Good morning. It's an honour to have been invited to present to you today.
I've been working on the science of marine conservation for about the past 14 years, with a focus on the design and effectiveness of marine protected areas, or MPAs. I also presented to this committee back in May about MPAs. Thanks for having me again.
Today I'm going to reflect on the proposed amendments and recommend some additional changes to the Oceans Act. I'll mention some scientific evidence supporting my comments, and I'll follow up with a written submission that includes the peer-reviewed scientific papers that support my point.
First of all, I'd like to commend this government for the proposed amendments outlined in Bill C-55 to improve the Oceans Act. I support the main changes that the bill would make to the Oceans Act. In particular, adding interim measures or freezing the footprint is very important so that consultations about studies, and studies about proposed MPAs, can take place without additional ecosystem degradation.
Clarifying fines and enhancing enforcement capacity are very welcome, especially in creating the opportunity to provide a role for indigenous guardians. Amendments to the Canada Petroleum Resources Act would allow the minister to prohibit new oil and gas activities and cancel existing interests. This is excellent because oil and gas activities are inherently unsustainable and not compatible with biodiversity conservation. Similar amendments would be needed for the accord acts to allow for a consistent approach across Canada.
Finally, having the precautionary principle enhanced in the act is also a great step forward.
I'd like to make five key additional recommendations for changes to the Oceans Act that would once again make Canada a leader in this area, as it was when the Oceans Act was first created.
The first of these is to add minimum protection standards to the Oceans Act. I know the committee has already heard from many witnesses about the importance of minimum protection standards. I won't belabour this point but wanted to add my support and one additional point. Opportunities to amend acts do not come up very often, and hence it would be a missed opportunity to delay discussing minimum protection standards. Also, there's a fear that not having minimum standards would lead to a decline in protections throughout Canada's protected area systems, on land and in the sea.
I'm a director on the board of the Canadian Council on Ecological Areas, a not-for-profit organization that facilitates and assists Canadians with the establishment and management of the comprehensive network of protected areas that are representative of Canada's terrestrial and aquatic natural diversity. On the board are federal, provincial, and jurisdictional representatives who work on protected areas in those jurisdictions, and some others who are academics like me. Those working in terrestrial jurisdictions fear that weak protection in the ocean could have the unintended consequence of lowering the bar for protections on land as well.
My second recommendation is to add a requirement for fully protected zones. You've also heard about this already, and there's documented scientific support for biodiversity benefits of strongly protected MPAs. My own recent work shows that MPAs that permit varying levels of fishing and other damaging activities are less effective at biodiversity conservation than are fully protected areas. Fully protected MPAs are also needed so that we can understand the impact of fishing and other activities on marine ecosystems. In other words, they can become a control site for understanding the impacts that humans have on the ocean.
My third recommendation is to add the ability to establish networks. As you know, best practice in MPA design is to establish networks rather than individual MPAs, and indeed many regions in Canada are working toward this. Thus encouraging establishment of networks of MPAs also means recognizing that representation is a legitimate and indeed essential rationale for MPAs. The Oceans Act should facilitate implementation of networks of MPAs by having provisions to establish a network rather than having to do each MPA in a network individually.
My fourth recommendation is to add a mechanism for co-management with indigenous peoples and recognize indigenous protected areas. There's an unprecedented opportunity to use MPAs to work toward reconciliation with indigenous peoples. There's a grave concern about the state of the oceans among the indigenous peoples I've worked with, and a keen interest to explore MPAs to engage in marine management. Joint management of MPAs, or co-management, means sharing of power equally, and this is seen as an opportunity both to revitalize cultural practices and to recover culturally important species.
The Oceans Act can provide for true joint management of indigenous marine territories on a nation-to-nation basis where desired by indigenous peoples. The planning toward a network of MPAs in the northern shelf bioregion in British Columbia is a great step in that direction. If done in partnership with indigenous peoples, MPAs can provide ecological conservation, cultural opportunities, and food security, and play a role in reconciliation. Additionally, the Oceans Act should also be amended to explicitly recognize indigenous-led protected and community conserved areas. Currently there is no legal tool for implementing marine indigenous protected areas. Those areas would rest decision-making with indigenous peoples.
My final recommendation for an addition to the Oceans Act is to ensure sufficient funding to manage and enforce MPAs. Implementing MPAs is only the beginning of managing our oceans for protection of biodiversity. Once established, MPAs need resources and staffing to ensure that they are managed properly, including enforcement, education, and outreach. A recent study found that MPAs with adequate staff capacity had an effect almost three times greater than that of MPAs with inadequate capacity. The rockfish conservation areas, or RCAs, in B.C. are illustrative. While they're not MPAs, they have a similar spatial management mechanism.
About a quarter of people interviewed in a recent study by one of my students admitted to unintentionally fishing illegally inside these rockfish conservation areas. The main reason for this non-compliance was lack of knowledge. About a quarter of the people had never heard that these places existed, and less than 1% knew all the rules of permitted and prohibited activities inside those areas. Most had never seen an enforcement officer, and this is in the southern Gulf Islands region in southern British Columbia, which is very populated. Outreach and education are thus essential for successful MPAs. Enforcement officers, be they DFO or other designated parties, need to have the resources to do their jobs properly or these areas will not protect biodiversity.
Another important resourcing issue is to compensate ocean users for lost livelihood opportunities, and not just oil and gas, as currently in the bill. This point was brought home to me by my terrestrial colleagues on the Canadian Council on Ecological Areas board, who work on protected area establishment and management federally, provincially, and in the territories. Compensation is simply an everyday reality for a terrestrial protected area establishment. Agencies buy land, compensate timber licence-holders, forgive property and capital taxes, while land trusts buy land, issue charitable gift receipts, and even buy out subsurface rights, and the Canada Revenue Agency writes off tax revenue, all to facilitate protected area establishment.
A key benefit ecologically is that, if you have such compensation or a structural adjustment, it can facilitate better protection of better sites. The political reality is that it's hard to achieve community support for well-protected MPAs where they are most needed because of the fear of loss of livelihoods. Communities can't always look past the near-term negative impacts to the potential long-term benefits. Compensation thus embodies an implicit recognition that protected areas benefit all of us, but sometimes put a disproportionate burden on a few.
One model that's worked well to engage communities in conservation-related activities is the coast fund in the Great Bear Rainforest, which provides a funding source for activities that support a sustainable economy in conservation. A similar fund could be established in regions where MPA networks support indigenous and non-indigenous coastal-dependent communities' engagement in marine conservation.
I thank you for the opportunity to present to you today, and I look forward to your questions.