Thank you very much. Thank you to all the members of the committee for running back and being back with us.
I'm pleased to be here to speak with you today on this critical topic, and I commend the committee for tackling this issue.
West Coast Environmental Law is an environmental public interest non-profit organization, and we've been operating in Vancouver since 1974. We currently work on marine protected areas, and that's what I will speak about today.
I've also filed a brief with the committee that has much more detail. Our written brief contains two main recommendations. I'll talk about those and some subtopics in one of the recommendations.
We ask you to first see what we can learn from other countries and their experience in creating marine protected area networks, especially their laws. Second, we ask the committee to determine how to fill the gap in our marine protected area legal regime.
We believe that new and amended legal provisions can provide you with the jet fuel that's needed to reach these very ambitious targets that you've heard so much about.
First, when looking at progress on MPAs in other countries, what can Canada learn? Witnesses you've heard from have outlined the glacial pace of progress on MPAs and the complex policy and social environment in which MPAs are created. Many witnesses to this committee have pointed out that the MPA creation lags far behind terrestrial conservation area creation and far behind Canada's legal commitment, which exists not only under the Convention on Biological Diversity but also under the United Nations sustainable development goal as well as the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
Some witnesses have underscored the need to go beyond the ambitious targets in Minister Tootoo's mandate letter so that our targets can match the growing body of scientific evidence demonstrating that 30% or 35% coverage is needed to retain the incalculable benefits of the ocean's ecosystem services.
Progress on MPAs has been remarkably slow. Where there is a will, however, there is a way. Other countries have made astonishing progress in a short time frame. Australia, California, the United Kingdom, the European Union, and South Africa are all examples.
Many of these places with successful records of MPA network expansion share a key feature: they've introduced a bold new law that compels action. Law can be a force for change. Canada can learn from their experiences.
A strong legal foundation is one of the enabling conditions for marine protection. The brief goes into a number of examples from Australia, California, the U.K., Scotland, the tiny island nation of Palau, and South Africa. There are also Chile and New Zealand.
A number of countries are racing to meet these legal targets to create MPAs. While no single factor can be pinpointed as the most effective way to a secure marine conservation, law does play a significant role. Careful study of the features of these laws that enabled rapid progress is warranted, and we encourage you to look in detail at features of laws that have proved successful.
Turning to the second point, our brief provides an overview of some gaps in the existing Canadian legal framework for MPAs, with examples of provisions from other places that suggest possible solutions to modify and adapt into law in Canada.
I will go through a few of those.
The first is to designate multiple marine protected areas at once instead of using the ad hoc one-by-one approach that has proved so slow and cumbersome. The evidence suggests that the ad hoc approach to marine protected areas has not worked well. An alternative approach is to designate multiple sites at once, following examples of other countries.
A legislated Canadian framework that ties together the various agencies responsible for MPA creation while setting common goals and objectives could be a foundation for a successful new approach. In the interim, all agencies with responsibility for MPA designation could agree to approach key geographic areas en masse and designate a series or a network of MPAs at once.
What better place to start than in British Columbia? We urge you to look at the exciting and innovative example of the B.C. marine planning partnership, also known as MaPP, as a place where the federal government can make rapid progress in expanding a network of marine protected areas on B.C.'s north and central coasts.
In April 2015, MaPP, the partnership between the Government of British Columbia and seventeen first nations, in a laudable example of co-governance, formally approved marine plans for an area of 102,000 square kilometres, a huge area of our central and north coasts. These plans create large-scale zones in the ocean, similar to the types of zones that we use on land.
To take one example from Haida Gwaii, the planning team identified protection management zones based on important ecological, economic, cultural, and social values. Ten per cent of the area is zoned for high levels of protection to protect eelgrass, kelp, forests, rockfish habitat, seabird colonies, estuaries, herring spawn, and salmon-rearing, areas with mixed human and ecological values. There are also lower-level protection zones corresponding to IUCN categories III and IV, for example. There are special management zones and general management zones as well.
These zones were adopted after years of scientific evidence-gathering, consultation with communities, and a unique partnership between these first nations and the Province of B.C.