The Chronicle Herald (Provincial)
Diluted biodiversity legislation passes House
The controversial Biodiversity Act passed third reading late Tuesday night amid criticisms from both opposition parties that the heavily amended legislation comes without appropriate consultation, that it is still ambiguous and that it does not go far enough to meet biodiversity goals.
Lands and Forestry Minister Chuck Porter finished off nearly four hours of debate on the legislation by assailing opposition Progressive Conservative members for charging that there had not been appropriate consultation on the bill.
“He (PC Leader Tim Houston) talks about, and members of his team talk about, no consultation,” Porter said. “None. No. Zero,” Porter said.
“There was extensive consultation,” the minister said, listing dozens of environment groups, forestry operations, native councils, woodlot cooperatives and municipal and community groups that attended meetings throughout 2019 and 2020.
“The public was widely consulted, industry was widely consulted, groups were widely consulted, yet we heard in this House ... that it wasn't done. That is wrong.”
Tory Rushton, the PC member for Cumberland South, characterized the consultation lauded by Porter as “pre-set conversations with stakeholders,” more like “lectures from a government with tunnel vision and no willingness to listen.”
Rushton said the vote on the third reading of the biodiversity bill capped a two-year roller-coaster on a bill that many Nova Scotians “saw or perceived” as a threat to autonomy on their own private lands.
“Whether the threat was actually there or not, it was certainly perceived, and perception could have been avoided with proper education, proper process,” Rushton said. “It could have been avoided with proper consultation, it could have been avoided with collaboration, sharing of ideas, thoughts, dialogue regarding goals, targets, and networking on achievements. It didn't need to wait two years.
“No one on either side of this debate felt properly consulted, educated, or collaborated with.”
Houston said the written words of the biodiversity bill are inconsistent with the spoken representations of Premier Iain Rankin.
“Nova Scotians should know that the original intent of this bill, the 55 clauses of this bill that were initially tabled two years ago and re-tabled in this session of the legislature, those words are the intent of this government,” Houston said.
“On the one hand, the Liberal government has said that the bill will only apply to Crown land, but the words of the bill aren't that explicit and the written words of the bill don't match the spoken word that the bill doesn't apply to private land.
“When we come to a situation where we see that the Liberal government is keeping the door open to come after private lands, we have to ask ourselves, why are they keeping that door open? We tabled some very reasonable amendments that would have made the bill very explicit that the bill does not apply to private land. The Liberals rejected them.”
The act, among the first of its kind in North American jurisdictions, was initially introduced to provide a foundation to manage risks, such as invasive species or ecosystem loss and diseases, and gave the government authority to act where there are threats or where opportunities for sustainable use of biodiversity exist.
When a cohort from the forestry industry and private landowners yelled foul on a perceived government overreach with the introduction of the bill this spring, government responded by stripping out nine pages of an original 19-page bill, including everything that had existed under the headings Biodiversity Emergency Orders and Enforcement.
The emergency orders would have given the minister authority to issue an order requiring private residents to comply with provisions of the act or to face significant fines.
The amended bill applies only to Crown land, with the hope that private landowners will volunteer to comply.
Gary Burrill, leader of the New Democratic Party, argued during debate that his party would support and defend “a piece of government legislation which the government has not had the courage to defend themselves.”
Burrill said the legislation is welcome and necessary but his party was “surprised and disappointed when the government moved, prior to submissions to law amendments, to introduce drastic modifications to the bill,” changes that he described as less like amendments and more like amputation.
“In the physical text, the deleted parts of the bill are in red and are crossed out so that on page after page, looking at the red crossed out parts, it is as though one acquires the impression as though the bill were, itself, bleeding, which indeed it is, bleeding its scope in its confinement, now, to Crown lands, and bleeding its capacity with the removal of its sanctions, which, after all, are what distinguish a law from a mere government suggestion,” Burrill said.
Burrill said the amended bill is “no longer a biodiversity law for all of Nova Scotia but a biodiversity law for threetenths of Nova Scotia, the part of the province that is Crown land.”
“It is, in effect, now a kind of mini-biodiversity bill, if not a glorified biodiversity brochure,” he said.
The legislation will be fleshed out with augmentative regulations.