Atlantic
Canada's largest aquaculture company — Cooke Aquaculture — says it has been
forced to delay key elements in a CAN$150-million expansion planned for Nova
Scotia by several years, CBC News Nova Scotia reports.
New
Brunswick-based Cooke blames a moratorium on new aquaculture sites imposed by
the previous New Democratic government in 2013, when it ordered a study of
aquaculture.
Cooke's
applications for new aquaculture sites have also been on a shelf for two years.
"That part
of our business plan has stalled. That's not our doing. That's the nature of
the review," says Nell Halse, vice-president of communications for
Cooke.
The results of
the review by Dalhousie law professors Meinhard Doelle and Bill Lahey was
issued Tuesday.
Halse says a
state-of-the art salmon processing plant promised for Shelburne — and other
plans — are now years behind schedule.
"We had
hoped everything would be in place for our plant to be open in 2015, but
clearly with this tremendous delay, we are not there. We still need additional
farm sites and production," she says.
In 2012 the
province committed CAN$25 million to help finance a Cooke expansion in Nova
Scotia. In addition to a processing plant in Shelburne, the company also
planned a new fish hatchery in Digby and an expanded feed mill in Truro.
In order to
justify the expansion, Cooke says it needs to double salmon production in Nova
Scotia to three million fish in the water.
Nell Halse says
the company is still committed to the Nova Scotia expansion but does not know
when it will proceed.
"It will
definitely be in a few years time … it might be as long as 2018," she
said.
Cooke is now
urging Nova Scotia's Liberal government to lift the moratorium while it studies
the report ordered by the NDP.
One of the
report's recommendations is to keep the moratorium in place until tougher rules
governing aquaculture are established.
"We need
to hear from them, that they are not going to delay this process any
further," Halse says.
Nova Scotia
says it is still studying that report ordered by the NDP.
Read the article HERE.
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