Thank you. It's a pleasure to appear before the committee.
Like my colleague, we too have been involved with the Fisheries Act and the various reforms over the last several years. In part, what I want to share with you is the history of that engagement and the struggles we've had with the implementation of the Fisheries Act through the various reforms, because implementation problems cost everyone.
When the 2012 reforms were put in place, we were assured by officials at the time that any sort of section 35 or authorization in process would be grandfathered, that we wouldn't have to worry, and that we wouldn't lose time and have to restart. Sure enough, a couple of years later, we were told, “Well, actually, we weren't right about that. You have to restart.” We had to go back to the beginning. That delayed the development of authorizations.
The process of getting officials familiarized with the new legislation in 2012 took a while. However, I will say that after a few years, it actually started to work pretty well. While there was a perception that the protection of fish under that regime was weakened because of the inclusion of commercial, recreational and aboriginal fisheries—aboriginal, at least where we work, is pretty much a catch-all—none of the protections for water bodies containing fish wherever we operated were in any way weakened.
What we did find is that the department eventually figured out how to implement the new act and did so pretty effectively. For a few years, we found that we had a pretty efficient regime, which is why we did not support the reversal to what was essentially the pre-2012 regime, when the government came forward with Bill C-68. We accepted it. It was obvious it was going to happen, but we cautioned them very strongly to prepare for implementation. We also emphasized that the act should not be brought into force until they had the compliance tools developed and put in place. That advice, unfortunately, was not heeded. We are now five years later and still waiting for those tools to be put in place.
Why is this a problem? Project reviews and authorizations are time-consuming for proponents and the department. Without a core set of compliance tools in place, DFO will be caught in a vicious spiral of not having enough capacity to respond to project-specific reviews for larger projects, thus not being able to spare resources to put the tools in place. Demand will exceed the department's recently increased resources. The result will be growing complaints and delays and overwhelmed officials struggling to deal with too many applications at one time.
It's in the best interest of fish, fish habitat and Canada's economy to adequately prepare for coming into force, which they did not.
This came into being. Five years later, we have very few draft codes of practice. The prescribed works and waters regulations have still not been put in place. We continue to be told by the department that it's complex. Well, if it were so complex that five years later they're not in place, why did you put this into the act in the first place? You should have thought of that before doing so.
For such things as culvert replacements, beaver dam removal and the installation of low-span bridges, we've started to see some codes of practice put in place, but we're still lacking an awful lot. Frankly, it's frustrating for proponents, but it's not good for fish either. If it takes months to get an approval to replace a culvert, those are months during which fish may not have access to spawning grounds. This harms fish habitat. It harms fish productivity. Nothing benefits from this.
As we look at your review, we caution, again, that the focus really has to be on good implementation. The department has to start doing its job, and doing it effectively. They need to accelerate the development of compliance tools and codes of practice, develop a plan with timelines to implement the prescribed works and waters regulations, and increase coordination among provincial and territorial governments and with federal departments, since, for example, the transport and navigation provisions and Fisheries Act provisions can intersect and sometimes contradict, so they need to be talking to one another.
What's probably most important—and the hardest thing to do—is driving culture change that reflects the urgent action required to accelerate clean growth. Transport Canada has done a good job since Bill C-68 of putting in place the measures that affected them. DFO has not. However, it can be done. We found that Transport Canada has a culture of “We have to get this done. We can't be a barrier to responsible growth.”
DFO has to change its approach, because fish and the economy depend on it.
Thank you very much.