Thank you.
I absolutely believe that we can get it right. I think there are a lot of examples. We have good science on planning. We have some good social science on decision-making with communities. There have been examples.
In British Columbia 20 years ago, when we were at 3.5% of our terrestrial landscape protected, people said there was no way we could get to 10%, 12%, or 15%, but over a period of 12 years we did that. We now have over 14.5% of the province protected on the terrestrial landscape. The forest industry didn't collapse. The mining industry didn't collapse. The agriculture industry didn't collapse.
We put reductions of risk to species, and we have some areas that will be legacies for hundred of years for our communities, so I think we know how to do this. It does take resources. It takes that commitment, but I also think we have ways now with technology to create a lot of efficiencies in the process. We have ways of bringing information to the table that we didn't have before. I strongly believe we can do that.
We set an example on the west coast as well in the fishing sector with the groundfish fleet. The fleet was closed for three years because of problems with overfished stocks. This was many years ago. Through the groundfish integration program, we managed to come up with a closure system and a planning system to reduce impacts on corals and sponges. After that closure was set in place, the fishing industry has managed to maintain its quota on that fishery, yet we have protected large areas of the ocean.
There are ways to do this. It just needs the investment and a commitment from government. As I saw with the PNCIMA process, when we were in that effort, the stakeholders came with great energy to that table, and I think we can repeat that.