Bill C-68 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Fisheries Act and other Acts in consequence

This enactment amends the Fisheries Act to, among other things,
(a) require that, when making a decision under that Act, the Minister shall consider any adverse effects that the decision may have on the rights of the Indigenous peoples of Canada recognized and affirmed by section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982, include provisions respecting the consideration and protection of Indigenous knowledge of the Indigenous peoples of Canada, and authorize the making of agreements with Indigenous governing bodies to further the purpose of the Fisheries Act;
(b) add a purpose clause and considerations for decision-making under that Act;
(c) empower the Minister to establish advisory panels and to set fees, including for the provision of regulatory processes;
(d) provide measures for the protection of fish and fish habitat with respect to works, undertakings or activities that may result in the death of fish or the harmful alteration, disruption or destruction of fish habitat, including in ecologically significant areas, as well as measures relating to the modernization of the regulatory framework such as authorization of projects, establishment of standards and codes of practice, creation of fish habitat banks by a proponent of a project and establishment of a public registry;
(e) empower the Governor in Council to make new regulations, including regulations respecting the rebuilding of fish stocks and importation of fish;
(f) empower the Minister to make regulations for the purposes of the conservation and protection of marine biodiversity;
(g) empower the Minister to make fisheries management orders prohibiting or limiting fishing for a period of 45 days to address a threat to the proper management and control of fisheries and the conservation and protection of fish;
(h) prohibit the fishing of a cetacean with the intent to take it into captivity, unless authorized by the Minister, including when the cetacean is injured, in distress or in need of care; and
(i) update and strengthen enforcement powers, as well as establish an alternative measures agreements regime; and
(j) provide for the implementation of various measures relating to the maintenance or rebuilding of fish stocks.
The enactment also makes consequential amendments to other Acts.

Fisheries Act

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

The promise to keep it under a minute was kept as well, and I am glad to see it.

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Foothills.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise to speak in this debate. I recall very succinctly, in my previous career as a journalist, how important the ramifications of the changes in 2012 to the Navigable Waters Protection Act were to farmers, ranchers, and municipalities. I will share this story.

I lived in a municipality in Saskatchewan and a farmer had a drainage area across from his property, where six weeks of the year, during spring runoff, water would flow across the property. There was a very old bridge there. In partnership with the farmer, the municipality went to replace that bridge. However, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans said that it was navigable water, that there was the possibility of a fish habitat there, and that the bridge over this waterway needed to be large enough for watercraft to fit under.

I can assure everyone that for this waterway, which held water for maybe six weeks a year with a good snowfall, there was no reason for the bridge over this drainage area to be large enough for watercraft. There were going to be no canoes, kayaks, Sea-Doos, and certainly the last pirate of Saskatchewan was not going to sailing down the plains to the mighty banks of the Regina. That is exactly what farmers and ranchers in rural municipalities were having to face before the changes were made in 2012.

The Liberal government likes to say that the environment and the economy go hand in hand. Unfortunately, with a lot of the legislation it puts forward, including this, there is always one hand tied behind our backs, and that is the economic hand. That certainly is the case with our farmers and ranchers when it comes to this legislation.

We can go back to what has been a very clear theme with a lot of the Liberal legislation: consequences be damned to rural communities and agriculture. We saw that come to a head in the fall with the small business tax changes. The government did not understand the consequences the changes were going to have on the transition of the family farm or farmers using income splitting. It was not until the rural communities and farm families voiced their opposition quite profoundly to the changes that the Liberals finally decided to step back. I will not say they stepped down, because I want to see what is in the budget coming up later this month.

Canada's food guide is still the number one document that people download from the Government of Canada website. It has a profound impact on the agriculture sector. Canada's food guide asks Canadians to eat less animal protein and less dairy. During the discussions and consultations on this document, it specifically said that representation from the agriculture sector was excluded from those discussions. In addition, very important health experts were also excluded from that discussion. I have letters signed by 700 medical professionals who say the direction of Canada's food guide is wrong.

Then there is the carbon tax. Studies have shown, even by the finance department, that it is profoundly impacts rural Canada. We see this theme going through everything the Liberal government is doing, unfortunately. The consequences of its decisions on rural Canadians and our agriculture sector do not resonate, it does not matter, and that is very unfortunate. They are an important part of our economy, certainly a pillar of who we are as Canadians, and part of our Canadian culture.

That is still the case with the legislation before us today. I do not think there is anyone in the House who does not want to ensure that we protect our fisheries and pristine waterways. It is certainly a fabric of who we are as Canadians. As I said earlier, in my constituency and riding of Foothills, there is the Bow River Basin and some of the most pristine fly fishing areas in the world. I am very lucky. If I drive north to south in my riding, I cross the Bow, Elbow, Sheep, Highwood, Oldman, and Belly Rivers. My riding covers all of those rivers.

A lot of Albertans would be quite surprised to learn that hunters and anglers spend close to $1 billion a year in Alberta. Many of my rural communities, like Crow's Nest Pass, Longview, High River, rely on the dollars that are spent by those hunters, anglers, and tourists.

For my colleagues across the floor and in the other room today to say that the changes we made in 2012 dismantled protection of Canada's waterways is not only misleading, it is absolutely wrong.

I am a Conservative member. I understand the impact that has on my constituency and my communities. There is no way I would have stood up and voted in favour of something that I knew would have a detrimental impact on certainly one of the most important amenities in my riding, the lifeblood of southwest Alberta.

Some of my favourite moments as a child was going on fishing trips with my father, going into the back country, no one around, no cellphones, of course this this was before cellphones, and enjoying the wilderness. My son and his grandfather enjoyed many of those same excursions. They were important to him.

To say that we do not care about our environment is just not true. We worked hard to find a balance between what was best for the environment and at the same time ensure that our farmers and ranchers had the ability to operate their farms and that municipalities could work through what was very onerous red tape and bureaucracy in the process.

The Conservative Party believes the goals of the Fisheries Act should remain. They were there to protect fish stock while at the same time avoiding unnecessary negative economic impacts and the bureaucratic tape that industries and municipalities had to, ironically, navigate through to ensure they could even operate.

The changes made by the previous Conservative government in 2012 improved fisheries conservation, prioritized fish productivity, protected significant fisheries, and reduced the regulatory burden on rural and farming communities. It also ensured that we protected our environment by protecting critical waterways, while at the same time eliminating those unnecessary hurdles and obstacles that were impeding economic opportunities.

Prior to 2012, the Fisheries Act did not make any distinction between vital waterways, lakes, or rivers that supported Canada's fishing industry. It did not distinguish between those smaller waterways that likely never supported a fish population, maybe 150 years ago but certainly not now.

The 1992 Canadian Environmental Assessment Act required environmental assessments for all protected waterways, even if it was a single project, like a small dock, cleaning a culvert, or minor bridge repairs. All of these were assessed in the same way that a major project on a major waterway was assessed. We tried to clean up some of these issues in 2012, and we did a strong job on that.

I have heard from our agriculture community and our rural municipalities that when spraying was being done near a drainage ditch, one of the biggest headaches was always looking for that DFO enforcement officer who would slap on a fine when minor maintenance or pest control was being done, the types of things that are done on a farm. Municipalities had to go through a lot of hoops and hurdles just to do a bridge repair or clean out a culvert after a long winter.

We want to ensure there are no unintended consequences with the legislation as a result of doing these things. However, the Liberal government has not given us that assurance. We just heard the minister say that he was hopeful that when the bill went to committee, there would be amendments to address some of these things. The Liberal government has not exactly been open-minded when it comes to amendments brought forward by opposition parties. I cannot say that I am hopeful that it will take our amendments in good faith and will listen to concerns of our farmers.

I recall many of our farmers in rural municipalities being quite relieved when we made these changes in 2012. These were important mechanisms and levers they had to ensure they could get critical infrastructure projects done.

It is important that they were going to be allowed to follow through on some economic development opportunities and some natural resource development. Again, these things have to be done with a balanced approach. We are not saying that this is wide open. Over the last five or six years, since the 2012 changes were made, we have not had constituents or communities or municipalities coming to us saying that this has been a horrible decision, to please go back to what we had before, that they needed those regulations and that red tape and things have gone a bit out of control. That has not been the case.

In fact, the changes we made have achieved the goals that we intended. They have allowed our rural communities to continue doing business without having that exorbitant amount of red tape and bureaucracy that they had to go through. That is critically important. Our rural communities are looking to our different levels of government to ensure we are giving them the tools they need to survive and to thrive. Unfortunately, over the last 18 months, what they have seen is a federal government that is doing exactly the opposite. Any tools that have been provided to them to be successful are being dismantled and one by one taken away.

On this side of the House, the Conservative members have been the voice of our rural constituents. We will continue to do that, whether it is the small business tax changes, the carbon tax, the Canada food guide, or the front-of-package labelling. Going back to putting restrictions and red tape and bureaucracy on to these communities is not a step forward; this is a punishing and debilitating step backward. We want to ensure that our municipalities and rural communities have an opportunity to thrive and grow.

It is troubling to see the Liberals reverting back to these pre-2012 regulations. Those regulations created confusion, they were difficult to enforce, and they certainly negatively impacted our farmers, communities, and natural resource development.

We have seen in the discussions we have had over the last couple of weeks on the Trans Mountain pipeline, the Minister of Natural Resources and the Prime Minister stand up and vehemently say that the pipeline is going to get built, but never will they say what they will do to ensure that project gets built. When it comes to a natural resource perspective, in my province of Alberta, we rely heavily on our natural resources, and we want to ensure that there is a clear path to success. Is there going to be some environmental impact analysis that needs to be done, some environmental boxes that must be ticked? Absolutely, there will be. We want to ensure that we protect our pristine Canadian landscape. At the same time, we have to ensure there is an opportunity for investment, an opportunity for natural resource development in Canada.

I would like to point to my colleague from Calgary, who a couple of weeks ago put it in a wonderful perspective. The direction we are going toward is adding hurdles to doing everything we can to ensure there is never another natural resource project built in Canada. Let us put that in perspective. They will say that oil is at $57 a barrel today. Absolutely, West Texas Intermediate is at $57 a barrel, but Canadian crude oil is selling at $30 a barrel. That is almost a $30 subsidy that we are giving to United States. That is a hospital being built in the United States every month that should be built here in Canada. That is a school being built every day in the United States that could be built here in Canada. However, it is not, because we have an ideological approach to our natural resources, to our agricultural economy, and to our rural constituents that is harmful not only to my province of Alberta but to all of Canada.

We had the Minister of Natural Resources say today that under 10 years of our former Conservative government, we never got anything built. Seventeen pipelines were built. They were not talked about being built, but built. Under the current government, it is zero. The Liberals have talked a lot about having pipelines built. Absolutely, I give them credit for that, but there is no shovel in the ground on Trans Mountain. Northern Gateway is done. Energy east was done, never to be heard from again. It is a lot of talk.

Again, on these environmental changes to the Fisheries Act, there has been a lot of talk; however, members do not understand the consequences of these decisions and what they are going to be doing to rural Canadians and our economy. That is something that I really hope my Liberal colleagues across the floor would start to understand and take into consideration, that the decisions they are making are having a detrimental impact on rural Canadians, our agriculture sector, and certainly our natural resources sector.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

The hon. member will have four minutes and 30 seconds to complete his debate when this topic comes up again.

It being 5:56 p.m., the House will now proceed to the consideration of private members' business, as listed on today's Order Paper.

The House resumed from February 13 consideration of the motion that Bill C-68, An Act to amend the Fisheries Act and other Acts in consequence, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Darrell Samson, Liberal, Sackville—Preston—Chezzetcook, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to inform you that I will be sharing my time with the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands.

I am very pleased to speak to Bill C-68, an act to amend the Fisheries Act. Before I get into the bill itself, I want to share with the House that my riding has various communities that benefit directly from fisheries. We have the Eastern Passage area, which is a very big community focused on fishing, and then we have other communities as we move down toward the eastern shore. Down in Seaforth and then into Chezzetcook we see all kinds of fishing taking place.

This is a very important bill, because we need to make sure we restore the protections that were cut back in 2012 by the former Conservative government. One wonders why those cuts were made. It is obvious, in the three years I have been here, that the Conservatives had a lot of difficulty balancing investment in the economy and the environment, which is so crucial.

The Conservatives moved forward to make those changes. It is important to know how they made those changes. Did they consult? Did they check with the fishers? Did they consult with environmentalists? Did they consult with the various coastal areas and harbours? No, they put it into an omnibus bill so that it was hidden. There was no consultation, and they just put it in there to slide it through and make cuts to various protections for the fisheries. It affected all the coastal communities, as well as the environment, and people had no opportunity to express themselves in any way, shape, or form.

However, this government took a very different approach. We consulted with Canadians. All Canadians had the opportunity to participate in this consultation. We also had two round tables, where Canadians could participate and offer their advice, suggestions, and comments. They could share some of the key areas where they had concerns.

Furthermore, our Minister of Fisheries suggested to the permanent committee on fisheries that it could have various witnesses come in and share their opinions on this important topic. This exercise allowed for 32 more recommendations to come forward. All those consultations and the feedback from Canadians in various forums allowed the minister, his staff, and the government to put forward legislation that would solidly ensure that we are protecting our fisheries and that we have some standards and safeguards in place, but also that we can do business, which is crucial for our economy.

We have invested over $284 million in that initiative. We have invested as well in the ocean supercluster. We have invested $1.5 billion in the oceans protection plan, and $325 million in the Atlantic fisheries fund. That is a clear indication.

I would like to point out that these cuts were comparable to all of the other cuts made by the Conservative government, such as those that weakened our official language communities.

I will go back to the first point, which is the restoration of these protections to ensure that we are protecting our fish and fish habitats, which is crucial to protecting the resource. That resource is precious and important to all Canadians. We benefit from that resource, and we cannot afford not to protect it. In the House, not too long ago, I presented a petition from my constituents Blair Eavis and Walter Regan about the conservation funding for the partnership program, which is important to continue as well.

Also in the legislation are some guidelines about issuing permits. There have to be guidelines, and they are very important. If it is a major project, we have to have a permit process. If it is a small project, then we would basically have a code of practice. This would actually help the industry, because the people in the industry would know there is a process in place. If they are going to bid on projects, they would know that these steps need to be taken, and therefore they would consider that when they put out bids. That is important, but it was not in place in the process.

When the minister considers issuing those permits, he has to consider what effect that would have on the fishing industry and the habitat, and whether there are alternate ways we could do these types of projects to ensure that we are balancing the economy, our resources, and the environment, which the Conservatives never did. That is a crucial issue that the past government did not do.

The minister would also be responsible for ensuring that the fish stocks are not depleted, and if they are depleted there has to be a plan in place to replenish that industry, because it is crucial. That is what it is all about: monitoring and making sure that we are safeguarding our resource, which is crucial.

To go further and continue with the transparency that our government has put forward since the beginning, we would have an official public registry. That registry would show what plans are in place to support, protect, and safeguard our industry. That would be public, so people would be able to see the plans and give feedback on those plans, which is crucial. Also, in that public registry we would see any permits that were issued, and on what conditions.

We would also see, which is very important, any agreements that may have been signed between the federal government and the provinces or the indigenous peoples. That is crucial. There is a very important piece about indigenous peoples' rights in this legislation, which was not considered by the past government in the last 10 years prior to our being here. This is what open and transparent government will bring, and we have done that on many occasions. Of course, we also had the political financing, which is another transparency legislation that we brought forward. There is access to information as well and the mandate letters that were made public. They were made public so that people would have an opportunity to speak on those issues.

This bill, to amend the Fisheries Act, would allow us to keep the fishery strong, but also to ensure that the environment is safe for a long, long time. These changes were crucial, and I am very proud of our government's commitment and our promise to move forward on this issue. In only two years, we are here with this legislation, which is extremely important.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I almost feel sorry for the hon. member across the way. I feel as though he is a lamb being led to slaughter. He spoke very eloquently, but he gave us so much ammunition with that speech.

We have a member whose family has benefited from a decision made by the Minister of Fisheries. The member's brother has just been given a lucrative surf clam quota valued at hundreds of millions of dollars.

The member talked about the government investing in fisheries, but the government invested in the member's family. He talked about indigenous rights and reconciliation, which is so important, and yet his brother's bid had no first nations involvement until three weeks after the winning bid was announced.

I have to ask the member how he feels about the process. When it comes to the people in Grand Bank who are going to lose their jobs, what are the member's comments to them on this whole process? His family is definitely benefiting from the minister's corrupt decision.

[Darrell Samson, Liberal, Sackville—Preston—Chezzetcook, NS]

Mr. Speaker, the member gives me a great opportunity. He says there is a lot to talk about, and there is.

The Conservatives cut protection. Let us think about this. They cut protection of our fisheries and our habitats. That is unbelievable. On top of that, the former Conservative government was going to issue those licences while it was ignoring the indigenous people, because the Conservatives did not feel they were important.

In our government, we are here for all Canadians, including indigenous people. That is what we are doing, and we will continue to do that.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague for his eloquent and very loud speech. I want to ask a question about the west coast.

Many British Columbians are very concerned about open net fish farms that are on our oceans, particularly those that are close to salmon migratory routes. The Cohen commission looked at this matter in depth. I am not sure those recommendations have been implemented by the previous government or the present government.

Many British Columbians and many Canadians want to make sure that we keep our coasts clean and that we preserve the iconic wild salmon that are such an important part of our coast and our economy as well as indigenous culture.

Could my hon. colleague tell us what his government's opinion is of the member for Port Moody—Coquitlam's promotion of the idea of moving open net ocean fish farms to closed containment systems inland? By doing that we could make sure we preserve our wild salmon, and in fact all of the species that live on our iconic west coast.

[Darrell Samson, Liberal, Sackville—Preston—Chezzetcook, NS]

Mr. Speaker, there is no question that these issues are very important.

Our government has put forward an oceans protection plan with $1.5 billion. That is a major investment in our coastal waters. The member will also find that a part of that funding, $75 million, is for the coastal restoration fund. As well, there is $64 million that will focus on transportation, ports and traffic.

On top of that, I would have to say that our government is working closely with the British Columbia government on these issues, which are very important. We will continue to find ways to support the communities in B.C. and across Canada.

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, St. Catharines, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. friend spoke about reconciliation with indigenous people. I know there is not very much time, but I was wondering if he could expand on their importance to the government, as well as what the previous government did on that particular subject.

[Darrell Samson, Liberal, Sackville—Preston—Chezzetcook, NS]

Mr. Speaker, this question is a very important one. We could speak about this all day long.

We know of the challenges of indigenous people and their communities. There are challenges, for example, in education and health. As a government, we need to do much more. Our government has taken many initiatives. One has to do with water in, I believe it is, 54 communities in the last two years. There have been many investments in housing and health. Those are very important areas that we need to invest in. We should have been doing this a long time ago. It is our responsibility. We are all Canadians, and we will do it together.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by acknowledging we are on the traditional territory of the Algonquin people, and express gratitude to them for their generosity and patience. Meegwetch.

I also want to thank the hon. member for Sackville—Preston—Chezzetcook for sharing his time with me, and acknowledge this shows a spirit of respect toward opposition benches from the current Liberal government. I am grateful for the opportunity to speak, although I still must object to the use of time allocation and reducing time for debate in this place. However, the respect shown in shortening time but still allowing a member such as me to have at least one crack in second reading to this very important legislation is appreciated. It is particularly appreciated when I stand to speak, with shared time from a Liberal member, with the intention of attacking Liberal legislation, which I have done recently with shared time.

Today is a different occasion. Bill C-68 would repair the damage done to the Fisheries Act under former budget implementation omnibus bill, Bill C-38, in the spring of 2012, as the hon. member for Sackville—Preston—Chezzetcook was just referencing. This bill goes a long way. Within the ambit of what the Minister of Fisheries can do, it would repair the damage done by omnibus budget bill, Bill C-38, in relation to the Fisheries Act. I want to speak to that, as well as the one aspect where it would not fully repair the damage.

This is definitely a historic piece of legislation. The Fisheries Act was brought in under Sir John A. Macdonald. Canada has had a fisheries act for 150 years. That act traditionally dealt with what is constitutionally enshrined as federal jurisdiction over fish, and some people may wonder where the environment landed in the Constitution of Canada and the British North America Act. Where was the environment? The fish are federal. The water is provincial if it is fresh water, and federal if it is ocean water, so there has always been a mixed jurisdiction over the environment.

Over fish, there has been no question. Fish are federal. In the early 1980s, this act received a significant improvement, which was to recognize that fish move around and they cannot be protected without protecting their habitat. The Fisheries Act was modernized with a real degree of environmental protection. It had always been a strong piece of environmental legislation, because if we protect fish then we tend to protect everything around them.

In this case, the Fisheries Act was improved in the early eighties by a former minister of fisheries, who by accident of history, happened to be the father of the current Minister of Fisheries. It was the Right. Hon. Roméo LeBlanc. We use the term “right honourable” because he went on to be our Governor General. He amended the Fisheries Act in the 1980s to include protection of fish habitat, requiring a permit from the federal Minister of Fisheries if that habitat was either temporarily or permanently harmed or damaged. This piece of legislation is the significant pillar upon which much of Canada's environmental regulation rested.

What happened in Bill C-38 in the spring of 2012 was a travesty that remains in the annals of parliamentary history as the single worst offence against environmental legislation and protection by any government ever. It was followed up with a second omnibus budget bill in the fall of 2012, Bill C-45, which took an axe to the Navigable Waters Protection Act. In the spring, Bill C-38 repealed the Environmental Assessment Act and replaced it with a bogus act, which I will return to and discuss. Bill C-38 also repealed the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act, the National Roundtable on Environment and the Economy, and gutted the Fisheries Act.

Rather than go on about that, the hon. member who was just speaking referenced the changes made. I can tell people some of the changes that were made, and I was so pleased to see them repealed. When one opens a copy of Bill C-68, the first thing one sees is subclause 1(1), “The definitions commercial, Indigenous and recreational in subsection 2(1) of the Fisheries Act are repealed.” This is not a scientific thing. This is what Bill C-38 did to our Fisheries Act. Fish were no longer fish. They were only fish if they were commercial, indigenous, or recreational. That language came straight from a brief from industry. It did not come from civil servants within the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. It came from the Canadian Electricity Association. That is repealed.

This bill would bring back protections for habitat. It goes back to looking at some of the foundational pieces of how the Fisheries Act is supposed to work, and then it goes farther.

I have to say I was really surprised and pleased to find in the bill, for the first time ever, that the Fisheries Act will now prohibit the taking into captivity of whales. That was a very nice surprise. It is proposed section 23.1. I asked the minister the other day in debate if he would be prepared to expand this section with amendments, because over on the Senate side, the bill that was introduced by retired Senator Wilfred Moore and is currently sponsored by Senator Murray Sinclair, and I would be the sponsor of this bill if it ever makes it to the House, Bill S-203, would not only ban the taking of whales into captivity but the keeping of whales in captivity. I am hoping when this bill gets to the fisheries committee. We might be able to expand that section and amend it so that we can move ahead with the protection of whales.

This bill is also forward-looking by introducing more biodiversity provisions and the designation of areas as ecologically sensitive, work that can continue to expand the protection of our fisheries.

I will turn to where there are gaps. Because I completely support this bill, while I do hope for a few amendments, they come down to being tweaks.

Where does this bill fail to repair the damage of Bill C-38? It is in a part that is beyond the ability of the Minister of Fisheries to fix. That is the part about why Harper aimed at the Fisheries Act, the Navigable Waters Protection Act, and the Environmental Assessment Act.

There was not random violence in this vandalism; it was quite focused. It was focused on destroying the environmental assessment process so that we would no longer be reviewing 4,000 projects a year. Of those 4,000 projects a year that were reviewed under our former Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, most of them, about 95% of them, were reviewed through screenings that were paper exercises, that did not engage hearings, and so forth. However, it did mean that, at a very preliminary level, if there was a problem with a project, a red flag could go up, and it could be booted up for further study.

There is a reason that the Fisheries Act habitat provisions were repealed. They were one of the sections listed in our former Environmental Assessment Act under what was called the “law list”, where a minister giving a permit under section 35 of our former Fisheries Act automatically triggered that the decision was subject to an environmental assessment.

Similarly, why did the former government take a hatchet to the Navigable Waters Protection Act? Like the Fisheries Act, it is an act we have had around for a long time, since 1881. It was not an act that had impeded the development of Canada or we would never have had a railroad. Since 1881, we have had the Navigable Waters Protection Act. The previous government took a real axe to it. The current Minister of Transport has gone a long way toward fixing it under one portion of Bill C-69.

This is why. Navigable waters permits also were a trigger under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. Do members see where I am going here? This was synchronized action. It was not random.

The current government has pledged to fix all of the damage done by the previous government to environmental laws. Where the failure to fix things is evident is in what is called the “impact assessment act” in Bill C-69. It has abandoned the concept of a law list altogether. It has abandoned the concept of having permits and environmental assessments required whenever federal money is engaged. In other words, the Harper imprint of going from 4,000 projects reviewed a year to a couple of dozen will remain the law of the land without significant improvement to Bill C-69. In particular, the decisions the Minister of Fisheries makes should be subject to an EA, just as the decisions of the Minister of Transport should be subject.

In my last minute, I want to turn our attention to something I hope the Minister of Fisheries will take up next, because he is doing a great job. I hope he will take up looking at open-pen salmon aquaculture. It must end. It is a threat to our wild salmon fishery on the Pacific coast. It is a threat to the depleted wild Atlantic salmon stocks on the Atlantic coast, where I am originally from. There is no Atlantic salmon fishery because it has been destroyed. However, there are still Atlantic salmon, which could restore themselves if they did not have to compete with the escapement of Atlantic salmon from fish farms in Atlantic Canada, and the destruction of habitat by those farms. On the west coast, these are not even indigenous species that are escaping and threatening our wild salmon.

Let us close down open-pen fisheries, give aquaculture to the Minister of Agriculture, have fish in swimming pools on land, and let the Minister of Fisheries protect our coastal ecosystems.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I have a great deal of respect for the member for both her excellent knowledge of the environment and also of process. She started out talking about process and time allocation, and I would like to ask her, because of her expertise in that area, for a solution.

We are sent to Parliament to accomplish. There is so much that has to be done in the year, and along with dilatory motions and everything, there has to be a way to get everything in. What some legislatures in the world use is programming, but there did not seem to be an appetite in opposition parties for that solution. Therefore, I wonder what the member would suggest, in light of the fact that in this and previous Parliaments, a number of dilatory motions can stop the agenda.

How can any government get its program through Parliament, on important bills like this, within a year, in the time it has?

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Yukon for a very useful question because I would love to see us fix the problem. I talked to colleagues of mine in the Parliament at Westminster. There is one Green Party member there, Caroline Lucas, leader of the Greens of the U.K. and Wales. She said do not go for that programming thing because it really does fast-track bills without enough time for debate.

What we should do is open up the process here. The hon. leader of the government in the House and the whip get frustrated and say they will have to bring in time allocation because they are not going to get the bill through. What is happening is due to the secretiveness of the meetings of House leaders and whips. They are trying to figure out how to schedule something. If those meetings were open, imagine if I could go to them. Imagine if any member could go. They could say, “Our side isn't even being reasonable here. We ought to be able to provide a list of how many speakers we have on the bill”.

Another very helpful thing would be if we followed the rules that we still have, but which are now viewed as no longer in effect, such as that no member be allowed to give a speech that is a written speech. If members had to come here and give a speech on what they knew about the bill without notes, I think we would not find so many people at the last minute willing to stand up and give a speech on the matter before this place, and we might find we could move along more expeditiously, as they do in the Parliament at Westminster, where the only people speaking are those intimately knowledgeable of the question at hand.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my neighbour from Saanich—Gulf Islands for her speech. As she knows, my riding is home to the iconic Cowichan River, which is a designated heritage river in British Columbia and home to salmon habitat.

I have handed a lot of petitions to the government on the status of the Lake Cowichan weir, which is responsible for managing flow rates into the Cowichan River. The government has acknowledged that summer low flows in the Cowichan River are a threat to fish and fish habitat, but there does not seem to be any explicit legal protection for environmental flows in the bill. I would like to hear her comments on that.