Submission to “Let’s Talk Parks, Canada!” Consultation

To: The Honourable Minister McKenna

From: Elizabeth May, O.C.
Member of Parliament Saanich-Gulf Islands
Leader, Green Party of Canada

Date: January 27, 2017

Dear Minister McKenna,
I am writing to contribute to the “Let’s Talk Parks, Canada!” consultation. I have also submitted my letter on the consultation website. While I appreciate that the Liberal Government is opening these consultations up to the Canadian public, I am surprised that this consultation period is so very brief.
There is much work to be done if we are to reverse the damage done by the previous government and protect our National Parks. As you know, Canadians care. Polls reveal that 90% of Canadians consider time spent in natural areas as children very important; 85% participate regularly in nature-related activities; 98% view nature as essential to human survival.
In the mandate letter for the Minister of Environment and Climate Change it is stipulated that our National Parks be protected by limiting development within them. Given the free admission at National Parks this year, it is especially important that we commit to the conservation and integrity of parks across the country.
The most serious blow to the integrity of our National Parks system was the 2013 Sable Island National Park Act. This iconic Nova Scotia island is famous for its dunes and wild ponies. The Green Party was the only party to oppose the legislation that allowed for seismic testing inside the park and directional oil and gas drilling under it. The legislation for Sable Island National Park places the Canada-Nova Scotia Off-Shore Petroleum Board (CNSOPB) as the key regulator. The CNSOPB only has to inform Parks Canada about oil and gas activities inside the park – not even consult in advance. Just as was done with the amendments to improve the Rouge Valley Urban Park legislation, I urge you to revisit the Sable Island National Park legislation to restore the fundamental principle that resource extraction and resource activity is incompatible with national park status.

At the same time, the boundaries of the new national park adjacent to Nahanni, the Nááts’ihch’oh National Park Reserve, were approved leaving out key and critical areas. The new park is 4 895 square kilometres, but omits key habitat for woodland caribou, grizzlies, Dall’s sheep, and mountain goats. The areas excluded from the park plan are those with mineral potential. According to Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society: “…this park boundary does not reflect the extensive scientific evidence of what’s needed to protect the Nahanni watershed, nor does it take into account the overwhelming public support for protecting the entire Nahanni headwaters expressed during the public consultation on the proposed park.”
The attack by stealth on our national parks system is also occurring through moves to privatize activities inside existing parks. I want to thank you for putting a stop to the appalling Mother Canada project in Cape Breton Highlands National Park, but more needs to be done.

With the 10% budget cuts to Parks Canada in 2012, pressure built to generate cash flow. The slippery slope started with the ice walkway within Jasper. This iconic national park, recognized with IUCN World Heritage status, now has a privately run, for-profit, structure. Brewster Travel Canada, a U.S.-based company, was allowed – over huge protest – to build a 400-metre skywalk and glass-floored observation deck suspended from a cliff face over the Columbia Icefields.
Meanwhile, in parks across Canada the level of maintenance, park interpretation and science to appreciate and protect ecological integrity is in dangerous decline. In my constituency, the Gulf Islands National Park has experienced a serious decline in staffing. The condition of the forest is declining. Visitors complain of a lack of proper servicing of washrooms on Saturna Island. A few summers ago, parks staff sent a message to fire departments in the area that they lacked capacity to respond to fires within the park. The situation is serious. Meanwhile, across the country, in Fortress Louisbourg, the number of interpretative staff has been slashed. The visitor experience is also significantly diminished.

While the Agency seems to have lost sight of its mandate to protect nature, its scientific, cultural, heritage and conservation capacity has been diminished. It is a real source of concern that when asked directly in the Standing Committee on the Environment about the funding levels in Parks Canada, senior staff denied they need more resources. The reality is that our parks are in real trouble. The 10% funding cut came on top of earlier cuts. A significant replenishment of A-base funding is required.

This government must commit to reversing the dangerous moves of the Harper administration undermining fundamental principles of ecological integrity in our national parks and devaluing park protection, with firm and unwavering action to protect existing parks and expand our terrestrial and marine park systems. We must rapidly establish ‘no-take’ marine parks as a last chance to save our vast tracts of critically-threatened and over-fished coastlines.
With this in mind, I recommend:

● Restore funding to Parks Canada to ensure science can be conducted in our national parks;

● Amend the Sable Island National Park Act to remove the authorities of the Canada-Nova Scotia Off-shore Petroleum Board and re-affirm that industrial activities have no place in our national parks;

● Enforce previous policies that precluded private sector and privatized for-profit activities within national parks;

● Re-commit to the completion of the national parks system that consists of a representative network of Canada’s terrestrial and marine ecosystems, setting a target date of 2030 with emphasis on:

○ Fast-tracking the establishment of ‘no-take’ marine protected areas: consultation with fisheries communities and sectors is essential, drawing on experience from New Zealand and elsewhere where ‘no-take’ areas have actually improved the economically viable fisheries;

○ Extending, in partnership with provinces, territories, and Aboriginal peoples, Canada’s network of land, freshwater, and marine protected areas and linking them up with provincial and territorial protected areas wherever possible, and establishing compatible-use buffer zones around national parks for the maintenance of natural biological diversity and ecosystem health;

○ Providing Parks Canada with the funding necessary to protect the ecological integrity of Canada’s national parks.

● And to achieve our international biodiversity commitments: ○ Ensure federal funding to meet our Aichi targets – protecting 17% of our land and inland waters and 10% of our coastal areas by 2020; ○ Establish a National Parks Completion Budget of $500 million annually to meet the goal of completing our National Parks and Marine Protected Areas Systems by 2030;

○ Implement the recommendations of conservation scientists for effective action to preserve:

1. Critically threatened habitats;
2. Keystone species, endangered species, and species of commercial or cultural value, especially those of value to First Nations communities;
3. Habitats specifically threatened by climate change;
4. Continuous interconnected tracts of habitat for wide-range migrating species sufficient to maintain viable populations.

● Advocate the purchase of private land, where necessary, to help protect critical habitats, especially of endangered species;

● Increase monitoring and protection efforts, including an increase in the number of park rangers and guides with interpretation skills to educate Canadians and visitors on the vast beauty and value of our national parks;

● Work with provincial and territorial governments to end all trophy hunting in Canada while supporting subsistence hunting by Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians of wild animals that are not threatened or endangered.

Again, thank you for undertaking this consultation. I would be more than happy to meet with you and your staff to discuss this important issue further.

Sincerely,

Elizabeth May, O.C.
Member of Parliament
Saanich – Gulf Islands
Leader of the Green Party of Canada

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One of the consequences of these deep cuts across Canada has been that Parks Canada’s infrastructure is crumbling. The money in the budget for Parks Canada, which I am glad to see, it is not to protect national parks but to protect Canadians who are trying to drive through national parks. It is to repair the roads, the bridges, and existing dams. There is nothing new in the budget to repair the damage done to Parks Canada in previous budgets.

The post The Budget – Financial Statement of Minister of Finance appeared first on Elizabeth May.

In spring 2012, Ritz announced that the Plant Health Centre on East Saanich Road would be shut down as part of budgetary austerity measures. The axe was swinging wildly in the wake of the March 2012 budget. We lost jobs in Parks Canada, losing critical capacity in the Gulf Islands National Park. The entire Marine Contaminants Programme, with 80 scientists across Canada under the leadership of Dr Peter Ross at the Institute for Ocean Science, was cancelled. The National Round Table on Environment and Economy was killed. And critical science and research facilities, from the PEARL lab in the Arctic to the Experimental Lakes Area in western Ontario, were on the hit list.

So many cuts all at once have the effect Naomi Klein described in Shock Doctrine–it becomes hard to think clearly with the repeated body blows of repealed laws, omnibus bills and lost programmes and facilities—radical agenda can be imposed as civil society is shell-shocked.

It is even more difficult to fight back in Harper’s Canada because civil servants are not allowed to speak to Members of Parliament–even their own.

In the case of the Plant Health Centre, the new plan was to transfer all the functions of the centre to Summerland, BC. It would mean the loss of about 40 jobs in the area, including contract and part-time staff. I have learned a lot about the Plant Health Centre (PHC) since the announcement of its pending execution, but I knew then that it is the national facility for the quarantine of viruses for fruit growing-plants and trees. Not being able to speak to personnel at the PHC, right after the news of the cuts, I stopped by the centre and helped myself to all the public information brochures in the lobby and went online for the description of the mandate of the Plant Health Centre.

Two things immediately struck me. Firstly, that the Plant Health Centre is run by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, while the Summerland facility was run by Agriculture Canada (potential for inter-agency rivalry?) and, secondly, that the isolation of viruses on Vancouver Island made more sense than having that function in the heart of the fruit growing Okanagan region. I began to see the possibility for persuading the minister to change his mind.

Now, before I share all the rest of the developments, I want to emphasize that I do not know which factors swayed Minister Ritz. As my mom always said, ‘you can accomplish anything you want if you do not care who gets the credit.’ So, at the request of our dauntless Island Tides publisher, Christa Grace-Warrick, I will share what steps I took, while not claiming saving the centre was due to my efforts. I can be sure that, at least, my efforts didn’t hurt!

I wanted to assemble a science package supporting keeping the quarantine centre on the Island to share with the mostly Conservative MPs from the Okanagan. I hoped they would review the information and speak to Minister Ritz to suggest leaving things as they are, rather than risk a quarantine facility in the Okanagan. My first hurdle was finding a credible scientist willing to help me. Every scientist I approached currently working in plant virology has some relationship with Agriculture Canada and was unwilling to attach their name to my background package. But as I kept calling experts, I was told of the retired scientist, holder of the Order of British Columbia, Richard Stace-Smith. Dr Stace-Smith turned out to be my saviour. An octogenarian living in Vancouver, Dr Stace-Smith was intimately involved with the decision to place the national quarantine centre with the Plant Health Centre in 1965. At my request, he wrote a detailed, foot-noted, letter to the Prime Minister, noting:

‘The Centre for Plant Health was selected for its location because there is always a danger of serious pathogens being imported together with the plant hosts from other parts of the world. Despite using extreme precautions, pathogens may escape and the danger is reduced when imported material is tested distant from the commercial agricultural industry. It made sense in 1960 when the Plant Quarantine and Diagnostic Services was established in Saanichton and it seems to me that it makes no sense to move it to Summerland today.’

I hand delivered the letter to Stephen Harper, as well as Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz. I also put together more background details and gave packages to the five Okanagan MPs. Fortunately, through one thing or another, I was already friends with all of them. Within days, Ritz told me he would reconsider the matter.

Meanwhile, the Summerland facility was shown to be inappropriate for other reasons. It would need at least two new large greenhouses to handle the work done by the PHC, and there was not enough space for them in the current facility. The idea of cost savings began to fade.

So, for the last few months, whenever I have seen Gerry Ritz I have asked him how the review was going. I have to say, on any issue on which I have ever approached Gerry Ritz, he has been accessible and fair. And on this wonderful reversal, I can only thank him for being willing to re-examine a flawed, hasty decision. I wish the same dynamics could work to get more money flowing back to our parks and to science. But, for now, a victory is very sweet.

The post Spared the axe: the arguments that helped save the Plant Health Centre appeared first on Elizabeth May.

The Monday, 15 October meeting saw members meet to review two new Order-in-Council appointees to the Department of the Environment . They were Bob Hamilton to the Position of Deputy Minister of the Environmentand Alan Latourelle to the Position of Chief Executive Officer of the Parks Canada Agency.  Each new appointee presented their credentials and answered a variety of questions asked by committee members.

The meeting on Wednesday, Oct 17 saw the committee commence a study on Urban Conservation Practices in Canada.  The witnesses were Virginia Poter, Director General, Canadian Wildlife Service, Department of the Environment and  Andrew Campbell, Vice-President, External Relations and Visitor Experience, Parks Canada.

Ms. Poter talked about and answered questions regarding the definitions and benefits of urban conservation. Mr Campbell described and answered questions about the mandate and benefits to Canadians of Parks Canada.

The post Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development (ENVI) appeared first on Elizabeth May.

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She reviewed the Harper Government’s decisions and announcements since the end of last parliamentary session, looked ahead to the Harper Government’s Fall agenda, Canada’s increased sell out to China and the impacts of Bill C-38 on Species at Risk and Parks Canada.

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ELIZABETH MAY (Green Party Leader): Bonjour. Good morning. First of all, I should explain in case anyone doesn’t recognize the blue striped scarf that today is National Prostate Cancer Awareness Day.

So I’ve never been known for fashion statements, so I just want to make sure that everyone knows that that is why you’ll see many members of Parliament wearing a blue scarf or a blue tie today.

Thank you for joining me this morning. I wanted to pull together some of the experiences being out on the ground in my riding and across the country this summer in terms of the effect being felt on the ground from changes brought in through Bill C-38 and to Budget 2012 on local communities, and local problems being created through the reckless cuts that occurred in the spring.

And I want to look ahead at what I see on the fall parliamentary calendar that all Canadians should be concerned about.

First thing I want to share with you, we know that Parks Canada received well above the average of other departments, severe cuts. The overall cuts in the 2012 budget came to five per cent of spending. There were several entities that got 10 per cent cuts. Those were CBC, CIDA, our overseas development agency, and Parks Canada.

Now some people may feel and maybe Stephen Harper feels that Parks Canada is an easy place to make cuts because you don’t have to do anything to protect ecological integrity in our parks.

Clearly Mr. Harper believes that Parks should have more visitors, more tourists, and that those visitor experiences could be privatized, such as with the Jasper Iceway and now the Banff Hot Springs being allowed to have private, for profit operations on them.

But our national parks are more than the tourist visitor experience. They also involved public safety. And that’s where the cuts hit the ground in a way that I think most Canadians would find quite alarming.

The cuts are so severe that in some parks at least to my definite personal knowledge, forest fires and rescues are beyond the reach of Parks Canada personnel.

They’ve lost so much capacity that they can’t put out forest fires in a national park and they have to rely on local, in some cases, volunteer fire fighting services.

To give a specific example on the Gulf Islands National Park within my riding, there were two forest fires this summer, Tumble Island and on Saturna Island, where Parks Canada staff couldn’t get there.

Parks Canada staff had to watch as the local forest fire fighting group, Saturna Island’s fire service which has one paid staff person, the fire chief, and everybody else is volunteer, dealing with a very difficult fire that was halfway up a cliff rock face, and it required repelling down the rock face, volunteer fire fighters did this and then the provincial forest fire service shot up with helicopters with water buckets to help put out that fire.

Now if you look at a map of Saturna Island, you’ll see it’s virtually half national park, and interspersed all around the edges of the park are homes. So this is a significant public safety issue when a public… when a national park decides it can no longer manage rescues or putting out fires.

And that’s been the case in more than one national park across the country this summer.

As well, in C-38, we changed the law so that now forest, or rather national park wardens are required under C-38 to operate as law enforcement officers for any law that’s being violated. They’re now required to carry fire arms, and they are required to be available to pursue any other criminal act within a national park.

It’s not clear that they would have the benefit that the RCMP officers do, that you should never send a lone officer into a remote area, that they should always be two. That doesn’t appear to be the case for national park service staff who would be required to go in to deal with any criminal wrongdoing.

So on top of a 10-per-cent cut, they’ve had to take on new duties. And to be responsible for those new duties, there are now fewer officers. Just by way of example, in the National Parks, if you take a rough number of park wardens that existed for one of the major national parks in the Rockies, you would have had in the past about 30 park wardens.

Now there are about six. Now it’s true that unlike the 30 park wardens who were there before, the six who are there now will have fire arms with them to be able to pursue criminal activity but six park wardens can’t do the job that 30 used to do. And the budget cuts in the resource conservation issues are so severe they’ve actually reduced the number of national incident management teams already and on the ground, we are experiencing an inability of Parks Canada to respond to rescue or fire situations.

That’s one area of cuts.

Another is to maintain the protection of endangered species. Again an example from my own riding, as part of the national recovery strategy for northern and southern resident killer whales or orcas, and this is a copy of the DFO report that explains what the Species at Risk Act requires of them for the protection, conservation and restoration of orca populations.

Part of the requisite job is to make sure that whale watching operations, which are a big economic boon to many parts of coastal Canada, we have a lot of whale watchers and it’s great. You know, it’s a fabulous ecotourism experience. But you have to follow the law. You have to stay a requisite distance away from the whale populations or the enjoyment of whales in the wild turns into harassment of whales and impedes their ability to recover.

So there’s been a straight watch operation run by CETUS’ research and conservation foundation that makes sure with federal government funding through the Species at Risk Act, through Environment Canada, to this operation in Southern Vancouver Island and other locations on Vancouver Island, to monitor what the whale watch groups are doing. Their funding was just completely cut.

Which leads me to what I expect to see in the fall. We’ve heard that there will be changes to the Species at Risk Act. It worries me that a service being performed consistent with the federal government’s statutory obligations under the Species at Risk Act to protect resident orca whale populations is being cut to me is a foreshadowing of changes coming in the Species at Risk Act.

We’ve heard from Minister of the Environment Peter Kent that they plan to make changes. Originally those changes were rumoured to be included in the upcoming Omnibus Budget Bill. We now hear that they will be taken separately and the reason for that, through the various sources that I’ve heard, is that even the provinces don’t want to take on the responsibilities the feds want to shovel off on them as quickly as possible.

The reality is that cutting the funding to a small operation, minimal amount of money, to keep an operation going where skilled people, knowledgeable conservationists out on the water to protect whale populations, that’s been completely eliminated.

The other thing we see coming, which I think deserves more attention than it’s getting, certainly more than it’s getting in the House of Commons, is looking forward again towards what’s going to happen this fall. I’m very concerned about the Omnibus Budget Bill. I of course will read it carefully.

But we also know that by November 12th, the government of Canada must decide on the bid by Nexen, I mean, the bid by SNOOC to purchase Nexen. SNOOC being the Chinese National Offshore Oil Company.

We are still hearing even the official opposition, the NDP only goes on about net benefit. When is someone going to talk about national security? We’re talking not about a commercial venture. We’re not talking about a private-sector operation coming from China. We’re talking about a state-owned operation of communist China. The same state that owns SINOPEC, the same state that owns PetroChina. Communist China owns SNOOC. And I thought this quote, which I found in the Wall Street Journal from late last month, this rather instructive, this is from the August 29th Wall Street Journal, and the headline says it all. For China boss, deep water rigs are a “strategic weapon”.

The full quote from SNOOC Limited Chairman Wang Yee Lin is this. Quote: “Large scale deep water rigs are our mobile national territory and a strategic weapon.” Unquote.

Purchasing large amounts of oil sands territories and operations, as strategic weapons, in the words of the company’s own chair, certainly requires that Canadians look at it as a national security question. We’re hampered in that by Stephen Harper’s refusal to include an objective definition of national security when the Investment Canada Act was amended in 2009. Nevertheless, we must ask these questions.

And we specifically must ask, and I will ask in the House, when we’ll see the specific text of the agreement Stephen Harper has signed with China for investor protection because it was bad enough when U.S. based corporations were able to sue municipal, provincial or federal governments in Canada for what they claim was a loss of profits due to decision-making or regulations in Canada at the municipal, provincial or federal level.

But if as it appears China’s companies, which are an extension of the state of China, will be allowed to sue Canada for democratically elected government decisions to protect our health or environment in Canada, if we are then susceptible to having to pay damages to Communist China, I think Canadians will have a lot of questions to ask. This agreement has already been signed by Stephen Harper when he was in Russia.

We need to see the text and we need to debate whether he’s giving Canada a way to Communist China without even allowing us to debate it in the House of Commons.

Merci beaucoup. Je regrette beaucoup que je ne fais pas beaucoup des commentaires en français mais je suis disponible pour les questions dans les deux langues. Merci.

QUESTION:  What are you worried about downloading to the provinces in Species at Risk?

ELIZABETH MAY: The provinces don’t have the same capacity and there are different federal and provincial jurisdictional areas. Historically in Canada provinces have different levels of capacity to do for instance environmental assessments. So what we saw in C-38, if you were to look at a common theme, Mr. Harper wants to call the common theme streamlining. In reality the common theme is abandonment of environmental responsibilities by the federal government.

So the Fisheries Act changes not only remove protection of fishery habitat in a wide part, in a broad swath across Canada, the other part of the change of the Fisheries Act were to say if any province asks to take this on, we’ll say okay. Same thing on the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act: if a province  says we can do this environmental review, we are to say federally okay, even if they don’t establish that they have anything like equivalent regulations. This I think will be what we’ll see in the Species at Risk Act. If a province says you know, we’ll take it on.

So the question then is what has happened to the federal areas of responsibility constitutionally? And as a matter of capacity, downloading to the provinces a whole lot of really significant environmentally critical protection measures without giving the provinces any new resources with which to protect those environmental resources is a prescription for Species at Risk going extinct, for areas of fisheries habitat being eliminated, for various coho and Chinook runs to go dead. We need to have a federal role in these areas.

It’s further dangerous because of the… made more dangerous by the elimination of so much environmental science to guide those policy decisions at both federal and provincial levels.

QUESTION:  Give an example of a species that is at risk that if you download the whole thing to the provinces, you may see the end of that species?

ELIZABETH MAY: Pretty much anything, but give a specific example, in the case of well, very critical example for British Columbians, we have a number of salmon on the endangered species list. We now have a combination of things. We’ve, in the decision to, in C-38, remove protection of fish habitat, under the Fisheries Act, the subsequent decision from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans was to lay off all of the habitat enforcement officers within DFO operating in British Columbia.

So we’re no longer going to have protection of critical habitat for certain salmon runs of coho and Chinook. Now if on top of that Species at Risk Act downloads as well, the question is will British Columbia step up and protect all the species, replace all those jobs? The answer is no. We certainly haven’t seen any new B.C. staff attached to protection of salmon resources. And salmon are clearly a federal responsibility.

So it’s… if you look at other Species at Risk, Woodland Caribou, for instance, we have a lot of pressure on Woodland Caribou habitat in Northern Alberta coming from expansion of the oil sands. I certainly commend Premier Allison Redford for making a decision to set aside some areas of Northern Alberta in the Athabasca region, so there’s some conservation zones.

But without a coordinated effort under the Species at Risk Act, downloading to the provinces is, and particularly in Northern Alberta, the amount of land now protected or on its way to being protected at the provincial level isn’t sufficient to keep the species extent and indeed, it may be extirpated from areas of Alberta, certain sub-species of Woodland Caribou are more trouble than others. So if you don’t have a federal approach under the Species at Risk Act, then you’re going to see species disappearing.

QUESTION:  Au printemps vous avez fait une lutte contre C-38 que vous avez perdue. Je me demande aujourd’hui quand vous regardez les choses sur lesquelles ils ne voudront pas revenir, c’est déjà fait, c’est fini. C’est quoi les nouveaux risques? C’est quoi les nouveaux dangers que vous dites qui s’en viennent cet automne?

ELIZABETH MAY: Oui, parce qu’à ce moment, évidemment personne a lu le projet de Loi omnibus 2 de l’automne. Pour moi-même on doit liser cette… on doit lire le projet de Loi omnibus pour l’automne avant de faire une décision oui ou non. Mais j’ai beaucoup d’inquiétudes parce que ce n’est pas le bon processus dont pour… ce n’est pas démocratique évidemment d’avoir plus que 400 pages des changements fondamentaux des lois pour Canada dans C-38 et s’il y a une autre loi et je (inaudible) que c’est peut-être 800 pages. Alors qu’est-ce qu’on peut faire avec 800 pages comme un seul projet de loi?

J’ai beaucoup d’inquiétudes et je pense qu’encore, on doit faire une lutte fondamentale pour arrêter cet effort. Mais je veux, on doit lire le projet de loi. Ce n’est pas à ce moment devant le Parlement.

QUESTION: D’un point de vue environnemental, quel mal est-ce qu’ils peuvent encore faire qu’ils n’auraient pas déjà fait?

ELIZABETH MAY: Oui, oui. Il y a beaucoup de mal maintenant parce que nous avons les changements des équipes dont les parcs nationaux, par exemple, et ce n’est pas à ce moment possible de faire une réponse contre les feux dans les parcs nationaux, dans beaucoup de parcs. Pas absolument chaque parc national mais j’ai le rapport pour beaucoup de parcs nationaux et particulièrement dans ma circonscription, le parc de Iles de Gulf, c’est pas possible cet été de faire, d’avoir une équipe contre les feux par… de parc national et il était … il reste avec les petits groupes bénévoles locaux pour faire une lutte contre les feux dont le parc national de Saturna, par exemple. Et aussi il manque l’équipe scientifique pour montrer les changements pour protéger l’intégrité écologique dans les parcs nationaux puis il y a aussi les nouvelles responsabilités pour les gens dans les parcs par les parcs « wardens », maintenant ont les autres nouvelles responsabilités à cause de C-38 que l’on doit répondre pour toutes les autres lois criminelles dans les parcs, on doit faire les réponses comme les polices mais ce n’est pas la responsabilité « core » des parcs nationaux.

C’est beaucoup de choses qu’ils ont fait maintenant déjà.

QUESTION: You didn’t understand my question. My question was, okay, so we know all the damage they’ve done with C-38.

ELIZABETH MAY: Oui.

QUESTION:  What more damage can they do? That’s my question.

ELIZABETH MAY: Pardon. Il y a beaucoup de choses où on peut faire, et c’est pour ça que j’ai beaucoup d’inquiétude. Pour par exemple pour la loi pour protéger les espèces en train d’extinction, M. Kent a déjà parlé qu’il a les changements et dont les choses qu’il y a des rumeurs au sujet de la Loi pour protéger les espèces, la Loi SARA, et tous les rumeurs sont mal pour réduire les responsabilités des gouvernements au niveau fédéral, pour réduire les protections des espèces menacées, pour donner aux provinces toutes les responsabilités pour protéger les espèces en train d’extinction.

Et il y a aussi les autres choses que je pense sera dans l’omnibus projet de loi 2. C’est pour réduire les protections pour les eaux au Canada, dont la loi de la protection des eaux de navigation. Je ne sais pas les mots en français mais Navigable Waters Protection Act.

Je suis certaine que dans le projet de Loi omnibus de l’OTAN, il sera les changements mauvais pour ce projet de loi pour éliminer le rôle du gouvernement fédéral pour beaucoup des eaux et des rivières et des fleuves du Canada.

So we’re seeing a lot, the threat is there, very clearly in a second omnibus budget bill to do more damage to the environment, particularly through the Navigable Waters Protection Act, being changed to reduce the federal role and it lines up with the Enbridge pipeline as a threat as well, to eliminate the federal role in unnamed waterways that are in remote locations that under the law we had in 1867 until 2009, would clearly have been navigable waters.

This government has made a number of changes, three different times, twice so far they’ve made significant changes to the Navigable Waters Protection Act and my information is they’re not done yet.

QUESTION:  You were saying when is someone going to start talking about national security and Communist China, what specifically are you worried that the Chinese could do by taking over Nexen?

ELIZABETH MAY: Well, I think the fact that the Chairman of the Corporation in question, CNOOC, speaking to his employees and Communist Party superiors, explained that ambitions abroad are a strategic weapon should make someone ask some questions about national security.

So, in its very specific context, coupled with the foreign investment protection review agreements which appear to have been signed, well, foreign investment protection and promotion agreement was signed on just last Sunday September 9th in Russia at the meeting of which Mr. Harper and President Hu Jintao were attending in Russia, they’ve now inked an agreement that Parliament hasn’t yet seen.

If it is as reported, the same as other foreign investment protection agreements that Canada has signed, if it is modelled on Chapter of NAFTA, we then have a situation in which a company completely owned by China and for that matter whenever we sign one of these agreements certainly all of the companies owned in the U.S. can already do this, but the companies owned in the U.S. are private-sector entities. We now would have a situation where the Chinese Communist government would have the ability to veto health, safety, environmental regulations of all kinds, if they made the case that this affected their level of anticipated profit, so investor-state provision agreement work.

And so while it’s being presented to the Canadian public, that we’re now protecting investor rights for Canadian companies that want to invest in China, and it’s a very good question whether there’s any reciprocity on the part of China to let Canadians invest there but meanwhile the real impact is going to be that on Canadian… I mean, if Fort McMurray decides to pass a bylaw that improves local air quality, China could sue for damages.

Sue the government of Canada for any local decision-making by Fort McMurray town… city council. Or the province of Alberta. Or the province of British Columbia. Or the federal government of Canada.

So as a national… so that affects perhaps more the net benefit question. But in terms of…

QUESTION:  In what agreement would that be allowed?

ELIZABETH MAY: That’s under the…

QUESTION:  Fort McMurray, I mean, like what is the…

ELIZABETH MAY: Foreign investment protection and promotion agreement signed on September 9th. We still haven’t seen the text, but all the analysis of it that has appeared elsewhere I have, for instance yes, there’s a note to their clients prepared by Heenan Blakely, Heenan Blaikie, rather, Canada concludes FIPA with China April 2012, with the best information that they have, this agreement will be modelled on the… what they call the NAFTA-based Canadian model FIPA brings the concept of expropriation one step further in that it also protects investors against less extreme or obvious actions which are, quote, tantamount to expropriation, unquote.

This is what has led to for instance Canada repealing the law we put in place that banned the toxic gasoline additive that was manganese based. It also led to a case Canada lost against a PCB destruction company called S.D. Myers in Ohio. It sued Canada when we didn’t allow the export of PCB contaminated waste to the U.S. We lost that case against S.D. Myers. In each of these instances, tens of millions of dollars ended up going to U.S. based corporations and in the case of the ethyl case, that rich ethyl corporation out of Richmond, Virginia, which is the one that made the toxic gasoline additive, we repealed a law.

Now this is quite egregious when it’s private sector U.S. compos getting Canadian laws repealed. But take it to the next level. According to everything I can see, and as a member of Parliament, I haven’t seen the agreement Stephen Harper signed with China. No one has. I think that’s alarming, especially since we’re about to see a decision for a very large Canadian energy giant, Nexen, to be purchased by SNOOC for $15 billion which as even Jack Mintz pointed out, state-owned enterprises have more cash. They are not… really it’s not what you call a fair level playing field with other private sector investors. They’re awash with cash and Communist China is able to put down $15 billion as a bid for Nexen which they then described themselves as a strategic weapon.

What kind of effect does this have on national security? Well, I think it’s a question we should be discussing. If it’s a national security question that we’re able to say what about the suppression of Tibetan monks? And the… well, not just suppression. What about the killing of Tibetan monks? What about suppression of Chinese Catholics who operate in their houses illegally to have worship? What about what happens to Falun Gong practitioners in China? What about what happens to Chinese dissidents? What begins to happen to Canada’s role in the world when Chinese state-owned enterprises own at this point, I’ve seen estimates up to $35 billion worth of investments, in Canada’s oil sands?

What happens if we decide, for strategic reasons, that we want to keep the oil domestically? That could be a national security concern.

Does anyone think we’re going to be able to say no to China? Our last chance to say no to China comes in two decisions: Saying no to CNOOC on the Nexen bid and saying no to the great pipeline of China across Northern British Columbia and the Enbridge PetroChina offer. That, those two things, we sort of … we sort of have the horse is out of the barn, but we’ve got to find some way to close the gate before this is just so far gone that Canada becomes a resource colony of China and there’s nothing any of us can do about it and say why didn’t anyone mention it at the time?

QUESTION: (Inaudible) favourite back and forth between the NDP and the Conservatives over a carbon tax. Do you plan to … or cap and trade.

ELIZABETH MAY: Yes.

QUESTION: And do you plan to weigh in on that? And what do you think about the (inaudible)?

ELIZABETH MAY: I’d love to weigh in on that. Thank you. You’re the first person who … It’s obvious that it’s, well, it’s appalling to me to watch responsible people run away from a good idea as quickly as they want to scamper away. I think the leader of the official opposition, I think Mr. Mulcair should be ashamed for the role the NDP has had in the past and currently in demonizing a carbon tax.

Someone needs to step up and say wait a minute: British Columbia has a carbon tax and it’s working. It’s reduced emissions. It’s reduced dependency. It’s working at the pump. It’s not… you know, British Columbians are largely supportive of it. After bringing it in, Gordon Campbell got re-elected. The tax that brought him down wasn’t the carbon tax. It was the HST.

We’re looking at economies around the world where it’s working. And in fact, the economies in Europe right now that are the strongest, like Germany and Sweden and Denmark and Norway, the economies that are bailing out the rest are economies that had carbon taxes, reduced emissions while they also had economic growth.

I think… so I wish that we worked… it’s sort of like the… reminds me of Brer rabbit and the tar baby. Somebody’s got to step up and say wait a minute, that’s a good decision. Don’t keep running away from it.

And of course it’s completely dishonest for the Conservatives to claim that they never supported a cap and trade regime. Jim Prentice introduced one when he was Environment Minister. The Conservatives wanted cap and trade.

Cap and trade is, after all, something that was designed by George Bush and the free-market Republicans as a way of putting a price on carbon without using a carbon tax. Cap and trade is something that has… that comes from a free market thinking. But the reality of putting a price on carbon is that every knowledgeable expert, well, everyone in the world recognizes, who’s looking at the climate crisis, that the first step is to put a price on carbon.

You can do it two ways. You can do it through cap and trade or you can do it through a carbon tax. Both have the effect of making fossil fuel based energy sources cost more. And the purpose of that is to drive more development in renewables.

We have to get rid of the subsidies to fossil fuels. That’s, you know, point A. Get rid of subsidies, and put a price on carbon. If you look at the International Energy Agency reports, they’re pleading with every government around the world to put a price on carbon. We’re one of the only countries that hasn’t done it, along with the U.S.

So if we don’t, we’re going to find our exports and our energy products getting a tariff on top of whatever else it costs to buy our products because other countries are going to want to internalize the carbon costs that we haven’t.

So if we don’t take steps to put a price on carbon, we’re both ignoring the climate crisis and putting our exports at risk. And the fact that Mr. Mulcair and Mr. Van Loan are running in circles attacking each other and Mr. Harper over who promoted a carbon tax and who didn’t, it’s really clear. The Green Party of Canada is the only party right now brave enough to stand up and say, you know, it works. Hello? It can be designed in such a way that the average Canadian has less tax burden than they had before because it’s all about shifting the taxes away from income and profit and putting it on pollution so that both individual corporations and individual consumers can make choices that reduce the amount they pay in carbon taxes, by shifting away from carbon to more green energy choices.

And frankly right now the Greens are supporting what’s called a tax and dividend, which means that every Canadian would actually get a dividend from carbon pricing and it would be an absolute wash in terms of the average Canadian household, would not cost people more.

But if we don’t have a discussion about how to make it work, if they’re so busy pointing fingers and running away from action on climate change, you know, in the summer, within weeks of when we have an all-time low level of ice covering the Canadian Arctic, the best we get from the so-called leadership of the Conservatives and the NDP is to run away from a good idea, I find it absolutely shocking.

QUESTION: (inaudible) asking if you’re planning to, on the Omnibus Bill, if you don’t like the content would you do what you did last time?

ELIZABETH MAY: Of course. It’s my responsibility as both leader of the Green Party and as an individual member of parliament to represent my constituents. And my constituents, I just finished a round of town hall meetings in every part of my riding and I have complete support. It’s un… at least in terms of people showing up, it’s hard to say complete support of everyone in a riding.

But their number-one issue in my community is to stop the Enbridge project, protect our coastline from super tankers, and I had enormous amounts of local support and gratitude for the fight we put up on C-38.

If I don’t like the contents of the next Omnibus Budget bill, they haven’t seen anything yet. They think 330 amendments was a lot. Well, we will take whatever steps are necessary to put up the kind of fight that Canadians expect to protect things like navigable waters, other environment laws. You know, if I like it, obviously we won’t put forward any kind of fight at all. We have to read it and see.

QUESTION: Thought 330 amendments were a lot. You can up that?

ELIZABETH MAY: Well, if basic … our amendments were directly related to the length of the bill and the passages that needed fixing. So a 425-page bill led to 330 amendments. They’ve actually got an 800-page bill, and it has egregious sections that we need to fix. That, of course, will mean more amendments.

It depends. We have to read it, obviously. But if it’s … if it’s as bad as I think it may be, yes, of course, we’ll bring forward everything we’re allowed to do under the rules of parliamentary procedure. That’s my obligation as a member of Parliament.

Thank you so much. Merci beaucoup.

Transcription done by:

H & K Communications
72 Elvaston Avenue
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• Looking ahead to the Harper Government’s Fall agenda;
• Looking back on Harper Government’s decisions and announcements since the end of last parliamentary session;
• Canada’s increased sell out to China;
• Impacts on local communities of Government’s Budget 2012 cuts; and,
• Impacts of Bill C-38 on Species at Risk and Parks Canada.

When: Tuesday, September 18, 2012 at 9:30 am ET
Where: Charles-Lynch Press Gallery, Room 130-S, Centre Block

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Given limitations of words and space, let me cover some of the main points.

Budget 2012 cuts government spending, overall, by about $5 billion for next year. (Green Scissors, my submission to Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, cut by $6 billion, but went after very different things—like government advertising and the Prime Minister’s Office budget.)

Budget 2012 delivers the expected news of increasing the age of entitlement to Old Age Security to 67, while deeply cutting CIDA, CBC, Environment Canada, Statistics Canada, Parks Canada, Library and Archives, and DND (cuts there largely due to the end of involvement in Afghanistan). It also cuts $7.5 million from Elections Canada, $14 million from tourism, and over $50 million from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (leading to the announced closing of the Canada Plant Health Centre on East Saanich Road). It also did away with the youth volunteer-service program, Katimavik.

There is no mention of climate change. The hoped for extension of the eco-Energy home energy retrofit programme was not to be, ditto hopes for funding to keep the Polar Environmental Arctic Research Laboratory–Canada’s critical research lab on Ellesmere Island and the world’s closest to the North Pole–from closing. No reprieve there, nor for funding of climate science. Scientific research through the National Research Council is now directed to focus on work that is ‘business-led and industry-relevant.’ (I can just imagine what Einstein would have said about that.)

Also announced in the budget was the surprise termination of the National Round Table on Environment and Economy– the only effort remaining within the government to develop consensus between industry and environmentalists to pursue sustainable development. As I was feverishly reading the budget document in ‘lock-up’ (the invitational, embargoed preview of the budget), I scanned for any reference to climate change, I got excited when I saw the word ‘climate,’ only to focus and realize it was a discussion of the ‘investment climate.’

Instead, Budget 2012 commits the country to expansion of fossil fuel production: oil sands, pipelines, super-tankers, seismic testing and off-shore drilling. Consistent with that is the funding of an attack on environmental charities with a new $8 million to spend on going after groups alleged to be conducting ‘political’ advocacy, a charge which has been directed at groups opposing the Enbridge super-tanker scheme.

The budget was very grim news indeed, but did not really prepare me for the introduction of the omnibus Budget Implementation Bill. It’s bizarre tabling was without prior notice—not even the usual advance ‘lock-up’ with technical briefing.

I picked up my copy and made for my desk in the House, where I sat, reading, near tears, for the next three hours. C-38 is over 400 pages repealing, amending or otherwise revising 70 different pieces of federal legislation. Aspects never even hinted at in the budget itself include removing oversight from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, changing entitlement to Employment Insurance (this is still vague but appears to allow refusing EI to anyone if there is any job available, even one not in their field), and allowing the Cabinet to overrule the National Energy Board (NEB).

Not Mentioned In the Budget

Nearly half of the budget implementation bill is directed at rewriting Canada’s foundational environmental laws. The Budget itself never mentioned that the Fisheries Act was to be re-written, gutting habitat protection and restricting federal action in many instances to commercial, recreational, and Aboriginal fisheries. This essentially means that if humans aren’t catching a fish, there is no protection for its habitat.

There nothing was mentioned in the budget speech about the changes to the Species at Risk Act which put the NEB in charge of permitting destruction of endangered species and their habitat along the proposed route of a pipeline; nor about the supplanting of the NEB as arbiter of pipelines under the Navigable Waters Protection Act. The NWPA is amended such that pipelines are no longer considered an obstruction to navigation–even if they are.

Although it was abundantly clear that a large focus was to be ‘streamlining’ the environmental assessment process, the advance hype focused on time limits for hearings. It was nowhere mentioned that the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act was to be repealed. C-38 wipes out the entire CEAA and introduces an entirely new law. Under the new act, ‘environmental effects’ (that which is to be studied under a federal EA), is, for many circumstances, restricted to fish and migratory birds.

Not Clear On the Concept

With so many new laws and the repealing of old laws and complex text, the Conservative ministers speaking in the House in support of C-38 frequently claim the budget implementation act will include measures that are simply not there at all, or misstate how the new laws will operate.

I go up to them afterward and, for example, ask ‘I cannot find any reference to increased tanker safety in C-38. Can you show me what section you were referring to?’ Or, ‘I can’t find anything that says environmental reviews will only be transferred to the province if the environmental assessment in that province is ‘as good or better’ than the federal one. Where is that?’ Of course, when I ask these specific questions, it is because I am pretty sure that I haven’t missed anything.

The ministers tend to look back at me, blinking slightly. They mention that it is a very long and complex bill. Yes it is, but I have read it and I missed the section they just told the House was in the Act. Where is it? Then the look on their face is like the ‘lapine’ word from Watership Down for a rabbit caught in headlights on a road: ‘tharn’.

There is much more, but for now, I urge constituents to join growing calls for removal of environmental laws from Bill C-38. The Harper Conservatives have gone too far. Previous Progressive Conservative Fisheries Ministers Tom Siddon and John Fraser have both spoken out against the horrifying changes to the Fisheries Act.

Write letters to the editors of the nation’s newspapers. Contact the other Opposition leaders (Rae and Mulcair) and urge that they join me in a strategy to derail this juggernaut of abuse. For more details about Bill C-38, go to www.elizabethmaymp.ca. Together, we can make Stephen Harper regret taking aim at nature.

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It can be a useful opportunity.  The NDP opted for Defence and Environment and the time for the meetings was duly scheduled by the Conservatives.  As customary, the Committee of the Whole (COW) begins when the daily business of the House is over.  The Conservatives chose the week the environment committee was out on the road, holding meetings across Canada, to have the Environment COW and then scheduled late votes both nights.  Earlier that day it was announced that last night would be the cut-off on Copyright legislation, Bill C-11.  I had many amendments to attempt removing the most onerous digital locks sections of the Copyright bill. Thanks to support from the Liberals as seconders and in forcing votes, we were able to force recorded votes.  Only once all substantive amendments had been defeated did I ask to compress the voting process to “Apply the vote,” cutting about an hour and a half off our voting time.  Still, COW did not start until about 9:30 pm and ran for four hours til 1:30 am. I attended both and wondered why anyone thought this could be useful.

True, departmental officials were available.  In each case a small table was placed at about the spot where the Prime Minister usually sits (although he was not there), and at the table top ranking officials sit in case their expertise and background is needed to answer questions.  I want to try to paint the picture of the table, one side pressed against the government bench.  In close formation, one on each of the three open sides of the table, sit the highest ranking officials.  Sitting like statues, facing each other.  True, General Walter Natynczyk had the best ram-rod like posture.  Staring straight ahead at the Defence Deputy Minister Rob Fonberg at a distance of a few feet.  The same formation for the Environment Deputy, Paul Booth, only he stared straight at Peter Kent, in the front row of government benches, flanked by the head of Parks Canada Paul Latourelle and Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency head Elaine Feldman.  What must have been going through their minds? In four hours of Defence and four hours of Environment, they never spoke.  Why were they there?  Maybe that’s what they were thinking: why am I here? 

Certainly not to help Peter MacKay or Julian Fantino answer a simple question from Liberal John McKay who asked (three times? four times?) if anyone knew the cost per hour of the Department’s current jets, the F-18s.  And the only person rustling through papers to provide answers to Peter Kent was Michelle Rempel, his Parliamentary Secretary.  And, really, when nearly every answer was like a Chinese menu, why did anyone need to be there to help with answers?

Menu options for Peter Kent:

Option A: If asked anything by an NDP MP, answer with some variation of how bad bad bad the leader of the Official Opposition was to call the oil sands a disease;

Option B: If asked anything by a Liberal MP,  say “we will never ever ever bring in a carbon tax;”

Option C: If asked by a Conservative backbencher, for extra measure one MP actually bothered to read from the script and ask Peter Kent, “will you ever bring in a carbon tax?”  Answer: We will never ever ever bring in a carbon tax, unlike those bad bad bad Liberals. 

So was there anything new?

Well, last night Peter Kent said some unbelievable things.   For one, when Megan Leslie asked if the government planned to allow Opposition Members on the delegation to the Rio plus 20 conference this June, he said “no” (that was the believable part). And then he said, for the Durban climate conference, the government had offered assistance to the two Opposition MPs who attended. He claimed that while not actually providing credentials as part of the Canadian delegation, the government helped with getting the Opposition MPs into the UN FCCC Conference of the Parties in Durban.  Well, that description only applies to two people: me and NDP MP Laurin Liu.  I tried to help Laurin.  She had a whole day in Durban without being able to get into the conference centre at all. The NGO Climate Action Network finally succeeded in begging the UN Secretariat to grant her a badge with them. I asked her last night if she had had any offer of help from the “official” delegation that I didn’t know about. Nope. 

I know for a fact I was never offered any help.  And I know I never saw any help.  Since I was granted credentials as an advisor to the Government of Papua New Guinea (PNG) and they never had any request from Canada, the whole claim was as unnecessary as it was invented.   (Fun to imagine the conversation as a senior Canadian diplomat rings up his counter-part in PNG, “We have the Leader of the Green Party, you know. And it’s kind of awkward because we are not going to allow Canadian MPs on our delegation, unless they are Conservatives, so we aren’t paying her way or helping her find a hotel, and frankly, we feel pretty lousy about it, but it would be just aces if you could accept her on your delegation.” Not.)

There was also the claim, not once but twice, that the contaminated sites programme was a Harper Conservative initiative: “Our government invested $3.5 billion”. Twice, they said it.  Even though the $3.5 billion was put in place in 2005 by Paul Martin’s government to remediate contaminated sites on federal land.  At the time they thought there were a total of 8,500 sites.  Now, with half the money gone and 40% of the sites remediated, they realize the total is 22,000 sites.  So the Environment Commissioner Scott Vaughan reported that a plan is needed.  More to the “unbelievably score card,” when Liberal Kirsty Duncan asked about the Commissioner’s report, Kent managed to insult both her and Scott Vaughan (and here I paraphrase) “The hon. member is as confused as the Environment Commissioner.”  She pressed to find out if he accepted the commissioner’s report. Nope. Not really. On toxics, Vaughan was confused. On climate, well, the poor man is obviously out of his depth.  Used out of date data sets. 

To both Liberal and NDP environment critics wanting to see plans for climate or toxic sites, Kent delivered a paternalistic, “the hon. members should be patient.”

Perhaps most unbelievable was Kent confusing the goal, to which Stephen Harper affixed his signature in Copenhagen (in the non-binding Copenhagen Accord) to avoid allowing global average temperature from reaching 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.  Kirsty Duncan prefaced a question noting that the “window is closing” on our ability to avoid a global average temperature increase of 2 degrees Celsius. Kent looked at me as he said, (not yet recognized by the chair) “it’s closed.”   And then he rose and said the temperature in our Arctic has already risen above 2 degrees Celsius.

He said the same thing to me in Durban and I had explained that Arctic temperature increases are not the same thing as a global average temperature increase. The poles warm more rapidly than any other part of the planet.  The reason scientists are warning that we must avoid 2 degrees Celsius global average temperature increase is because that is a level of serious danger. It will be too late for low-lying island states at 2 degrees global average temperature.  That is why scientists and African nations rally around the slogan “1.5 to stay alive.”  Going beyond a 2 degree global average temperature increase is catastrophic.  The Minister of Environment doesn’t know the difference.  Kirsty Duncan explained the difference.  She is both a Liberal MP and a scientist. She worked on the IPCC. When she had clarified the science for the minister, she let out a sad sigh. It carried on her mic.  And Peter Van Loan and Peter Kent and Michelle Rempel all found that a hilarious moment.  And they all laughed uproariously. I wish I had found that more unbelievable.

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As the Member of Parliament for the area, May has been working hard towards this initiative and during her conversations with the Minister had been advised by him that this would be moving ahead.

“This is such an important initiative for the protection of biodiversity along our coastline.  It will also help us to meet our domestic and international legal commitments toward protecting our coast,”said May.  Canada has commitments to protect marine habitat under the Oceans Act, Migratory Birds Convention Act, National Marine Conservation Areas Act and the UN Convention on Biodiversity.

“Parks Canada, the Town of Sidney, the District of North Saanich, non-profits and First Nations have all played important roles in seeing this project toward fruition.  I sincerely hope this feasibility study has a positive result.  With only 0.1% of Canada’s ocean under protection, a new National Marine Protected Area is urgently needed,” said May.

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“Perhaps the most neglected natural areas on Earth are our marine environments,  for the simple reason that humans live on land and not under water. But  our oceans harbor most life on the planet. The Strait of Georgia in  particular has extremely diverse marine environments harboring  incredible creatures, from the endangered southern resident orcas to  glass sponges in Saanich Inlet to a phenomenal diversity of fish,  invertebrates, birds, and marine mammals throughout the region,” stated  Ms. May. “As the new Member of Parliament representing the region of the proposed Strait of Georgia National Marine Conservation Area, I’m  hoping that the federal and provincial governments will give approval  for the establishment of this first rate marine sanctuary soon. It would be a phenomenal marine complement to the Gulf Islands National Park  Reserve.”

The BC and federal governments signed a Memorandum Of Understanding in 2003 to undertake studies on the scientific and socio-economic feasibility  of creating an NMCA in the waters stretching from the Haro Strait and  Saanich Inlet by Victoria, north to the waters around Gabriola Island  near Nanaimo.

National Marine Conservation Areas (NMCAs) administered by Parks Canada and  Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) administered by the Department of  Fisheries and Oceans, offer protection to marine ecosystems, ranging  from restrictions on certain practices and harvesting of some species to fully-protecting all marine life in “no take” areas. Worldwide,  “no-take” MPAs have dramatically increased the populations and size of  commercial and non-commercial species. This includes increasing the net  amount of commercially available fisheries, as protected fish and  invertebrate populations inside MPA’s grow and spill over into adjacent  areas where they can be harvested. Unfortunately less than 0.01% of  Canada’s and BC’s marine waters are in fully-protected “no-take” areas.

“While BC is still blessed with productive and diverse marine environments,  today’s richness pales in comparison to the abundance of life in years  past. At one time the seas teemed with so many salmon, lingcod,  rockfish, invertebrates, birds, whales, and seals that early European  settlers thought the marine wealth to be inexhaustible. An extensive  network of real marine protection can help our oceans approach their  former biological magnificence, brimming with life to sustain all the  citizens of this country,” stated Ms. May

Parks Canada has a goal of representing each of Canada’s 29 natural marine  regions in a system of National Marine Conservation Areas. Currently  only four NMCA’s have been declared, including one in BC – the Gwaii  Haanas (South Moresby) NMCA and Haida Heritage Site announced last year. NMCA’s prohibit ocean dumping, seabed mining and oil and gas  exploration and development, and can also restrict harvesting of certain species, including zoning some fully-protected “no-take” areas.

“Scientists around the world and in Canada have been calling for the protection of  at least 30% of the oceans in fully-protected ‘no-take’ marine  sanctuaries. I fully support this goal and will push hard as Canada’s  first Green MP to see to it that the glacial pace of marine protection  is stepped-up before our oceans are emptied out,” stated Ms. May. “June 8 is Oceans Day and what better way to celebrate that special day than  with the announcement of a new National Marine Conservation Area in the  Strait of Georgia?”

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