Here's the real story:
N.S. Aquaculture Review Board not fulfilling public complaint role envisioned in 2014 report
Francis Campbell · Multimedia Journalist | Posted: Dec. 3, 2021, 12:07 p.m. | Updated: Dec. 5, 2021, 1:56 p.m. | 8 Min Read
The province's Aquaculture Review Board seems only a shell of what was envisioned in the 2014 report that recommended establishing it in the first place.
“
The board was initially supposed to be an independent body to hear complaints from community members who were close to operating open-pen farming sites,” said Simon Ryder-Burbidge, marine campaign co-ordinator for the Ecology Action Centre, an environmental charity in Nova Scotia.
“The idea was that this would be a place for people to air grievances and vie for the consideration of revoked licences in some cases, where operators were not operating in good faith with regard to environment or community.”
On its website, the review board is described as “an independent decision-making body with a mandate to decide on aquaculture applications in marine areas for new sites and expansions to existing sites.”
Meinhard Doelle and Bill Lahey, in their 2014 independent
Doelle-Lahey aquaculture regulatory review, proposed the creation of a review board that would consider public applications to have a licence revoked where there was “clear evidence of a site’s biophysical unsuitability or of a pattern of substantial non-compliance with regulatory requirements.”
Regulations and amendments to
the Fisheries and Coastal Resources Act the following year
did not include a public grievance role for the new board.
In its detailed December 2015 response to the new aquaculture regulations, the
Ecology Action Centre voiced apprehension that the public was denied an avenue to have concerns about “persistently problematic fish farms heard by an impartial body, and to have those concerns acted upon.”
Fisheries and Aquaculture Minister Steve Craig declined an interview request for this article. The department said he cannot speak to regulatory decisions made by a previous government.
A Fisheries and Aquaculture Department spokesman said the Progressive Conservative government is committed to maintaining an effective and modern regulatory framework for the industry and plans to begin a comprehensive review of the regulations in the new year.
Department spokesman Bruce Nunn said in an email that aquaculture sites are monitored regularly by department officials and compliance officers with the Environment Department for regulatory compliance.
“Licences will not be renewed, or operators given permission to restock their sites, if sites are deemed biophysically unsuitable,” he said.
The public can contact the Environment Department if they have concerns about regulatory compliance on aquaculture sites, Nunn said.
“The investigation, compliance and enforcement division of that department has the ability to investigate alleged regulation violations and can issue summary offence tickets,” he said.
The Ecology Action Centre’s apprehension from 2015 came to the forefront again during the
review board’s November hearing of an application by Kelly Cove Salmon Ltd., owned by seafood giant Cooke Aquaculture, for a boundary amendment to its marine finfish lease at its Rattling Beach site in the Annapolis Basin in Digby County.
The three-member board, chaired by retired lawyer Jean McKenna, denied intervenor applications for the hearing from the Ecology Action Centre, the St. Marys Bay Protectors and the Healthy Bays Network, granting intervenor status only to Gregory Heming, a landowner living on a 1930s Annapolis River farmstead about 2.5 kilometres downstream from the Rattling Beach salmon farm site.
Steve Craig, the Nova Scotia minister of fisheries and aquaculture: 'My focus is to take what was done in the past, recognize perhaps the shortcomings of that but certainly implement the processes and the regulations now that’s going to suit us well in the future.' - Francis Campbell
Ryder-Burbidge said the intent from the Doelle-Lahey report was an overhaul of aquaculture regulations “that would enable widespread public participation” when it comes to siting decisions.
“By disallowing environmental groups like ours or nearby community groups … you’re losing a lot of pretty critical input from the stakeholders I think the aquaculture review board was supposed to hear from,” he said. “The process right now is set up in such a way that it would be nearly impossible for an individual community member to participate adequately, in a way that Cooke and the province are able to.”
An affidavit received from Ronald Neufeld, who lived with his wife from 2007 to 2013 in Port Wade on the Annapolis Basin, immediately in front of the Rattling Beach site, said Kelly Cove Salmon took over the 8.75-hectare lease and licence at Rattling Beach in 2004.
Neufeld, acting on behalf of the intervenor, said although the lease and licence have been renewed several times since 2004, Kelly Cove has
never been authorized to use an area larger than 8.75 hectares.
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