Fisheries committee  I'm satisfied with the ecozones at the national level. I'm not that satisfied with the ecozones within each region of DFO.

Fisheries committee  Again, I'm not an aquatic biologist. I can't quantify the cod predation. This is a factor that has been mentioned. It has been studied. What I know is that there are different arguments for and against, so I do understand that it's part of the problem. It's part of the reason why cod are not recovering, but I certainly do not, as an expert in conservation, think that is the main driver.

Fisheries committee  I don't have those numbers, but I can clarify. The 80% decrease was for.... In Canada, we have a number of terrestrial and marine species, and 50%, more or less, of them have shown a decrease. Amongst those, there was a decrease of 83% on average. That's the summary finding of a report from the World Wildlife Fund published in 2017.

Fisheries committee  I'm no lawyer, but I believe that the IUCN captures a lot of indigenous rights. The different categories of MPAs that are recognized by the IUCN do recognize the rights of indigenous people to fish in some contexts. I don't think the two are in opposition.

Fisheries committee  It's a difficult question. Again, we can hypothesize. I certainly think a number of well-placed protected areas with higher-level protection would have done some good, yes, because there was knowledge from fishery scientists of the important places for cod. Would it have prevented the collapse?

Fisheries committee  Yes, no-take zones have been the focus of a lot of attention in the scientific literature in the last 15 or 20 years. There have been a number of papers showing multiple benefits, including, for instance, a significant increase in biomass, so the weight of the fish inside the no-take area is significantly larger than for an area that has partial protection.

Fisheries committee  That's an excellent question. It's a question that is actively researched currently in Canada and internationally. Obviously some species cover a range that is far greater than the size of the protected areas, but that does not mean that you cannot identify specific sites that are important for the life cycle of those species—nursing, spawning, and all that.

Fisheries committee  My colleagues covered most of it, but [Technical difficulty—Editor]. I worked on this a few years ago, on a project in collaboration with DFO, and the technology is progressing very rapidly. Maybe what I can add that my colleague did not discuss is that many boats are not equipped with those technologies at the moment.

Fisheries committee  That's a very complex question. I'm not a cod scientist. Dr. Worm may have a better answer for that. What I can say is that fishing was a major cause in the collapse, but maybe not the only cause. The recovery was limited by environmental conditions. There have been a number of years where the ocean was not in the same favourable condition for cod, which would prevent that.

Fisheries committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, for the invitation to contribute to your study on the proposed amendments to the Oceans Act and the Canada Petroleum Resources Act. I am a professor of geography at Memorial University of Newfoundland. I've been a scientist for about 20 years, specializing in geographic methods that can help us to understand and manage our oceans.

Fisheries committee  Yes. In terms of the social-economic balance, just to put things in perspective, about 99.9% of Canadian waters are open to industry. There is a very unbalanced balance at the moment. Small versus large is a long-standing debate in conservation science, and it basically depends on what you protect.

Fisheries committee  Low, yes.

Fisheries committee  Just as a little follow-up quickly, on the 99.9%, I didn't say “fisheries”. I said “commercial use”, and that can be seabed mining, that can be oil and gas exploration, that can be anything. A low level of protection relates a bit to what I was saying earlier. The level of protection right now is a bit too specific for some species and some threats.

Fisheries committee  I could refer to many countries, but yes, that was in my statement referring to Canadian MPAs.

Fisheries committee  The only metric I'm using to assess the quality is how much a difference it makes to the species that we're protecting. If you create an MPA to protect some species, then you can measure if the species are coming back. In Newfoundland, for instance, we have two MPAs that I'm familiar with: Eastport and Gilbert Bay.