Fisheries committee  It depends on the drain, really. Lots of farm drains are first- and second-order drains. They can be cleaned without harming habitat, and there's no residual harm. We have lots of room to support farmers in not requiring authorizations and undue process. But there are drains

Fisheries committee  Yes, I think in our specific submission, we don't go into detail about either the registry or the auditing, but some of the joint submissions we're participating in with other NGOs do address that. Ultimately, any project that either harms or has the potential to harm fish habit

Fisheries committee  Yes, it needs to go beyond monitoring. We need to make sure that, with all these small projects that cause harm, the harm is addressed by some mechanism, and we're pretty open-minded as to how that will prevent that loss. The other challenge is that, for larger projects, any sit

Fisheries committee  These questions have come up at the committee before, and they're important questions. I think we need to have a broad cross-sectoral discussion about what those service areas are, ensuring within an ecosystem or a watershed a certain scale of watershed where that is allowable.

Fisheries committee  I think when you get to something like someone wading in a stream, streams are dynamic and they create their own habitat over time if they have proper watershed conditions, so that's easily recoverable. Riding an ATV through a stream is another matter. But I think the examples w

Fisheries committee  Yes, absolutely. In the U.S., it's actually consulting companies, habitat banking companies, that are undertaking that work, and it's been a quite successful model in the U.S. Certainly, we would like to see conservation organizations, like Trout Unlimited or the Nature Conserva

Fisheries committee  Yes. Personally, I'm interested in seeing conservation organizations be involved in that, but we're very receptive to having both involved in third-party habitat banking.

Fisheries committee  Thanks. We've heard so far under Bill C-68 that large projects will be managed either by permits as designated projects or by authorizations, and we support this. We've also heard that low-risk projects will be regulated by codes of practice, and we support this as long as they

Fisheries committee  I'll say yes.

Fisheries committee  I would like to speak about the Ottawa River. I fish in the Ottawa River regularly and I really do love that river. It has excellent elements to it, but there are severely stressed elements to it as well. Atlantic salmon have been extirpated from that river for hundreds of years

Fisheries committee  Yes, I think consistent outcome should be expected in terms of consistent protection for streams and lakes in all jurisdictions. However, ecosystems vary quite a bit, and what it takes to offset works in the Arctic versus in southern Ontario are different types of projects. The r

Fisheries committee  I simply wanted to add that it's not just a question of sharing data, but it is the lack of monitoring data that makes weighing in on whether these changes are beneficial or harmful very challenging. Ongoing baseline assessment of habitat condition across Canada would really help