Fisheries committee  No. I'm actually just clarifying that the premise of your question is wrong.

Fisheries committee  That's an excellent question. I think there should be stronger action. It's another example of how our regulatory system is not as strong as regulatory systems in other countries. It is—

Fisheries committee  I think I would start by perhaps clarifying that it's simply not true that Canada has the most restrictive environmental regime of any country in the world. It's not even remotely close to true. There have been several very authoritative reviews of the—

Fisheries committee  Yes, but among OECD nations, we rank almost last in the strength of our environmental regulation. If you look just at the example the environment commissioner looked at on Tuesday, our regulation of fish farms, for example, is falling far behind that of other fish-farming nations

Fisheries committee  The premise of your question is just fundamentally wrong. In the big picture, it's obviously important to be able to regulate—

Fisheries committee  I'd say the starting point for equitably managing that question is to actually start grappling with the totality of the authorizations for fish habitat destruction that are being issued. We need better information earlier in order to avoid that place. What's happening now is that

Fisheries committee  It depends entirely on the context. Certainly, as I understand the proposals from a habitat banking perspective, the idea is to move toward allowing habitat to be restored or enhanced in an area that isn't necessarily exactly where the habitat disturbance is. Depending on the con

Fisheries committee  I think moving to closed containment is the only responsible thing to do at this point in our understanding of the impacts of fish farms on wild stocks. The report of the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development released on Tuesday was quite shocking. At the en

Fisheries committee  My understanding is that both Sweden and Norway have recently brought in restrictions on open net fish farms. In Sweden they have to do with areas where there's sensitive fish habitat. In Norway I'm not sure if they've particularly designated where fish farms won't be allowed. Bo

Fisheries committee  Sure, and I added a bit of it in response to the question from Mr. Stewart. I was talking about the need to ensure that the public registry includes all the instruments that authorize harm to fish habitat. Under the act, there are a variety of ways HADD can be sanctioned. For th

Fisheries committee  Thank you for that question. First of all, I think I've said a lot on the purpose and the changes necessary to ensure that we address all the cumulative effects of fish habitat loss. With respect to those last proposals, on making sure that the act is a tool for assessing cumu

Fisheries committee  It's a tricky one.

Fisheries committee  Thank you, Elizabeth. I think I have it. This is a question of what we look at before. What do we consider through the environmental assessment process as part of the process of issuing fisheries authorizations? If you expanded the scope of triggers, if you basically said that

Fisheries committee  Obviously, there's a key component in effectively protecting fish habitat where education comes into play. Where it's going to be important and, I think, historically has been a challenge is to explain to people what is fish habitat is and what is harm to fish habitat. From a bio

Fisheries committee  That's fine.