Good morning, honourable members, and thanks again for inviting me. I've spoken to many of you before, and I always appreciate this opportunity. This particular issue is one that is dear to me and one I've worked on for many years.
I've been with the David Suzuki Foundation for 15 years and was previously with the Sierra Club of British Columbia for five years. I've lived the life of the Oceans Act, I guess, in my work on the west coast, as well as working nationally with different governments and people in the agencies to try to realize the terms of the Oceans Act and apply them as they were intended. I've worked in this field for 30 years in total, with the last 10 years of my career focusing specifically on marine conservation.
I was involved in many advance planning processes, consultations, discussions, and dialogues with government over the implementation of the Oceans Act. That goes back to the development of Canada's ocean strategy and the oceans action plan. As many of you know, the description in the act that required the establishment of these large ocean management areas—one of which was the PNCIMA area off the central north coast of British Columbia—was one of the most robust examples of where the act was applied in the context of integrated management.
There are a lot of examples that I could give on how that was developed, the consultation process that occurred, and the engagement of a variety of federal agencies, stakeholders, and first nations. To me it was moving towards a very prominent model of how integrated management could and should be done. Unfortunately, that process failed in the end. I'm happy to answer questions about that, and I think it's worth revisiting because, as our previous speaker said, there's an expectation now about integration. There's so much information, more science, more participation by people, and more use in our ocean. There are people wanting to participate at another level.
To speak to the earlier question about consultation, it's moved to a range of consultation processes that need to be engaged. That's something that could be articulated in more detail in the act. The Oceans Act overall was a very bold document with good moral intentions, and it's provided a real focal point in Canada to look at marine conservation. Prior to its enactment, we really didn't have as much opportunity. Much of the conservation effort, much of the non-profit organization effort was on terrestrial conservation. I was part of that. I worked for many years on land use plans and planning throughout western Canada, but moved to the marine because it was always the poor cousin that wasn't getting the attention and wasn't getting resolution.
In the wake of much of the land use planning in British Columbia, where many of the stakeholders and government people learned a lot about process and about opportunity to get some positive outcomes, we start working on the marine area. When the federal Oceans Act integrated management plan was taken down, we moved to a process with the provincial government and first nations called the marine planning partnership. This embodied many of the objectives and principles of the Oceans Act, and carried on to try to identify planning opportunities and outcomes for the B.C. coast. That took us part of the way, but as you know, the federal jurisdiction over much of the ocean really requires the federal agencies to be involved.
Again, that's where the Oceans Act is the driver. There are some things I'd like to see changed there, and I'll speak to two main elements of the act. One is the integrated management provision, and the other is protected areas.
First, on the integrated management piece, there's a clause that is very specific about directing the minister, saying that he or she shall lead the development and implementation of integrated management plans. That was done, and large ocean management areas were defined—there are five of them—but they only cover a portion of Canada's oceanscape, and I believe we should amend the act in some way to require that.... It implies that we do this in all of Canada's ocean, but there are no timelines and no targets, so we could be another 20 years down the road without having defined action.
One of my concerns is that in some of the most developed areas of our coast, some of the ones that have been most heavily impacted, we don't have a planning process. We don't have a large ocean management area established. The Strait of Georgia, on the west coast, is an area that needs planning. It's the area that gets so much of the activity and would benefit from an integrated management plan. Somehow, I would like to see us mandate this work in a broader scale across Canada's landscape.
For the other component in the act to be effective, I propose the insertion of targets and timelines around protection as well. I think these timelines should ideally line up with those reflected in the international commitments that Canada signs, including biodiversity targets under the Convention on Biological Diversity, known as the Aichi targets, or the United Nations sustainable development goals. These are provisions that Canada has signed on to, and they continue to be a forum for conversation and developing the thinking and anticipated outcomes for biodiversity conservation.
I'm sure many of you have seen the international report by the World Wildlife Fund that defines the ongoing decline of wildlife on the planet, both marine and terrestrial. Granted, some species are doing well—some fish stocks are doing very well, including some Canadian fish stocks—but many are not.
On some, we're losing both the number of species and, also, the overall abundance of species. As long as that trend is moving in a negative way, my proposal is that we need to find ways to implement the Oceans Act provisions in a more timely manner and stem the loss of species diversity and abundance.
We know that other climate impacts and things like that affecting the oceans are having previously unseen consequences to ocean biodiversity, so a higher level of intensity of management is needed, both to track and maintain what we hope will be productive ecosystems that serve our communities, serve the fishing industry, and serve our opportunity to maintain a food supply from our oceans.
I also think the act would be improved by enabling a legal requirement for the implementation of the plans so that they can guide decision-making across all agencies that share the regulatory management space in our oceans.
We know that DFO has a lot of power under this act, but it doesn't have all the power necessary, given what the other agencies have in their statutory powers as well. Having Indigenous and Northern Affairs, Transport Canada, and Environment and Climate Change Canada actively involved, and mandated through the act to be part of realizing the outcomes driven by the act, is an important piece. We've had some effort in the past through ministerial committees, deputy ministerial committees, and management groups across the agencies, but I think it needs to be embedded more solidly so that it isn't an option for an agency to participate or not.
The requirement for integrated management planning does not stand alone, rather, it helps to accommodate the second part of the act, which is the protected areas piece. Through the establishment of comprehensive marine plans, we have the opportunity not only to identify specific areas for conservation, but to achieve efficiencies in time, cost, and conservation by establishing networks of MPAs. I'll refer back to the Pacific north coast integrated management area.
We had many good objectives developed for that region, including a network of MPAs, and we were getting into the analysis where we were looking at the entire seascape there. We were looking at the high biodiversity values, looking at the economic values, looking for ways to maximize conservation and maintain the productivity of fisheries, while at the same time maintaining those opportunities for economic activity.
I think the act should be amended in a couple of ways to more specifically provide direction and authority to designate a collection of protected areas through one designation process. This would identify a suite of protected areas, and instead of having to go through a very rigorous timely process around each one, you could have a network of areas that become one package of protection, similar to what we've done in the national parks system, where we have things like the Gulf Islands National Park Reserve, which is a consolidation of many pieces.
I think the other area of the act that needs strengthening is the area of indigenous protected areas. Many indigenous peoples have a long-standing interest in conserving resources and protecting areas of their traditional territory, and there's an opportunity to enable the government to accommodate indigenous protected areas, which are determined, managed, and governed by indigenous people. This amendment would not only facilitate additional conservation of natural resources, but would take Canada further down the path of reconciliation with indigenous communities.
There is a lot of discussion—