Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, for the invitation to contribute to your study on the proposed amendments to the Oceans Act and the Canada Petroleum Resources Act.
I am a professor of geography at Memorial University of Newfoundland. I've been a scientist for about 20 years, specializing in geographic methods that can help us to understand and manage our oceans. One of my areas of expertise is conservation science, specifically the design of marine protected areas and area networks, and the assessment of their effectiveness.
When I testified in front of this committee last June, I was also in Ottawa for a workshop that focused on this exact topic: potential revisions to the Oceans Act. This workshop involved representatives from Fisheries and Oceans Canada, from the Canadian industry, and from environmental non-profit organizations. A lot of excellent recommendations came out of this workshop, and I strongly encourage you to review the report that was recently released by one of the organizers, the West Coast Environmental Law Association.
Let me start my statements by reiterating a warning I gave you in my previous testimony. Do not confuse the goal of meeting the Aichi 10% target with the real goal of protecting marine biodiversity. They can be very different things. As a matter of fact, a paper published only two weeks ago by Dr. Venter, a scientist at the University of Northern British Columbia, has shown that, globally, terrestrial protected areas tend to be placed in locations characterized by little economic value, and fail to protect areas that show high concentrations of threatened species. Canada's oceans are no exception to this trend, including a lot of areas that contributed to the recent 5% interim target.
We often put MPAs in places of low economic value and are not ready to make the hard choices required to make it right. Our government cannot only be driven by an area-based target. It needs to monitor Canada's progress using a more complex set of metrics.
Marine protected areas have been shown to be a useful management tool to help maintain healthy oceans. I understand the concerns some members of this committee shared about impacts on the economy and employment. Those are valid concerns, but let me remind you what happens when ocean health is not maintained.
In 1992, over 20,000 people from Newfoundland and Labrador were put out of work due to the cod moratorium—20,000 people. This was the single largest mass layoff in Canadian history. This is what happens when decisions favour short-term growth over long-term sustainability. The health of our oceans is declining globally, including in Canada. We have to make sure that what happened in Newfoundland and Labrador will not happen again, and effective marine protected areas have an important role to play in this.
With regard to Bill C-55, you may remember the letter that I co-signed last June with all the marine scientists from across the country, including Dr. Ban and Dr. Worm, who are present today. This letter was sent to Ministers LeBlanc and McKenna.
Our first recommendation was to amend the Oceans Act to include minimum protection levels for MPAs, similar to terrestrial parks. I cannot overstate how important it is to review the Oceans Act in more depth. While the Oceans Act was novel legislation 20 years ago, it has many gaps that have to be filled if we want Canadian MPAs to be useful for protecting marine ecosystems and biodiversity.
The changes proposed in Bill C-55 are a good start and aim to help the government meet its targets, but those changes are not sufficient in the long term. I will focus on four main areas I think should be addressed.
First, the Oceans Act should start by providing a clearer definition of what an MPA is. As mentioned in my earlier testimony, I believe the only logical choice would be to adopt the existing definition from the International Union for Conservation of Nature, IUCN, the international authority on the topic.
The Oceans Act should explicitly list activities that should be prohibited in all Canadian Oceans Act MPAs, something mentioned by Dr. Ban in her last testimony. This is what has been called “minimum standards”. Minister LeBlanc, I believe, is establishing an advisory committee on this topic. I hope that academic scientists with expertise on MPAs will be involved in this process to help review the scientific evidence that supports this advice.
There are already many recommendations from the IUCN that could be explored, and there is no shortage of literature on negative impacts from many human activities on the marine environments. Possible activities that can be reviewed include oil and gas activities, bottom trawling, and seabed mining.
My first point is that the Oceans Act, like the Canada National Parks Act, should require MPAs to maintain ecological integrity. In short, they should be considered marine parks. The Oceans Act should also require a minimum amount of no-take areas for each individual MPA and for the entire network, in order to reflect international recommendations.
My earlier testimony was supported by a number of scientific studies demonstrating that no-take areas tend to provide much higher benefits to marine ecosystems.
Finally, and this may be my most important point, the Oceans Act should have a clear process to support adaptive management of those MPAs. Once created, Oceans Act MPAs are generally not modified, even in cases where there is ample scientific evidence that an MPA does not work in its current design. We need to learn, and we need to leave room for improvements. The current culture and context makes those changes very hard to make in practice.
A study published earlier this year by the World Wildlife Fund of Canada showed that half of Canadian species have declined over the past 45 years. Those species have declined by 83% on average. This is alarming and clearly shows that current management measures are not sufficient to prevent this rapid decline in Canadian wildlife. As mentioned by Kevin Stringer, associate deputy minister for Fisheries and Oceans Canada, during our workshop, this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to advance ocean protection and management. I strongly encourage you not to miss it.
Thank you for the opportunity to present my view on the key challenges I see with the Oceans Act and the Canada Petroleum Resources Act. I look forward to your questions.