I think you can't protect fish without protecting their habitat. As I understand it, we're going to be limiting the protections in the proposed act to limited and specific fisheries and fish species. I think my comments stand that the limits in the new act will weaken the protection for our aquatic resources. If you don't have clarity and consistency of the application of law, whether for the smaller undertakings...or certainly, when there's discretion applied to larger undertakings, where ordinary Canadians see that bigger enterprises get to flout the Fisheries Act and important regulations related to fisheries, that sends a really terrible message. It's going to lead to an eventual decline in the state of the resource.
On May 28th, 2012. See this statement in context.