Thank you, and good morning. I'm happy to see you again. It's pretty dark out here. It's early in the morning. It's been about six months since I testified to you about this very subject.
I'm really pleased to be here again to celebrate all the action on marine protection of the past six months, to talk about the good features of Bill C-55—which we support—and also to go through key points from our written brief that outline ways to improve the bill even more so that your government will leave an even greater lasting legacy for marine protection.
As you have our brief, I won't go through it in detail. I'm going to highlight some key points, and I would be happy to answer questions later.
As you know, the oceans provide every second breath we take and are essential to who we are as Canadians. Our history, culture, diet, transportation networks, recreational activities, and spiritual beliefs revolve around the ocean. Yet cod, the lifeblood of so many of your communities, have still not recovered, 25 years after commercial fishing was halted. Wild salmon are in danger on both coasts. Whales are dying in alarming numbers, and moratoria are in place for too many previously commercially fished species.
We want to celebrate the leadership of the government because marine protected areas, as you've just heard, are one solution, which this bill recognizes. The bill has some very good innovations, like the interim marine protection area designation, freezing the footprint of activities in the areas, and especially, a timeline to make sure we can designate areas a lot quicker than we currently do.
Bills like this don't come up very often for amendment, so now is the time to improve our flagship ocean protection law even more while the global momentum on oceans is so high, as we saw with the UN meeting in June on oceans, the Our Ocean conference in Malta, the upcoming leadership of Canada on the G7 with the blue economy theme, and while Parliament is looking at the details of the best feature of ocean protection law.
Our brief outlines very specific recommended amendments with legislative language to strengthen the bill even more, and the main area of improvement is on these minimum protection standards. This was a key message from the workshop we held in June in Ottawa with many government members, experts from different countries, and representatives including stakeholders from all three coasts, the IUCN, first nations leaders, and industry representatives.
To be effective, MPAs must be truly protected, and that's why we need these minimum protection standards. Your government is on top of the quantity issue for marine protected areas and has made a lot of progress. Now it's time to address quality of protection. Your government's environment committee made a unanimous recommendation about this topic in its recent report on federal protected areas—recommendation 26.
Our brief recommends a number of amendments to enshrine standards in law. The law is currently very inconsistent. As you've heard and will probably continue to hear, people are astonished to learn that oil and gas exploration, undersea mining, and damaging fishing activities are all possible in the tiny fraction of the sea that we call marine protected areas. That's why an unprecedented 70,000 Canadians, members of the public, spoke out about one of the proposed new MPAs, Laurentian Channel, and said that we need to keep harmful activities out of these areas.
Right now, the act creates inconsistent protection standards. We did send an expanded version of our brief to all of your offices this week, and appendix 2 of that brief has a chart of all the MPAs designated under the Oceans Act, and lists which activities can take place. You will see that there are a lot of activities allowed, and some of them are harmful. That really shouldn't happen.
These are straightforward amendments to achieve the goal of minimum protection standards, and there are precedents that exist now already in Canadian law that can be transferred into the Oceans Act. Now is the time to do that. We point particularly to the outright prohibition in the Canada National Marine Conservation Areas Act and its section 13. The environment committee unanimously recommended that this should happen. We hope your committee can also make this proposed amendment.
You may be told that these simple standards prohibiting damaging activities can't go into the act because of legal barriers, but I'm here today to tell you that it's both possible and straightforward to make these amendments, whether for oil and gas in all parts of Canada or for bottom trawling in fishing. Our brief has details on these legislative options.
Requiring the ecological integrity of MPAs to be the top priority for designation and management is an easy and straightforward amendment—we've just heard from Stephen Woodley about this—and we also recommend it and the legislative language from the Canada National Parks Act.
Both the 10-page brief you have before you today and the longer version we sent to you sets out language for these standards. You have the power to make this happen right now. We don't expect the Oceans Act to come up for amendment again very soon. Right now really is the time to get it right.
We also recommend an amendment to increase accountability by amending section 52 of the act to require an annual report to Parliament on how many MPAs are designated and whether they're meeting their conservation objectives. We already have such a reporting obligation in the Fisheries Act. We have a sort of strange one in the Oceans Act, which requires a one-time report, which already happened, but not regular ongoing reporting. This would be a good amendment to make.
We commend your government's commitment to reconciliation, and our brief sets out a number of proposed amendments related to indigenous rights, jurisdictions, protected areas, and co-management. We recommend that you engage on a nation-to-nation basis with first nations on these amendments.
In conclusion, Australia is famed for its Great Barrier Reef, Ecuador for the Galapagos, and the U.S.A. for marine protected areas like California's Monterey Bay, Alaska's Glacier Bay, and all of Hawaii's amazing undersea wonders that are protected. Here in Canada, we want our marine areas to equally be a source of pride for all Canadians and bastions of nature's wonders unaffected by industrial activities. From our seamounts to our glass sponge reefs, to our whale breeding grounds, we're blessed with rare wild places that deserve the best protection we can imagine and the strongest laws to make that happen.
You have the power to again make the Oceans Act a world-leading law by enshrining minimum protection standards. I think we all want our grandchildren to experience the wonder of nature and our blue planet.
I'm happy to answer any questions you may have about proposed amendments or any other matters in our brief. We strongly support this bill as do many of our colleagues in the conservation sector, and we are working to encourage you and your colleagues to make it even stronger.