Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I live in a city that borders on one of the greatest salmon rivers on the planet, the Fraser River. I think that DFO is and should be involved in watershed planning. I'll give you an example. I was a councillor for seven years for the City of Coquitlam. We eventually changed from having to mandate.... We mandated that that watershed plans have to happen before development plans. That was to work with DFO and with the province to focus on those cumulative impacts on one of the greatest salmon rivers in the world, and we're just one city of many along that river.
My question comes back to Ms. Venton. We know that fish kills happen all the time. The dumping of paint and other toxic chemicals in streams has resulted in the death of fish. Sometimes it's a small kill, and sometimes it's a large kill. We also know that there have been no prosecutions under the new act.
We also know that houses and other buildings are built along streams. We know that roads are built and bridges go across these streams, right through fish habitat, and that's just in an urban setting. All of these examples have nothing to do with resource management along streams, at least in my home province of British Columbia, in terms of industries like forestry, agriculture, and mining, which all have impacts as well.
I'm wondering if you could talk a little more about that serious harm provision and how that needs to be changed in order to determine what we talked earlier in terms of cumulative impacts, or how to make the changes more specific in the new Fisheries Act if it does get revised.