Mr. Speaker, it is always great to rise in this House to talk about an issue that is so important to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, and certainly to the people from St. John's East.
Amending the Fisheries Act to bring it into modern times would provide the flexibility we need to make sure that we not only provide for the care and protection of marine mammals, such as porpoises, whales, and dolphins, but take into account indigenous concerns and make sure that our act and our fisheries protections takes their traditional knowledge and beliefs into account. It is also important that we provide some framework so that Canadians can better understand the decisions the minister will be making and how they will be made. It is important to make sure that there are advisory panels to consult on fees to make sure that people who are licensees under the Fisheries Act, who are engaged in the fishery, are appropriately paying into the system, but not overpaying into the system, and that when we administer the rights and responsibilities with respect to our offshore resources, stakeholders appropriately participate in that. The advisory council would be a great way to do that.
We also have to make sure that we meet our international obligations on fish habitat. We need to do the good work to protect the coastal waters of Canada under our international obligation under the Aichi target, which is 10% by 2020. To protect these areas, we need to make changes to the act so that we can protect fish habitat with respect to works, undertakings, or activities that may result in the death of fish or the harmful alteration, disruption, or destruction of fish habitat. In the case of Newfoundland and Labrador, this is obviously a very sensitive topic. Newfoundlanders and Labradorians care about the protection and growth of the biomass of fish off our coasts. At the same time, we need to make sure that we can undertake our enterprise so that we can maintain the high standard of living Newfoundlanders and Labradorians, and indeed all Canadians, enjoy. This legislation would require that we both maintain access to the productive areas of our coasts and at the same time identify areas that are ecologically important. There is going to be a balance that needs to be struck.
My understanding is that the fisheries ministry has, through various mechanisms that already exist, hived off about 7.75% of Canada's waters for protection, meeting our target of 5% by December 31, 2017. However, there is still some way to go.
The member from Prince Rupert will have a chance to examine the changes we are proposing to the Fisheries Act in committee after, hopefully, we pass this here today. I encourage all members to vote in favour of it at this stage. The changes would allow the government to move forward and protect those next 2.25% or more of our coastal areas so that we can protect these ecologically important areas. We can protect things like cold-water coral off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador or dogfish off the southern coast of Newfoundland and Labrador. We can make sure that our ecologically protected areas are interlinked so that species can travel safely through them, and important breeding grounds and important transitory areas for different marine mammals are protected.
Yesterday the minister made an important announcement about protecting right whales. It is a scary prospect that it is possible that the world may lose yet another species this year, the right whale. We saw a couple of weeks ago the loss of the last male white rhino, protected at Ol Pejeta, in Kenya. Here we are now in a situation where people are very concerned about the reproductive capacity of right whales in Atlantic waters as they pass through the Gulf of St. Lawrence through very important areas for industrial development in Canada. At the same time, we need protections such as the Minister of Transport is undertaking under the Transportation Act and also that the Minister of Fisheries is doing. The changes we are proposing would allow them to do more and do it in the right way and provide a period of time in which we could make quick decisions to save species.
I look forward to the protections that are coming. When oil and gas proponents met with me earlier this year, such as British Petroleum, for instance, on their desire to do offshore exploratory drilling off the coast of Nova Scotia, there was some concern that their ships, drill rigs, and whatnot were going to be expected to move at a slower pace through those waters.
I fully applaud the foresight of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency in including those conditions, because now we are seeing that this is going to be an important factor not only for oil and gas exploration but for other transportation in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. It is similar to what happened last year, is my understanding. It is heartwarming and good to see the government of the day putting in place the mechanisms, regulatory policy, and now legislation that will help Canada meet its international targets to protect cetaceans.
The 45 days to address the proper management and control of the fisheries and conservation and to protect fishing is obviously very important in Newfoundland and Labrador. There is a strongly held belief, not always supported by the science, that cod is coming back. We see it coming back in Norway. We see it coming back in the North Sea. Iceland's cod fishery is recovering, yet Canada's cod fishery remains a bit stagnant. It is important to have hope. It is important to make sure that the science is done.
I applaud the government's earlier decision to hire more fishery scientists in Newfoundland and Labrador to help create a plan to see the regrowth of the cod stock. However, as we are seeing this year, the science does not support a regrowth. Cod still finds itself in the critical zone. To get back to the point where we can have a sustainable amount of biomass so that cod fishing can be undertaken safely, with the preservation of the resource, and historical amounts of cod can be taken and can support the infrastructure that is needed, requires that we be patient. We need to do the necessary science. It is good to see that the minister will be provided with special tools under the act to take special steps to put a halt to overfishing if the science deems it required.
Protecting, preserving, and restoring our environment should be key principles of the Fisheries Act to make sure that Canadians trust the act. Not all Canadians, when they think about the fisheries, think about them the same way Newfoundlanders do. I need that empathy for the environmentalists. When they look at the fisheries, they see that perhaps they have a larger impact on our environment than I do, but it is important that all Canadians have confidence that our fisheries are being undertaken in a sustainable way. I know that Newfoundlanders and Labradorians have faith that they are and that more could be done. They have faith that the government is doing the right thing by putting scientists in place. They like that the focus is on the fisheries and that the Minister of Fisheries is taking this time to propose new legislation to bring it into the 21st century.
We do not want to return to the previous version of the Fisheries Act. We want to make the law even better than it was before. Through this process, it is not just something that has arisen from the imagination of the minister. It came after thousands of consultations undertaken by the minister and his department. All Newfoundlanders and Labradorians find this to be of critical importance to our future.
When the previous minister was in Newfoundland and Labrador early in this government's tenure, all Newfoundland and Labrador MPs were invited to participate in the consultations at that time. Those consultations have continued. People feel that their voices are being heard by the government, but not always, perhaps, by the department. Providing this link between Canadians, government ministries, and departments is important for confidence to be created. These changes will allow both environmentalists and people who are engaged in the fishery to have more confidence. They will allow us to meet our international obligations with respect to the preservation of 10% of our territory. They are long overdue.
Without further ado, I would like to encourage all members of the House to support the bill at second reading and get it to committee, where people can answer some of the questions my colleague from Cariboo—Prince George had earlier. We can have this improved for future generations of Canadians and for the preservation and growth of our resource.