Lahey Report were insufficiently implemented. One of the key recommendations of that report, Mr. Speaker, was that every five years there should be an independent review of aquaculture regulations in this province. That review is written into the terms of reference of the Nova Scotia Aquaculture Regulatory Advisory Committee - and I'll table that. The committee has not been meeting regularly. There have been three meetings since 2018. In the last available minutes from May 2021, the minister acknowledged that the five-year review was needed, but as of now there is no information available about a timeline, how it will be structured, or whether the public will in fact be able to provide input as the Doelle- Lahey Report envisioned.

From our perspective, it is troubling to see this push to get applications for new licences processed sometimes with potentially a single member without a similar urgency around the review of regulations, which is what we heard about most during the campaign.

Those are a few of the concerns that we move into this legislative process with. With those few remarks, I look forward to hearing from folks at the Law Amendments Committee.