I share your concern about the changes to the Fisheries Act. It remains to be seen how these terms “serious harm” and “permanent harm” will be defined by the courts. That will take some time. Again, we're going to be faced with a fair amount of uncertainty as we go through that process.
The Fisheries Act we have right now is tried and tested as a piece of legislation, and it does protect fish habitat, through the HADD provisions. It's pretty clear what the scope of it is, and proponents have a pretty good idea of when they're in jeopardy of prosecution and when they're not.
In situations where there may be damage to fish habitat now, proponents will say, “Well, you know, we've got this new law; it's not so strict, maybe we can get away with this. Although we're destroying fish habitat, we're not actually killing fish, so we don't really need to worry.” I would worry that it will be harder to protect.