First, I don't understand why we don't have the English version of the motion.
Then I discovered something else when reading this amendment. The French version uses “principe de la prudence” everywhere in the act. So we looked it up in the dictionary and did some historical research. In French, we use the word “précaution”. That's what came out of the 1992 Rio Declaration. I understand that, at the time, the language chosen came from other public policy spheres, but in French, based on the Rio Declaration, it should be “principe de précaution”.
In fact, I remember doing a search on the Pest Management Regulatory Agency and noticing that, in that context, they also used “principe de précaution”.
The precautionary approach enacted in 1992 is as follows:
Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.
Therefore, I'd like to propose an amendment to replace the word “prudence” with the word “précaution”.
Based on its usage, the word “prudence” (“caution” in English) refers to accounting values. It's one of the seven big accounting and economic principles. For example, accounting records should be collected with “prudence” (“caution” in English.
“Principe de la prudence” is not used when we talk about the environment. In this area, we always talk about the “principe de précaution” (“precautionary principle” in English).