Stewart McKelvey

4 Fall 2014 Doing Business in AtlAntic cAnADA BAckground Aquaculture is the farming of fi sh, shellfi sh and plants in the sea or in fresh water and there is anec- dotal evidence that the practice has been carried on in Canada for over one hundred years. The First Nations have been said to have practised a form of aquaculture by transferring fi sh species from one river or stream to another. Commercial aquaculture in Canada is a much more recent phenomenon. In Nova Scotia, mar- ine farming began in the 1970s. Commercial salmon farming in Canada began in New Brunswick with a single commercial aquaculture site in 1978 and this has now grown to over 90 marine aquaculture sites. New Brunswick based Cooke Aquaculture, the world's largest independent, fully-integrated salmon farming company, established its fi rst commercial aquaculture site at Kelly Cove, New Brunswick in 1985. Commercial salmon farming, and aquaculture in general, have grown exponentially in Canada since the 1980s. According to Library of Parliament, Aqua- culture in Eastern Canada (Background Paper Publi- cation No. 2010-13-E) (Ottawa: Parliamentary Infor- mation and Research Service, 2010), "[b]etween 1986 and 2008, Canada's aquaculture production increased By Greg Harding AQuAcuLture And sALMon fArMing in AtLAntic cAnAdA from 10,488 to 144,684 tonnes, or by about 1,300 per cent". In Eastern Canada over the same time per- iod, aquaculture production increased from 5,953 to 67,742 tonnes. In 2011, aquaculture production in At- lantic Canada was as follows: 1 • New Brunswick - 22,274 tonnes • Newfoundland and Labrador - 17,264 tonnes • Nova Scotia - 8,016 tonnes • Prince Edward Island - 23,018 tonnes I should be clear that commercial aquaculture in Atlantic Canada is a signifi cant industry. The value of the 2011 aquaculture production in Atlantic Canada is in excess of $340,000,000. 2 In New Brunswick, the primary aquaculture prod- uct is Atlantic salmon and the production in that province represents approximately 40 per cent of all salmon produced in Canada (second behind British Columbia). The majority of the salmon produced in New Brunswick is exported to the United States. Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador also have strong salmon farming production as well as robust trout and mussel production. Prince Edward Island produces almost exclusively shellfi sh. Similar to New Brunswick, the majority of the aquaculture product produced in the rest of Atlantic Canada is destined for export from the producing province. LegisLAtive frAMeWork As with any type of commer- cial farming, regulatory considerations are a signifi cant variable in the operation of the business and aquacul- ture is no exception. All forms of aquaculture are subject to stringent regulatory oversight and, as a result of the multi-jurisdictional nature of commercial aquaculture farming, it is not surprising that the legislative and regu- latory framework is complex. Many Atlantic provinces have entered into a series of memoranda of understand-

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