First of all, sections 20 and 29 deal with fish passage. One of the threats to fisheries is ensuring that there is sufficient water flow, and sufficient ability for fish to get through obstacles. Sections 20 and 29 deal with fish passage.
In Bill C-38, there weren't substantive changes to the provisions that are currently in 20. There were a few. There was modernization. We took a number of sections that were in place before, 20, 22, 26, 27, and a couple of others, and combined them into section 20. Basically, though, it was a modernization of the fish passage provisions. There were a few provisions that hadn't been used since the twenties that were removed, but it was basically left intact.
It was pointed out by some stakeholders that the section 20 that was adopted by Parliament in June included a prohibition that basically said you can't put any obstacle in the water such that two-thirds or more of the watercourse is blocked. But there was no authorization scheme to be able to authorize that. We were saying, and have always said with respect to that provision, that it's the section 35 prohibition that applies in that regard.
Section 35 says that you can't have any undertaking, activity, or work that would cause serious harm to fish that are part of a commercial, recreational, or aboriginal fishery. Certainly if you're putting an obstacle in place, that is where that is triggered.
The concern that we heard from some stakeholders is that when you have that in section 35, you still have something that says you can't put any kind of obstacle that takes up at least two-thirds of the watercourse, and they were saying, “You know, you don't really have an authorization scheme”. We wanted to make it clear there's only one authorization scheme, so we removed that particular section.
We then put it into section 29 and made it a fish management piece, and in 29, basically, that's the section that our fish managers require to ensure that somebody doesn't put a net or a weir across an entire river and block. So we do have the ability to address the issues, and it's clear that our one prohibition is section 35.