Currently when an industry wants to site a fish farm somewhere, they have to go through an environmental assessment process, a federal as well as a provincial process. DFO has developed a decision support system. Basically, there's a checklist and a scoring system of factors that it has to take into account—the depth of the bottom, the proximity to other fisheries, the proximity to other net pens. This scoring system has been applied recently in two instances in Nova Scotia, in St. Mary's Bay and in Shelburne Harbour.
Despite failing to meet the criteria that DFO has set out, these farms have been granted permits to operate. In fact, in the case of Shelburne Harbour, these are now before the courts; the decisions that have been made by the province with advice from DFO have landed these farm applications in court. It's similar in St. Mary's Bay. Fishermen have come forward and said the farms were being put where they fish lobster. The consultants for the proponent for the fish farm have taken bottom video at a time of the year when we would not expect to see lobster and have said, “Look, we didn't find any lobster here. Therefore this is not lobster bottom.” Yet they've ignored the experience and the expertise of people who have fished those areas for 30 years. This is what I'm saying.
The environmental assessment process is where fishermen would come forward and say it's really not a good area because it's where they scallop, it's where they harvest sea urchins, where they lay their lobster traps, or it's an area where they don't actually fish but they know that fish go there to lay their eggs, or their young come to mature, and the habitat is important. They say the activity is going to displace those fish, that they're going to either not survive or go somewhere else and fail to develop.
This is why I'm saying the process is not effective.