By Gloria Dickie 
HAKAI MAGAZINE

​In 2013, a mass of unusually warm water appeared in the Gulf of Alaska. Over the next three years, the Blob, as it became known, spread more than 3,200 kilometers, reaching down to Mexico. This freak marine heatwave, combined with a strong El Niño, drastically affected the Pacific Ocean ecosystem killing thousands of animals and changing the distribution of species along the coast.

It’s been three years since the Blob dissipated, and researchers are taking stock of its long-term impacts on fish and other wildlife.

Last month, Laurie Weitkamp, a fisheries biologist with the Northwest Fisheries Science Center, and her colleagues released a report detailing how the Blob affected species found in the northern California Current ecosystem, which runs from the Canadian border to southern Oregon. The report shows that the mass of warm water helped some and hurt others. Between 2013 and 2017, for instance, the populations of animals accustomed to warm water, such as mackerel, squid, hake, and rockfish, ballooned. Many jellyfish species also had a strong showing.

One of the strongest effects of the Blob was the explosion of California market squid along the Oregon coast. In 2018, fishers in Oregon landed more than three million kilograms of market squid, shattering the previous record of a mere 1.2 million kilograms in 2016. Meanwhile, fewer squid swam in the waters off California, their usual stronghold.

Troy Buell, the fisheries management program leader at the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, says the boom was likely the result of more squid being born in Oregon waters rather than animals moving up from the Golden State. Squid fishers, however, did migrate north to cash in.

But other species have struggled in the wake of the Blob. “When fish hatch out of their eggs, they absorb their yolk sac and have to start feeding,” says Weitkamp. But if their food isn’t there, “they’re screwed.” For many young fish, their favorite food was wiped out by the heat or shifted elsewhere.

As a result, there is now a void in the populations of some species that were in their larval stages when the Blob hit its crescendo. Species that should be along the Pacific coast or returning to inland waterways simply aren’t. And that’s taking a toll on the ecosystem and on commercial fisheries.

Chinook salmon, for example, are often harvested when they are around three or four years old, meaning that the salmon that went out to sea in 2015 should have returned home this year. As a result of the Blob, says Weitkamp, the Columbia River has “the lowest spring return ever of chinook this year.” In response, Washington State has suspended summer chinook fishing.

This July, British Columbia, also suffering low returns of sockeye salmon due to the Blob, closed the recreational sockeye fishery on the Skeena River. The return of sockeye and pink salmon to the Fraser River this year is also uncertain.

Alaska, meanwhile, is a story of contrasts. Pacific cod crashed around 2017, and the shrimping industry has struggled, too. But in 2018, Bristol Bay, in southwest Alaska, saw the highest return of sockeye salmon ever recorded. “It’s so strange,” says Weitkamp. “It’s so unpredictable.”

There have been less obvious consequences of the Blob, too. Scientists believe that the availability of prey for humpback whales has changed around California. “There’s now a lack of krill, so the whales are feeding on anchovies closer to shore, which is also where there is more overlap with crab gear,” says Buell. This change in feeding habits may be contributing to a recent spike in whale entanglements.
​
It’s unclear how long the consequences of the Blob might last or when the next Blob might hit.

By Gabriel Friedman
FINANCIAL POST

The Senate on Thursday night passed controversial legislation that overhauls the environmental review process, a bill that is likely to draw court challenges and remain a topic of discussion as campaigning for the upcoming federal election heats up.

“I must say that I’m fairly comfortable supporting Bill C-69 as it stands today, especially because it may be one of the major issues in the next election campaign,” said Eric Forest, an independent senator from Quebec.

Though it was staunchly opposed in the energy sector, the bill drew support from mining trade organizations.
C-69, which passed 57 to 37, has a broad range of consequences and was designed to ensure that companies moving forward on major construction projects have a “social licence.”

To that end, it creates new requirements for public consultation including on climate change, gender and other issues. But it also has broader consequences, including the creation of a national Impact Assessment Agency that will oversee project evaluations.

The legislation grew out of a Liberal campaign promise in 2015 to overhaul the environmental review process; and earlier this month, Senator Grant Mitchell, formerly leader of Alberta’s Liberal Party and now sitting as an independent, said that C-69, which he sponsored, replaces an environmental review process that had stopped working.

“It had failed to get critical projects built,” Mitchell told the Senate on June 17. “It did not have the trust of Indigenous peoples nor the public at large and, as a result, had been mired in litigation that had so unsettled investors it had to be fixed.”

He added that the House of Commons had accepted 62 amendments from the Senate outright and 37 with some modifications, which is an “historic record” and the greatest number since it started being tracked in the 1940s.

The centre of opposition to the bill has been the oil and gas industry in Alberta, where Premier Jason Kenney said on Friday he would file a court challenge to the law, calling it a violation of provinces’ constitutional right to control the development of natural resources.

“It inserts massive new uncertainty into the federal environmental approval process for major projects, leading energy industry groups to say that no future pipeline will ever be proposed under this regime,” Kenney said in a statement.

Chris Bloomer, president and chief executive of the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association, said that his organization had put forward a package of amendments it felt were necessary to make the bill palatable.
​
The Liberals rejected most of his organization’s suggested amendments, leaving him feeling like their concerns had been “glossed over,”  said Bloomer.

Unlike the Liberals, he argued that the old environmental review process — the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act of 2012 — has been working.

“There were things about the CEAA 2012 legislation that needed to be fixed,” said Bloomer, “but fundamentally these were renovations, not burning down the house.”

Still, he said it is difficult to point to specific problems with C-69, and instead said that the legislation has too many vague clauses and elements. That will end up injecting uncertainty into the environmental review process, which will deter investment in pipeline projects in Canada, said Bloomer.

In a prediction, he said, “It’s highly unlikely that you’re going to see, beyond what we see on the table now, major new projects put forward.”

But there was even stronger opposition from a group called Suits and Boots, founded and led by Rick Peterson, a former leadership candidate for the Conservative Party of Canada, who led a campaign to kill the bill outright.
Peterson acknowledged that the bill did contain some good provisions, but said it also had “some real killers.”

“To me, the biggest risk is the litigation risk — going to court all the time,” he said.

In some ways, that concern echoes Liberals’ stated reason for overhauling the environment legislation, with Mitchell saying that projects had been “mired in litigation.”

Most notably, that included the Trans Mountain Pipeline, which faced 18 court challenges.

Anna Johnston, a lawyer with West Coast Environmental Law, who was appointed to sit on an advisory committee to assist with the process, said the new bill is an improvement in many ways.

As an example, she said it introduces a new planning phase so that companies must consult the public early on, designed to ensure that all project impacts that need to be studied are identified at the outset.

She also said it requires companies to assess their impact on gender: For instance, when a mining company, which has a largely male workforce, sets up in a remote area, it evaluate its potential impact on women in the nearby community.

“Unlike what a lot of opponents would have you believe, it’s not earth shattering, it’s not a whole new approach,” said Johnston.

The bill sets out which projects are subject to the federal environmental review, and Johnston said many projects are not covered, and predicted only a handful of projects per year would be covered.
​
“Bill C-69 — it’s a compromise, it’s not a perfect bill,” said Johnston.

By Holly Lake 
HAKAI MAGAZINE

​Canada has the longest coastline in the world, yet it has long been a lax outlier in fisheries management. But with an overhaul of the federal Fisheries Act now complete, the sense among advocates and fisheries experts is that the tide is about to turn.

The passage of Bill C-68 on June 21 means that for the first time since the Fisheries Act was enacted in 1868, Fisheries and Oceans Canada is required to manage fish stocks sustainably and put rebuilding plans in place for those that are depleted.

Josh Laughren, executive director of the nonprofit advocacy organization Oceana Canada, says that in 20 years we may look back and see the new criteria around sustainable management and rebuilding stocks as a transformational change.

“We’ve put our money where our mouth is,” says Jonathan Wilkinson, minister of fisheries, oceans, and the Canadian Coast Guard, noting that the federal government has already committed CAN $107-million to support the work. “It raises the bar in making sure that decision-making is based on science and evidence.”

Laughren says if this act had been in place in the 1980s and implemented as written, Canada could have avoided the collapse of the northern cod fishery in the early 1990s. “The history of Atlantic Canada would be different.”

Instead, cod stocks were depleted, triggering a moratorium on fishing in 1992. The federal government still has no recovery plan in place for the species.

Like Laughren, Wilkinson believes the changes are overdue.

“These kinds of things should have been done a long time ago,” Wilkinson says. “We should have been resourcing them more effectively.”

The new act also restores protections for fish habitats that were gutted in 2012 by the previous Conservative government, increases requirements for monitoring and reporting, requires Indigenous knowledge to be incorporated into decisions, and mandates a review of the act every five years.

Wilkinson says when it comes to addressing the challenges facing global fisheries, Canada is now “at the forefront.” Laughren, however, says it’s more that Canada is now in the conversation.

Until now, for example, Canada’s fisheries minister had full discretion to authorize fishing without limits. There were no provisions in the act to prevent overfishing or mandate actions on troubled stocks. It was a unique power in fisheries management and conservation.

In contrast, Chile, New Zealand, Japan, the European Union, and the United States have long had legal restrictions and requirements limiting fisheries managers’ discretion.

Most of these jurisdictions have also had requirements to prevent overfishing. New Zealand’s Fisheries Act and the European Union’s Common Fisheries Policy go even further, imposing binding requirements to rebuild depleted stocks and base decisions on the best available science.

While Canada had policies on evidence-based decision-making and sustainable fisheries, until now, they were not enshrined in law.

“We now have [legislation] that says the purpose of fisheries management is to keep stocks healthy and return them there if they’re not healthy,” Laughren says.

However, the United States is still ahead in terms of the government’s legal obligations, he says. The Magnuson-Stevens Act mandates annual reports to Congress about which stocks are overfished, how to determine if stocks are close to being overfished, and how overfishing will affect stocks.

“Then they have to outline what they will do about it,” Laughren says, noting that management plans must include clear targets and timelines, and a failure to meet them often lands the government in court.

“[The Magnuson-Stevens Act] is far more prescriptive than [Canada’s] Fisheries Act. And there’s evidence it works,” says Laughren. “The US has 45 rebuilt stocks since that law was put in place in 1976.”

In Canada, of 26 critically depleted stocks, only five have rebuilding plans. Further, only 34 percent of fish populations in Canada are healthy, and more than 13 percent are critically depleted.

Like Laughren, Susanna Fuller, a marine biologist and senior project planner with Canadian nonprofit Oceans North, thinks the new act is something to celebrate. But they’re both looking to the act’s regulations, which are still to come, to provide prescriptive timelines, targets, and directions—details that are rolled into the law itself south of the border.

“In Canada, our regulations actually do mean a lot,” Fuller says. “I think that whether or not we’re in line with other countries is going to be very much in the implementation of the act. We’ll find that out over the next while as regulations roll out.”

While Canada now has legislation that is on par with other fishing nations, and is unique in that the act’s habitat protection provisions apply to all fish and habitats covering all aquatic ecosystems, Fuller says no country is really managing fisheries sustainably, none has met global targets on rebuilding stocks, and none is employing an ecosystem-based approach to management.

Fuller says that the law now enables Canada to possibly meet some of its international commitments around sustainable fisheries management, but adds that whether the planet gets real fisheries management and biodiversity protection in the face of climate change is another question entirely.

“Quite frankly, no one is making the really hard decisions.”

SOURCE: https://www.hakaimagazine.com/news/canada-has-a-new-fisheries-act-how-does-it-stack-up/

By Jolson Lim
iPOLITICS

​With time ticking away on the 42nd Parliament, the Senate last night passed the Liberal government’s controversial legislation overhauling environmental assessment practices in the country along with a flurry of other government bills.

A ceremony will be held in the upper chamber on Friday afternoon to give 21 bills recently passed royal assent, formally making them into law.

Among bills senators passed yesterday was Bill C-69, which passed a motion by a vote of 57 to 37 in support of the House of Commons message on the Senate’s amendments.

READ MORE: Liberals reject 90 per cent of Senate Conservative amendments to C-69

The government had agreed to accept 99 Senate amendments to the bill that would change the way large energy projects are regulated in Canada, stripping out proposed changes put forward by Conservative senators that tilted in favour of the interests of the oil and gas sector.

It included amendments that would reduce the scope of cabinet power in deciding to approve resource projects.

Conservative politicians across Canada and the oil and gas sector condemned the passage of Bill C-69, which they worried would make it nearly impossible to get approvals needed on new resource projects.

Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer said he would repeal the legislation if his party forms government in the upcoming fall election.

“This is a sad day for Canada,” Scheer said in a statement. “With the passage of Bill C-69, Justin Trudeau finally has his law that will phase out Canada’s oil and gas industry.”

The piece of legislation had faced a rocky road through the upper chamber, with senators proposing an unprecedented 188 amendments at third reading.

Meanwhile, environmental groups, who had worried that the bill would be watered down amid the Senate turbulence, praised the passage of Bill C-69.

“The government should be commended for remaining committed to strengthening environmental oversight in the face of misinformation and fear-mongering from the oil and gas industry and some provincial leaders,” said Tim Gray, executive director of Environmental Defence.

“For the first time, a project’s impact on climate change will be considered during the review process.”

The Senate also passed the Liberal government’s budget implementation bill, Bill C-97, at third reading last night without any amendments. It includes controversial changes to asylum eligibility requirements and measures to boost Canada’s struggling journalism sector.

READ MORE: Oil tanker ban bill to become law

The only government bill left to be passed is Bill C-98, which would create a new complaints board for the Canadian Border Services Agency. It currently sits at first reading in the Senate.

While senators passed a motion late last night that would adjourn the Senate until September following today’s royal assent ceremony, the body can be recalled back in the summer in order to pass this bill. Bills are not formally scrubbed off the order paper until the election writ is dropped.

The Senate will also be needed to vote on legislation ratifying the new North American trade agreement, if the government chooses to proceed with doing so. Ratification of the trade deal currently faces headwinds in the U.S. Congress, with Democrats wanting changes regarding labour and environmental protections.

The government’s legislation banning oil tanker traffic from the northern British Columbia coast (C-48), reforming Canada’s current prison system (C-83), and reducing delays in criminal proceedings and eliminating peremptory jury challenges (C-75) were also passed in the Senate yesterday evening.

Unlike Bill C-69, which received the vote of moderate senators including Sen. Paula Simons, Bill C-48 was passed with only a narrow 49 to 46 vote, with one abstention.

Earlier yesterday, legislation meant to protect and preserve Indigenous languages (C-91) and reforming Indigenous child and family welfare services (C-92) had also passed.

As well, legislation that would provide more federal power to impose safeguard measures in order to protect Canada’s steel industry from dumping (C-101) and providing money for the public service for the 2019-20 fiscal year (C-102) was also passed.

SOURCE: https://ipolitics.ca/2019/06/21/senate-passes-bill-c-69-in-a-scramble-to-approve-last-remaining-government-bills/

By Fisheries and Oceans Canada
​NEWS RELEASE

Ottawa, Ontario - Canada’s oceans, lakes and rivers are important to the millions of people and Indigenous communities that depend on them for work, food, and recreation. However, changes that were made to the Fisheries Act in 2012 challenged our ability to protect fish and fish habitat. Canadians, including Indigenous peoples as well as industry and environmental groups, expressed concerns with these changes and how they were made. That is why, in 2016 the Government of Canada took action to strengthen and restore lost protections and incorporate modern safeguards to the Fisheries Act.

Today, the Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard, the Honourable Jonathan Wilkinson, announced that Bill C-68, an Act to amend the Fisheries Act passed Parliament.

Bill C-68 reflects the views of Canadians and will help ensure our fisheries can continue to grow Canada’s economy, protect our ecosystems and sustain coastal communities. Further, this bill will see the end to whales in captivity as well as the banning of shark finning and the import and export of shark fins that are not attached to a shark carcass.
​
A modernized Fisheries Act will benefit all of Canada:

• For our environment, it will provide strong protections for all fish and fish habitat, and will put a priority on rebuilding fish stocks and restoring habitat.
• For industry, it will bring more clarity around project development.
• For Indigenous peoples, it will strengthen their role in project reviews, monitoring and habitat decisions.
• For our communities, it will keep the benefits of fishing in the hands of independent fish harvesters and their local area.

Following the passage through the Senate, Bill C-68 now awaits Royal Assent before it can officially become an act of Parliament and become law. Once a modernized Fisheries Act is in place, we can better support the sustainability of Canada’s marine resources for future generations.

“I’m so pleased this very important piece of legislation is one step closer to becoming law. Canada is home to the world’s longest coastline and our countless lakes, rivers, streams and wetlands hold one-fifth of the world's freshwater. Our government is working hard to protect fish and fish habitat from coast-to-coast-to-coast, and the modernized Fisheries Act will do just that.”
- The Honourable Jonathan Wilkinson, Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard
​
Quick facts

• The Government of Canada announced its intention to propose amendments to the Fisheries Act in 2016. The proposed Bill C-68 was tabled in Parliament on February 6, 2018.
• In developing Bill C-68, the Government of Canada consulted broadly with provincial and territorial governments, Indigenous peoples, industry stakeholders, environmental non-government organizations and the public to discuss planned amendments to the Fisheries Act.

SOURCE: https://www.canada.ca/en/fisheries-oceans/news/2019/06/the-modernized-fisheries-act-bill-c-68-passes-parliament.html

By Jesse Ferreras and Emily Mertz
GLOBAL NEWS

Canada’s senators have given the thumbs-up to Bill C-69, the Impact Assessment Act, which sets up a new authority to assess industrial projects, such as pipelines, mines and inter-provincial highways, for their effects on public health, the environment and the economy.

Bill C-69 passed Thursday night by a vote of 57-37.

The bill is set to go to Royal Assent after a motion by Sen. Grant Mitchell to keep the Senate from insisting on amendments that the House of Commons didn’t agree to.

The move came after Senate passed 188 amendments to the bill earlier this month.

The governing Liberals accepted 99 of those amendments – 62 were accepted as they were written, and another 37 were accepted with several changes.

Conservative Sen. Richard Neufeld called C-69 “one of the most toxic, polarizing and divisive bills” he’s encountered in 10 years as a senator.

READ MORE: Provincial energy ministers condemn feds after majority of Bill C-69 amendments rejected

Energy ministers from Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario said June 12 that many of the amendments that were struck down would have made Bill C-69 more palatable for the resource sector. They wanted the amendments taken as a complete package.

The federal government, however, said it believed some would have allowed a new Impact Assessment Agency to decide not to consider the impacts on Indigenous people or climate change when assessing a project. Other changes would have restricted limits on who can participate in an assessment hearing, as well as made it harder to challenge a project approval in court.

The prime minister responded June 12, saying the legislation is necessary to get energy projects built in Canada.

“The conservatives still seem to think that the way to get big projects built is to ignore Indigenous peoples and ignore environmental concerns,” Justin Trudeau said. “That didn’t work for 10 years under Stephen Harper, and it’s certainly not going to work now.

“That’s why we we had to change the process.”

The legislation split opinion among senators from Alberta.

Sen. Paula Simons voted in favour, tweeting that she “would and could never have supported it as it first came to us.”

“But tonight, we passed a dramatically different bill than the one that met me when we arrived here.”

Less enthusiastic about the bill’s passage was Sen. Doug Black.

“Tonight the Senate has chosen to keep the ‘closed for business’ sign in the window of Canada by adopting Bill C-69,” he tweeted.

This is bad for Canada and I will continue to work for our collective family business – the natural resource sector.”

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney said it was “a bad day for our economy, and the Canadian federation.”

In a message on Twitter, Kenney said: “This means the No More Pipelines Law will become law.”

In a second tweet, Kenney thanked the 37 Senators who “voted for common sense by opposing C-69, including Alberta Senators Black, Tannas and McKoy,” and said he was “very disappointed that Alberta Senators Mitchell, Simons and Laboucane-Benson voted in favour of this bad version of a bill that will hurt our province.”

The federal environment minister had a different take on the bills’ passage.

Earlier Thursday, the Senate approved Bill C-48, the Oil Tanker Moratorium Act, which will formalize a moratorium on oil tanker traffic of a certain size in waters from the northern tip of Vancouver Island to the province’s border with Alaska.

It was a close vote, with 49 Senators voting in favour of the controversial bill, 46 voting against and one abstaining.

READ MORE: Canadian Senate passes B.C. tanker ban bill, prepping for it to come into law

The passage of the bill in the Senate means it will now proceed to Royal Assent and become law.

C-69 and C-48 were among a long list of bills the Senate pounded through late into the night Thursday as the chamber prepared to adjourn for the summer and the subsequent election.

But Canadians haven’t heard the last about the pair of bills. They’re both destined to be fodder for Liberals and Conservatives on the campaign trail to this fall’s election.
​
— With files from Global’s Adam MacVicar and The Canadian Press’ Mia Rabson

SOURCE: https://globalnews.ca/news/5415294/bill-c-69-passes-senate/

By Marco Vigliotti
iPOLITICS

The Trudeau Liberals are rejecting Senate amendments to their overhaul of the Fisheries Act that would change the definition of fish habitat and expand an offset credit program to outside groups.

Fisheries Minister Jonathan Wilkinson on Tuesday moved a motion in the House responding to changes to Bill C-68 made by the Upper Chamber.

As per the motion, the Liberals accepted most amendments to the bill, some of which they orchestrated themselves. Sen. Peter Harder, the government’s representative in the Upper Chamber, moved 28 amendments to Bill C-68 when it was before the Senate fisheries and oceans committee last month.

The changes included banning the practice of shark finning and the import and export of shark fins, excluding human-made agricultural waterways from being designated as a “fish habitat” and making it mandatory to have a permit for the import and export of the class of marine mammals — cetaceans — that includes whales and dolphins.

READ MORE: Shark finning, cetacean captivity amendments could be folded into C-68

Collectively, the Liberals only took issue with four amendments from the Upper Chamber, proposing relatively minor language tweaks to two of them and flatly rejecting the others.

Wilkinson said the government would not accept an amendment from Sen. Rose-May Poirier eliminating “water frequented by fish” from the definition of fish habitat in the act because it goes “against the objective of the bill.” The inclusion of the term in the originally worded definition, he said, “increases the scope for the application of the fish habitat protection provisions.”

The governing Liberals also rejected changes to the bill permitting third party habitat banking, a compensation tool designed to offset the impact on the environment and wildlife caused by human activity.

According to a 2012 study ordered by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), the most common application of the tool in Canada is the creation of in-kind habitats which require developers to “restore, create or enhance the productive capacity of fish habitat” through moves like stream restoration, controlling invasive species and replacing man-made physical barriers.

Wilkinson said the DFO has been encouraging use of habitat banking since 2013 and C-68 would “enshrine this policy approach into law,” while offering new incentives to use the banking credits to offset impacts on fish and fish habitat.

Expanding fish habitat banking to third parties would allow any organization to earn credits through restoration and conservation efforts which they could then sell to developers or other project proponents. Some senators also supported allowing project developers to pay an upfront fee pay instead of investing in offsetting projects, with the funds to be directed to habitat restoration.

Wilkinson, though, said the government believes habitat banking credits must benefit the specific fish populations and areas affected by the project they were designed to offset, adding that habitat protection and restoration should be prioritized especially so in cases where “aquatic species at risk are present.”

He also noted that the provinces are responsible for resource management for freshwater and inland areas, meaning there would need to first be robust consultations, including with affected Indigenous communities, before the development of any banking system.

“Due to the legal complexity and public policy considerations that the government would need to address prior to establishing and implementing such regimes in Canada, we will not be adopting the habitat banking amendments proposed by the (Senate),” Wilkinson said.

BACKGROUNDER: Fisheries Act overhaul casts off at Senate committee

The minister, though, committed to having the DFO evaluate the performance of proponent-led habitat banks and to assess offsetting policies adopted elsewhere. He also said he has asked the House fisheries committee to study the issue.

Conservative Sen. David Wells, who moved the habitat banking amendment, urged MPs Wednesday to ensure it was included in the bill, arguing complexities in implementing the system identified by the minister could be rectified by appropriate regulations that could be made after the legislation becomes law.

“I think we all recognize and appreciate the complexities involved in establishing an effective third party habitat banking regime in Canada. Those complexities though, colleagues, are not legislative – they are regulatory,” he told the House fisheries committee, where he appeared to testify as part of its study on third party habitat banking.

Wells said changes to the bill introducing third party habitat banking would only come into force upon proclamation by cabinet, not simply when C-68 receives Royal Assent. As a result, the DFO and relevant federal agencies could take the “time to get it right” in terms of creating the necessary regulatory framework, he argued. 

“This could take a year, it could take two years, or it could take five years – however long it takes to bring in a system that is based on international best practices, and generates the best possible ecologic and economic outcomes,” Wells added.

*This story has been updated with comment from Sen. David Wells. ​

SOURCE: https://ipolitics.ca/2019/06/12/liberals-reject-habitat-banking-amendment-to-fisheries-bill/

By Paul Withers
CBC NEWS

Trudeau government legislation that enshrines the independence of Atlantic Canada's inshore fishing fleets and enhances protections for fish stocks and fish habitat has cleared the Senate.

The news is a relief to Martin Mallet.

"This is great news. We've been waiting for this for a long while," said Mallet, executive director of the Maritime Fishermen's Union.

Inshore fishery associations like his lobbied hard for Bill C-68, which overhauls the Fisheries Act.

It will give the teeth of law to two key policies designed to prevent inshore fisheries — including lobster — from ending up in the hands of a few large companies.

The owner-operator and fleet separation policies keep commercial fishing licences in the hands of small enterprises and prevent companies from both fishing and processing the catch.

"This will protect smaller operators from corporate takeover," Mallet said in an interview from his office in Shediac, N.B. "It will protect our small coastal communities."

Conservatives won't delay C-68 in CommonsBill C-68 passed the Senate Thursday with Conservative support after Liberals agreed to remove the so called "water flow" amendment from Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, added in the House of Commons.

Conservatives warned it could give Fisheries and Oceans the ability to treat industrial, agricultural and municipal water flow locations as fish habitat.

A spokesperson for Conservative fishery critic MP Todd Doherty said Conservatives will not delay C-68 when it reaches the Commons.

The party still believes the bill is flawed — it restores habitat protections removed by the Harper government — but Conservatives support owner-operator and fleet separation policies in Atlantic Canada.

Fisheries groups warned Conservatives during the lobby campaign that Conservative candidates in Atlantic Canada would pay a price at the polls in the upcoming federal election if they vote against Bill C-68.

On Thursday, just three Conservative senators voted against it in the Senate.

Fish protectionsEnvironmentalists were also heartened to see the bill move to the House of Commons, where it is very likely to pass before Parliament rises.

In addition to protecting habitat, the new Fisheries Act also imposes new requirements on the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to more carefully manage fisheries.

"This is one of our oldest pieces of legislation: 1868. And this is the first time we are going to see something that says sustainably manage our fish stocks and rebuild stocks that are depleted — first time," says Robert Rangeley, science director of Oceana Canada, a marine conservation group.

"So this is a really important piece of legislation."

Minister expects new Fisheries Act to passIn North Vancouver, federal Fisheries Minister Jonathan Wilkinson also welcomed the Senate vote.

He is on the verge of delivering a signature piece of legislation that fulfils a 2015 election commitment to restore lost protections for fish and fish habitat.
​
"It's a very important promise from an environmental perspective. It is one of the most important promises that we made with respect to fisheries and oceans and so from my perspective this is a very important milestone," Wilkinson said.

By John Paul Tasker
CBC NEWS

While the Senate's transport committee recommended the upper house defeat the bill outright, a coalition of Independent and Liberal senators has cobbled together enough votes to rescue legislation to implement the government's planned ban on oil tankers along B.C.'s northern coast.

The outcome was far from certain after the committee that studied the legislation recommended against passing the Liberal plan. The committee issued a scathing report this week saying that, if passed, the bill would stoke a nascent separatist movement in Western Canada, and accused the government of unfairly targeting Alberta's oilpatch at a time of constrained pipeline capacity and cratering oil prices.

The strongly worded report — penned by the committee's chair, Conservative Saskatchewan Sen. David Tkachuk — prompted a backlash of sorts Wednesday night from other senators who called it overly partisan.

Senators rejected the committee's report by a vote of 38 to 53, with one abstention. Now, senators are expected to make amendments at the third reading phase of the legislative process before sending the bill back to the Commons for approval.

The Senate also voted this evening on Bill C-69, the government's controversial overhaul of the environmental assessment process. The Senate's energy committee passed more than 180 amendments to that bill that would, among other things, limit the environment minister's ability to interfere in the regulatory process and stop and start project timelines.

Having passed the Senate, C-69 now returns to the House of Commons with all 180 amendments. 

While not explicitly written into the Liberal government's 2015 platform, then-third party leader Justin Trudeau vowed to institute a moratorium on oil tankers docking at ports along the northern B.C. coast when unveiling his plan for the environment at a Vancouver-area event in June, 2015.

In describing the legislation, Tkachuk said it is "not as advertised" — that it is not a "moratorium" at all because there is no set timeline, and should be described as a ban. (The Conservative Party recently launched a series of ads with the tagline, "Justin Trudeau, not as advertised.")

In the report, Tkachuk said the legislation was motivated not by a desire to protect the pristine Great Bear rainforest but rather by electoral considerations. He said Trudeau is willing to undermine the Prairie economy to court votes elsewhere.

Tkachuk said Trudeau is "targeting one region, where the political rewards for the government of the day are few, in order to please voters in other regions of Canada — regions where the government of the day has far greater potential to win seats.

"Your committee notes the ruling political party has historically been unable to win a significant number of seats in the region targeted by this bill, and that all credible polls indicate the ruling party will be unable to win a significant number of seats in the upcoming federal election."

Independent Quebec Sen. Andre Pratte said that, while he opposed parts of the tanker ban bill and will offer amendments at the third reading stage, he thought Tkachuk's report did a disservice to the committee's deliberations on the legislation.

While many reports are produced with a degree of consensus — with contributions from members of the committee from different parties — the committee's deputy chair, Independent Quebec Sen. Julie Miville-Dechêne, said there was no such offer from Tkachuk.

"He said no to any steering committee, as usual. We were therefore unable to decide in a collegial manner how to go about writing the report. My only priority then became to ensure that whatever report was prepared would be put before the Senate promptly so that we can all vote on it," the senator told her colleagues.

"I therefore urge you to emphatically reject this 21-page report, which does a disservice to the Senate and does not do justice to the diversity of opinion among the 139 witnesses who appeared before us."

However, while she was critical of the Tkachuk report, Miville-Dechêne and other dissenting senators did not draft a minority report to respond to the Tory-penned document.

Independent Manitoba Sen. Murray Sinclair said the transport committee is clearly "dysfunctional," given how much bickering there was between members at its meetings and in the chamber Wednesday.

"It's appearing to me, from being here, that this committee did not function properly and did not function in a collegial matter. I therefore consider it to be a dysfunctional committee," the former judge said.

"The committee did not appear to be able to get along very well in its work and deliberations, and that causes me concern because now we are being asked to be parties to this report as members of the chamber."

The "dysfunction" label prompted claims of unparliamentary language from the Conservative opposition, with one senator saying the description "defamed" the work of the committee.

Independent Quebec Sen. Rosa Galvez said the mood at the transport committee, of which she is a member, was "extremely unpleasant" under Tkachuk's leadership.

She said the committee's travel, to locations in B.C., Alberta, and Saskatchewan, was essentially a waste of time because dissenting voices were all but excluded from Tkachuk's final report.

"A cost-benefit analysis of this report would be absolutely scandalous," Galvez said.

"Overall, I got the feeling that our work was being undermined and even sabotaged. Rather than conducting an in-depth analysis of Bill C-48, of its weaknesses and limitations, so that we could suggest amendments and make observations that could be effective in improving it, we created a hostile and aggressive atmosphere that prevented the legislation from being studied in the best interests of Canadians."

Galvez said her colleague, Independent Alberta Sen. Paula Simons — who sided with the Tories to vote down Bill C-48 at committee — was "harassed" to vote a certain way.

Tkachuk defended the committee's work and the report it produced.

"This was not a waste of time. This was the Senate at its best," he said of the committee's travels.

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He said the bill, which would ban tankers capable of carrying more than 12,500 metric tons of oil from an area that stretches from the northern tip of Vancouver Island to the Alaska border, is "so egregiously bad that it should be stopped in its tracks."

"Your committee has concluded from the varied and quite passionate testimony put before it, from a broad range of witnesses who appeared in Ottawa, British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan, that Bill C-48 is both divisive and discriminatory," Tkachuk said.

He said the legislation, which does nothing about oil tanker traffic in Eastern Canada, serves only to bolster a growing Western Canadian separatist movement.

"The feeling of resentment, I can tell you, is palpable and any legislation that pours fuel on that particular fire should not be allowed to proceed," Tkachuk said.

He said the bill will cost "us all," as it imperils the future of Alberta's oilpatch and conventional oil development in Saskatchewan — two major economic drivers for the Canadian economy.

If enacted, the ban would frustrate future pipeline projects like the now-defunct Northern Gateway project, or the proposed Indigenous-led Eagle Spirit pipeline.
​
"Your committee strongly maintains that targeting one region of Canada for economic punishment is unconstitutional and destructive to the fabric of Canadian federalism," Tkachuk said.

By Marco Vigliotti
iPOLITICS

​The Senate has passed legislation instituting new safeguards for fish and their habitat that includes government sponsored amendments banning shark fin imports.

Bill C-68 passed third reading in the Upper Chamber Thursday afternoon and will now be returned to the House, which must sign off on the amendments before it becomes law.

The bill aims to restore protections removed from the Fisheries Act by the previous Conservative government in 2012 while incorporating new safeguards. It also directs the minister of fisheries and oceans to manage fish stocks sustainably and put rebuilding plans in place for depleted stocks.

Prior to 2012, the Fisheries Act protected all fish and fish habitat in Canada, though this was changed by the Harper government in a bid to make life easier for farmers who would have to navigate regulatory red tape to win approval to alter small water bodies or clear out drainage ditches.

BACKGROUNDER: Fisheries Act overhaul clears House of Commons

Sen. Peter Harder, the government’s representative in the Senate, moved 28 amendments to Bill C-68 last month during clause-by-clause consideration by the Senate fisheries and oceans committee.

Among other changes, the amendments incorporated provisions in Bill S-238 banning the practice of shark finning and the import and export of shark fins, with the government worried that bill will not pass into law before Parliament rises for the next election. They also touched upon Bill S-203 which would ban the taking of whales, dolphins and porpoises into captivity. Specifically, the changes would make it mandatory to have a permit for the importation and exportation of the class of marine mammals, known as cetaceans.

Harder’s amendments to Bill C-68 also include a provision that would exclude human-made agricultural waterways from being designated as a “fish habitat.”

The senator called the definition as it stands in the bill “overly broad.” He said such waterways currently follow environmental codes of practice.

READ MORE: Shark finning, cetacean captivity amendments could be folded into C-68

SOURCE: https://ipolitics.ca/2019/06/06/amended-bill-c-68-passes-third-reading-in-senate/