Madam Chair, it's a pleasure to be here again.
Thank you to the committee for the opportunity to present to you today.
During the last election, you heard loud and clear that Canadians had lost faith in the revised system under the previous government to approve projects with impacts on fish habitat. The West Coast Environmental Law Association commends the government for following through on its commitment to restore lost protections and modernize the Fisheries Act.
There are many provisions that we and many others across the country are pleased to see, and I'm happy to talk more about them if you want. Today, though, I'm here to talk about how you can improve the act even more while you have the chance to do so. As the minister mentioned this morning, there is still time to propose amendments.
Many conservation groups have worked collaboratively to analyze this bill and have proposed amendments on three key issues: rebuilding fish stocks, cumulative effects, and environmental flows and fish passage. We fully support and endorse these.
Today I'll address two broad areas where you can propose amendments that will make the act even better and address past criticisms of it. You can set national legally binding and enforceable standards in the law directly. I'll speak to two of these issues: flows and cumulative effects.
The other big issue I'll speak about is increasing government transparency and accountability. The government has made great strides in this area as well, especially with mandate letter commitments. Additional improvements can be made to increase transparency and accountability, and I'll speak of three ways.
First is legally binding standards.
As described in one of our briefs to you, the legislative history of this act, going back to when it was first introduced—and it is one of Canada's oldest acts—shows Parliament's clear intent to create national standards for the protection of fish and habitat. Courts at all levels have confirmed the wide scope of this federal power.
Standards on environmental flows are a priority area for legislative change. The minister this morning gave you the internationally accepted definition of “environmental flows”. This definition is included in laws around the world, and it really would be an improvement to Bill C-68 to actually talk about the flow regime and environmental flows—the environmental role of water for fish. Water law was traditionally about water for people. The concept of environmental flows shows that water has a really critical environmental role, especially for fish and other aquatic organisms.
DFO's own science advisory report from 2012 talks about the need for a national framework for flow, so that there can be a consistent approach to this issue across Canada. From all your work, you know very well about the decline in fish—northern cod, which was spoken about this morning, and both Atlantic and Pacific salmon—and the decline of fish habitat, which continues apace across this country. One example is that only 10% of the former habitat of the lower watershed in the Fraser River remains, and that's one of the biggest salmon-producing rivers in North America and probably the world.
Minister LeBlanc indicated a willingness to consider amendments. We have provided language for amendments that define environmental flows, establish national standards on the acceptable limits of flow alteration, and establish monitoring requirements.
The second area that you've already heard about this morning is cumulative effects. This is a big one. The government is grappling with it, and I know the department is grappling with it. It's a difficult one.
The cumulative effects of small projects remain a major cause of habitat loss, and this was a priority issue in public consultations. The minister said there are two types of projects: large projects, which go through the authorization, and low-risk projects that avoid harm. This actually leaves a really big gap in terms of all the medium-sized projects—a massive number of small to medium-sized projects that cumulatively can impact fish habitat and cause it to be lost.
We support amendments that have been provided to the department and will be provided to this committee in briefs, which talk about ways to better address cumulative effects. One way to do this is by expanding the records that are in the proposed new public registry, to require not only the authorizations in there but also that all the projects be approved under the codes of practice and under designated project regulations. You can really press a button—online registry—and say, “Here's our project. Here's where it is.” People can track it. Scientists will track it, as will researchers and DFO.
This bill also needs to address one of the chief ways that DFO currently uses to exempt proponents from the need to obtain a habitat authorization, and that's the letter of advice. This isn't mentioned at all in the act. We suggest and recommend that the letter of advice be defined in the act, and that all letters of advice also be posted on the public registry. A letter of advice is given to a proponent because there is the potential to cause harm to fish habitat. Why not tell everybody about this advice?
I'll move rapidly along, because I know I have limited time here.
I also want to talk about, in the second half, transparency and increasing accountability. I've already mentioned the public registry. We and many others strongly support this. This has been a recommendation from many groups for many years.
There's a great registry for CEAA projects. We need such a registry for fish and fish habitat projects as well. Now we have one, and that's great, but the rationale for making some records mandatory and some optional is really unclear. Mandatory records include standards and permits, and optional records include guidelines, policies, and intergovernmental agreements.
It's really not clear why there's a distinction between mandatory records and optional records, the ones that are listed in proposed section 42.3. We recommend that all the ones listed as optional be mandatory.
There's a new requirement for more transparency and public access to information, which again is a great improvement. It's a five-year report from this committee, or your corresponding Senate committee, on the administration of the act. We suggest and recommend that if you're going to do such a five-year report, why not do the state of fish habitat and the state of fish stocks across Canada? Our neighbour to the south, with a bigger population and more impacts, does a national fish habitat report every five years, and Canada can and should do that as well.
Third and finally, the act can increase accountability through legal mechanisms allowing other levels of government and scientists to request action, and require a response from the minister. We're proposing this amendment to deal with one of the big criticisms of the former act, that there was too much discretion.
The minister and his or her staff could, really, make decisions without too many bounds on their discretion. The act has been changed. There are many factors that now must be considered when making decisions under the act, but we recommend that another way to increase accountability would be for other levels of government, scientists, and conservation groups to make requests. I'll give you one example of what I'm talking about.
There's a new provision in this act for the protection of long-term area-based fisheries restrictions, and these are what DFO calls marine refuges. They're intended to be a complement to marine protected areas. Long-term fisheries closures are a federal responsibility. They can only be imposed by the federal government. They really require an extra level of protection for provincially and indigenous declared marine protected areas.
For example, as far back as 2004, the Province of B.C. has requested from DFO that for the ecological reserves and marine protected areas declared under provincial law, the province wants federal fisheries closures. It wants full protection for those areas. Fourteen years later, that still hasn't happened. The province is still talking to the federal government about it.
Why not put in a legislative mechanism requiring the minister to act, creating the ability for a province, or an indigenous government to make this request of the minister, and requiring a response from the minister about the decision? Indigenous declared marine protected areas are another set of places where complementary federal fisheries closures could enhance protection.
There are some other suggestions for increasing accountability through this ability for people or other levels of government to request the minister to take action that are set out in our brief, which will be provided to you shortly. You're moving so quickly, and we haven't yet filed our brief, but we will.
In conclusion, many of the provisions in Bill C-68 will require regulations. We look forward to working with the department and the government to make these regulations effective. It's important to examine whether all the procedures contained in this law will help restore Canadians' faith in the fisheries regime. We're sure your committee wants to achieve this goal, and will work with everybody who appears before you on amendments to achieve that goal.
Thank you.
