My apologies, Mr. Speaker. Mary J. Gorman and Percy Hayne Jr. informed the minister that fishermen were fed up with the daily dumping of 87 million litres of effluent into Northumberland Strait by Scott Maritimes Limited.
One, they asked the minister how the federal government can justify agreeing with the Nova Scotia government's recent proposal to pipe Scott's effluent to MacKenzie Head, long considered by fishermen to be a vital spawning area.
Two, they asked whether the federal government can guarantee that the chemicals which have not already flowed into this strait over these past 30 years but which have been accumulated in Boat Harbour settlement ponds will not now be inadvertently piped to MacKenzie Head.
Three, they asked whether the federal government and all parties involved in these negotiations consider it justifiable to diffuse and disperse toxic, bioactive chemicals into our oceans
which influence sexual maturity and reproduction in fish when alternate technology exists.
Four, they asked whether the federal and all parties involved in these negotiations will lobby Scott Maritimes whose multi-million dollar profits have been subsidized by the taxpayers of Nova Scotia for the past 30 years to consider an alternate bleaching process and once and for all stop polluting Boat Harbour and Northumberland Strait.
The Halifax Chronicle Herald called for a full scale public review of the proposed upgrading of the effluent system. The province's $17 million plan should be tested in the fire of informed debate, they claim.
They go on to say that Atlantic Canada's offshore banks have few enough rich spawning grounds left and the region cannot risk sacrificing more on the altar of political expediency.
We congratulate the minister on the Irving Whale announcement but suggest that she not be too self-satisfied because there is another ecological disaster in the making and she should do something about it.