Ecology Action Centre: The NS Aquaculture Review Board has rejected EAC's application for intervention in the hearing to decide on open net-pen aquaculture expansion at Rattling Beach. Despite this extremely troubling development, we won’t sit by while the Province casually approves expansions for salmon farming sites operating outside of their legal boundaries.
Our colleagues at Ecojustice have found the same pattern of regulatory violation in the Annapolis Basin, St. Mary’s Bay, St. Margaret’s Bay and Liverpool Bay. Minister Colwell has yet to provide any kind of an explanation for why this has been allowed to go unchecked in our province for years under his watch. So much for those “Gold Standard” regulations…
From EAC Facebook in response to the article linked below.
Excerpt below from article by:
SeafoodSource | Cliff White | April 12,2021
Quoted by Glenn Cooke, President and CEO, Cooke Aquaculture:
"I think a lot of the people who are opposing our industry today really are ill-informed or have information that is old and not real anymore," Cooke told CBC News after his talk. "We do have sustainable, environmentally friendly operations that will create long-serving jobs in those communities."
Cooke said the proposed processing plant will be located in Shelburne, Nova Scotia, and will create hundreds of new jobs, but that the company around 30 million pounds of salmon input per year to be viable.
If Cooke is able to realize its ambitions, it will have succeeded where another global salmon-farming powerhouse recently failed. Last January, Oslo, Norway-based Cermaq abandoned plans to expand in Nova Scotia, saying it could not find suitable locations for the farms it needed to make its operations in the province worthwhile.
Link to the full article here.
Glenn Cooke and his PR team continue to spout the same decades old media lines, over and over again. These play book lines have consistent themes of "misinformation' and "promises of jobs" crafted intentionally to be repeated publicly at every opportunity in attempt to spin facts, confuse the public and most of all discredit published science and belittle community concerns including local knowledge and fisherman. The longer their bully-like behaviour continues, and the more they repeat the same insulting and mindless media lines - the more credibility they lose (if they have any at all) and the more their profiteering agenda becomes clearer for all to see.
What does its say about a company that has no regard for social license? Nova Scotian's have made it loud and clear that Cooke's net-pens are not wanted in their communities and in our bays, further, the Region of Queens Municipal Council voted NO to expansion of this industry in RQM as did our Chamber of Commerce. But from the top down, Cooke Aquaculture demonstrates an alarming lack of respect for the overwhelming majority of residents, businesses and Officials in these communities who have said NO to open net-pens.
Its apparent what's become 'old and not real' anymore and its not the increasing opposition against net-pen farms!
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