Thank you.
Members of the committee will recall passing the motion that requires Mr. Tootoo and myself to be here if we want to have any substantive impact on the bill. That's why we're here at your invitation. It's not a process I like, by the way, but let's move on because I need all your help today.
I have proposed, in your package, PV-4, which would have occurred in clause 5, to inject the notion of ecological integrity into the bill. I'm proposing to withdraw PV-4 and to replace it with the amendment that is now being passed to you. This one takes a slightly different tack to accomplish close to the same goal.
Clause 4 relates to subsection 35(1) of the existing Oceans Act. In that subsection, there's a list of criteria that ends at criteria letter (e).
If you had the original Oceans Act in front of you, you would see that marine protected areas could be designated for one or more of the following reasons: the conservation and protection of fisheries; the conservation and protection of threatened species; the conservation and protection of unique habitats; the conservation and protection of marine areas with high biodiversity; and so on.
I would inject a new paragraph (f), which would be “the conservation and protection of marine areas for the purpose of maintaining ecological integrity.” Then, I would add a further subclause to define ecological integrity.
Just to give you some background on this, I consulted a lot with West Coast Environmental Law. I don't know if this will help me with my friends on the Conservative side, but the lawyer I worked with is Linda Nowlan. Her father, Pat Nowlan, was a long-time Progressive Conservative member of Parliament from the Annapolis Valley. I just want to mention that.
Linda Nowlan, lawyer at West Coast Environmental Law, recommended that we look at the language found in the 1999 final report of B.C.'s park legacy project.
I like very much Mr. Donnelly's ecological integrity amendment proposal, but this one, I believe, would work in terms of ecological integrity being a condition in which the structure, composition, and function of ecosystems are undisturbed by human activity, natural ecological processes are intact and self-sustaining, ecosystems evolve naturally, and an ecosystem's capacity for self-renewal and its biodiversity are maintained. This now becomes not a directive—as I was originally hoping in the amendment that I'm now prepared to withdraw—but a part of the reasons and criteria examined, and it injects into the Oceans Act a workable definition of ecological integrity.
I'm hoping for the forbearance of the committee to allow this amendment to replace the one that's in your package. Then, Mr. Chair, at your pleasure, we can debate it and vote on it.