Fisheries committee  It depends on your perspective on the tipping point.

Fisheries committee  That's why I think we need to have these watershed level assessments before we issue individual authorizations.

Fisheries committee  Well, I think what is challenging is that in the absence of having a watershed level plan, if you want to protect fish habitat, that might unfortunately be the conclusion. This is why we think watershed level planning is so essential. If you can have the regulator look at a water

Fisheries committee  Absolutely. It's a recommendation for two separate provisions. This approach actually exists in some other legislation in Canada. There are parallel provisions, or similar provisions, in the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. Essentially, the request for investigation simply

Fisheries committee  Well—

Fisheries committee  It would certainly help the situation. Unquestionably, I think that you need to properly staff and to equip the people enforcing the act to go out on the water and do that. Canada is such an enormous country that I question whether you could ever really get total enforcement in a

Fisheries committee  That would be a really.... Let me just say that all of our money comes from individual or group donors. We don't receive any government money, and we don't take any direct corporate sponsorships. As I mentioned in my introduction—maybe it was only in my written notes—we do have a

Fisheries committee  Those are just our individual donors. We're also supported by foundations. Generally, those are our two large sources of support.

Fisheries committee  As I said, I've been in a number of legal cases that have involved the interpretation, application, and enforcement of the Fisheries Act. Some of those have been against DFO for, in our opinion—and, in some cases, the court's opinion—the failure to properly implement the act.

Fisheries committee  If that's the way one wants to interpret the provision, I think we would be on the same page. We would agree that there probably is, from a biological perspective perhaps, no fish species out there that isn't involved in the ecological web of life that keeps the commercial fisher

Fisheries committee  From a clarity perspective, I think it would just be better to revert to that position, for that reason.

Fisheries committee  Sure. I think there are many places in the Fisheries Act where you could specifically insert consideration of cumulative effects. There's the idea that I believe we just heard about: the notion of the guiding principles. For example, you could specifically insert into the discr

Fisheries committee  Thank you for that question. To clarify my earlier statements, we were very clear that we don't propose reverting to the HADD prohibition. We would propose reverting to “harmful alteration, disruption, and destruction of fish habitat” as the primary definition for what constitut

Fisheries committee  That's okay. I was done. That was the end.

Fisheries committee  Thank you. Good afternoon. I would like to thank the committee for this opportunity to present on the important issue of fish habitat protection. My name is Margot Venton. I am a Staff Lawyer with Ecojustice Canada and also the Director of our Marine Program. Ecojustice is a n