Environment committee  Thank you for your question. Perhaps I can preface my answer by saying that this was a test for the act. This was the first GM food animal in the world. There are many more under development. In my opinion, it failed, so we really need to learn from this. I would look to you and others who are scholars in CEPA to find ways to fix it.

Environment committee  I think your suggestion of making it mandatory is a good one. I think CEPA is a good place to start with an environmental bill of rights and also environmental justice. If I could just move the conversation a little, something that really struck us when we were dealing with this GM salmon is that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans had all the scientific expertise, yet they were not a decision-maker, and essentially their advice was spectactularly ignored when it came to the approval process.

Environment committee  I would endorse what Dr. Boyd is saying. We work with communities that are disproportionately affected by landfills and other toxic industries. There was a study done here in Nova Scotia which showed that a disproportionate number of African Nova Scotian and indigenous communities are adjacent to landfills.

Environment committee  Madam Chair, co-chairs, and members, thank you for this opportunity to present and for turning your attention to the application of the act to the first GM food animal in the world to receive approval for human consumption. At the end of my presentation, I will also briefly address a couple of other CEPA-related issues.

Agriculture committee  Yes.

Agriculture committee  Right now, if you are growing a lot of fish, there are impacts on the surrounding environment. For finfish—salmon, trout, halibut—we prefer to see closed containment, because that has a number of advantages in terms of waste, antibiotics, and sea lice. We have companies in Nova Scotia that are moving in this direction, and I am very happy to buy their product.

Agriculture committee  Whoa. You're asking me to go back to my early twenties.

Agriculture committee  That is my understanding. I think the wild industry makes an effort to label it as wild.

Agriculture committee  Do you mean in terms of wild versus farmed?

Agriculture committee  It depends how the farmed is grown. When it comes to shellfish—and by the way, they have been growing oysters in P.E.I. for a long time—when it comes to farmed, it's a question of how it's grown. I won't pretend that we don't have issues with the aquaculture industry, and you have heard about them presumably either in the news or here.

Agriculture committee  We have the DFO assessment of the export of eggs, and then we have as part of the core process another 400-page document. I would love to see more science, more discussion of science. Actually, our organization is thinking about convening some kind of scientific discussion around this, because it's not happening elsewhere.

Agriculture committee  I care about my family and my friends. Yes, I'm concerned about human health. It's not my area of expertise. I respect others who are concerned about it. Also, when we got into this court case, we got calls from people from the Jewish faith who said there's an issue here for them in terms of kosher food.

Agriculture committee  May I give a glib answer? Then why bother, if it's no different. Obviously, there is, I mean....

Agriculture committee  It's a fair question. I get it, but at the same time there obviously is a difference, otherwise we wouldn't be interested. I think if any other body goes forward on this, you need to.... There's a DFO scientist, Robert Devlin, who's done, relatively speaking anyway, a lot of research on how these salmon behave.

Agriculture committee  The Lord could better answer this question, but there are a number of reasons. I think one that is really important is that DFO did an assessment, but only of the export of 100,000 eyed eggs from P.E.I. to Panama. They did not do an assessment of the commercial grow out. I'm still worried about the P.E.I. facility, but unless we get a mammoth hurricane or there's some kind of serious eco-sabotage, it is unlikely there is going to be interaction between those fish and the few remaining wild fish left in P.E.I.