Thank you.
I think one of the issues with the changes made in 2012 is that proving that there has been harm or damage is very difficult, as was already brought up by somebody. It's very difficult to actually observe, in some cases, what those damages might be.
We have seen examples where there has been obvious damage to what we believe is key habitat, which has been reported to DFO, and DFO has come out, looked at it, and said, yes, that doesn't look very good, but unless we can prove that there have been dead fish—and we don't see any—or that habitat alteration is permanent, there's nothing we can do at the moment. It seems to be “wait and see”. The question is, when does something become permanent? Rivers do have a tendency to repair harm to themselves; it may take years, or it may never happen. At what point can you say it's permanent? In the meantime, while we're watching and waiting to see what happens, there's harm to fish happening.
We believe that when there's harm or damage caused to habitat, when it's clear that the damage has been caused, and when there's a reasonable expectation that the habitat alteration or damage has resulted in some impacts on the salmon population, that should be a point at which somebody steps in to say, “That needs to be repaired.” They need to say that we don't need to wait for that to be proven to be permanent, whatever that means.
In terms of that sort of an example, we would like to see that idea that it must be permanently removed. If it's causing an impact on salmon, then that's a problem for us. It doesn't matter if it's permanent or if we actually see the dead fish or not. We know enough about salmon and the way they use habitat—and experts in DFO do as well—to know or to have a reasonable expectation to know that there has been an impact when we see those sorts of things. Whether you can actually prove it by showing dead fish or not shouldn't be an issue.