Transport committee  Thanks for your question. Let me clear that for an organization like ours litigation is always the last straw. It's not a desired strategy, in part because of the costs associated with it. Given the significant dependence that would be placed on the common law, under the changes

Transport committee  The exemptions that most concern me have to do with the list of rivers, lakes, and oceans. It seems to me that everything outside that list is to some degree exempt, unless a citizen, a public interest group, or a business is willing to broach the situation via the common law.

Transport committee  So it seems to me, but I think a lot of these are questions that all of us are trying to get to the bottom of.

Transport committee  Sorry—most certainly.

Transport committee  I'll just pick up my final point and slow down. I do only have a couple of minutes left. The third point is that I'm deeply concerned that Canadians are being told, not asked, if their waters are significant. I am a believer in participatory democracy. While I appreciate the op

Transport committee  Thank you, Chair. My name is Tony Maas. I direct the freshwater program for WWF-Canada. We are one of Canada's oldest and largest conservation organizations. We have staff and offices across the country. In our 40-plus years working in Canada, we have partnered often with govern

Subcommittee of the Standing Committee on Finance on Bill C-38 committee  Yes.

Subcommittee of the Standing Committee on Finance on Bill C-38 committee  I'll have to add another option to the answer to this: I'm not familiar with that element of the budget bill.

Subcommittee of the Standing Committee on Finance on Bill C-38 committee  I can't even begin to speculate. Again, that's a recognition or understanding that things will be forthcoming in regulations. As I said in my introductory remarks, in my view such underpinning terms as changing a test essentially for the validity of an authorization or prohibitio

Subcommittee of the Standing Committee on Finance on Bill C-38 committee  Yes, it is.

Subcommittee of the Standing Committee on Finance on Bill C-38 committee  You asked me if I believed if all waters that contain fisheries—

Subcommittee of the Standing Committee on Finance on Bill C-38 committee  —should be afforded protection, which is different from a discussion of what the existing policy framework is. I said it was far from perfect. I'm a practical person. I recognize we're not going to protect all fisheries or all waters where a single fish exists. We need to be able

Subcommittee of the Standing Committee on Finance on Bill C-38 committee  I'm saying that if there were some substance for me to have in hand behind the criteria that will exist, or a process to develop them—and that's what you're saying, that the existing policy documents in your hand are the proposed criteria against which we'll define these fisherie

Subcommittee of the Standing Committee on Finance on Bill C-38 committee  Again, the answer to the latter part of your question is that it remains to be seen. As an organization, we are very willing to engage in a constructive conversation about how to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of administration of the federal Fisheries Act. But as I s

Subcommittee of the Standing Committee on Finance on Bill C-38 committee  I'm a member, in another kind of side gig, if you want to call it that, of a group called the Forum for Leadership on Water, or FLOW for short. In 2007 we released a report called Changing the Flow that identified, even at that point, the declining trend over the last two to thre