by Geoff Leboutillier
Fall, 2024, the Provincial Government introduces an omnibus bill to the Nova Scotia Legislature. It contains tweaks of 7 different Acts, including the Fisheries and Coastal Resources Act, which governs Open-Net Pens (ONPs) and the Aquaculture Review Board (ARB) which licenses them. Despite glaring shortcomings in the ARB process pointed out for years by HBN, the omnibus bill contains not one peep about ONPs. The only ARB tweak concerns shell fish and marine plant licensing, which are to be taken from the ARB and given to a Minister-appointed administrator. Re: the Healthy Bays Network’s suggestions, complete and utter silence.
All bills before passage are reviewed by the Legislature’s Law Amendments Committee. As there’s a majority government, changes are doomed from the get go, but review does provide a forum for serious discussion. HBN has encouraged opposition MLAs to ask, as long as the Act is undergoing a facelift anyway, why aren’t some of the following issues being addressed:
When intervening at the ARB, why can’t communities get grants to help pay legal costs. That’s common practice with Environmental Impact hearings. The industry applicants sure are well lawyered-up, and so is the government. But communities have to hold bottle drives to pay their lawyers. This does not constitute a level playing field.
Another serious ARB problem: Applicant’s often dismal non-performance records are not admissible, nor are their rap sheets – convictions, fines, and evictions. Cooke, for example, got thrown out of Washington State and told never to come back. Surely that would be useful information for the ARB when adjudicating applications.
The feds are currently introducing anti-greenwashing amendments to the Competition Act. It would be illegal to make false claims of “sustainability,” being “climate friendly,“ or having the backing of institutions like the United Nations. Nova Scotia should perhaps include anti-greenwashing wording in our Fisheries and Coastal Resources Act.
When ARB intervenors challenge something in an applicant’s proposal, the matter is often pooh-poohed. “Don’t worry. Be happy. We’ll figure it out in the FMP, the Farm Management Plan.” Problem is, the FMPs are negotiated after the license has been approved, and the terms are then deemed strictly “proprietary.” Communities don’t have a clue what’s been promised. So, how can we measure performance? We can’t.
Here’s an easy one. Currently our ONP license fees are miniscule. No wonder multinationals are lining up to gain access to our waters. Government and industry brag of an imminent four-fold increase of ONPs. It’s open season! And we taxpayers are on the hook. We even pay for the very data the applicants use to make their case. And when the pens do go away, which we hope they will do soon, who gets stuck with the clean-up? We do, of course, and so does the longest suffering victim of all, Mother Nature.
Here’s another easy one: drastically raise the fines for non-adherence, and then, start using them. If you want to smell how effective enforcement currently is, go have a sniff around Bayswater Beach.
We could go on, but before we go, here’s one more low-hanging fruit. Curtail the practice of operators’ self-reporting things like escapes, lice, or other pathogens. The fox should definitely not be guarding the hen house.
These are but a few ways Law Amendments could help drive the omnibus. Be a forum
to introduce some meaningful amendments to the Fisheries and Coastal Resources Act.
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