The reason I make the distinction between holistic and integration is from the work of Joanna Vince from Australia. She's taken a look at the Australian example around their success, or not in their case, with regional integrated management plans. She's asking the question of what is integration and whether that's what we should be looking forward to. From my point of view, the reason I use “holistic” is that it encourages us to take a broader view of what we mean by ecological systems and bringing in human systems, ecological environmental systems, socio-cultural as well as economic systems, so we're broadening the framework, if you will, through which we're making our decisions.
I think in the past, certainly if you talk to folks over at DFO, a large part of their methodology has really been confined to the environmental and the economic aspect and putting those two systems together. Whereas, more and more we're seeing in the literature an encouragement to expand that so decision-makers are getting a better and broader perspective, whether it's in how you make decisions around MPAs or regional plans.
I want to make a distinction as well between what we're asking of federal departments. Fourteen federal departments have ocean-related activities in their portfolios. Getting them to work together versus the work that needs to take place at a regional level, recognizing the diversity of our three coastlines, and then within those three coastlines, as well as at a local level, again recognizing the diversity of the various communities....
Much of my work has been thinking more on the federal level and how you get the federal family working together. As noted, in the past interdepartmental committees have been chaired by the deputy minister. I would like to see those committees having more force. I'd like to see whether there should be some kind of mechanism where, if a decision is going to cabinet and it has an ocean-related impact, some kind of assessment is carried out to understand that impact on oceans.
Again today, as this committee is probably aware, environmental assessments around oceans are divided between the Minister of the Environment and DFO. There's a split jurisdiction there, if you will. Perhaps there's a need to really look at that split and ask if we are doing the oceans and ourselves any favours by keeping them in two separate jurisdictions.