House of Commons Hansard #275 of the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was post.
The Speaker Liberal Geoff Regan
There being no amendment motions at report stage, the House will now proceed without debate to the putting of the question on the motion to concur in the bill at report stage.
Dominic LeBlanc LiberalMinister of Fisheries
moved that Bill C-55, An Act to amend the Oceans Act and the Canada Petroleum Resources Act, be concurred in.
The Speaker Liberal Geoff Regan
The vote is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?
The Speaker Liberal Geoff Regan
(Motion agreed to)
When shall the bill be read the third time? By leave, now?
Dominic LeBlanc LiberalMinister of Fisheries
moved that Bill C-55, An Act to amend the Oceans Act and the Canada Petroleum Resources Act, be now read the third time and passed.
Terry Beech LiberalParliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Fisheries
Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege to rise in the House today to speak for a second time to Bill C-55, following the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans' review and analysis of this bill. We thank the committee members for their careful study of this legislation and their thoughtful amendments.
Bill C-55, An Act to amend the Oceans Act and the Canada Petroleum Resources Act, puts forward provisions that show Canadians our commitment to be responsible stewards of our ocean resources for future generations. Since 2015, we have made excellent progress in achieving our domestic and international marine conservation targets. We have kept our promise of protecting 5% of our marine and coastal areas by the end of 2017. In fact, we are now at 7.75%, up from less than 1% in 2015. Meeting this target has put us on track to reach our international target of 10% by 2020. I know that Canadians are proud of this achievement because it means hundreds of thousands of square kilometres of new protections. In fact, we are up to 446,000 square kilometres to date. To get to 10%, our government is following a clear plan, which is based on science, indigenous knowledge, consultations, and collaboration.
Bill C-55 is an important piece of that plan. It currently takes approximately seven to 10 years to officially designate an Oceans Act MPA. Our partners agree when we say that this is too long for a sensitive marine or coastal area in need of protection to go without. Establishing interim protection would address this gap, while still allowing for the necessary ecological, economic, social, and cultural analysis, as well as consultation and collaboration efforts with all of our various partners.
This bill would require the application of the precautionary principle when deciding whether to designate new MPAs. The precautionary principle means that the absence of scientific certainty should not be used to postpone decisions where there is a risk of serious or irreversible harm. Under this legislation, incomplete information or a lack of absolute certainty could no longer be used as a justification for avoiding the establishment of an MPA where science tells us there is a need for action and where there is a need for protection.
The precautionary principle would be used judiciously. As we know, it is a matter of concern to some industry stakeholders. We have heard the concerns that science resources may be insufficient to conduct the necessary work within the five-year period subsequent to the ministerial order, or that the precautionary approach could provide an excuse for not doing the scientific analysis at all. This, of course, is not true. Our commitment to science and information gathering remains strong. We agree that our foundational principle of science-based decision-making must not be compromised in any way.
In addition, Bill C-55 would update, modernize, and strengthen enforcement powers, fines, and penalties, effectively bringing the Oceans Act in line with Canada's other environmental laws. Such changes to the act would support the people who manage and monitor MPAs. Enforcement officers, for example, would get the tools and authority they need to better protect MPAs, which in turn would improve the effectiveness of the MPAs. These changes would expand and modernize the tool kit for enforcement officers designated by the minister, which may include indigenous people or provincial and territorial partners.
Bill C-55 also proposes amendments to the Canada Petroleum Resources Act that would complement the freeze-the-footprint process of the interim protection MPAs. These changes would provide the competent minister with the authority to prohibit authorized oil and gas exploration or development activities, for example seismic testing, drilling, or production within a designated marine protected area.
During their review of Bill C-55, my colleagues in the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans have heard from many different witnesses and experts on the proposed amendments and what they think should be included in Bill C-55. I would like to take this time to talk about what we have heard through the standing committee on Bill C-55. Several witnesses expressed concerns that the proposed changes may short-circuit the collection and analysis of reliable scientific data or deprive Canadians of the opportunity to meaningfully contribute to the creation of interim protection MPAs. Our commitment to science and to working with our partners remains unwavering. As is our current practice, collaboration is essential to advancing our marine protection work.
We are working with the provinces and territories, indigenous groups, industry, and other environmental stakeholders to establish networks of MPAs and will continue to do so under this new option for interim protection marine protected areas.
Our government knows that the effective management of Canada's oceans depends on an in-depth understanding of the marine environment. We gain this understanding through peer-reviewed science, the traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples, and through information shared by the fishing industry and local communities. By balancing the collection of information and consultations with our partners with the precautionary approach, interim protection marine protected areas will offer the needed protections to our important ocean seascape and resources, while still being shaped by science and consultation.
We have heard the call for stronger conservation standards. While Bill C-55 is a targeted response to the length of time that it takes to designate MPAs, we know that it is important to continue the conversation on conservation standards. That is why we have established a national advisory panel that will provide the minister with advice and recommendations on protection standards for future marine protected areas. The panel is to report back with their recommendations. It is essential that we come to the right answers to these questions together, in order to properly protect our oceans for long-term sustainability.
The issue of economic fairness was also raised by a few indigenous groups and fishers during the standing committee's hearings. These are concerns that the new powers proposed could deprive rights holders and others of their dependence on marine resources for sustenance and livelihood.
I want to emphasize that the ministerial order provision is not meant to close the door on economic opportunities. We are committed to working in full transparency with our partners to ensure that our oceans and marine resources support a long-term sustainable economy. In fact, we are of the view that provisions like this will actually make for more abundance so that future generations can have more economic opportunities.
Lastly, we have heard from some of our indigenous partners that we need to renew our relationships to ensure that their voices are being heard. We are open to conversations on co-management, and providing a greater role for indigenous partners in the management of our oceans. We are committed to reconciliation and are striving to work more closely with indigenous groups, including Inuit communities, to inform the process and make the most of their traditional knowledge.
We have listened to many important proposed amendments to Bill C-55 and the committee has worked diligently to reflect carefully on all of them. We particularly support the proposal made by the member for Nunavut, supported by the member for Northwest Territories, which amends the bill to ensure that our approach to interim protection MPAs is consistent with land claims agreements. We understand that conservation is integral to the indigenous way of life, but a balance with sustainable use is necessary to ensure that our communities are able to continue to thrive. As I have said, interim protection MPAs will not be established without constructive conversation, and it will be a collaborative effort.
We are not looking to move ahead without our partners, but to offer protection where it has been identified by our partners as necessary to ensure the long-term health of the marine environment. Bill C-55 is a powerful step toward better protection for our oceans, advancing reconciliation and moving towards a nation-to-nation dialogue, and continuing to work together on the shared objectives that Canadians care deeply about. We have a shared duty to protect our oceans for generations to come, and this bill helps us do that.
Peter Kent Conservative Thornhill, ON
Mr. Speaker, my thanks to my hon. colleague for his remarks, although he somewhat misrepresented the amount of marine protected areas accomplished under the previous Conservative government and that were in the process when the Liberal government came to power.
Previous changes to the Fisheries Act under the Conservative government provided for predictability, certainty, and timely review for those covered by the act. Conservatives have long supported protection of our lakes, oceans, and our fisheries. However, one of our many concerns with the bill is that it undermines transparency in that it gives the minister the power to withhold information from certain proponents.
What happened to the Liberal commitment to greater transparency?
Terry Beech Liberal Burnaby North—Seymour, BC
Mr. Speaker, I would like to start by addressing the statement that we misrepresented the actual progress that has been made with regard to marine protected areas. Up until the last election, less than 1% of our oceans and marine ways were protected, despite the fact that we are five years into a 10-year commitment to get to a protection level of 10%. Our government has doubled down our efforts and now has reached a point of 7.75% protection, representing hundreds of thousands of square kilometres of new protection, which I know for a fact Canadians are proud of.
Also with regard to transparency, what we will see, not just in the changes to the Oceans Act in Bill C-55 but also in the changes in Bill C-68 to the Fisheries Act, and Bill C-69, is that our government is sticking to and increasing our commitment to provide transparency. In the Fisheries Act, for example, a registry is being created. This is to make sure Canadians have all the tools they need to understand what the government is doing so that they can hold us to account. It is also to make sure people who are doing projects, whether big or small, have certainty around timelines and the like. That is the kind of transparent work that our government continues to do on these important bills.
Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC
Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the member about some of the amendments the NDP proposed in committee on Bill C-55. It included the establishment of no-take zones. What is the point of having a marine protected area if we do not have some of it established as a no-take zone? What are we protecting it against? I wonder if he could comment on why those amendments were not adopted by the Liberals in committee.
Terry Beech Liberal Burnaby North—Seymour, BC
Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question from my friend and fellow basketball player. I think he will also find it somewhat humorous that I just fell victim to the chair that tears the pockets open, so I will be doing some sewing after this session is over.
The minister was very well received globally in Malta when he first stated that we were going to establish an expert panel to provide feedback to us on what minimum standards for a marine protected area could look like. This was very well received not just here in Canada from coast to coast to coast but also within the international community.
I just returned from the World Ocean Summit. I was there along with the Minister of Environment and Climate Change. There were various partners, other countries, other nations that have taken leadership roles in MPA, such as those in Latin America and Mexico. They have been very excited, seeing that not only have we said Canada is back but our actions are representing that fact. Canadians can be proud of the global leadership we are taking on this file and others.
Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
Mr. Speaker, the hon. parliamentary secretary knows I support Bill C-55. I am very pleased to see the amendments to the Oceans Act. I am also very grateful that amendments I made in committee were accepted by the committee and supported by the government.
Certainly, we know it takes a long time to establish national marine protected areas. By way of example, in my riding, what is still called the southern Strait of Georgia national marine conservation area, or as we call it the Salish Sea, was initially put forward so long ago, in the 1970s, that it was endorsed by Jacques Cousteau. We await the creation of this protected area. I wonder if the hon. parliamentary secretary can shed any light on how he sees the timing for the Salish Sea national protected area, adjacent to the Gulf Islands National Park Reserve.
Terry Beech Liberal Burnaby North—Seymour, BC
Mr. Speaker, I would like to start by congratulating and thanking the member opposite for her great work on the bill. We appreciate her amendments and her feedback throughout.
I appreciate the comments she makes about the timeliness of these protections. The average time it has taken for previous marine protected areas to go through has been somewhere between seven to 10 years. The way we propose to address that time crunch, all those years where critical habitat might not be protected, is to implement this new tool called interim protection MPAs.
How this would work is that within the first 24 months, when a number of consultations are going on and science is being conducted, when we first realize and identify the protections that need to occur, there would be an ability to put in an interim protection. It would freeze the footprint. This would mean that existing activities would be able to continue, and there is a definition I could get into about what qualifies as an existing activity, and then the minister would have up to five years to implement the full marine protected area. Hopefully, that will help solve problems like the very long process that has been witnessed in other projects, like in the Salish Sea.
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the parliamentary secretary for fisheries and oceans, and formerly the parliamentary secretary for science, could help to bridge the investments that budget 2018 has in science, the $3.8 billion going into research, where scientists will be working on fisheries and oceans research around protected areas. How do those two areas fit together?
Terry Beech Liberal Burnaby North—Seymour, BC
Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for that question and also for the great work he has done on his sub-caucus. I participated in many of the sessions and it has been a great way to drive innovation and scientific activity. I thank him very much for his good work there.
The last budget made sure that we had the investments and tools we needed to make sure that Canada can return as a scientific powerhouse. If we think about what makes an economy relatively more successful, there are two things in the history of developmental economics that really provide the kind of environment that allows us to compete relatively better than other nations.
The first is that we need to produce goods that other countries want. In the olden days that might have been fish, silver, or gold, but more and more today it is technology. That means we need to invest in science and education, and that is exactly what we are doing.
The second thing that we need to have a relatively more successful economy, to make sure that Canadians are better off and that our kids have better opportunities tomorrow than we have today, is a strong and empowered middle class. I think the member will agree that almost all the policies the government is pursuing are to ensure that we are strengthening that, so that every individual's children have more resources and more opportunities than their parents did before them.
Mel Arnold Conservative North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC
Mr. Speaker, I refer to the comments made by the parliamentary secretary about the areas that are now protected. A major portion of those areas that have recently been claimed as MPAs were actually considered as protected under other protective measures. They were there for fisheries closures to protect specific habitat. They were not specifically set out, identified, and all of a sudden appeared on the map as something from the current government.
There were directives, protections that were put in place by the previous Conservative government as part of our targets that we set for the 2017 and 2020 targets of 10% and 20%. Those were Conservative targets.
How much of that seven point something percentage that the parliamentary secretary referred to was actually already under some form of protection?
Terry Beech Liberal Burnaby North—Seymour, BC
Mr. Speaker, the member opposite is correct in that the previous government was really good at setting targets. In fact it said that 10% should be protected by 2020, a commitment that our government is going to not only commit to but follow through on. Despite the target that the Conservatives set, in the first five years in which they pursued that target, they achieved protections of less than 1%.
The way that the minister and the government have pursued this, and we have been very open and transparent about it, was as part of the five-point plan that the minister put into place and talked about very early on in the mandate. We have followed that plan. We have consulted broadly. We have worked with industry. We have worked with stakeholders. We have worked with environmental groups. We have worked with indigenous peoples.
Due to all that good work, we are now having some success in actually meeting those targets.
Blaine Calkins Conservative Red Deer—Lacombe, AB
Mr. Speaker, it is truly a pleasure for me to rise and to consume about 30 minutes of this House's time on this issue.
I will couch my opening remarks by saying it was a privilege for me at one point in time in my life to earn a zoology degree in fisheries and aquatic sciences from the University of Alberta. I worked as a fisheries technician and on many fisheries experiments. I worked as a national park warden in Parks Canada enforcing the Fisheries Act, among other things, and of course as a conservation officer in the province of Alberta doing much the same, so I have a little working knowledge on this. I am proud to have folks like Dr. David Schindler as one of the professors I learned something from. If I told people when I was going to school, that would probably date both of us and I do not think that is a particularly constructive thing to do at this point in time.
Suffice it to say, I remained active. I was a fishing guide in the Northwest Territories while I was going to university. I spent a lot of time on Great Bear Lake, and of course on the north coast where the Coppermine River flows into the Arctic Ocean. I have maintained my love of the outdoors as an avid hunter and angler ever since. These kinds of issues are near and dear to my heart, especially when it comes to recreational fishing, or as it is more affectionately known, sport fishing.
These issues are very important. I will start by making some comparisons. When I was going to the University of Alberta years and years ago, there was a plan at that time by the World Wildlife Fund and the Canadian wilderness societies and so on that they wanted a 12, 75, 12 plan. They wanted to have 12% of all the land mass in Canada protected under the same kind of statutory protection a national park would have. That meant there would be no opportunities to do anything, no development and so on. There would be complete protection for that area. I do not want to call it conservation. I call it a preservation type of protection that they would have in these areas.
The other 75% of Canada would be considered areas that would be managed, like forest management areas. These would be areas where we would have human activity that would go on, but there would be zoning. Activities would be permitted, but they would be heavily regulated by the federal, provincial, or municipal government. Then about another 12% of our land mass at that particular point in time would be a complete disturbance areas. This would be areas for our cities, roads, major industrial developments, and so on.
I remember asking the question when I was in university if 12, 75, 12 was going to be enough. That adds up to 99, but members will get the point. As we have seen evolve through time, those numbers no longer hold true today with what certain groups are asking for. They are asking for more of that preservation land. They are asking for stricter regulations on the 75%. Of course, nobody wants to take responsibility for the 12% because that would mean we would have to tear down cities and do all those kinds of things in order to restore it back to its natural habitat, which is not a reasonable thing to ask people to do.
Who bears the burden then every time somebody asks for more protection? We have to take that protection out of that 12% or out of that 75% to add to the 12%. I am talking about the preserved areas. Who suffers the consequences of that? I am using this as an example on land to make my point later on about the protected areas and the marine areas. Who bears that price? It is everybody who lives in rural Canada. It is everybody who farms, everybody who relies on forestry, and everybody who is a fisherman, or a fisher person, or fisher peoplekind, depending on what the moniker of the day is.
The point is that everything we ask to happen in the natural environment generally happens outside the confines of city limits. This is not an aspersion on folks who live in cities, and I live in a city myself. However, having grown up on a farm, I understand every time somebody has to pay a price out in our so-called natural areas that price is borne by the people who live there or make their livings in these rural, remote, or non-city areas.
The same is going to actually hold true for those who earn a living in our marine areas. This would be our commercial fishermen. This would be anybody who does any tourism, anybody who does any type of business, and of course first nations people who earn a living off the coastal waters of our country. We have seen the absolute damage, the economic damage, that can be done to these communities when we do not get things right.
As we know, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans is tasked with maintaining fish stocks. We know in Atlantic Canada, going back to the early 1990s, some of the issues that happened there when we applied a purely political decision over good science and technical information. I am referring specifically to the collapse of the cod fishery.
I was a fairly young man at the time. I was studying in university in the late 1980s and early 1990s at about the same time that the cod fishery was closed. I believe it was in 1993 when it was closed. It was closed because it was mismanaged. At that time there were over one million seals in the Atlantic Ocean. Today we have six million or seven million seals there. It was a big problem. The fishermen had to move to other resources, such as herring, lobsters, and other fisheries. They had to adapt to overcome the loss of the cod.
To this day we have had a moratorium. I want to talk about what it means. The moratorium on the cod fishery means that no one is allowed to do it, so the cod for all intents and purposes are preserved. The cod population stocks are under a preservation style of protection. Have the cod stocks actually come back? No, they have not. We have moved this from a managed fishery into a completely protected class and even that movement in and of itself has not had the desired effect or outcome that we wanted.
We have not stopped any of the other activity that happens off of the east coast. There are still ships coming in and out. I would argue we have lots of ships with foreign oil coming into the east coast. It would be nicer to have a pipeline going from Alberta to our friends in the east, but I digress. It is a much easier thing to manage than tankers full of oil coming in on the east coast. It would be interesting to see if we had a tanker ban on the east coast the same as we do on the west coast. It seems to be a bit of a double standard there, but I am getting off topic and I will come back to marine protected areas.
When we moved from a management mode of the cod stocks into a preservation mode, it did not solve the problem. I am not saying it was not the right decision, but it did not solve the problem because all of the other aspects of managing the cod fishery have now fallen by the wayside. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans, rather than restoring the cod stocks or managing the cod stocks, and I am not saying they are not doing some of that work, but now it is more interested in working the fisheries currently before it.
Now the Liberal government has proposed moving to a massive increase of the marine protected areas in our coastal waters. I was lucky to be a member of the fisheries committee in previous Parliaments because of my experience. As a matter of fact, people used to laugh when they found out a farm boy from central Alberta was a member of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans for all those years, until they found out I actually knew a little about fisheries, other than how bad a fisherman I am.
Notwithstanding that, I learned a ton over the years and I was very honoured to go with the standing committee on a trip up north. We went to places like Prince Rupert, Inuvik, Tuktoyaktuk, and Paulatuk. We talked with the people who are going to be impacted by these marine protected areas there. The impacts and concerns are very real. People from local hunting and trapping associations up north came in droves to those meetings and made their voices heard. They are very concerned because they feel there has not been adequate consultation regarding some of the areas being proposed. There are very good questions about the risks of what is going to happen in the marine protected areas.
This is where we get to the conversation about what the international standard for a marine protected area is and how Canada is going to define a marine protected area. If we ask someone from the United Nations, that person would consider the marine protected area to be a no activity zone whatsoever. This is complete protection or what I referred to earlier as that preservation mentality. I am not saying it is right or wrong; I am just saying that is the mode most people would see when they hear about a marine protected area. They would see it as having the same protections that a national park would have.
Everyone knows that we cannot hunt in a national park. We cannot drill for anything in a national park. As a matter of fact, I have been an MP for 12 years and resort owners and so on in our national parks have not seen any changes over the last 12 years because it is so hard to get approval to get anything done in a national park. I am not saying it is right or wrong; it is just very difficult to do that because of the mandate Parks Canada has on its preservation, ecological integrity, and the other types of goals and ambitions that are laid out in the Canada National Parks Act.
Those same goals and ambitions are laid out in the legislative changes that are currently before the House with Bill C-55 and Bill C-68, which the government opposite just moved time allocation on, a bill that might be disastrous for the Alberta economy. It is just another straw on the camel's already broken back when it comes to the energy sector. However, I digress again and must return to Bill C-55.
With Bill C-55, the aboriginal groups, the Inuit, the people at the Prince Rupert Port Authority, the first nations groups, the Lax Kw'alaams and all the other groups we talked with out there are very concerned. PNCIMA was brought up. They are very concerned about the amount of foreign money that is coming in to influence policy decisions. The money coming in has been used by some aboriginal or indigenous groups out there to inadvertently stop what they thought was going to be an increase in the conversation. They realized they have sided with people who took money from a bunch of organizations that actually have a completely different mandate than what the first nations have. There is a court action happening right now where first nations groups in B.C. are raising funds to take the Government of Canada to court, citing all of the barriers it has put in place in the name of standing up for first nations, which will deprive them of economic opportunities going forward. This is something that is of very legitimate concern with Bill C-55 and the marine protected areas.
We have a tanker ban off the northern part of the west coast. Most people think that the entire west side of B.C. is coastal, but it is not. Just a little over a third of the west side of the province of British Columbia has access to the coast. The rest of it is in Alaska. We would have to go through Alaska in order to get some things done if we wanted to use the coastline in that case. We have a very small area to use along the British Columbia coast to begin with, and now a significant part of that coast is denied access, depending on what one is trying to ship or move.
I might be a bit cynical, but this is what the folks on the west coast and on the north coast who we met at committee are thinking. The folks up north want to be able to continue to hunt whales. One of the marine protected areas that the government is considering putting in place is right in the mouth of the Mackenzie River and the delta where it comes in. That happens to be an area of shallow water where the belugas come in. It is a safe place for the Inuit hunters to go. They go there every year to hunt belugas. If it becomes a marine protected area to protect the belugas, which seems to be a noble cause, it would exempt the Inuit from harvesting in that area. They would have to try and find those belugas somewhere else in order to maintain their traditional hunt. That is a problem for the first nations people there.
Are we going to create marine protected areas in Canada that do not actually meet the international standard of what is expected of us with respect to marine protected areas, or are we going to have a made-in-Canada solution, forgo our international obligations and then do our best? I am not sure what the government's intentions are with respect to that. It would be great to see. However, we seem to have a lot more questions than we do answers, and the legislation is not particularly clear on some of these questions.
I will go back to the port in Prince Rupert. We met with the port authorities there. They are already very much concerned. Most people in Canada do not know that most of the container goods that we see going through the western part of Canada on their way east—and a ton of containers that come to the west coast come in through Prince Rupert, which has a great container ability—go by rail through Canada all the way down to Chicago. This is supplying goods from the Asia-Pacific marketplace into central North America as a distribution hub. It is an amazing facility. It is a very small community. It is a great provider of jobs. There are great economic opportunities there.
There was a proposal for an LNG terminal in Prince Rupert. We know what happened with the LNG proposal. That seems to have gone by the wayside. Given the fact that there will be a tanker ban, there is no way anybody would even consider moving forward with an LNG terminal in that area.
If I were the kind of person who wanted to be bitter and vindictive about making sure that the tanker ban held its way for all time, I would consider putting a marine protected area across the Dixon Entrance and across the Hecate Strait. This would pretty much mean that particular area, depending on the provisions that were put in place for the marine protected area, could shut down shipping altogether in those areas, or at least really restrict what one is able to do.
This again brings me back to my point. What is a marine protected area supposed to do? Is it supposed to protect the water? Is it supposed to protect the species living in the water? Is it supposed to protect the benthic area directly below the water column along the sea floor? These are all questions to which we do not have answers.
If we look at the sunlit zone, which is the area where the human eye can see sunlight at the top of a water column, there is not a whole lot of activity there. There are some fish species, some algae, and some plankton. However, all of the stuff is very much moving as currents move in and out. Does it make any sense to try and protect a wave while it is a-wave? It does not make any sense at all. These things are going to move around the ocean. Are we protecting that area? Some would say yes. Some would say no.
Are we protecting a rearing area for whales or other types of migratory species that use the water? Are they going to be birds, fish, aquatic mammals, or terrestrial animals, where a certain part of their life cycle relies on the marine environment? Are we adequately taking into consideration where those protections should be best placed?
Are we taking a look at the littoral zone, and are we going to protect it? Are we going protect the benthic zone? Are we going to shut down commercial fishing, for example? Are we going to be shutting down dragging or trawling along the bottom of the sea for fish species? That is maybe a good thing, but maybe it is not. I happen to believe that, in certain cases, if it is done in the right place, protections on the bottom of the sea floor are great. They are great for the groundfish that live there, especially if it is an area rich in groundfish that usually stay in that area. An area of refugia actually creates species all around it.
I will go back to one of my jobs as a park warden, which was to patrol the north boundary of Jasper National Park on horseback. Why I ever gave that job up in the glorious Rocky Mountains riding horses, to this day I do not understand. However, my job was to protect the park boundary from poachers. Where did everyone go hunting for trophy rams or bighorn sheep? Well, they would go hunting where the rams were. The rams were in the national park, because they understood the refugia, and they would go back into the park any time they felt threatened. They knew where the boundary was. It was an interesting thing to watch. That area of refugia continued to populate the sheep populations as they migrated out, which is the same thing with other species.
This is not necessarily bad policy, but it is not an effective one-size-fits-all policy. It is going to work well for some species of groundfish, but it is not going to do anything for some species of fish that might migrate through or that do not use the area on a regular basis. We have to ask the question of whether the marine protected area is in the right spot.
I have a lot of questions about this proposed legislation and what the consequences of it might be. I have highlighted the fact that the cod fishery, taking the protectionist approach, has not exactly worked if we are not taking a serious look at management. When we put things into that category of preservation, it becomes very difficult to do any management, because we have to get double approvals for everything.
Imagine if Parks Canada said we need to shoot grizzly bears, wolves, and mountain lions in order to protect caribou. It is not unfathomable that this might be a desperation policy at some point down the road, as growth of the wolf, grizzly bear, and mountain lion populations continues to explode in the eastern slopes region of Alberta. These animals are everywhere, so much so that, in some cases, we cannot find any ungulates anymore. Rather than stopping economic activity such as oil and gas exploration or forestry, we are going to shut those industries down and not do anything at all about predator control.
I do not see some of my colleagues from Atlantic Canada who were here earlier, but I know that a lot of them, even though they might not say it in front of a microphone, hear the same things that I hear. I have been there many times with fisheries, and they are asking for control of the seal population in order to allow the cod stocks to come back. However, imagine a situation where we create a marine protected area around some of the islands where grey seals or harbour seals rear their pups. It comes down to the point that someday somewhere, someone will say we have to have the courage to manage these populations and do what is right.
Imagine trying to manage predator control in a protected area where the needs of the wildlife are put before the needs of everybody else, a fishery, or whatever the case might be. I have news for members. It is romantic to think we have the ability to have these protected areas and that they can operate in isolation from the rest of the world, but that is not the case. The bill before us could seriously limit the ability of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and other organizations to effectively manage wildlife populations and allow other economic activities to grow. Therefore, the bill should not be rushed through Parliament. It should be given every opportunity, which is why I move:
That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “That” and substituting the following therefor:
“Bill C-55, An Act to amend the Oceans Act and the Canada Petroleum Resources Act, be not now read a third time but be referred back to the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans for the purpose of reconsidering all of the clauses.
The Deputy Speaker Conservative Bruce Stanton
I see the hon. government House leader rising on a point of order.
Bill C-71—Notice of time allocation motionAn Act in Relation to FirearmsGovernment Orders
Waterloo Ontario
Liberal
Bardish Chagger LiberalLeader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister of Small Business and Tourism
Mr. Speaker, an agreement could not be reached under the provisions of Standing Order 78(1) or 78(2) with respect to the second reading stage of Bill C-71, an act to amend certain acts and regulations in relation to firearms.
Under the provisions of Standing Order 78(3), I give notice that a minister of the crown will propose at the next sitting a motion to allot a specific number of days or hours for the consideration and disposal of proceedings at the said stage.
The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-55, An Act to amend the Oceans Act and the Canada Petroleum Resources Act, be read the third time and passed, and of the amendment.
Kevin Lamoureux LiberalParliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons
Mr. Speaker, I can appreciate the background knowledge the member brings to the table when addressing the legislation before us. In listening to a number of his Conservative colleagues and to a certain degree him, I get the sense that they do not recognize the benefit to society with respect to how and why it is so important that we bring in legislation of this nature.
Does the member not believe that there is a strong role for the government to play in terms of protecting our coastlines or protecting endangered species? Obviously Canadians want to see that happen but Conservative members appear not to, or they do in a different bizarre way. I am interested in the member's personal opinion on this.
Blaine Calkins Conservative Red Deer—Lacombe, AB
Mr. Speaker, Canadians are rightly concerned about the pace at which the current government is ramming legislation through the House. This is about the fourth time allocation motion that we have heard today and now it is going to ram through the gun registry bill without even one hour of debate in the House. We have received notice of time allocation on that bill as well.
Notwithstanding that, the hon. member has been here for a while, longer than I would like I will admit, but he was here during the last Parliament and Parliaments before where we created marine protected areas in the Great Lakes and in other parts of the country, and we took a slow, methodical approach that resulted in buy-in from everyone.
The Liberal government is the most ideological government I have ever seen. We just need to read the articles that Chantal Hébert, a well-known Conservative, has written about the ideology of the government. The Liberals rammed through the tanker ban, and it is going to get sued on that by first nation groups on the west coast. If they ram this legislation through, they will get sued on it too.
Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC
Mr. Speaker, the member brought up some issues around the concept of protecting no-take zones. These are called marine protected areas, so one would think they would be protected from something.
The member said maybe in some situations it might be worthwhile, for instance, to ban bottom trawling, one of the most destructive methods of harvesting animals from the ocean floor. Being in a marine protected area, should that not be the obvious first choice, and if we wanted exceptions, we would talk about them later? I am just wondering under what conditions would he think bottom trawling would be good in a marine protected area.