Fisheries committee  That's not the language I used. I'm not a lawyer, so I don't understand what “restore” or “return to” means. In our view, let's move forward. We do want to return to the language of “had”—those words. How that actually gets put into law, I don't know. I'm not sure that it's “return to”, or what.

Fisheries committee  We like those words—

Fisheries committee  Yes.

Fisheries committee  I would just respond that it's always good to take time to make important decisions the right way. However, I think the issue is urgent. Any clarification that's needed in the law as it stands should be done as quickly possible. If you can arrive at a consensus on what the clarification is—and we put forth our ideas on what clarification needs to be—and they're consistent with others, we'd like to see that move pretty quickly.

Fisheries committee  Prescribed works is a portion of the law as it stands, and it can incorporate prescribed set standards for doing certain works that can be regulated through the law. That would be one way to do that. I'm not a lawyer, but I would assume it would make it quite a bit clearer when you violated, because you were violating a specific regulation that laid out exactly how you should do something and what's prescribed therein.

Fisheries committee  We accessed funds through it, and it was a government funding program of about $10 million a year that continues to this day. I think it has two more years in it. So it's been a good investment. I think a bunch of good projects were put on the ground. There's an evaluation of it, and we'll see how good it's been, so we'd like to see more of that.

Fisheries committee  I was around. There was no consultation during the drafting of the change. We were unaware, a lot of people I talked to were unaware. There had been, though, about five years of consultation on the Fisheries Act, and my understanding is that a bunch of that consultation was input.

Fisheries committee  The restriction wasn't so much around the fact that there was a prohibition on a temporary harm. The restriction was really around liability and what was allowed from a regulatory point of view. The way this law gets applied both pre- and post-2012 is that there's a prohibition, and then there's a policy that interprets that and there's a program that rolls out.

Fisheries committee  I think it's both before and after. Some amendments were made in 2012 that might facilitate some new ways of looking at offsetting. There is still some legal language, as I understand it, that is a barrier to working on things such as creating a habitat banking program in Canada.

Fisheries committee  That's a complicated question. I don't think that you write laws based solely on scientific evidence but I do feel, and I pointed out, that there were a couple of shortcomings in the language that was used. I think Dr. Favaro did a good job of pointing out some of the inconsistencies that it's created, more on the policy side.

Fisheries committee  Yes, we would like to see improvements to it. Neither of us is a lawyer, so we didn't comment specifically on exactly what that improvement would be in terms of language in the act. The one shortcoming primarily is the lack of clarity around it being temporary, preventing temporary harms.

Fisheries committee  Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. The Canadian Wildlife Federation is a national charity. It has about 250,000 supporters. We work through education, science-based policy, and outreach to conserve and inspire the conservation of Canada's wildlife and habitats for the use and enjoyment of all.

Environment committee  That's what one of the witnesses was proposing: clarity on who makes the judgment.

Environment committee  The objective was set many years ago, so it certainly gave us the time frame, hopefully, to achieve it. Right now we're looking to 2020 and being able to report. I think we want to get as far along as we can by 2020. I'm not in a position to have done an analysis of what's on the table and what can be....

Environment committee  Yes.