Yes, basically, Mr. Hardie, and thank you for your question, and thank you for your characterization of one of the challenges on the road to meeting these targets. I don't necessarily disagree with your assessment.
The idea of freezing the footprint—and this would be based obviously on scientific advice and on consultations with communities, with provinces, and with territories—is that it would give us as a government, and also future governments, the opportunity to say, in a very sensitive biological or ecological area where there is reason to think that the lack of protection could lead.... Let's take examples of endangered species. As examples, let's take the iconic southern resident killer whales and the North Atlantic right whales. Canadians are deeply concerned, for very understandable reasons, about those kinds of issues.
In this case, if a particular area was determined to be a critical feeding area for southern resident killer whales, for example, is there a way to provide an interim protection for something as important to Canadians as that iconic species and help it recover? These protections would give us the tools to do that. It would say that if we freeze the footprint, existing practices—things that had been lawfully and properly taking place in the previous year—would be allowed to continue for the five years of the interim protection, but in the interim, further erosion or accelerated or continued erosion through the introduction of new practices or new human activities would be frozen, pending the consultation and the work that the final regulatory process would enact.