Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and committee members.
My name is Stephen Hazell. I'm pleased to represent Greenpeace Canada today on the traditional, unceded territory of the Anishinabe Algonquin people. Thanks for the opportunity to appear.
Greenpeace is an independent, not-for-profit organization that uses peaceful protest to work towards a greener, more peaceful world. My role is as a consultant on federal nature law and policy. Formerly, I was executive director to a number of national environmental and nature groups. I served as regulatory affairs director of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency and as adjunct professor of environmental law at uOttawa.
Greenpeace's overarching message is this. With amendments, Bill C-73 could be an important tool to hold Canada accountable to meet its international commitments to halt and reverse nature loss. Nature in Canada is in dire crisis. As of 2020, 873 species have been identified as critically imperiled. Highly endangered northern spotted owls have dwindled in number to just one female in the wild. Boreal caribou populations are in sharp decline across Canada's north. The population of endangered right whales has continued to decline in the past decade, despite efforts to reduce entanglements and vessel strikes.
Overall, Canada has repeatedly fallen short in fulfilling our commitments to protect nature since the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity. Federal and provincial nature laws have been largely ineffective and poorly implemented. Canadians are now demanding a strong nature law. A Greenpeace petition now has almost 90,000 signatures. The landmark 2022 global biodiversity framework, signed by 196 countries, is a tremendous opportunity for Canada to halt human-induced extinction of threatened species and to protect 30% of terrestrial and marine areas. This can and must be achieved while respecting the principle of free, prior and informed consent under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
My colleagues has talked about the CNZEAA, the Canada Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act. Implementation has shown that legally binding targets and plans do drive progress—in this case, on climate. The same is true for nature. Accountability is required to ensure progress, and legislation is needed to ensure accountability.
Bill C-73 does need strengthening. Greenpeace Canada strongly supports the amendments proposed by Ecojustice and West Coast Environmental Law in the previous panel. I'll highlight a few of these amendments as follows.
The biodiversity shield amendment would support a whole-of-government approach, which is critical to ensure consistency in Canada's nature protection efforts so that you don't have one department saying one thing and another department doing something that is completely contrary. That's what we mean by whole-of-government approaches.
Amendments are also needed to ensure that the proposed advisory committee has a legislated mandate to ensure its independence and effectiveness. I, myself, would say that anglers, hunters, landowners and ranchers are all experts as well. They're the people who manage wildlife on their land. I don't see any reason that you wouldn't have them on the advisory committee as well. In fact, the species at risk advisory committee did have anglers and hunters on it. I don't know why we wouldn't do that again under this bill.
In a country that's built on colonial resource extraction, Bill C-73 must also explicitly prioritize the rights and leadership of indigenous peoples. Bill C-73 should also acknowledge that the rights of nature are inherent to the right to a healthy environment as currently proposed by the government in the draft implementation framework for the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.
Note that Bill C-73's accountability framework mandates federal action, such as setting Canada-wide targets, but not action by provincial or territorial governments. Provinces and territories hold much, if not most, of the authority under Canada's constitution to conserve and restore nature, so collaboration among the several levels of government is absolutely critical to meeting the overall national targets.
In conclusion, a strong Bill C-73 would signal true leadership in Canada and leadership internationally to halt and reverse nature loss.
Thank you so much. I look forward to questions.