Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Fisheries and Oceans
Issue 13 - Evidence
OTTAWA, Tuesday, September 30, 2003
The Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans met this day at 7:03 p.m. to examine and report from time to time upon the matters relating to straddling stocks and to fish habitat.
Senator Gerald J. Comeau (Chairman) in the Chair.
[English]
The Chairman: We are continuing tonight with our examination of matters related to straddling stocks and fish habitat. We have already completed our report on straddling stocks despite the fact that it is still on the agenda. Tonight we will focus specifically on fish habitat.
We are fortunate this evening to have as our witnesses from Myles and Associates, Mr. Myles Kehoe and his partner, Michael Ojoleck. We look forward to the presentation.
Following your opening comments, we will go to the important part of our session, which is the questions and answers. If you have any documents that you would like to have appended to the committee, by all means, so they become appended to the committee.
Mr. Myles Kehoe, Partner, Myles & Associates: Honourable senators and guests, we thank you for inviting us to appear before your committee. My research on this topic began by accident 1990 when I found a newspaper story from 1946 in an old scrapbook. This article detailed the transport of boxcars filled with 45-gallon drums of mustard gas from Ontario to Nova Scotia. The "surplus war gas" was shipped off the coast and dumped. Another story told of how fishermen from Newfoundland and Nova Scotia protested the dumping, fearing it would destroy their fishing grounds.
At the time, I questioned my father, John, about the stories. As a career fisherman during the war, he confirmed that the dumping of munitions was commonplace in the years following World War II. His old charts had sites marked, "Danger Area— Unexploded Bombs" and "Explosives Dumping Ground." Some sites on the American charts of our waters were not on our corresponding Canadian charts.
Since I started my research, many of my father's fishing colleagues told me they had hauled up everything from pieces of Jeeps, old shells, torpedoes, et cetera. Often these "army surpluses" came from areas far away from designated dumping zones.
When the Canada Offshore Petroleum Board granted exploration licences to Hunt Oil Company for the Sydney Bight, I noticed two charted dump sites within this licence area. With research assistance from Dr. Michael Ojoleck from Port Hood, we tried to find out just what lay beneath. We made some interesting discoveries.
Mr. Michael Ojoleck, Partner, Myles & Associates: Canada was a world leader in the development, testing and production of chemical weapons during the war. Shells, bombs and grenades were charged with thickened mustard gas at several plants, primarily at Stormont Industries in Cornwall, Ontario.
Artillery shells were coated inside and out with special anti-corrosion materials and painted with a red band to signify mustard gas. Other coloured bands were used for lewisite. Newspaper accounts from 1946 told that these chemical weapons were shipped overseas immediately upon production, and "were never far behind the front lines."
After the war, Canada shipped its munitions home for disposal. The problem was that the armories at Bedford, near Halifax, and Point Edward, near Sydney, were already filled with munitions that were destined to be shipped overseas.
Mr. Kehoe: Retired sailors and dockside workers have told me how munitions were dumped over the sides — sometimes on the return voyage from Europe in 1945, and later during disposal-at-sea operations that went on for many years after the war.
In the early 1960s, the U.S. Navy cleared many of its ammunition bunkers at its naval yard in Argentia. Although we do not know the actual inventories, we learned that a ship, specifically the LST-519, had special equipment bins installed to facilitate dumping of ordnance, toxic and nuclear waste at sea. In October 1960, she made four disposal trips from Argentia. A veteran in Newfoundland told us that he suspects that the U.S. Air Force disposed munitions from its base at Stephenville, possibly using the established dumpsite north of the Magdellan Islands. It is important to understand that Argentia was America's largest naval base in the whole of the Atlantic.
Mr. Ojoleck: It appears that few inventories of just what was dumped — and where — have survived. Non-authorized operations probably took place, as did dumping outside of designated sites.
For instance, in February 1946, a barge containing 2,800 tons of mustard gas and 10,219, 45-gallon drums was scuttled off of Sable Island. Access to Information requests identified the location as 42 degrees, 50 minutes north by 60 degrees, 12 minutes west — only 30 kilometres from a present-day oil exploration site.
Recent studies indicate that mustard gas forms a thick goo in the frigid ocean water and stays active for decades. Covered with sediment, it lurks on the seafloor and is still able to cause injury or death to anyone exposed to it. Reports over the years indicate that trawler fishermen and petroleum resource crews have the highest risk of accidental exposure.
Our research report outlines the findings of international scientists, who are concerned that chemical agents such as mustard gas, lewisite, and the breakdown products of conventional explosives such as TNT are finding their way into the food chain or causing increased mortality rates in fish. Shellfish, crustaceans, and adult or larval fish, which spend time on or near the sediment layer, are at risk of exposure to these chemical agents either as leachate or as breakdown products.
It now appears that the East Coast fishermen who warned of a possible disaster way back in 1946 were correct in their predictions. Yet, little did they know that the effects of these chemicals weapons would not be experienced until their great-grandchildren's' time.
Mr. Kehoe: Secrecy about the existence and disposal of chemical weapons is still strong in Canada. In 1984, following reports of injuries and death of members of a Danish fishing crew who had been exposed to mustard gas from leaking grenades that were hauled up in their nets off the coast of Denmark, Canada's department of transport Deputy Minister Withers asked National Defence to investigate if this could ever be a problem for our country's fishermen. One reply from DND stated, "No such items were known to have been disposed of by Canada."
Last June, representatives from the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board, CNSOPB, Environment Canada, and the Department of National Defence met to discuss the dump sites and offshore exploration. We were told that no minutes or transcripts were recorded. In another letter, the CNSOPB insisted that this was an "open and transparent process."
Mr. Ojoleck: Our research has uncovered a lack of scientific studies into the safety of 240-decibel seismic blasts directly over chemical weapons dump sites in shallow water, which is less than 200 feet deep. There is an obvious reluctance on the part of industry and both the federal and provincial governments to acknowledge the significance of this.
Hunt Oil of Canada has stated its intent to conduct seismic tests directly over a military priority class one dump site, only 12 miles off the coast of a populated area in Cape Breton — a site identified in a DND-commissioned report as likely to contain mustard gas munitions.
In an environmental impact assessment filed with the federal-provincial regulatory board on August the 1, 2002 Hunt Oil estimates that there are over 23,000 tons of mustard gas and related lewisite munitions dumped in uncharted sites in their licence area off the east coast of Cape Breton Island.
Mr. Kehoe: Staff Officer Kyle Penney from National Defence Formation Environment in Halifax told the Globe and Mail in January 22, 2002 that DND may not have all the answers. He said, "We don't know what is down there so therefore we don't know what seismic work is going to affect."
On CBC Radio-Canada TV news, January 22, 2003, Lieutenant Chris Hough from DND headquarters reiterated that DND still does not know the effect seismic testing would have on ocean-based munitions dump sites.
Deputy Minister John McCallum wrote on December 12, 2002 that the Department of National Defence provided both boards — the CNSOPB, and the Canada-Newfoundland Petroleum Board, CNOPB — with "information about the ocean disposal sites for use in their approval process with the intent that these areas be avoided during exploration activities."
Mr. Ojoleck: Despite these warnings and valid concerns from National Defence, the regulatory board granted full permission to Hunt Oil and Corridor Resources to conduct seismic blasts in the munitions-laden waters off of Cape Breton between November 1 of this year and February 29, 2004. In fact, the board science review panel determined that, on the topic of ocean-based chemical munitions, "No additional action is required."
Mr. Kehoe: My research led me to Scotland last November where I met with fishermen from the north and west coasts. I also spoke to the leading scientists in Belgium, Norway, a senior official with the Royal Swedish Coast Guard and the president of the Danish Fishermen's Association about their experiences with mustard gas munitions dump sites.
They all echoed a recent U.S. study that warned that potential threat to human health and safety include "... the capture of munitions and mustard lumps in trawl nets by commercial fishery and the exposure to crews of oil and gas explorations development pipeline activities" if these activities are carried out in the disposal sites.
Mr. Ojoleck: Dr. Tine Missiaen and her colleagues at the Renard Centre of Marine Geology, at Ghent University in Belgium are global experts on the topic of chemical munitions dump sites in coastal environments. They carried out the Paardenmarkt Site Evaluation, involving charting and sediment sampling of near-shore mustard gas munitions sites off the Belgium town of Zeebrugge. Dr. Missiaen was coordinator of the 2001 Ghent Workshop on marine munitions sites in coastal environments, which drew participants from many countries.
After communicating with Dr. Missiaen and reviewing her research, we share her concern that this is a growing health and environmental issue, worthy of our best efforts.
Mr. Kehoe: To bring this issue to the fore, I filed a petition under section 22 of the Auditor General Act last year, directing specific questions to key federal departments. Unfortunately, their responses were vague, non-technical and non-scientific.
The overriding concern of our government is not for the health of the fishermen, oil rig crews or the marine environment. It seems that liability issues, worries over the potential costs of cleanup, and an urgency for new petroleum resource discoveries are driving the unwillingness to study this problem.
Technical advice given last year by a key policy adviser to Environment Canada and Natural Resources on this topic reads:
The federal government needs to demonstrate to the public that it is confident that new maritime activities will not disturb sites on the seafloor containing old hazardous materials and that these sites do not pose an unacceptable risk to human health, life, and the environment.
The Department of Fisheries and Oceans' new ocean strategy fails to mention the presence of munitions dump sites and the danger they pose to dragging crews. The munitions-laden waters off of Cape Breton were opened earlier this year for dragging operations despite Hunt Oil's published estimates of 23,000 ton of chemical munitions in uncharted sites in the area known as Sydney Bight.
While respected European, Scandinavian, Russian and American scientists are studying the potential and real effects of ocean-dumped chemical weapons leachate and breakdown products on the marine environment, Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans is officially in denial.
Last year, in response to the concerns raised by the chair of the House of Commons' committee on fisheries and oceans, our Minister of Fisheries informed the public that DFO "has not conducted any studies on the toxicity or behaviour of mustard gas in water, as DFO's laboratories are not equipped to deal with such highly toxic substances."
The real kicker came later last year when DFO and Environment Canada scientists failed to even comment on the sections of Hunt Oil's and Corridor Resources' Environmental Impact Assessments, EIA, dealing with ocean-dumped conventional and chemical munitions. They gave plenty of consideration about the effect of sea birds but absolutely nothing on the effects of munitions dump sites.
Mr. Ojoleck: Scientists employed by these departments recommended to CNSOPB that, "no further action is required" on this topic. This recommendation sets a precedent in Canada: that no precautions are necessary for petroleum resource activity directly over a mustard gas dumpsite located within site of a populated area.
If this scenario were to happen 12 miles off the coast of New York City, do you think that the U.S. federal regulators would allow seismic testing to proceed in light of the lack of scientific evidence regarding the effects of such testing above 60-year-old corroded and leaking reactive chemical munitions that are in a mile-wide dump site clearly marked "unexploded bombs"?
I would remind you that the mile-wide site off the east coast of Cape Breton is clearly marked on civilian navigational charts as, "Danger Area—Unexploded Bombs," and is thought by DND to contain mustard gas.
Mr. Kehoe: Officially, they say it is a mile wide on the charts. Yet, as the dragger fishermen and my father and all his friends will indicate, that particular dump is at least five miles in diameter. The Department of National Defence's report also indicates that it has a high probability of having mustard gas in it.
Mr. Ojoleck: What to do about these and other marine munitions sites? In October 2000, NATO conducted a seminar in Riga, Latvia entitled: "Environmental and safety implications of the recovery and disposal of dumped ordnance in coastal waters." Participants included both military and marine scientists. The full report and recommendations are contained in Dr. Missiaen's book on the 2001 Ghent Workshop.
Briefly, the motivation for this conference was that off the coast of Northwestern Europe and in the Baltic Sea, chemical weapons are often deposited at depths of less than 360 feet. Over these years, the shells, bombs and grenades have become covered with sediment, in some places several metres. Fishermen frequently have gear fouled by mustard gas "blobs" coming from corroded and leaking munitions.
At the Riga seminar, several civilian scientists warned that the environmental risks related to recovery would be far greater than if the dump sites are left disturbed. However, detailed monitoring of each site is needed to check for the potential release of the agents or their toxic waste breakdown products into the environment.
Mr. Kehoe: Dr. Missiaen's colleague, Dr. Jean-Pierre Henriet, was recently cited in an article in the New York Times: International as questioning the rationale for any planned recovery operations. He stated that there are obvious concerns relating to contamination of land-based storage facilities or transport routes and exposure to workers.
In the Paardenmarkt study, Henriet and Missiaen explained that the surface identification markings, which were painted on the shells, have long since dissolved. It is now impossible to visually distinguish chemical weapons from conventional ones. As a result, in view of the fact that TNT breakdown products are toxic, some scientists suggest that all maritime munitions dump sites be charted as "chemical dumping grounds."
On the basis of our research on this topic and the wealth of information available from the experts in Belgium and their colleagues, we respectfully offer these recommendations:
First, the immediate charting of suspected chemical and munitions dump sites on Canada's civilian navigation charts, as is the practice in Europe, Russia, Japan, and Australia.
Second, we recommend the immediate establishment of exclusion zones for bottom fishing, dragging, petroleum resource exploration and production and transmission activities around suspected and charted sites.
Mr. Ojoleck: The question of liability may arise if government and regulatory boards have the information and warnings but fail to act in a prudent fashion and harm to human health, property or the environment ensues.
Mr. Kehoe: Our third recommendation calls for research by reputable, independent scientists on the effects of chemical and conventional chemical munitions leachate in the marine environment — especially in light of the many reports associating fish mortality from exposure to these toxic agents and their breakdown products such as arsenic and DNT.
Fourth, there is a need for monitoring of Canada's ocean dump sites by Dr. Tine Missiaen and her colleagues at the University of Ghent in Belgium, working in conjunction with DND's Formation Environment.
Mr. Ojoleck: This would serve to create a confidence level and is a standard international protocol. For instance, Canada already assists Russia with its land-based chemical munitions remediation projects. The U.S.-led MEDEA Team, a group of about 40 US environmental and global change scientists, conducted a comprehensive study of the Baltic Sea chemical munitions dump sites.
Mr. Kehoe: We respectfully suggest that these recommendations be implemented before petroleum resource exploration and recovery be permitted to proceed off Canada's Atlantic and Pacific coasts.
Fifth, we seek intervention by Parliament, the Senate or the Supreme Court to reverse or to halt regulatory approval granted by the Canada-Nova Scotia Petroleum Board for petroleum exploration in the munitions-laden water off of Cape Breton, until accurate risk assessments are conducted by DND's Formation Environment in collaboration with independent European scientists led by Dr. Tine Missiaen of Belgium.
Finally, we recommend that DND's Formation Environment division be tasked with responsibility for locating and monitoring Canada's ocean-based nuclear material dump sites. This is in light of national security concerns, proposed petroleum resource activities, and fishing.
Mr. Ojoleck: We believe that the CNSOPB acted irresponsibly by granting regulatory approval to Hunt Oil of Canada and Corridor Resources for exploration activities over areas of charted and suspected chemical munitions sites within sight of land.
The precautionary principal may be a point of law, especially in view of potential liability and indemnification issues should disturbance of these resting munitions occur as a direct result of the petroleum resource activity or bottom trawling in these areas.
We have made our concerns known to the regulators and to the federal and provincial governments and we would like to take this opportunity to review them with your committee.
Mr. Kehoe: Allowing seismic testing exploration in areas with known and high probability of containing these viable and reactive chemical weapons may be interpreted by the international communities as a sign of Canada's disrespect for the terms and intent of the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1997.
Mr. Ojoleck: Allowing sea floor exploration by seismic testing, test well drilling, pipeline activities or deep sea trawling in areas known to contain viable chemical weapons may represent concerns of national and global security.
Mr. Kehoe: Proceeding with these activities in light of the knowledge available on the presence of these chemicals and their viability and reactability — especially mustard gas — will be noted by the global press, and will be embarrassing for the federal and provincial governments.
The effects on the environment and the toll on human health and the marine life will only be measured in the days and years that follow disturbance of these chemical weapons.
The general sentiment of the leading European scientists on this complex topic is best stated by Drs. Missiaen and Henriet in Belgium:
Creating public awareness is of vital importance. Not only will this take away the incertitude and doubts on the subject, but it will also avoid over-concerned reactions. This problem deserves the best of our capacities, both today and in times to come. This we owe to society and to future generations.
Mr. Kehoe: Now, more than ever, caution and common sense must prevail. We are asking that these sites be put completely off limits. It is mind boggling for Mr. Ojoleck and myself to have done all this work and researched all this material, and we still have our government agencies in Canada doing absolutely nothing.
I have been impressed by National Defence's actions. However, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans is not putting these sites on the charts.
There is a 1945 film that focuses on the 2,800 tons of mustard gas dumped off of Sable Island. Everybody knows it is there; I have the film clip. Yet, the department of fisheries will not put it on the charts.
We allow foreign fleets to fish Canadian quotas in Canadian waters on top of these. Who is responsible? It is mind-boggling to see what is exactly going on. We are asking for Dr. Tine Missiaen and her team strictly because they are experts in their field, in the world. We have no experts in Canada. When we were accessing information, we were considered two of the experts in Canada. That is scary.
Mr. Ojoleck: That is by National Defence.
Mr. Kehoe: We are not experts. We are doing the research charting these sites is a big project. National Defence received $10 million to chart these sites and conduct the research. That is peanuts.
It costs far more than $10 million to put one of those ships on the water to do this work. To get those boats and the men on the water to do it, you have to have the scientific team from Europe with them to judge what is going on. They have the experience.
We are losing our fish on the east coast at a catastrophic rate. My entire family has fished for generations, and all my friends are fisher people around the coast. We have a cancer rate that is beyond none. The staggering part about this whole thing is that when I was in Europe, Ireland, Scotland, and Norway, they all have the same problems we have — same dumps, same problems.
Did the honourable senators realize that Canada was the top producer of chemical and biological weapons for the allied forces and probably the world? We were the experts in mustard gas — right over here in Cornwall. We charged it all into our shells and bombs and everything.
The problem we have right now is 20 per cent of all munitions were charged with mustard gas and chemical agents of all kinds — we have not even started to talk about the nuclear materials. Yet, of those agents, 95 per cent of it was put in shells.
During the war, it was a combined effect involving England, the United States and Canada. Britain came up with the solution. They coated the inside and outside of shells with a rust-retardant agent. That is a problem because we used high-quality steel in our shells, and by coating them we created a nightmare. I called the Department of Fisheries and Ocean to discuss certain sites in which they allow fishing and dragging and so forth. They told me never to call them again. It is not so reassuring to hear departments reject the efforts of people who do the work and try to share the information.
DFO has known about it since 1984. They have heard from National Defence the Department of Transport, both of which have asked the same questions.
From 1984 to 2003, they have all this information and they have done nothing. That is alarming. I would suggest that they are in contravention of sections 35 and 37 of the Oceans Act. Somebody should look into that. They are supposed to protect fish, fish habitat, and the health of the fisherman.
We know what the problem is, we know about the potential risks and no-one is doing anything about it. We have a serious problem. Yet, when we forwarded the response from the Canada-Nova Scotia Petroleum Board, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans scientists said that no further action was required. They told us we were "hallucinating." It is a problem all over the world.
The Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr. Kehoe and Mr. Ojoleck. Perhaps we should put these weapons under the jurisdiction of the firearms registry and get them all registered. We have been spending quite a bit of money on registering such items.
Mr. Kehoe: You really would not want those arms, sir.
The Chairman: You have provided us with and informative, albeit disturbing, presentation. You have given our senators a lot of food for thought and ammunition to start asking questions.
Senator Cook: You have been doing this for 13 years?
Mr. Kehoe: Yes, I have.
Senator Cook: You are a wonderful advocate. How are you funded?
Mr. Kehoe: We pay for it ourselves.
Mr. Ojoleck: We receive no funding from government or private sources, just grocery money.
Mr. Kehoe: We are not affiliated with anybody.
Senator Cook: You have this compelling force within you that wants to do this for humanity?
Mr. Kehoe: My brothers all fished and my people fished. We are seeing some really horrifying things happening. We are seeing areas that contain dual-sexed crab; there are areas with mud toxic enough to burn children's hands. There are fish of all kinds with cancerous lesions. There are high cancer rates among people who live in coastal communities near these dumps; this includes the eastern shore in Newfoundland and from Cape Breton all the way to Canso. The same thing is happening on the western shores of Scotland and the eastern shores of Ireland. The cancer rate is rising and the fish are dying. Everywhere this happens there are dumps.
Mr. Ojolek: When you speak to folks on the Isle of Man, there has been extensive pipeline activity all through the Beaufort Dyke area — a large munitions site between Isle of Man and the mainland. The Irish Coast Guard and the Swedish Coast Guard patrol the beaches with binoculars and find problems on a regular basis.
Community organizations also watch for suspicious-looking objects on the beaches. When these are found, they are immediately removed and detonated.
There is evidence that the pipeline activity has stirred up the sea beds because a lot of munitions are becoming buoyant or swept to shore by the currents.
Senator Cook: Can you tell us what this has cost you to date?
Mr. Kehoe: No, we do not. We have spent a lot. However, I live there and I want to continue living there. I can tell you that it is scary to hear retired military personnel, who dumped the stuff there, tell me to tell my children not to have their kids on Cape Breton.
Senator Cook: What has been done is done.
You talked about the next thing on your horizon and the seismic testing. Do you really think that will probably let the genie really out of the bottle?
Mr. Kehoe: There is absolutely no research anywhere in the world on the effects that seismic testing will have on military dump sites. You can ask all the scientists; a few people say they "do not think" it will hurt but there is no scientific research.
That is all we have asked: that exclusion zones be implemented immediately, until National Defence and a proper scientific community study it and then tell us what is going on.
Senator Cook: I have heard from the people who explore off our coasts, that the permits that are required to drill and explore, run across 18 different departments. Is there a department that you would go to get clearance not to do seismic testing in charted areas?
Mr. Kehoe: Before the petroleum industry gets their permits they get sub-sea research groups in to conduct a study. For instance, in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, both the petroleum boards got an organization out of Aberdeen, Scotland. I was over there doing research and I contacted this firm to ask which are they had researched. I had all my charts spread out in front of me as we talked. I asked them if they found any military dump sites. They said they had not found any at all. This was and institute specializing in sub-sea research. I told them it was odd that they had not found any dump sites because two of them have been charted in the area they were researching.
There is a problem when they inform a regulatory body that there is no problem on the sea floor. I do not understand. Is it money? Is it because they simply do not care? Is it because there are too many areas to chart? We must remember that National Defence is looking at 1,200 sites off the coast of Atlantic Canada alone.
Senator Cook: There have been incidents of material from dump sites being brought up in draggers nets. Have there been any encounters with chemical weapons?
Mr. Kehoe: We had a few encounters early on. One fellow was killed in the Bay of Fundy. A child up near Halifax was injured. All of this comes through access to information. A small group of men in Newfoundland were almost killed when they set bonfires on the beach and some of this stuff was there.
Mr. Ojolek: It was not chemical; it was conventional.
Mr. Kehoe: They cannot easily determine whether it is conventional or chemical. Take this glass for example. If we put rings around it and then put it in the water, in a year or two the rings will be washed away. Without the identifying markings, I cannot tell whether or not it contains chemicals. It is the same with these munitions; 20 per cent of ours did contain the chemicals.
Senator Cook: While the sites are charted, you really do not know what is there.
Mr. Ojoleck: Correct.
Senator Cook: During World War II, when Newfoundland was not a province of Canada, the American base was in Argentia. You mentioned that Canada was a leading expert in the making of bombs and other weapons of destruction. It was the Americans who perfected the atom bomb and we do not know what it is in Placentia Bay.
Mr. Kehoe: You do not know what is in Placentia Bay. We have not even mentioned here the nuclear dump sites that are off our coasts. There are many of them off your coast as well, senator. That is a scary topic for us. The Americans, the Russians and some Canadians dumped.
Senator Cook: In the cold war era.
Mr. Kehoe: That is right. They just dumped it. We have quite a few sites. We are hearing that some of that stuff was cased in lead and then covered with cement. The cement is breaking down now.
They were discussing this very topic at a convention in Halifax last year — a sort of "secret" convention that no-one really knew about. We received information under access to information. I am certain they were glad that Myles Kehoe was in Scotland researching their dumps over there while they were having their meeting in Halifax.
Senator Cook: Are you comfortable in knowing that the sites are charted? Are there any sites out there that are not charted?
Mr. Kehoe: Ninety-nine per cent of them are not.
Senator Cook: I am looking at lot of colourful areas on a map. What do the colours that represent?
Mr. Kehoe: Oil and gas. These are sites that we are actually working on.
Senator Cook: These are identified sites?
Mr. Kehoe: See these little things here? This is deemed to be an area of five kilometres. However, all the dragger captains in Newfoundland will tell you that that site is in excess of 30 miles across. That is a big site. In that site, they pulled up bombshells, warheads, detonator charges, and barrels of stuff they could not identify. There were had seismic testing rigs that were caught in the bombs.
This chart shows a site in the Laurentian sub-basin that is under lease now. However, this chart does not exist anymore. When a new chart comes out, suddenly a site is no longer marked. They take the sites off. You can have 10 charts, one of them will show a site, and nine maps would not. However, these are the same charts in different years. It is pretty weird.
I had a mildly heated discussion with representatives from National Defence on this issue one day. They told me that a particular site did not exist. I replied that I was looking at it and I read the coordinates right off the chart. I asked the official what date was on his chart. His was 1990; mine was 1967. My question is, "Where did the dump go?"
We have all these sites; we have the Bras d'Or Lakes in the middle of Cape Breton. There is a deep hole right off Kempt Head and Long Island. All indications showed that was a huge military dumpsite for chemical weapons containing mustard gas, because they did not have to go out to the Scotian shelf to get the depths of water.
Senator Cook: Last year, I was told by a friend of mine in Nova Scotia that the Bedford Institute had done some mapping in the Bras d'Or Lakes.
Mr. Kehoe: They did mapping but the Bedford Institute has known about this since 1984 and has never really done anything about the dumps.
I was at a meeting at a First Nations community just this spring. They are really puzzled now. Everything in the Bras d'Or Lake is dying. That is a fact that has been well documented by the media down home. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans will not look at the effects that these dump sites are having on the fish.
Senator Cook: If you had one wish, what would you do?
Mr. Kehoe: My wish would be to put exclusion zones in immediately on the areas that are known and get National Defence and a team in to study all the suspected ones, immediately. That has to be done.
If we want to see our next generation or we want to see fish in the sea down home, we had better start doing things like that now.
Mr. Ojoleck: You have to think of the people who are living near that populated site, 12 miles off the coast. In one month's time, one of the oil companies will have full permission — full regulatory approval — to conduct seismic testing directly over the site.
Senator Cook: Your immediate concern is the effect seismic testing may have on this?
Mr. Ojoleck: We are concerned about the effects of exploratory activity.
Senator Mahovlich: Is Bras d'Or Lake right in Cape Breton?
Mr. Kehoe: Yes, it is.
Senator Mahovlich: It is a freshwater lake?
Mr. Kehoe: It is semi-salt; both freshwater and the tidal current run into it. There is another entrance at the St. Peters locks.
There was a site at Johnstown called the "Johnstown Armories." We have information that it was used for the testing and experimentation of chemical and biological weapons. However, if you were to access any information at National Defence, Johnstown Armories does not exist and never has.
Mr. Ojoleck: You can drive by the buildings.
Mr. Kehoe: It is there. I have seen it since I was a kid.
Senator Mahovlich: You tell me there are problems with the fish.
Mr. Kehoe: We have concerns. Off Sable Island, 10,219 50-gallon drums of mustard gas were dropped. I have film footage of the dumping.
There is a type of American flounder there. Up in the Bras d'Or lakes there is another American flounder, but it never mixes with this one. At one meeting, I heard a DFO researcher saying that they were baffled and did not understand why the American flounder were all dying off in the Bras d'Or Lakes in this hole. I spoke up and pointed out that according to their statistics for 2003, they had the same problem with the American flounder off Sable Island. I suggested that the one common denominator was that there is a confirmed military dump containing mustard gas in one area and a high probability of the same thing in the other area. The two species of flounder never mix and yet their egg production is gone along with their body mass and muscle tone.
Everything in the Bras d'Or Lake is dying. That is a very sensitive area, because in that deep hole — a thousand feet deep — there are species of fish that are pre-date the last ice age. There is also an earthquake fault and a tracking system for National Defence — all in one hold. It is scary.
Senator Mahovlich: Are you saying that if you brought a sample of these dying fish to our fisheries department, they would no study it?
Mr. Kehoe: I asked that very question of our fisheries department officials down home.
Senator Mahovlich: If a cow is ill, they will take a look at the cow.
Mr. Kehoe: Did they find out what was killing the whales? You have four chemical dump sites and one biological and nuclear dump site and everybody says they are baffled as to why the whales are dead.
Senator Mahovlich: It is the same with the cod.
Mr. Kehoe: That is correct. There are two dumps up there where the cod are. That is a "could-be." We do not know for certain. We need a series of studies.
Senator Mahovlich: Can you not get scientists?
Mr. Ojoleck: The Canadian scientists are not equipped.
Senator Mahovlich: Who is equipped? The Europeans?
Mr. Kehoe: The Europeans are equipped, sir.
Senator Mahovlich: What are the Americans doing? They did a lot of dumping here, right?
Mr. Kehoe: They did a lot of dumping. That is a problem for our Canadian military. They are trying to access the American files to find out exactly how much dumping was done.
Mr. Ojoleck: On this map you can see a dump site that measures 10 nautical miles by 10 nautical miles. This site was set up pre-1960, according to the hydrographic service expressly for use of the American forces at Argentia. The Canadian government retains no records as to what was dumped there.
Mr. Kehoe: This week, National Defence will have their boats on the water. I respect the Minister of National Defence. They are studying an area in the Bras d'Or Lakes and in the Sydney Bight.
Now, they are not yet totally equipped to do it but they are at least starting the study.
Senator Mahovlich: DFO is not equipped at all either?
Mr. Kehoe: Their documents say they are not equipped at all.
Mr. Ojoleck: They are not equipped to deal with mustard gas.
Mr. Kehoe: That is their claim; not mine.
Senator Mahovlich: This has been enlightening. I want to congratulate you on your presentation. I did not know there was such a huge problem.
Mr. Kehoe: When you have a dumpsite like this that is stated on a chart, why would you not put an exclusion zone on it?
Senator Mahovlich: Exactly.
Mr. Ojoleck: When we attended public hearings at the offshore petroleum board in January of last year, we made a similar presentation and warned that the risks of the unknown are far greater than just a cavalier attitude.
Hunt Oil actually revised its seismic testing from near the dump site to directly over the dump site. Their environmental impact assessment says: "The proposed survey lines pass directly over Site One, which contains only unexploded bombs." However, no one knows the inventory, and unexploded bombs could be charged with chemical munitions.
Mr. Kehoe: With regard to that area, National Defence has indicated that there is a high probability of mustard gas. In a CBC interview, Hunt Oil's spokesman said the dumps were of no concern to his company. That is positive.
Mr. Ojoleck: I would like to play this 40-second clip from that interview with CBC Radio's Jacques Hébert in Moncton.
[Sound Presentation]
Senator Trenholme Counsell: You have painted an alarming picture that certainly raises questions. I want to thank you for bringing your concerns to the committee.
I would like to know more about the DND study of $10 million. Can you provide me with more information on the scope and timetable of this study? I also have a question relating to health.
Mr. Kehoe: Yes, the timetable is we have to make sure — and this is important for everybody to understand — that we get very precise information from accredited scientists in the world.
When we first hit the media following the public review commission, everybody was phoning up and saying they would help and wanted all our information. We did not want to give the information to just anyone. We wanted to know who people where and what they were going to do with the information. We wanted to ensure that the information went to proper scientists.
We do not know what is actually down in some of those sites. You need to get down there with the proper equipment and test the soil. In Europe, at sites only two miles apart, you can have two totally different readings. That is really important to know. Each site must be taken individually and they must be put into appropriate categories.
With respect to the DND study, it should be huge. It is a slap in the face to see only $9 million allocated to do all this work. It is a joke.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: Sometimes funding is incremental; you get $9 million now, you get $5 million or $19 million later if the need is proven. What is the timetable and how are they going to start?
Mr. Kehoe: National Defence has already started.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: How long ago?
Mr. Kehoe: They started with the research vessel about two weeks ago. I met with them in Halifax and they said they were starting to do the work. About four months ago, the researchers got a contract to do the bookwork — the research on how much of this stuff was produced.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: Are these researchers scientists or members of DND?
Mr. Kehoe: The contracted was awarded to a researcher in Alberta. I spoke to a Dr. Lloyd White in Cape Breton a year ago.
The one important thing that the Senate committee here should do is to actually get National Defence to come and talk to you, specifically, Mr. Kyle Penney, of Formation Environment in Halifax.
The Chairman: Kyle Penney.
Mr. Kehoe: Yes. He said that they would need three to seven years. The oil companies are saying that they have a permit to do seismic starting next month until February 2004. National Defence has absolutely no time to catch up and determine whether a site is okay or not okay.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: Have any operations been put on hold?
Mr. Kehoe: Absolutely none.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: You are saying that the timetable for this study is not parallel to any exploration timetable?
Mr. Kehoe: Absolutely not.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: When was the study approved for DND?
Mr. Kehoe: It was approved about a year ago. However, it has taken them some time to get started. We were the first people the researchers came see and that was just about a month ago.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: Did this project come about because of your work? Do you feel you were the catalyst to make it happen?
Mr. Kehoe: We were told by National Defence it was. I am shocked that they do not have what they need to do their job. This is an important project to all of us. There are so many issues that must be researched. I cannot even talk about the nuclear stuff because it is too depressing.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: In my view, $9 million is a lot to start with for a study.
Mr. Kehoe: It costs $400,000 a day for a ship.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: Are you saying that most of the funding covers the cost of the ship?
Mr. Kehoe: Yes. Our Department of Foreign Affairs gave $5 million to Russia and earmarked $1 billion to look at the exact same thing in Russia.
The Chairman: That is right.
Mr. Kehoe: When I first heard about this, I called the Department of Foreign Affairs and asked why they are over there when we have those sites here. However, it is for compensation because NATO and the UN have an organization in Europe and they have got everybody working together and it is great.
In Canada, we are all in a sleep mode. They do not understand what is going on over here because we are not doing anything.
Mr. Ojoleck: NATO is divided into the East Atlantic and West Atlantic. Canada is on the West Atlantic. The NATO Eastlant has initiated a comprehensive study to chart, identify and monitor all of the known and suspected chemical munitions dump sites from the Second World War. We are not aware what NATO West Atlantic is doing.
Mr. Kehoe: NATO prepared an estimate of what it would cost to conduct the research and to remediate some of these dumps. They say that in the United States, it would be in excess of $20 billion to $30 billion on the eastern seaboard and in Canada, it would cost $15 to $20 billion. Most of these sites cannot be remediated.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: This study is probably to ascertain at least the problem — not to remediate.
Mr. Kehoe: That is right. You cannot remediate some of these sites.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: I have heard that the Sydney Tar Ponds are a factor in a lot of the cancer? Can you tell me what type of cancer you are talking about that could be related to this problem and any factors about the incidents?
Mr. Ojoleck: One consequence of exposure to mustard is suppression of the immune system. A type of mustard gas is called "nitrogen mustard." This is used as a chemotherapy agent in hospitals worldwide because it is effective for certain types of blood borne cancers. However, although it suppresses some cancers, in improper amounts or exposure, it can actually promote malignancies.
It is hard to confirm a cause and effect. That is what science has to study now. In coastal areas such as Cape Breton, people have a relatively clean traditional life style; people grow their own food and catch their own fish. It is a traditional lifestyle that goes back many generations. We are seeing high rates of cancers in areas where we cannot see obvious other forms of pollution. We are not making a link. We would like to see the scientists do that.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: What kinds of cancer are you taking about?
Mr. Kehoe: Every type of cancer. My parents lived on Île Madame, and both died of cancer. One day my mother and I tried to think of one house in the bordering three communities that did not have cancer. We could not find one, not one. That is hard to take.
I live on the western side in the Margarees but I also have a business in the eastern side, over in Île Madame. As an antique dealer, I am out talking to people all the time. Not a day goes that you do not hear of two or three people who have cancer. The victims are getting younger. There is a huge cancer rate in my age group — 45 to 60. It is getting scary.
We need to study this and determine if there is a correlation between the fish in a certain area and the cancer rates in another area. I have not investigated this on my own, but someone needs to go to all the places where you had dragger ports that took in fish from certain areas. For example, this area had the biggest red fish area in Atlantic Canada. The catch went over here to an area that now has huge cancer rates.
I am not a scientist or a biologist or a chemist, somebody has to do this work. We have to stop saying that we do not know what is causing it. If we have something this horrific out off our coast, someone has to attempt to find out why.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: Do you think that the cancer is related to the consumption of fish or to the air and or water?
Mr. Kehoe: I could not say because I do not know.
Senator Hubley: It certainly seems to be a problem of such scope that we can hardly address it. It appears that no-one else is addressing it either.
I was interested that NATO had sponsored a conference on sea-dumped chemical weapons in 1996, and that the concerns then were that there would be major releases of chemical agents around the year 2005. We are getting very close to 2005.
I am not sure if you know why they have divided the ocean into the east and the west. That might be a question that you might help me with. Are you familiar with the conference?
Mr. Kehoe: When I was in Europe a spectacular thing happened. I talked to all the scientists who were supposed to be at all these conventions and I took the time to contact each one individually and discuss it.
Only one country that knew Canada was the producer that we were and that was Norway. It was quite shocking to know that because Scotland, Ireland, and the Isle of Man did not even know that Canada had been involved — nobody did.
We are feeding information to them because they should know and they provide information to us. It is quite spectacular that Michael and I have to ask the European scientists for help and that our scientists here do not help anybody.
Mr. Ojoleck: These issues are not well known. Where they are known in the government circles, DFO, officially said their labs are not equipped.
Mr. Kehoe: On my way to the public review hearings last January, I heard a Health Canada report on the radio that said we have the highest rate of cancer in Canada as well as the lowest life expectancy. Let me tell you I felt good sitting up on that stand. Then to hear the representative from Hunt Oil say that his company was not concerned with our comments on the mustard gases dumps, despite the fact that all we are asking for are exclusion zones was very discouraging.
The oil companies have all this area. It is huge and what I am showing you on this map here is just for the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board. Up in Newfoundland, there is a completely different board that covers this area on the map. The Quebec board covers this area over here. The sites we want excluded comprise a very small area in total.
It does not make any sense not to deem those sites close to populated areas as exclusion zones. We can then let National Defence and scientists do their work and go from there. However, the oil companies have refused.
Senator Hubley: When chemicals were dumped, were they in drums or canisters? Do you have any information that these are, in fact, going to deteriorate in a certain period of time?
Mr. Kehoe: Yes, we have three dumping films. The first one came out of Cornwall. We have stacks of newspaper articles and films about this load. It consisted of the stuff they did not charge into bombs and shells. They just made shipments of that. Five trainloads — 35 cars on a train — all specifically equipped with box cars, went to Halifax. It is horrific to watch on film; they did not wear masks or any other kind of protective gear. They just took it out and scuttled the whole ship.
Senator Hubley: Do they just take the train on to the boat?
Mr. Kehoe: They loaded the barrels on to the boat. That was the first film. There was another one during the war when we sent a ton of munitions to Europe for the war effort. Interestingly, our CBC Canada called it, "Carrying the Tools to War." This film was made in 1942 for schools in Canada. It shows all the areas where the chemical weapons were developed and the routes by which they were shipped. It was a game.
Senator Hubley: That was a game?
Mr. Kehoe: That was a game that they put in the schools for the children. I was on the radio one day when a man aged 92 called and said that he was a teacher and had this for the kids.
Behind the front line, there was always a line of chemical and biological stuff in the shells that were charged. Germany had it; we had it. The stuff that was not use went back to Londonderry, Ireland. Some of the materials that we are tracing then went from Londonderry to St. John's. St. John's was not part of Canada so then they sent it there. Some of the old fellows on the boat would tell us they picked up army guys in St. John's and brought them back to Canada, which was Point Edward at the time. They realized that the Point Edward facilities could not take the supplies because they were full with all supplies that they were waiting to send to the war — pure mustard glass.
As you look at the film here, you can see only one guy wearing protective gear.
[Played silent newsreel from 1946]
Mr. Ojoleck: This is the actual newsreel made by Fox Movietone in 1946. The National Film Board also made a film but after extensive research we found out the copy was no longer in existence. That was the official word.
Mr. Kehoe: They just took the materials out and dumped them. They would scuttle the whole ship. Some of them were floating so they had to shoot them.
Mr. Ojoleck: They pulled the main mine sweeper along the floating barrels and fired rifle shots into them to make them sink. There was exposure to crew members.
Mr. Kehoe: On this film, you see that the ship is right off the Sable Island. There are the trains coming out of Cornwall, Ontario into Nova Scotia. All of those train cars were especially equipped and lined to carry the drums of mustard gas. Yet, these fellows handling the material have no protective equipment at all.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: The materials went from the trains on to the ships and on to sea?
Mr. Kehoe: Yes.
Senator Hubley: What are they doing there, marking or painting them?
Mr. Ojoleck: No. The gentleman who came to interview us from National Defence had been a researcher with Suffield. He said that they could be "white washing." They would mix lime with water. Apparently, if mustard gas was leaking — these barrels were corroded — the mixture would form a precipitate and neutralize. The white wash neutralized the leaking mustard gas.
Mr. Kehoe: That was the second process of dumping the stuff that came back from the war. Then we had to dump everything that was left in all our warehouses and magazines. In Cape Breton — in Point Edward — it was called "Protector Two." That is right about in here. That facility was quite unique. It stored all the munitions to go to war. The men departed from Halifax, the munitions left from here.
National Defence also kept all their military archives for the east coast at this spot. Somehow, that stuff all disappeared; nobody knows where it is. This area on the map is Saint Paul's Island. There were military bases here, yet when you research Saint Paul's Island now, it does not exist. There were military bases there but it does not exist in archives. The Johnstown armories do not exist; Saint Paul's Island does not exist. It is as though they have just vanished.
National Defence's own archives state that Cornwall was the leading producer of mustard gas in North America. It was all shipped our direction. We are looking at the east coast. There are also some nasty sites off of Clayoquot Sound and Esquimalt. There is talk of sites in Lake Ontario.
The Department of National Defence needs people to help them research that. I do not know how they are going to do some of it. A story appeared in Cornwall's Standard Freeholder in May about all the facilities in Cornwall — what they were doing and how people were being affected by it. Now there are some nasty problems in that region.
Senator Hubley: There was some obvious reason to put them in deep water. Do you feel the tides would be affecting these sites now?
Mr. Kehoe: That is the problem. An Order in Council, directed National Defence to dump the stuff at sea. There was a prescribed protocol: they were supposed to put it out past the 12-mile limit, keep it away from all fishing grounds, and make sure it was concealed properly and so forth. That was never done.
The site here off of Scatterie Island is in about 220 feet of water. Some sites are in thousands of feet but some sites are in hundreds of feet. They are all over the place.
National Defence would have hired contractors to dump the materials and it is all quite helter-skelter. The boys that were in the magazines here — the security guards and some of the workers in Point Edward — could figure out where the stuff was dumped. They calculated out how fast the boat was going, how many knots and how many hours she left for, the same as in Argentia. Those boys are still alive.
Retired military personnel who had this type of secret information are not allowed to tell the public or media or anyone else now. National Defence has to go public and ask for their information. We have asked. They told me that they were going to do that a year ago. I have been hounding them ever since because these men are dying; you have to get the information before they are all gone.
In a way, it seems that nobody really wants all the information. They want the oil and gas out there. Maybe they are concerned about money and they do not really care about us. Give these old gentlemen the freedom to speak to National Defence and let them explain what occurred.
Senator Watt: It is hard to believe that our government has not acted upon this matter. I would imagine that the areas that you have showed us on the map are not isolated and that this occurs elsewhere as well. Are the other sites apart from the eastern maritime area?
Mr. Kehoe: Oh, yes. National Defence commissioned a document I happen to have it. It is privileged and confidential, but it covers all the sites that they are looking at. They are actually looking at 1,200 and it is not necessarily sites; would be like a ship down, a dump, something like that.
For every ship that is down, they do not know what was in the cargo. That is the problem. They have my sympathy. Trying to figure that out will be a big and difficult task. It is also interesting to note that sites that are not included on their list. This one site that is well documented — both on film and paper — is not in there at all. A lot of the sites near Argentia are not there.
National Defence has to get going. The $1 million that they received to research the amount that was dumped should be scrapped. They should take the million dollars, hire the European scientists to come over and work with National Defence now.
I gave National Defence lots of information that we have. Then a contractor came to see me. I gave him the same information and he took it back to National Defence again. That is stupid. They should hire the willing scientists in Europe. They have already made contact with the navy in Halifax. When we talked to the scientists in Europe, we asked them to talk to Kyle Penney and send him materials. They have done that. Mr. Penney contacted them and they sent him all kinds of research.
It would be really nice if they spent the money that they have properly. Sending someone to talk to me and get the same information that I have already given them is spending money stupidly.
Mr. Ojoleck: In Europe, many of the dump sites are such high priority exclusion zones — particularly ones around Norway and Sweden — that you cannot take out a ship and dive to see what is on the bottom yourself. Yet, off the coast of Cape Breton, Newfoundland and the Magdellan Islands, you want to hire a fishing boat and go on out and diving, look for souvenirs, that is permissible under current Canadian law. Furthermore, oil and gas companies can conduct seismic testing and possibly even test well drilling directly over these dump sites.
Mr. Kehoe: I could swim right over to the on in the Bras d'Or Lakes. That is scary.
I live in Cape Breton. I get on the public radio and TV, telling all my friends and neighbours that this stuff is on their property right out from their shore. It is frightening for an older person to hear that on the radio.
Once again, in view of the research that Mr. Ojoleck and I have done, I am totally disgusted with how the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and Department of Health has dealt with this.
The response from the Auditor General's office to my petitions was totally delinquent. Health Canada wrote it off; their response was terrible. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans was no better.
National Defence cannot chart this site. The only department that can chart this site is Department of Fisheries and Oceans. So why is the Department of Fisheries and Oceans not doing it under their mandate under the Oceans Act?
Mr. Ojoleck: They could declare the site an exclusion zone for all activity. They have not done that despite our warnings.
Mr. Kehoe: This is strictly a health issue. It is scary to live in a community where everybody is dying. All the fish are dying too. My brothers and nephews are asking whether they should be fishing in this area or that area? It is hard for people to take.
DFO is not doing anything.
Mr. Ojoleck: We just received a fairly comprehensive pamphlet summarizing the research on the Paardenmarkt project by the scientists at Ghent University.
Mr. Kehoe: We will leave it with you. It just came out in March. Dr. Tine Missiaen and about 25 scientists in Europe put it together.
Mr. Ojoleck: In the Paardenmarkt site study, one of the recommendations was to give information to fishing crews, oil and gas exploration crews and anybody else who would find themselves out over these charted dump sites. It contains warnings. The only copy we have is in Dutch. There will soon be a copy available in French and possibly one in English. It has been written for the folks along the coast of Belgium. We will drop a copy off with the clerk. The document shows where the site is and explains what old munitions look like in case that lumpy thing in your net is not just a piece of scrap steel; it may be an old grenade from the second world war. It gives instructions on who to call and which hospitals have emergency response teams trained specifically to deal with exposures to chemical munitions or toxic agents such as nerve gas, which may be in some of these shells as well. It explains what the injuries look like. If you see welts on your skin four or five hours after you pulled in a net, you could have been exposed to mustard gas. It describes how to do first aid.
Mr. Kehoe: They have safety kits on all the boats in Denmark and Sweden. The head of the Danish Fishermen's Association was alarmed that we did not have them. The Swedish Coast Guard said it is becoming mandatory; the department of health helped to formulate these things.
When we phone the department of health here, they practically hang up on us. They are not doing their jobs and neither is DFO. I can give the Department of National Defence a little bit of credit but they have to do a little bit more.
Mr. Ojoleck: One of the arguments that has been used by federal agencies is that there has been no known exposure to chemical munitions off the East coast. The problem is that if there was exposure, it is nobody knew what it was because there are not many physicians left who would have first-hand experience dealing with exposure to World War II mustard gas. There may have been or not been exposure, we do not know that.
This problem is even on Isle of Man. For 50 years after the war, there was no history of massive amounts of munitions coming up on shore. You can talk to the Irish Coast Guard, the Swedish Coast Guard, and folks around the Isle of Man and learn that there are munitions coming ashore.
What is the difference? The difference is possibly attributed to the sea floor disturbance due to the pipeline activities. We are saying that we should attempt to pre-empt such problems by having these charted sites deemed exclusion zones. We do not want to experience the problems that have occurred in Europe.
Mr. Kehoe: All those barrels were dumped off the Sable Island. Yet, none of that stuff is in the barrels anymore; it is all crusted over and silted over. Any type of activity such as dragging tears everything up. It is hauling that stuff all over the place and that is the problem. We have to stop deep-sea-diving and recreational diving, in those areas. We have to stop gas and oil exploration in those areas. We have to do it now.
We have to get National Defence to get moving a little bit quicker. We have to get our federal government to own up to its responsibility under all the different acts — the environmental acts and health acts. There is a lot of legislation that nobody is adhering to. In the case of DFO, the Oceans Act states that they are supposed to be protecting fish and fish habitat. It is very clear that they are not doing it.
Senator Watt: Do you feel this is also starting to spread into the ocean elsewhere?
Mr. Kehoe: Yes, I do.
Senator Watt: Is it spreading into the Arctic and affecting the food chain? I have personally witnessed the things that you have just described.
Mr. Kehoe: There was a study entitled "Ocean Dumping of Chemical Munitions: Environmental Effects in Arctic Seas," by Mitretek Industries. A good example is a bomb on the ocean floor will start leaching. All the fish that enter a certain radius of this bomb will die. As the fish are further away, they are dying or they are becoming lethargic and swimming upside down. This is documented. The fish swim into this area and go spastic.
If one bomb can do that, think about what 5,000 bombs that are leaching can do. That is why the Europeans are saying that by 2005, we are going to have a problem. In Europe, it might be a little different than Canada because of our tides, salt, saltation and amount of mustard in the shells in Canada.
National Defence's own records state that a 60-pound mortar shell would have 30 pounds of explosives and 30 pounds of liquid chemical weapons. In Europe, the Germans would have put about 10 pounds of mustard gas and 50 pound of explosives in a 60-pound shell. They used a lot less over there. We used a ratio of half and half.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: If, in an ideal world, these exclusion zones were to be established, what would be left for the fishery? I am talking about our Atlantic coast fishery now.
Mr. Kehoe: Any fisherman on the East Coast — in Cape Breton and most of Newfoundland — will tell you that in five years there will be no fish at all.
Most of our groundfish are gone; a lot of our shellfish are gone. Our crab are going hand over fist. I was told the dual sex of crab is out of control. DFO has done a study on it. National Defence tried to get a copy of that study and the fisheries department would not give it to them.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: What percentage of the ocean bed or areas designated as used by fishing by our Atlantic fishermen would be left for fishermen?
Mr. Kehoe: I would think it would be to a minimum, because we have the dumps on the Grand Banks. Georges Bank is riddled with them.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: Do you mean there would be little left for fishing?
Mr. Kehoe: Yes. There would be very little left for fishing. I am shocked to say that. I come from a long line of fishing families. Most of the fisher people that I know are scared. They realize that some of this stuff is out there but they are scared to say anything.
We do not have much down here. We have fishing, a little bit of industry; we have got not too much. If we can get a handle on this, maybe to stop people from mucking around with it, it will keep it contained a little bit more.
Mr. Ojoleck: There are different types of fishing, nets, bottom trawling. For clarification, in respect of the activity of harvesting fish from the ocean, we are not suggesting that this is any kind of health risk.
We are saying that fishing crews involved in bottom-fishing activities are at risk for exposure.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: I asked whether you consider the fish harmful to eat.
Mr. Kehoe: Oh, I eat the fish all the time.
Mr. Ojoleck: Me too.
Mr. Kehoe: The fish are dying but we do not know if they are harmful, because nobody has ever checked.
Mr. Ojoleck: The juvenile fish are the ones that seem to have the highest mortality rate and that is in the 2000 December article in the Chronicle Herald.
Mr. Kehoe: The stocks are not building.
Mr. Ojoleck: We do not eat juvenile fish. They are the little ones on the bottom. The juvenile fish are not growing into the adult fish and that is why the death rate baffles scientists.
We see the eggs and the larva, but when you go down and sample the larva, they are all sort of skinny and slinky. Those are the words the scientists are using. Twenty or 30 years ago, the larva were plump and healthy.
When you compare today's larval cod, with 30 or 40 years ago, samples of larval cod, you are looking at two different things. That article says, as fishery scientists in Canada, we do not know what is accounting for today's larval cod just not making it to adulthood.
Senator Mahovlich: Let me understand, you are saying the solution is just to leave things alone.
Mr. Kehoe: That is what the world community says now — leave things alone until they figure out how to deal with it.
Senator Mahovlich: Can we not go down there and clean this up?
Mr. Kehoe: No, no.
Senator Mahovlich: Do you think that any people from Cornwall know how to handle mustard gas today?
Mr. Kehoe: No. Mustard gas is quite weird and it is very unstable. When you are trying to move it, you do not know if you are breaking it open and exposing it. The scare is really the marine environment. It is causing harm now, but it could be causing a lot more harm when you start to take it up from the ocean floor.
Senator Mahovlich: Therefore, we should leave it down there.
Mr. Kehoe: There was a big mustard gas area in Italy.
Senator Mahovlich: What happened?
Mr. Kehoe: They are trying to encapsulate it.
Senator Mahovlich: What does mustard gas do in water?
Mr. Ojoleck: It will break down or hydrolyze if it comes into contact with water. Mustard gas is a very simple molecule. It has two alcohol molecules. You unscrew the alcohol groups and put on chlorine and bind them with a sulphur molecule. It is not a complicated thing.
When you put it in cold ocean water, a chemical reaction occurs so that the outside of the lump forms a skin, like a crust. As one gentleman who worked with the mustard grass at Suffield explained to us, it is like a water balloon: there is water inside it but it has a stable skin on the outside. However, once you break open, you have reactive material.
With the mustard gas, if you break it open and let the reactive material into the water, within hours some of it will start to dissipate and break down into a totally harmless solution but it starts to form that crust again. They did not know this in 1946.
Mr. Kehoe: The science is just being developed. It is pretty depressing to look at what is there and how they are actually going to deal with it. That is why we need the top scientists to work with our government and we need National Defence to invite the scientists to come with them and work from there.
Senator Mahovlich: The Russians are not the only ones with this problem.
Mr. Kehoe: No, there are 13 countries in the world that we have been researching.
The Chairman: Have you talked to the Auditor General's Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development?
Mr. Kehoe: Yes, we have. We sent a petition in. We petitioned six ministers on 10 questions. The answers we got back were all routed through National Defence. No department was allowed to send their answers back to us directly. National Defence had to route all their answers back.
The Chairman: Through Mrs. Gélinas?
Mr. Kehoe: That was true. When we petitioned the Auditor General's office under section 22, then she petitioned, on our behalf, I presume, the minister of health, environment and fisheries and asked them all these questions that they had to answer. The answers that we got were completely nothing.
We are reissuing another petition. We have learned a bit over the years. We will ask questions that are more pointed.
The Chairman: We will do a follow up on this, because Mrs. Gélinas did appear before this committee sometime ago and was very proud of this petition process to which her commission operates. We might do a follow up on it.
We might talk to you again, if we could, Mr. Kehoe, to get samples of the documents you received in response to your question. Then we might, as a committee, wish to pursue this with Mrs. Gélinas.
Mr. Kehoe: The response we got from her department and office has been fantastic. When you phone different departments and they do not talk to you and then you phone a department that actually wants to help you, it is quite nice.
The Chairman: It is one of the things that we will want to follow up on, because we were quite impressed with the way she was presenting the case for the petition process.
I do not think our committee has had the opportunity to how the process works. We can see whether you are getting the answers and whether she was doing the proper follow up and so on.
She is appearing before us October 23. That would give us an opportunity. If you would not mind, could you get the information to us so that we can follow up with her on that date? We will certainly question her on the question of whether she is satisfied with the kind of responses that she got. That would be helpful to us and it will kill two birds with one stone.
Mr. Kehoe: We are also going to leave your committee a binder of information that we would like back. We will also give you copies of one of the films, Dr. Missiaen's new book, and Mitretek Industries' journal. Anything good information that we come across we will pass on to your committee for their own research purposes.
The Chairman: There has been a lot of information on the DEW line in the North. The commission was quite public because the North is a very sensitive area. So is the ocean. Yet, for some reason we do not seem to have any kind of decommissioning of these dump sites in the ocean, in any way, shape or form, anywhere as near the decommissioning that was done on the DEW line.
Is there some kind of a parallel we can do here? Is it just more difficult to decommission?
Mr. Kehoe: Most of the dump sites off the east coast of Canada were top secret, nobody knew about them. For instance, in 1997 National Defence was denying that we even had mustard gas, while they were simultaneously cleaning up a mustard gas dump in Chalk River where the big nuclear site is. On one hand they are denying and on the other hand they are cleaning up.
I know it is scary for the public of Canada to know, but in all the European countries they chose to inform the public and get help from the public. I think that is what has to be done here. We get so much information. It is a lot of work and some of it that is over our heads. I do not feel comfortable with the nuclear stuff. Others with more knowledge should be doing this work.
With respect to the work on the east coast and west coast of Canada, I think National Defence is still in denial. If we were not here, to tell you the truth, it would probably still be under that table.
The Chairman: I believe you informed us that the DFO labs were apparently not equipped.
Mr. Kehoe: That is to do what the minister has said.
The Chairman: Did you actually get that response?
Mr. Ojoleck: The letter is in the binder.
The Chairman: We do want to follow up on that.
Mr. Kehoe: If the letter is not in the binder, we will send it to you. There is a working group done in Canada now for the dumps and DND is the lead, Foreign Affairs is involved along with fisheries and environment.
Some of their documents are quite interesting to read because they feel that these dumps are causing the death of the fish. It seems that people are thinking that, but they are not really reacting.
The Chairman: Whenever there is any kind of harmful impact on fish habitat, it automatically triggers section 35 of the Fisheries Act. Has any kind of a trigger ever been attempted by anybody on this?
Mr. Kehoe: No. We called DFO on that section and they just ignored us. They would not even talk to us or respond to our letters.
We also called Foreign Affairs on the chemical weapons convention, because we were a signatory to that convention. That has puzzled me. If we signed a convention and we are not doing anything at all about that we dumped, what is the problem here? Why are they doing it in Europe and not here?
I asked some scientists in Europe what would cause that problem. They said that Canada has been delinquent in regard to some sections of the Chemical Weapons Convention. They suggested that we should have reported what we had and what we did with it. Nobody has ever done that.
The Chairman: I asked a question a few weeks back or recently of DFO officials, where somebody was proposing a rock quarry and it did not take long to trigger a section 35 assessment. This was for a rock quarry, which has nowhere near the kind of impact that would occur from a munitions dump site.
Mr. Kehoe: We have to realize that dump sites have been dragged for years. Undoubtedly there has been some seismic testing as well. However, we do not know what effects that has caused in those years.
Have these occurrences contributed to or caused what is happening to our cod and groundfish? We do not know. That is a big question that somebody should answer.
The Chairman: We do not even know what has happened to the cod, for crying out loud.
Senator Mahovlich: Have you heard anything about dump sites in the Pacific?
Mr. Kehoe: Yes, lots. There are many nuclear sites in addition to chemical and biological sites.
The Chairman: It has been a most interesting presentation this evening.
Mr. Kehoe: Would you kindly keep Mr. Ojoleck and me informed of your progress and any information you find? We will share anything we have with your committee.
The Chairman: Absolutely, that would be our pleasure. In closing, your passion and persuasiveness has been helpful most impressive. You have impressed the members of this committee judging from the kinds of questions that were coming through.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: Mr. Chairman, could we at some point have a follow-up on this rebuttal with people from fisheries and DND. Have you already had that?
The Chairman: Not on the specific subject.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: I think we would really need that so we can continue.
The Chairman: Generally during the closing parts of our study, we will get DFO to come to address the subject at hand. In the case of DND, will certainly take it up with the steering committee to see if we can get their officials to appear.
The committee adjourned.