Thank you for the opportunity to provide our perspective on the bill before you.
The Nova Scotia Fisheries Alliance for Energy Engagement comprises harvesters from across Nova Scotia. Our alliance arose out of a shared need to communicate industry perspectives on energy development in the marine waters surrounding Nova Scotia. By bringing industry participants from all sectors, species and regions, we undertook to assemble and communicate our shared concerns to proponents, regulators and government on the development of energy resources in the waters that support the fisheries and, hence, the communities of this province we call home.
That this alliance includes participation from over 20 harvesting groups from across fisheries demonstrates the importance with which the fishing sector views offshore energy development. This issue is crosscutting, and my voice is the amplification of their concerns, questions and solutions.
To be clear, members of the NSFAEE do not oppose offshore energy development but seek that it be done in a responsible manner. Historically, members have relied on the federal government to protect the interests and viability of their enterprises. They have worked to support science and refine rules for the fishery, and they have tried to be part of the solution. In turn, they rely on the government to make good decisions.
Perhaps this is why members are surprised and dismayed by the content of the bill before you. Collectively, we understand that, as a planet, we are facing profound challenges related to climate change risk, and we realize that we all have an important role in finding a viable solution. However, rushing poorly thought-out legislation to govern an industrial marine development that remains largely in an experimental stage for Atlantic waters and lacks proper safeguards to ensure a viable and resilient coastal economy is myopic. It will act only to damage those who are perhaps the most informed stewards of the resources while potentially facilitating even more environmental damage.
Quite simply, we are concerned that the legislation as drafted fails to account for or even consider the fundamental differences between the offshore petroleum industry, which this legislation was originally intended to apply to, and the burgeoning offshore wind industry that is dramatically different in structure, function and impacts.
For instance, this legislation provides clear guidance for compensation for impacts to harvesters related to the construction, operation and demobilization of oil and gas facilities or offshore wind sites related to the release of “debris”. Let us be clear. This is to address direct damages if a trap is lost or a vessel is damaged as a result of falling infrastructure or otherwise—impacts that occur in a very narrow period of time. Any other consideration is directed to the Fisheries Act, confined to the release of “deleterious substances”, meaning a spill for oil and gas, but what does this mean for offshore wind? The answer is that it isn't even relevant. Unlike an offshore oil and gas development, wind farms render vast areas of the ocean off-line because of safety concerns and operational challenges as they harvest energy from the wind before it enters the ocean environment.
It has been demonstrated that the act of harvesting wind stands to alter the very basis of the ocean ecosystems and the marine communities and fisheries that they support, meaning that the very existence of a wind farm stands to alter fisheries productivity, stock distribution and even the ability of commercial fish stocks to survive and flourish. The current legislation before you provides no avenue for such losses to be recovered from offshore wind operators and appears to be intentionally silent on it, perhaps because the bill reads as a short rewrite of a petroleum-based perspective.
This is untenable at best.
Furthermore, as legislators, you have an opportunity to ensconce in law that the benefits of offshore wind development be required legally to be shared with those communities, fishers and industries that stand to be impacted by generation, operation, transmission and, potentially, lost fisheries production.
Again, this legislation before you speaks to sharing royalties with governments but not communities or people. This is problematic.
In Atlantic Canada, we are deep into a regional assessment process that, as approved by the federal and provincial ministers, seeks to identify potential areas for offshore wind development in the marine environment. However, embracing the outcomes of this process and using those selected areas to guide further detailed study and subsequent development are also completely absent in this legislation. This means that, despite all of the efforts of the fishing industry to help identify low-conflict areas for offshore wind and to ensure that appropriate baseline information, mitigation measures and monitoring are in place, there is no security that development would be restricted to those selected areas.