Thank you, Lesley.
My name is Matthew Pickard. I'm the vice-president of environment and sustainability with Sabina Gold and Silver Corporation, which is a junior mining company based in Vancouver.
Over the past seven years we've been focused on the development of the Back River gold project, a proposed gold mine in the western Kitikmeot region of Nunavut.
Over the past seven years we've also been focused on various aspects of the Fisheries Act, both before and after the 2012 amendments. Before I delve into the specifics of the 2012 amendments, I'd like to briefly go over some thoughts and key principles for an effective regulatory process.
We believe that regulatory regimes need to be balanced and should adopt integrated holistic frameworks for balancing environmental protection with conservation goals and the economic benefits. It's important to have clarity, consistency, and predictability in process, to ensure that triggers, timelines, and scopes are followed.
We believe that regulatory processes should be scalable and proportionate to the nature, scope, and duration of the project activities. We believe they should be timely, and move forward as rapidly as possible, keeping in mind the balance of participation for stakeholders and rights holders, adequate time for regulators to properly review information, and the commercial realities of the proponent. We believe they should be based on science and traditional aboriginal knowledge.
We believe that departments should be properly resourced with both the human and financial resources to undertake their work.
Finally, regulatory regimes should establish defined responsibilities with respect to the duty to consult and, where appropriate, to accommodate aboriginal peoples.
It is our view that the 2012 changes to the Fisheries Act have helped generate more certainty in the process, but have also been successful overall in maintaining the protection of fish and fisheries, for example, through the proportionality of the reviews.
Regulatory oversight called for by the 2012 act is proportional to the scope of the potential impact, in that projects that have the potential to generate serious harm to fish must still seek a section 35 authorization.
Lower-impact projects or activities have a two-step process that includes the self-assessment by proponents, and the potential of completing a request for review to get feedback from DFO in a timely manner if the project is uncertain whether a section 35 authorization is required.
On clarity, the 2012 amendments have helped to further clarify, by providing clear and predictable definitions and enhancing the opportunities for proponents to speak to Department of Fisheries and Oceans officials. They also have helped to improve the guidance available to companies with respect to identifying potential effects, by utilizing the pathways of effects diagrams.
On timeliness, some timelines have been established, specifically the section 35 authorizations, and these have proven helpful to resource development. The maximum timeline for authorization has been defined, and the self-assessment process helps to remove pressures on DFO staff to provide the previously utilized letters of advice.
On capacity, the 2012 changes now allow for the government resources to be targeted and more focused while still allowing oversight.
Finally, although the 2012 amendments were intended to lead DFO to focus on commercial, recreational, and aboriginal fisheries, in our experience, the act generally remains similar to previous versions. The requirement to protect any fish that support commercial, recreational, and aboriginal fisheries has, in practice, sustained protections for fish.
I'll use our Back River project to illustrate our experience with the Fisheries Act.
In order to develop this project, two small fish-bearing lakes and a handful of streams will require dewatering or significant modifications which will result in serious harm to fish. Therefore, a section 35 authorization will be required prior to the project proceeding. As part of the application for authorization, we prepared a conceptual offsetting plan, which includes various options or measures to counterbalance the loss of fish or fish habitat.
The ultimate goal of this plan is to improve the productivity of a local aboriginal—or in this case, Inuit—fishery. We've worked on this offsetting plan together with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and local communities, and in partnership with the Kugluktuk Hunters and Trappers organization.
In 2012, we formalized an agreement with the Kugluktuk Hunters and Trappers organization, and initiated a study to determine if the remediation of the Bernard Harbour area, which was once a thriving Inuit fishery, could also meet DFO offsetting requirements.
The Bernard Harbour restoration project included a traditional knowledge study involving community members from Kugluktuk and Cambridge Bay, baseline fieldwork, development of a fisheries offsetting plan, restoration work, monitoring, and long-term management and restoration activities.