Thank you, Gabe, for that, and thank you for touching on the relationship between the Tsleil-Waututh and the killer whales. Obviously it's a topic that warrants much further discussion and exploration, but in these time limits, this is what we'll present. I'll get right into our specific recommendations to the committee.
We have outlined four specific recommendations. They're included in the written submission, so you can follow along.
The first one is that the federal government consult and engage with indigenous groups to amend the definition of “critical habitat” under the Species at Risk Act to consider continued indigenous cultural use. We've provided an example of proposed language to that effect.
The second recommendation is that the federal government base southern resident killer whale critical habitat on pre-contact or pre-industrial environmental conditions as opposed to current environmental conditions, because we truly believe that only maintaining habitat that's currently suitable for the resident killer whales will maintain only current population trends, which we all know are quite dire.
In accordance with the first two recommendations, our third recommendation is to designate Burrard lnlet and the Fraser River estuary as critical habitat for the southern resident killer whale so that it's connected and continuous with the rest of the critical habitat in the Salish Sea.
Our fourth recommendation is really a point of support. We want to express that Tsleil-Waututh supports the additions to the southern resident killer whale critical habitat put forth in DFO's amended recovery strategy for the killer whale, which came out earlier this year.
Those are the four specific points that we wanted to recommend to the committee with respect to Tsleil-Waututh's concerns around the killer whales.