Fisheries committee  Yes, I have, for well over 20 years.

Fisheries committee  Thank you. I absolutely believe that we can get it right. I think there are a lot of examples. We have good science on planning. We have some good social science on decision-making with communities. There have been examples. In British Columbia 20 years ago, when we were at 3.5

Fisheries committee  Yes. Given that Canada has a wide range of statutory tools for protecting the ocean, it's my view that the Oceans Act marine protected areas should be designated in ways that have a high level of conservation. I think we need minimum standards established in the act, and you've

Fisheries committee  Good morning, honourable members, and thanks again for inviting me. I've spoken to many of you before, and I always appreciate this opportunity. This particular issue is one that is dear to me and one I've worked on for many years. I've been with the David Suzuki Foundation for

Fisheries committee  In my own experience on the west coast, we had a national marine conservation area proposed for the southern Strait of Georgia. It's been more than 14 years, and we still don't have it even near a stage of the process whereby I would anticipate we're going to see it in the next f

Fisheries committee  One thing that we know they're contemplating is looking at large off-shore areas that perhaps need less consultation because there are fewer users and there is not a near-shore effect from there being a lot of people and communities. That's one option we know they're exercising,

Fisheries committee  As an example, in the Pacific north coast integrated management area process on the west coast, we had secured funding from third parties, which I think is a beneficial thing to look at—private-public partnerships. In total, with government and philanthropic money, I think there

Fisheries committee  I'll speak to that quickly. One way is to look at hard protection where it's needed and where it's justified by the conservation needs and our commitments around biodiversity conservation. There are a lot of other management tools for conservation. I'll use shipping in the Stra

Fisheries committee  Our organization primarily focuses just within Canada. The only extension is through our sustainable fisheries and seafood program, whereby we advocate for the import of sustainable seafood, in which case we're trying to get measures in offshore countries to manage fisheries in a

Fisheries committee  I think at last count it was about 15%. We embarked on a program about 15 years ago to switch our funding from foundation grants to individual donors, and we're now at a point that between 68% and 72% of our donations come from individuals in Canada.

Fisheries committee  As I said in my presentation, we've taken an active role in working with stakeholders. I have personally sat through numerous advisory committee planning processes. We have people sitting on the fisheries management advisory committees with DFO, so we meet with the fishermen regu

Fisheries committee  As a more specific forum, we formed an NGO-commercial sector dialogue forum that we meet with regularly. We worked with the groundfish fleet on the west coast for over a decade to institute reforms to that fishery, which have resulted in benefits to the fishery and benefits to th

Fisheries committee  That's fine.

Fisheries committee  In the Green Budget Coalition this year, we had asked for an additional $60 million, specifically for DFO to engage in the co-management elements that we think are essential. We think that's a bottleneck to developing MPAs. We also asked for $60 million to go to Environment and C

Fisheries committee  I'll speak to that first.