Thank you, Michael.
It's a pleasure to be here, Mr. Chair and members. My time in fisheries management goes back more than five decades. I had the pleasure of working as a fisheries officer and an adviser to the minister at DFO, a deputy minister in the province, and in the last 20 years, an adviser in Nunavut.
In saying that, I wish to say that, from all of my experience and all of my reviews of activity pertaining to the Fisheries Act, probably the biggest single step to modernize it that I can remember was when LeBlanc senior introduced some changes back in 1977, which protected fish and the habitat. I might add that at that time I was very close to the minister and was very pleased that he went slightly beyond fish, the habitat, and the protection of it, and said that the Fisheries Act should also be a lot about people and their communities. I think that's a very important point that we should bear in mind.
The board has a number of recommendations, including proper consultation and co-operation, as well as recognition of, and conformity with, the protected aboriginal and treaty rights. Decision-making should be based not just on good, up-to-date science but—a very basic point pointed out earlier by some people who have spoken—on traditional knowledge, especially from the Inuit community in the north. The application of the precautionary approach in ecosystem management should be guided by environmentally sound principles.
We should have emphasis on co-operation with other governments and especially land claim agencies; stronger protections for fish and their habitat, including marine biodiversity, with decision-makers' discretion bound by mandatory directions, including with respect to the making of regulations—and I'll come to that specific point shortly; enhanced protection for critical fish habitats; avoidance and mitigation of cumulative detrimental effects on fish and their habitat; and, of course, from the north you couldn't miss or ignore the recognition of climate change.
Mr. Chair and members, on another point, I would add, from practical experience, that having a good act, a modernized act, without appropriate, modern, and applicable regulations to follow is certainly where my mind is focused, to a large degree, in Nunavut. In Nunavut, in addition to the long delay in modernizing the act, we have been waiting for 23 years now to get complementary regulations even to the current Fisheries Act. In that case, efforts have been made by Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated, the Inuit parent body, with DFO over the years 2002 to 2016, and they are still pending having the necessary regulations.
The result is that all fishing in Nunavut waters, our newest territory, is still governed by the Northwest Territories fishery regulations and the Fisheries Act. This has negatively affected ongoing fisheries and will especially impact emerging fisheries.
To end this presentation, and answer questions later, I will simply say that we have two recommendations in particular that I will leave with you.