You're right in that we don't understand all the complexities, but we do know enough about how to start defining the ecological zones of Canada's coastal waters, and we do know what we need to measure to monitor for climate change. We can address Canada's oceans.
I would refer you to the Royal Society's panel report—it's available on their website—which was two years of work by quite a strong panel. You can review that material.
I have no concern myself. We know enough that we could draft a policy for our oceans.
The biggest response is that it's not cheap working in oceans. You need specialized equipment; you need ships. We're very badly behind in ships on the west coast, but the oceanographic side is much stronger.
But there are new tools that allow us to do real-time monitoring. We have proposals where we can use what we call “community science” to monitor oceans. Many people who used to fish want to be on the water and have vessels that we can adapt to collect information and monitor things through time. There's lots of opportunity for the development of an ocean policy like that.