Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Fisheries and Oceans
Issue 10 - Evidence - May 29, 2014 - Evening sitting
HALIFAX, Thursday, May 29, 2014
The Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans met this day at 7:34 p.m. to study the regulation of aquaculture, current challenges and future prospects for the industry in Canada.
Senator Fabian Manning (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: I see that we have quorum, so I'd like to call the meeting to order.
I'd just like to pass on the committee's condolences to the family of Chief Lawrence Paul, who we understand passed away in the last day or so. I didn't know the man, but there are people around the table who did and speak very highly of him and his contribution to our province and country. I certainly want to pass along the condolences of the committee to his family and friends.
I am pleased to welcome you to this meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans. My name is Fabian Manning. I'm a senator from Newfoundland and Labrador and I am the chair of this committee. Before I give the floor to our witness this evening, I would like to invite the members of the committee to introduce themselves.
Senator McInnis: Senator Tom McInnis, Nova Scotia.
Senator Lovelace Nicholas: Senator Lovelace from New Brunswick.
Senator Poirier: Senator Rose-May Poirier from New Brunswick.
Senator Munson: Senator Jim Munson from Ontario.
Senator Mercer: Senator Terry Mercer from Nova Scotia.
Senator Wells: Hello, Mr. Doucette. I am David Wells from Newfoundland and Labrador.
The Chair: We're pleased to have with us this evening Mr. Charles Doucette, Fisheries Manager with the Potlotek First Nation. Thank you for taking the time to join us here this evening as we continue our study into the aquaculture industry, our special study on the regulation of the aquaculture industry, its current challenges and future prospects. We've had a very interesting day here, to say the least, from many witnesses and we look forward to hearing from you, Mr. Doucette. The floor is yours.
Charles Doucette, Fisheries Manager, Potlotek First Nation: Thank you. I am Charles Doucette from Potlotek First Nation. We are also known as Chapel Island. I am the fishery manager. I also manage the aquaculture of ground fish, crab and lobster. I also manage the AFS fishery, the food social ceremonial, so what I do is quite broad.
As for my background, I did enforcement with DNR for several years and then I started work as a guardian. For the last year and a half I have been the fishery manager for Chapel Island.
At Chapel Island or Potlotek, there were several attempts at different things in the fishery. They had a trout farm back in the 1970s and that didn't go well. It lasted only a couple years. At the time they also tried oyster farming. They were using the floating system, hanging them off scallop shells, but the system didn't work well enough because they had a hard time dislodging the oysters from the shells once they got big enough. So in the 1990s we started processing live oysters. We rented a facility in Louisdale, Nova Scotia, and it was going good. We were getting oysters from leaseholders in around Potlotek plus other parts of the Bras d'Or and we processed oysters.
The processing of oysters is a hands-on type of thing. They all come from the mud so when the oysters come in you have to clean them manually, every oyster, and then you grade them as to size, pack them and then ship them off. We were shipping several truck loads a month to the Boston market, Toronto market and some to Europe. It was at that point that the band decided to invest in our own plant on our own soil. So they built a plant and it got CFIA approved. They got monies for a large vessel, a barge to get out to the oyster grounds to do larger harvesting and a couple of small skiffs to help the individual leaseholders get to their leases until they could get vessels of their own. Just after that everything was ready to go. Eskasoni had the means to produce a lot of seed and we ordered a couple hundred thousand seed from them, but they were never delivered because of the disease that infected it. It was found in the Boom Island area, the northern parts of the lake. The disease was called MSX, and the disease affected oysters, but it did not affect humans who ate them. We were told at the time that the whole lake would be shut down for oysters, so we could not move any of the oysters we had.
Over the years since then, the oysters in our area of the lake never became infected with the disease for some reason. It's an open lake, but still we weren't allowed to move any oysters. Later, there was a protocol established so we could move some oysters. I found out about this just when I started the job. The protocol would involve not being able to soak the oysters again once they were transported.
Also, at the same time, many people we saying that it was because of climate change, the warming of the waters, which actually helps oysters grow faster. But we've got green crab in our lakes. Green crab eat small oysters. We kept experimenting because the oysters were still alive. So we found ways to mitigate the green crab by putting the small seed oysters in mesh containers until they were big enough to not be predated by the green crab.
But, at about the same time, another invasive species came in. It's called colonial tunicate, one of several tunicates that are moving north. They cover the natural surfaces that the spawning oysters would land on. They cover the eel grass and rocks and shells and any things we would put out, spat collectors. So we've had to adjust trying to collect spat by using the system where you wait for the oysters to spawn. After a couple weeks of spawning, when the oysters are ready to land, then you put in your spat collectors so that the tunicates don't have time to attach to the spat collectors.
That's where we're at now. We're hoping to continue and trying to get our plant into operation again, following all the protocols so that if somehow our oysters did get infected with MSX we wouldn't spread the disease anywhere.
However, we need a quicker way of getting the seed. We were looking at a micro hatchery, but we have no money for that right now. The idea is that if we can produce enough seed we can outgrow before the disease, if it ever does head our way.
There is a difference in the salinity from our area of the lake to the other areas of the lake. Our salinity is somehow higher and our waters are just a little bit colder and that's what they think is holding off the disease because the areas like Whycocomagh and Malagawatch, they're shallower and warmer. That gives them the advantage of spawning, but it also gives them disadvantage of the disease working its way through the oyster and killing them quicker.
So that's where we're at with the oysters because we have no plans right now of doing anything with finfish because of the enormous cost of starting anything like that. We still have that barge which, even though we haven't been able to use it for harvesting, we've been able to use it for an annual gathering of Catholics at the island. They've been gathering there since 1792 and we use that vessel now to clean up the island before and after and to remove the garbage and sewage because we don't want anything contaminating the lake and that is where we're at right now.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Doucette.
Senator Poirier: Thank you for being here and your presentation. From my understanding, you were in the process and you were ordering seed and due to disease you lost all the seed that was coming in, so that put an end to it. You were renting your processing plant and now you have built a processing plant. You perhaps explained it and I didn't get it, but from my understanding, you have the plant and you have the boat, the vessel?
Mr. Doucette: Yes, we do.
Senator Poirier: Do you have the licence? Are you farming right now or are you not?
Mr. Doucette: We keep our licence open. We have to annually renew them.
Senator Poirier: Okay, but you're not farming right now?
Mr. Doucette: We have leases and they have oysters in them, but we're not in the process of — I wouldn't say farming — we're not producing though.
Senator Poirier: So at your plant, you're not producing or you're not exporting at this time
Mr. Doucette: No, we're not.
Senator Poirier: Do you have a timespan on when you think that you are going to be able to return to production?
Mr. Doucette: Well, I just started, like I said, a year and a half ago. Oysters take about four years to go from seed to market size. If we could get more seed, we could do more. We could start processing and shipping following, like I said, the protocols.
Senator Poirier: Other than the problems of getting the quantity of seeds that you're looking for, are there any other challenges that you're facing right now that you want to share with us?
Mr. Doucette: We have a large problem with the leases we do have with what some call "poaching." We've gone to DFO Consecration and Protection and told them about it. Their answer is there's no recreational fishery in the Bras d'Or. I said, "Well, I've seen it, witnessed it." They said, "Oh, your leases have to be marked." Well, they are marked, but they mark them with a sign, with a number and unless you are an oyster producer, you don't know what that number is or what that sign means. So these people continue to take whatever starts to grow because they think what they're doing is recreational. No one has educated them on what those signs mean.
Senator Poirier: Are you doing the floating cages?
Mr. Doucette: We were hoping to try that. Ours are on the bottom, bottom culture.
Senator Wells: Thanks for coming, Mr. Doucette.
So I understand there are six leaseholders?
Mr. Doucette: No, there are about 30 leaseholders.
Senator Wells: Thirty? You have to update your website.
Mr. Doucette: Our website has to be updated, yes.
Senator Wells: When someone wants to become a leaseholder, do they have to invest or do they just purchase a permit to be a leaseholder? What are the requirements?
Mr. Doucette: It goes through the province and they apply for a lease. They apply for an area. It will take up to three to four years because they have to find out if there's any like adjacent landowners that have issues with a lease being in that area or fishermen who also may have issues, like lobster fishermen or any other fishermen.
Senator Wells: So this isn't done through the band; it's done through DFO?
Mr. Doucette: No, it's done through the province.
Senator Wells: It seems to me that three or four years is a really long time. I think if you have an entrepreneur who wants to invest — not you, but in general — you would try to reduce not so much the regulation, I understand the regulation around it, but reduce the timeline required to invest. That seems like a long time. Is that what you're finding?
Mr. Doucette: Yes, it's a long time. We've had some guys who've had leases, but because of people poaching in their areas, they wanted to move to other areas. It's taken them that same amount of time to just transfer.
Senator Wells: Because, they have to go through the process again?
Mr. Doucette: They have to go through the process again.
Senator Wells: Do you work with some of these leaseholders in their dealings? As fisheries manager, do you work with some of these leaseholders in trying to get the paperwork done?
Mr. Doucette: Yes, we do. We do a lot of it on behalf of them because some are not as educated as other people are.
Senator Wells: Are most of the dealings with the federal government or provincial government?
Mr. Doucette: They're dealing with the provincial government, but also with the federal government. It goes back and forth.
Senator Lovelace Nicholas: I welcome you here tonight.
Who is doing the poaching?
Mr. Doucette: We would say just regular people, but there's also a black market in oysters, too. These people do not follow the protocol and they risk spreading the disease outside. They will get a number of a lease in a clean area and put that number on their export permits.
Senator Lovelace Nicholas: So nobody is monitoring the poachers?
Mr. Doucette: It doesn't seem so. We've brought it to the attention of the DFO officers in our area. I know the difficulties because I used to be a conservation officer with DNR, and you pretty well have to catch them in the act to do anything. I told them the calmest days are the days you have to be out there. That's when they're doing this because that's when they can see the oysters on the bottom.
Senator Lovelace Nicholas: Do the youth in your community show interest in aquaculture and, if so, do you have training programs?
Mr. Doucette: We don't have any training programs, but some youth do. Most of the youth are being encouraged to go on to higher learning, if possible. We have several of this year's high school graduates going onto engineering because their math is so good. But, this type of operation is more hands-on. If they're interested, if it gets going, we could show them but until it gets going there's not example to follow.
Senator Mercer: Thank you, Mr. Doucette, for being here. We appreciate your time.
I want to follow up on this poaching thing and you've complained to the DFO and have asked them to follow up but that it doesn't seem to go anywhere. You went on to say that some of the poachers are taking the product and they're exporting it and using somebody else's number for export
Mr. Doucette: Yes.
Senator Mercer: It would seem that for something to be exported out of the country it has to go through one or more checks on the way out of the country, through Border Services. Is there not a way to get them at that end, to catch them there? Nothing would stop the poachers faster than them going broke. Is there not a way to stop it at the border?
Mr. Doucette: I would think there would be, but they seem to know how to get around it because some of the buyers, and we know who the buyers are —
Senator Mercer: Do the buyers know they're buying poached oysters?
Mr. Doucette: Oh, yes, because they're involved in a lot of other shady stuff. Actually when I told DFO that they were taking oysters from the Bras d'Or, not just our area, and then putting them in the waters, storing them in waters in an MSX free area, their eyes just went wide, and they knew who the people were. They knew of them already.
Senator Mercer: They got wide-eyed, but they didn't do anything?
Mr. Doucette: They didn't do anything.
Senator Mercer: Yes, that's obviously a concern.
Tell me, what's the size of Chapel Island population?
Mr. Doucette: It's just over 600.
Senator Mercer: I thought so.
Mr. Doucette: There are 1,800 acres of land. We have several islands and a lot of shoreline. About a third of the leases are on reserve land.
Senator Mercer: Right.
The involvement in the shell fishery on the Bras d'Or Lakes is long-standing. They've been doing it for years when, unfortunately, you seem to have had a run of bad luck, bad timing. I'm not sure which it is. Have you thought about going into finfish?
Mr. Doucette: Yes, we've looked at it, but the start-up costs are enormous.
Senator Mercer: Would your leases be adaptable to switch from oysters to finfish?
Mr. Doucette: The leases are in shallow areas and finfish need deeper water.
Senator Mercer: Yes, exactly.
Mr. Doucette: From our experience, the oysters are in an area from near the surface to about 12 feet, but they can survive in some areas as far down as 22 feet. Finfish would require deeper water, 40 plus feet.
Senator Mercer: Besides the poaching, is your main problem the seed supply?
Mr. Doucette: Seed supplies are —
Senator Mercer: And you were getting the seed supply from Whycocomagh?
Mr. Doucette: No, Eskasoni.
Senator Mercer: Eskasoni, the other side of the lake.
Mr. Doucette: Yes, but they are completely shut down because of the disease. They actually had a lot of mortality.
Senator Mercer: So where would you get your seed now?
Mr. Doucette: That's the thing; we have to try to produce our own.
Senator Mercer: You have to produce your own.
Mr. Doucette: That's the problem I told you we had with the green crab and the tunicates.
Senator Mercer: And then of course it takes four years to get from the beginning to the end and, as others have commented, not a lot of people are willing to wait four years for a return on their investment.
Mr. Doucette: Yes.
We have oysters that have been checked by biologists. We have some large oysters that we keep; we call them "the mothers," and they're up to 80 and 100 years old. I mean they're large, and they haven't been affected by the disease. People have been told not to harvest those because they produce a lot of spawn.
Senator Mercer: How is it going with producing your own seed? Do you think it is working? Do you think there's going to be light at the end of this tunnel?
Mr. Doucette: Well, we're hoping we could somehow accelerate it, but it all depends on weather. Like if you have a warm summer, you have more seed production, but if you have a lot of rain, that'll cool the water down and you'll have hardly any.
Senator Mercer: We've had a lot of cold weather this year in Nova Scotia.
Mr. Doucette: Yes. I think we are more affected by the rain because it changes the salinity in our lake. They say it takes about 17 years to completely flush the water from Bras d'Or Lake. It's not tidal like the ocean here. It mostly runs with the direction of the wind. If the wind is blowing north to south they will have a low tide, that kind of thing.
Senator Mercer: Now, the province's involvement is greater here when they're dealing with the fishery than the norm and that's because it's the lake as opposed to the open water?
Mr. Doucette: Yes, we're in the lake.
Senator Mercer: If you were in the open water on the other side, you wouldn't be dealing with the province; you'd be dealing with the feds.
Mr. Doucette: Yes, they have colder water but they have fewer oysters.
Senator Mercer: It's a complicated issue. Thank you very much.
Senator Munson: Thanks very much for being here. I have a couple of questions.
We have documents and reams and reams of testimony today from scientists at Dalhousie University, to seed producers, to the Cooke people, you name it. Do you have any affiliation at all with any of these organizations or does Dalhousie, through its scientists, work with First Nations and give advice? Everybody else seems to have a collaborative approach. Everybody seems to know what others are doing, and I'm wondering about First Nations, or your nation's involvement is with these folks.
Mr. Doucette: Yes, we meet from time to time with the members of the Aquaculture Association of Nova Scotia and there's also another group called, Unama'ki Institute of Natural Resources. They try to coordinate meetings and info and, before I started, my predecessor was trying to work something out with CBU. A professor there developed a way to clean the oysters of the disease, and they were hoping to use our plant for that.
Senator Munson: This is the College Cape Breton?
Mr. Doucette: Yes, College Cape Breton. I don't know about the Dalhousie people. Maybe I have met them.
Senator Munson: I'm just wondering if you feel your communities are getting a fair shake. People in this province are obviously making money in aquaculture, and I'm just wondering if you feel that there is enough collaboration going on, a big enough playing field or fishing field.
Do you feel you're getting a fair shake in what has been taking place?
Mr. Doucette: I think if maybe we had known more about the protocol for moving oysters earlier, we could've started our efforts to mitigate the problems with the seed and spat production and be a lot further along. Right now, we're still hoping to use the knowledge that we've gained the last couple years and then figure out a way to make a hatchery as others have. Eskasoni has a hatchery, but they can't send to us. So we have to get our own source of seed or produce our own. We've invested so much, and it's a shame to let it go to waste.
Senator Munson: Your money, when you talk about investments, comes from where? Are these grants?
Mr. Doucette: Yes, a lot of it is from grants, but the band hires the seasonal workers to help out and to look for seed and to look for ways to produce it.
Senator Munson: I'm wondering as well whether Millbrook, Whycocomagh, Eskasoni, Chapel Island — it seems that with the aquaculture associations there are always meetings going on and best practices going on. Are you sitting down with other First Nation groups and having, let's say, a weekend meeting of new innovative ideas and are you able to bring in the science that we've heard so much about today? I mean these experts seems to be an incredible group of people who are moving the industry forward, and I get the sneaking suspicion that perhaps you're not part of that engine.
Mr. Doucette: No, everybody's trying to be independent and when you want to be independent, you don't want others to take over your turf. That's kind of what happens if, like I say, Whycocomagh wanted to come in with us. They want to have control and the leaseholders don't want to give control of their leases to someone else. The same with Eskasoni; they provide us with a lot of info which we're happy for, but as far as like infrastructure to get this thing going, we have to try to come up with that ourselves.
Senator Munson: Thanks very much. I appreciate it. Good.
Senator McInnis: We had another presenter this afternoon, Robin Stuart, Atoqwa'su Farms Limited in St. Peter's Fish Hatchery. Do you know him?
Mr. Doucette: I know Robin, yes.
Senator McInnis: In the end, I think this is what Senator Munson was getting at. His conclusion, let me just read it:
Supporting these small players at this stage will result in a growth in more coastal communities for this huge opportunity of shellfish aquaculture. We need to start lending more support to the small producer. If we had done this in the past, Nova Scotia would have been a greater player in the shellfish aquaculture sector. It is recognized that there will be failures, but there will also be success stories and probably far less total dollar expenses in a wider, more diversified aquaculture sector. As is the case in any industry, the chances of success increase if small business can grow over the long term. Small players could become large players in the future.
I think that speaks volumes with respect to this because he said today that they shut down the lake.
Mr. Doucette: Yes.
Senator McInnis: And you're saying that the disease did not affect your area because of water temperature.
Mr. Doucette: Yes.
Senator McInnis: So it was a blanket shutdown. You said it was Fisheries and Oceans that shut you down, not CFIA.
Mr. Doucette: Yes.
Senator McInnis: We were in Newfoundland earlier in the week and we heard another band up in the Conne River and James River and they were plagued with difficulties. They've retired most of their debt and they hope to be able to flourish in the future. You wouldn't be permitted to continue, would you, even if you had seed?
Mr. Doucette: We'd have to follow, like I said, these protocols. We can't take our oyster and soak them somewhere else. It has to go directly to the market, and we can't send it to certain areas. We can't ship to New Brunswick because they don't have the disease and there's a risk that somehow the shell will make its way to the water. The X in MSX means "unknown," and they don't know what that unknown is or how it's transmitted. They haven't been able to figure out why you can have oysters in the same aquarium and have some get infected on this side and have non- infected oysters on the other side. That's how mysterious this disease is. So you can't even risk putting the shells in an area like New Brunswick or P.E.I.
Senator McInnis: But you can't do anything in the Bras d'Or Lake?
Mr. Doucette: No, we can't move from out of our area.
Senator McInnis: I'm missing something in the mix here. Let me go further.
When we were in British Columbia, we heard from the Native community. Many of them had leases. I think the parent company for many of these operations was from Norway, and it was a real partnership. There wasn't as much vertical integration. We went out to Clayoquot Sound and Meares Island and we went in a boat. The Native driver and his father had three or four boats that transported people back and forth. Also they had leases. They worked in partnership with the company and Natives were employed, others were employed.
You've come before the committee tonight. How can we help you and the Native community be part and parcel of some of what is alleged to be, in the future, a real panacea for rural communities where they'll get jobs? What can we do as a committee? What recommendation can we make?
Mr. Doucette: Right now trying to find a way, like you said, to produce enough seed to sustain ourselves because the former plan of using the fishermen from other areas of Bras d'Or is not feasible. So we have to produce enough to make our plant operational again. It's operational; it passes CFIA and all that. We make sure it runs, but we can't produce enough at this time to keep it going. It's a physical structure that we're maintaining. One of the things, like I said, we're looking at is maybe a micro hatchery because each oyster produces I think 27 million seed. So you don't need a lot of oysters to start, but you have to keep taking them to different places to keep your biodiversity. If we can somehow get that going — get enough spat and spat becomes seed and then the seed becomes the marketable product, the oyster — we can get past that problem. What we were doing before was trying to collect from naturally spawning areas and then we had to move from that to try to collect spat in different ways. We got to somehow get that production going again.
What they used to do one time was just rake eel grass in the fall and all the spat would be on the eel grass. Then you'd take all the eel grass and you'd pick off the spat and you'd put them on your lease. But they can't do that because, I think I told you, of the colonial tunicate invasive sea creature that covers the eel grass? So we have to do it almost more mechanically. I think we'll always have oysters, but it may not be in an amount that will give enough work for people to live off of because it's seasonal work. Our lake freezes over in the winter.
Senator McInnis: Just a suggestion. There is greater strength in numbers. You have, I forget the exact name, but the union of Nova Scotia Mi'kmaq, the mainland, and you have Cape Breton.
Mr. Doucette: Yes.
Senator McInnis: And you've got some real expertise, people like Danny Christmas out of Membertou and a number of others that have all kinds of credibility. It strikes me that what you should be doing is on aquaculture period. You should be dealing with the leadership and working collectively. I take it that from the fact that your band is involved in the oyster industry it is in favour of aquaculture?
Mr. Doucette: Yes, there's some talk now about a company that wants to promote halibut production on land, but I don't know where the chief and council are on that. There's some doubt about it, but there's also a little bit of promise, but again, it requires quite an investment.
Senator McInnis: Anyway, no one gives you power, you have to take it. It strikes me that you have some very able individuals involved in the Native community who are Native that could be of great help to you.
Senator Poirier: I have a question of clarification. I think I may know the answer, but the 30 licences that you have in the lake, do they all belong to First Nations people in your community?
Mr. Doucette: Yes, they belong to band members or the fishery co-op that used to export oysters.
Senator Poirier: Are there any other licences on the lake other than First Nation people? Are there any over and above the 30?
Mr. Doucette: When the MSX hit, a lot of them abandoned their licences. They expect that the oysters were just going to die. Even the non-Natives in our area, most of them abandoned their licences because you have to pay a fee every year to continue them.
Senator Poirier: So if a licence is abandoned, then is it offered to somebody else?
Mr. Doucette: Someone can apply for that area again, but they have to go through the same process.
Senator Poirier: The same process again?
Mr. Doucette: Yes.
Senator Poirier: I know you said that you're trying to grow your own seed and that that is a slow process. Is it not possible for you to be able to buy seed?
Mr. Doucette: No, no.
Senator Poirier: Is it non-feasible for you?
Mr. Doucette: Because our area doesn't have the disease, if we bring in from somewhere else, there's a risk of introducing it to our area.
Senator Poirier: Okay, got you.
Senator Mercer: Eskasoni is not harvesting oysters? No?
Mr. Doucette: No, they have the capacity —
Senator Mercer: But they have the disease. What about Whycocomagh?
Mr. Doucette: Whycocomagh is in the same area.
Senator Mercer: So it's the same.
Mr. Doucette: Whycocomagh was among the areas first hit.
Senator Mercer: Okay, so the only place that's in the business now is Chapel Island?
Mr. Doucette: Yes, we're the only place that's not infected.
Senator Mercer: And that's good news.
Mr. Doucette: But they're still trying to develop a disease resistant oyster that they could bring to market faster.
Senator Mercer: The tragedy of this, of course, is that the Aboriginal communities around the lake were famous for their oysters for many years until the disease hit.
Mr. Doucette: Yes.
Senator Mercer: And it's devastating. Eskasoni and Whycocomagh were both doing well off the oyster business. So nobody's processing oysters at all?
Mr. Doucette: No.
Senator Mercer: Now you have a processing plant. Can you process anything else besides oysters?
Mr. Doucette: We can process lobster.
Senator Mercer: Are you processing lobster?
Mr. Doucette: Not right now. We're selling all our lobster to another processor.
Senator Mercer: Okay, so you have your own boats in lobster?
Mr. Doucette: Yes, we have two boats that fish in St. Peter's Bay and then we lease another licence out to an individual in our band that fishes lobster out of Bras d'Or. We also lease another licence in Glace Bay area to a non- Native.
Senator Mercer: There's a healthy First Nations fishery up towards Glace Bay too, isn't there?
Mr. Doucette: Yes. Membertou leases all theirs out.
Senator Mercer: Membertou, and nobody from Whycocomagh? It wouldn't be up that far would it?
Mr. Doucette: They're farther up along the Ingonish area.
Senator Mercer: Thank you very much; very informative.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Doucette. This is certainly another angle to the situation here in Nova Scotia. I thank you for taking the time to come join us this evening.
(The committee adjourned.)