Views
Victoria Standard, March 4 to March 17, 2002
by Aaron Schneider
A recent editorial in our Island’s daily newspaper (February 23rd, Mussel Farm no Disaster, Cape Breton) was a shocking and biased misjudgment of the Bounty Bay proposal to monopolize the waters of St. Ann’s Harbour with 1400 acres of mussel farms. As such it does provide a basis from which to examine the project and to clear up misconceptions.
It is implied that the project’s surreptitious approval by the Nova Scotia Department of Aguaculture and Fisheries proves that the numerous criticisms and deficiencies of the project as stated by Environment Canada, Transport Canada and an impressive number of well informed private citizens are of no real concern. The naïve assumption is that power is equal to credibility.
It is considered of no importance that the environmental assessment prepared for Bounty Bay had oversimplified and trivialized the complexities of the marine environment, the economic benefits and the real objectives of St. Ann’s Bay residents.
The spurious comparison to a farm (on land) regarding the number of jobs that might make the projects worthwhile misses the reality that, while the farmland usually belongs to (or is leased by) the farmer, the Harbour belongs to all of us.
The critics of the project are accused of polarizing the community by “overstating” their case. Nothing could be more misconstrued. The case against the project by two federal ministries and the civil society rested on the project unprecedented size and the serious flaws of the environmental assessment. The polarization of the community was largely the result of two things. One was the failure of the Nova Scotia Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture to ensure a fair and timely community consultation process with unobstructed access to information before the hearing. The other was Bounty Bay’s strategy of soliciting of the five local residents as “partners”, if not co-leaseholders. That created the ironic polarity between some residents of Englishtown (home of four of the “partners” and previously the only opponents of all mussel farming in the Harbour) and a community which never objected to aquaculture on a moderate scale.
The former federal fisheries minister is quoted out of context to describe this project as one where mussel farming “assumes its place as an equal and legitimate user of Canada’s aquatic spaces”. It ignores the size of this appropriation that grants a monopoly of the Harbour for only one use and only one “user”, all other interests being marginalized.
Finally we are all exhorted “to help ensure the most benefit for the least harm”. Most critics of the project want nothing less than that. They support mussel farming on a moderate scale, away from sites that people object to and shared by a variety of leaseholders, rather than the proposed monopoly. This would allow more options, a more equitable distribution of benefits and more protection for this pristine resource that we own in common.