Fisheries committee  Thank you. Thank you for inviting me to present today in my new role at Oceans North Canada. Having been involved in previous attempts to amend and modify the Fisheries Act in 2006 and 2007, I want to commend the current government and the work of this committee for finally br

Fisheries committee  Absolutely. It was the first act after the British North America Act. I would say, when we look at some of the other legislation in other countries around fishery building and habitat protection, we see that our act doesn't quite get us to where we need to be in this century. Tha

Fisheries committee  Okay.

Fisheries committee  I do think science should be the basis. I think in some cases the discretion is inherent in this act and this Bill C-68 has not gotten rid of discretion. I think it's important to have the factors to be considered absolutely include science, and I think that's a good addition bec

Fisheries committee  Yes, I will.

Fisheries committee  I think the examples that Joshua Laughren of Oceana gave are cases in point of where other countries and groups of countries have much better fisheries laws than we have. I think Bill C-68 goes a long way to getting there, but it's not quite there. I think two key areas, making s

Fisheries committee  So—

Fisheries committee  Thank you, all, for inviting me to speak here today. I work for Oceans North, an organization that engages on conservation initiatives in Canada's Arctic and Atlantic provinces, in partnership with indigenous communities, as well as non-indigenous fishing entities. We support t

Fisheries committee  Not necessarily, except that I do know that some of the conflict on the wharf has been difficult in order to prosecute those fisheries. I think the question also is, where is the market for those moderate livelihood lobster? If it's to be exported, that's why hard-shell is much

Fisheries committee  Again, it depends on where the market is. If it's going to go into the same flow in the supply chain as the non-indigenous lobster, it depends on the state. Soft-shell lobster do not ship well.

Fisheries committee  I think that when the Atlantic policy review was being done there should have been an immediate rollout of what that meant for aboriginal fisheries. There should have been a rollout of education when the Marshall decision was done and when it was clarified. The department spent

Fisheries committee  I think that immediately trying to work with first nations on moderate livelihoods and understanding what was.... You know, the moderate livelihood is not black and white. It's different for every community, as others have said here, but allowing that to go forward in a way that

Fisheries committee  Maybe I'll give you an example. When the Government of Canada committed to protecting 10% of its coastal and ocean environment in 2015, I heard that at every single fisheries advisory committee meeting that I went to, every single one. I will say that I have never heard it said

Fisheries committee  I do think that we really need all of the civil service to understand what reconciliation is, especially in DFO where the pressure on the resource to actually do reconciliation is real. I don't know that there is a departmental strategy on educating staff on reconciliation and wh

Fisheries committee  I think there's a frustration about the lack of communication and being able to discuss issues that affect everybody, including the resource. I understand that frustration. I cannot speak to any programs per se, or very specific, dedicated policy outcomes that have happened withi