Natural Resources committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, and members of the committee. My name is Martin Olszynski. I'm an assistant professor at the University of Calgary, Faculty of Law. The focus of my presentation today is on what are commonly referred to as the environmental damages provisions of Bill C-46.

Natural Resources committee  Essentially I'm two lines away, Mr. Chair. Thank you. My final comment there simply is that the making of such regulations, which ideally would be made applicable to all of the federal environmental damage assessment regimes that I just referred to, would go a long way, I think,

Natural Resources committee  To the first question, yes, that's what I am proposing, that in proposed paragraph 48.12(1)(c) the reference be changed to “environmental damages”. As I tried to set out in my remarks, environmental damages could be seen as the biggest envelope. Within that you have your two ca

Natural Resources committee  I'll answer the question more of who “does” right now. The “should” is maybe a bit trickier. In other jurisdictions, such as the United States, this is a power generally confined to governments, the federal government in the U.S. and state governments. It is a bit broader in the

Natural Resources committee  Okay. Thank you. I will answer in English, because it will be quicker that way. I would stick by my two amendments. I think that they, in a sense, just simplify the bill. I think they're achieving essentially the same objective. The first one certainly is just to clarify the

Natural Resources committee  Without saying that I want to do those latter things, I will speak to your question as best I can. We don't currently have a lot of litigation in this context. There was a spill in Alberta recently, the Plains Midstream spill, and in that context there was regulatory enforcement

Natural Resources committee  There are remote areas, but I can actually give you one example, again from my home province. Right now in Alberta, there is a lawsuit involving Encana, which is being sued for contamination of groundwater in relation to fracking activities. Right now, that lawsuit is running a

Natural Resources committee  I would echo those comments. I think, in some cases, where there is a discretion to make regulations, for instance.... Regulations are inherently consultative and when regulations are published in the Canada Gazette there will be public comment periods, and those kinds of things.

Natural Resources committee  Essentially, in thinking about these provisions, they are very similar to what we have in the United States and the Superfund there. The goal is really to mobilize money quickly, even where the operator cannot or refuses to do so, to deal with those issues. I think the one differ

Natural Resources committee  I agree with what the other witnesses have said about that.

Fisheries committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, and members of the committee for giving me this opportunity to speak to you in the context of your review of the Fisheries Act. As the Chair mentioned, I am currently an assistant professor of law at the University of Calgary. I want to point out that befo

Fisheries committee  I used the access to information legislation and I specifically targeted the Pacific and central and Arctic regions. My apologies.

Fisheries committee  No, absolutely it's a fair point.

Fisheries committee  You learn almost immediately. In any environmental law course in Canada, you learn very quickly that the Fisheries Act, in section 35 in particular, has always been regarded as one of the most powerful environmental laws that we have in Canada at the federal level. Part of that i

Fisheries committee  I don't know if that's possible. What I can do is refer you, if you have paper copies of my deck, to page 8, figure 3. This is for habitat enforcement and compliance. Essentially what we see is that in...again, there are matters of scale here with this figure, but of course if th