Sustainable Oceans 2015 – Healthy Oceans, Health Canada
1. If your party forms the next government, how will you commit to addressing issues
related to the sustainability of Canada’s oceans?
The Green Party of Canada believes that Canada must develop a coherent and comprehensive
oceans’ policy as a matter of urgency. Canada’s approach should be one of fostering resilience
in marine ecosystems, while simultaneously working to strengthen international regulatory and
policy regimes.
In Canadian territorial waters, Green MPs will work to strengthen current oceans’ legislation
and the ability of regulations to cope with the fast-moving nature of current threats. The Green
Party has a number of important goals, including: to increase, as a matter of urgency, the
extent, interconnectedness, and number of marine-protected areas; to work with the scientific
community to end maximum sustainable yield (MSY) as a default fisheries exploitation policy;
to rebuild wild Atlantic salmon populations in Atlantic Canada, while protecting wild salmon
throughout British Columbia waters; to introduce legislation to dramatically reduce by-catch
and habitat destruction by fishing gear; to work urgently to restore the Ocean Contaminants &
Marine Toxicology Program of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), while restoring
funding to six major water pollution labs around the country; to collaborate internationally to
improve marine species protection; to improve both national and international regulatory
regimes to prevent, reduce and control the release of toxic substances and nutrients into the
marine environment; and to ensure the federal government supports ongoing international
research into the effects of ocean acidification in Canadian waters.
For more on our comprehensive approach to sustainability, please look at our policy
backgrounder on the environment and our comprehensive grassroots policy document Vision
Green.
2. In your party’s opinion, since the Ocean’s Strategy, is Canada meeting its obligations
to manage the Oceans properly
Canada’s Oceans Strategy calls for the holistic management of our territorial waters and in
principle, the Strategy provides the basis for a strong, sustainable ocean management regime.
The reality is that the management of marine resources has all too often been held hostage to
political expediency. The Harper Conservatives’ recent severe cuts to oceans monitoring and
the weakening of the Fisheries Act severely compromise our ability to deliver on ocean
management targets. Greens believe we can, and must, do better.
3. In your party’s opinion, do you think the activities laid out in the current Oceans
Action Plan are being met and do you think it is an effective plan?
The Green Party of Canada believes that the activities laid out in the current Oceans Action Plan
are being inadequately implemented - failure of leadership and insufficient funding are
primarily to blame.
While the plan showed promise, the effectiveness of centralizing the implementation of ocean
conservation within Fisheries and Ocean’s Canada (DFO) is compromised due to chronic
political interference in that department. This is part of a growing trend in our civil service
where managers from other departments, without any policy strength or scientific background,
are moved into key policy positions in departments like DFO. Greens want to restructure DFO
into three separate branches: Management, Monitoring and Enforcement, and Research. This
restructuring will reduce the potential for political interference in department programs and
allow the department to better implement its mandate.
Underfunding prevents adequate monitoring of conservation efforts and is a key barrier to
implementing conservation efforts. The Green Party supports including $50 million annually to
the federal budget to be used for adding knowledgeable scientific staff to Environment Canada
and Fisheries and Oceans, thereby increasing their competency and capacity to implement the
Oceans Strategy.
4. In your party’s opinion, what do you see as the three most important Marine related
concerns facing Canada? Facing the world?
The Green Party of Canada believes Canada’s oceans face many urgent concerns, foremost
amongst them are climate change (including ocean acidification), over-fishing and land-based
sources of marine pollution. The Harper Conservatives are failing to meet our international
legal requirements, dangerously ignoring our international climate change obligations, and
directly risking the health of our oceans and coastal economies with their risky expansion of the
transportation of diluted bitumen by tanker and pipeline. Greens are consistent vocal
advocates for the protection of our Oceans.
5. Do you think an additional 10 years is an acceptable timeframe when the plans are
already 3 years overdue and this expectation does not include completion of action
plans? If your party forms the next government, how does your party plan to address
this issue?
The Green Party of Canada believes that the time for adequate environmental regulation and
increased conservation efforts is now. Canadians want the protection of our natural
environment to be a top priority for the federal government.
Our progress on Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) is abysmal. While Australia has protected 7.5%
of its marine areas, Canada has only protected 1%. Canada ranked 70th out of 228 countries in
its creation of MPAs. Greens believe we need to increase, as a matter of urgency, the extent,
interconnectedness, and number of Marine Protected Areas. Our goal, in consultation with
experts from the permanent scientific civil service, aboriginal peoples, and other stakeholders,
should be to establish reserves in currently healthy ecosystems, avoiding areas potentially
exposed to local hypoxia, pollution or low pH levels.
In a June 2014 Embassy magazine article, Andrew Park, Green Party Environment critic,
discussed the importance of MPAs. “So what should Canada’s policy responses be to marine
environmental stresses over which we have limited control, and which we often have no idea
how to fix? One answer is to enact policies that build up the resilience of marine ecosystems.
Resilience, in ecological terms, is the ability of an ecosystem to bounce back from a disturbance
or from a chronic stress. We could improve the resilience of our coastal waters by greatly
expanding our network of marine protected areas, or MPAs.”
6. Do you think Canada will achieve this objective? If your party forms the next
government, how will your party be able to do to ensure that Canada comes as close
as possible to meeting this target by 2020 if it will not already be achieved?
While we can still meet this target, it is unlikely to be met by Canada’s current government.
With the Green Party of Canada holding the balance of power in the next Parliament, we will
push the other parties to quickly meet the target of 10% of marine protected areas by 2020.
Just this past June, when other MPs were preparing for the House of Commons to rise for the
summer election campaign, MP and Green Party Deputy Leader Bruce Hyer introduced a
motion to pass Bill C-61, an Act to amend the Canada National Marine Conservation Areas,
which received unanimous consent. Greens are prepared to put in the work required to meet
our conservation goals - and work across party lines wherever possible.
But we also believe we can be more ambitious when it comes our targets. Greens believe we
should create 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, extending, in partnership with provinces, territories, and Aboriginal peoples,
Canada’s network of land, freshwater, and marine protected areas and linking them with
provincial and territorial parks wherever possible.
To read more about our plan to enhance Canada’s Marine Protected Areas and reinvigorate our
national conservation efforts, please read this backgrounder on our website.
7. How do you think Canada is meeting the precautionary and ecosystem principles in
the fisheries management initiatives takes recently? If your party forms the next
government, how will your party move forward with respect to sustainable fisheries?
Canada is not respecting the precautionary or ecosystem principles in its current fisheries
management initiatives. Over the last few decades, the fishing industry has installed large,
powerful gear on ships equipped with sophisticated navigation and fish-finding technology. This
has caused serious depletion of cod, haddock, bluefin tuna and other species, leading to the
collapse of local economies and loss of important biodiversity from ocean to ocean to ocean. To
save our gravely depleted fish stocks, something must go: either the high-yield fishing
technology or the excessive number of licenses to fish. Federal government policies allow the
over-fishing of critical food chain species, such as Pacific coast herring, ground fish, and Atlantic
coast capelin. Current laws do not adequately protect marine habitat from a range of
destructive forces, including the devastating practice of bottom-trawling, bioaccumulation of
toxic chemicals that flow into the sea from various land practices, and spillage from oil and gas
exploration.
Crucially, we must also restore the habitat protection provisions of the Fisheries Act and the
Navigable Waters Protection Act. In the case of the Fisheries Act, protection of species must be
extended beyond the narrow scope of species of commercial, recreational, and aboriginal
importance. Under the current Act, 80% of Canada's 71 freshwater fish species at risk would
lose protection, and one must suppose that the bait fish that feed those species which are
protected under the Act will not be protected: an ecologically untenable position.
The Green Party of Canada wants strong sustainable fisheries management. Green MPs will
advocate to sign and ratify the global treaty to ban bottom-trawling; restructure Fisheries and
Oceans Canada; strengthen legislation that protects fish habitats and fish stocks from overfishing and pollution; implement measures to quickly phase out open-ocean net-cage fish farms
and ensure that this aquaculture industry does not continue to harm wild fisheries; give funding
priority to small-scale projects to restore and enhance wild fish stocks, especially with
Aboriginal peoples and traditional fishing communities using traditional technologies; shift from
interception fisheries management practices to selective terminal fisheries; and establish an
Independent Review Commission made up of marine biologists, ecologists, and resource
economists to investigate (with input from fishermen, fishing communities and indigenous
peoples) the causes of the enormous decline in Canada’s fisheries resources, and recommend
policies and programs to restore offshore and inshore fisheries.
8. What are your party’s priorities with respect to Canada’s maritime security?
The Green Party recognizes the importance of maritime security. We must protect our
sovereignty through meaningful engagement with the Indigenous peoples of Canada’s North not merely an expanded military presence. Better security also means better monitoring - we
must increase our capacity for aerial monitoring of our coastlines for oil spills and fishery
violations. It is time to order new Fixed Wing Search and Rescue (SAR) airplanes.
The Green Party will commit to reinforce Canada’s Arctic sovereignty through community
infrastructure development, regional sustainability projects, northern research, northern
culture, and other regional socio-economic activities; establish, with the partnership of
Indigenous peoples, protected areas – terrestrial, marine, and ice – in an ecologically
representative network in the three northern Territories; and seek a constructive multilateral
Arctic maritime treaty, negotiated through the Arctic Council, to regulate all maritime activity in
the Arctic, with the exception of traditional Aboriginal activity, such that the health and wellbeing of the Arctic ecosystem and its northern inhabitants are safeguarded.
9. In your party’s opinion, do you think it is feasible to have a marine park and oil and
gas development situated so close together? If your party forms the next government,
what is your party plan to protect the health of the Gulf of St. Lawrence and sustain
the industries already operating within while exploring offshore oil and gas
development options in the Gulf of St. Lawrence?
The Green Party of Canada believes it is completely unfeasible to have a marine park and oil
and gas development situated within close proximity of one another. The Green Party of
Canada is dedicated to extending permanent bans on oil and gas exploration and development
in ecologically sensitive areas, particularly the coast of British Columbia and the Gulf of St.
Lawrence.
In fact, the Green Party of Canada is the only federal party to call for a full moratorium on oil
and gas exploration in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The Gulf of St. Lawrence is too precious a
resource to risk a major ecological disaster.
10. Do you think the responses to the recommendations made are sufficient? If your party
forms the next government, what long-term measures will your party take to ensure
that the priorities on the safety and environmental risks of shipping through Canada’s
Arctic are addressed?
The Harper Conservatives glibly claimed that they accepted the report’s recommendations –
the exact same response they have given to the dozens of reports that preceded it. Meanwhile,
they have no credible plan for how the recommendations will be implemented.
The report highlights significant safety concerns regarding marine navigation in the Canadian
Arctic, noting that the Arctic coastline remains inadequately mapped, and that the government
is short of icebreakers, with the two most effective ships to be decommissioned by 2022. As
this report makes clear, the Harper Conservatives’ sector-by-sector regulatory approach has
been an utter and complete failure.
In addition to supporting the extension of the Kyoto Protocol - which Greens would re-ratify - to
cover international shipping, the Green Party will commit to do the following to ensure that
safety and environmental risks of shipping through Canada’s Arctic are addressed: work
through the Arctic Council and strengthen the Oceans Act and the Arctic Waters Pollution
Prevention Act to establish firm limits on Arctic development.
For more information on our Arctic policy, please see Section 3.11 of our comprehensive policy
document, Vision Green.
11. If your party forms the next government, what actions will be taken to ensure that
northern development will have the least on the ecosystem and tradition livelihoods
of communities and support local governments?
The Green Party is committed to working with Northerners as the North realizes its true
potential as a healthy and prosperous region within a strong and sovereign Canada. Decisionmaking and action must build on the northern tradition of respect for the land and on the
principles of responsible and sustainable development. It is long past time we honour the intent
of our Land Claims Agreements and treaties. Any talk of Development projects impacting
coastal communities must take local First Nations sovereignty into account. Any new resource
extraction projects must be negotiated nation-to-nation. Where no social license for pipelines
exist - there can be no pipelines.
The Green Party has a number of recommendations for an Arctic strategy that harmonizes
ecosystem protection and community support: improve and increase monitoring of Indigenous
food sources to ensure Inuit and First Nations, particularly pregnant women and nursing
mothers, are not over-exposed to persistent organic pollutants and heavy metals that build up
through the global food chain and pool at high levels in the Arctic; work to develop
collaborative community-based education programs to promote the consumption of food with
less toxicity; invest in renewable local energy sources to avoid the dependence on very
expensive and polluting imported diesel fuel; develop a comprehensive pan-Arctic waste
management strategy that addresses issues like the discharge of wastes into water and open
dump burning on land through a plan that integrates community, mining, fishing, tourism,
shipping, and military waste management strategies; establish, with the partnership of
Indigenous peoples, protected areas – terrestrial, marine, and ice – in an ecologically
representative network in the three northern Territories; promote the creation of an
internationally recognized Arctic Protected Zone where no mineral exploration will be
permitted by any country, similar to the internationally-recognized Antarctic Protected Area.
12. If your party forms the next government, how will your party proceed with involving
not only First Nations but include the residents of coastal communities in discussions
related to initiatives that can impact their use of the coastal environment?
The Green Party of Canada will improve public participation in decision-making, under the
principles of the Oceans Act, in particular engaging coastal communities in local fisheries
management. The Constitution outlines our duty to seek free, prior and informed consent from
First Nations when initiatives impact their use of traditional land.
13. How does your party see marine scientific research progression in Canada in
comparison to the rest of the world? If your party forms the next government, how
will Canada contribute to the marine scientific research?
The Green Party of Canada is greatly concerned with the progression of marine scientific
research in Canada. Green Party leader Elizabeth May introduced, Bill C-699, the Public Access
to science Act in June 2015. This bill would ensure all publicly-funded scientific research is made
publicly accessible. The challenges we face require an open and transparent engagement with
the facts and the work our scientists do is too important to be hidden from view, simply
because it is inconvenient to the Prime Minister’s agenda. Science is too important to
democracy to be kept in a government vault.
Furthermore, the muzzling of government scientists is a crisis we need to address now. The
Green Party believes in expanding Canada’s scientific capacity and supporting our scientists and
scientific inquiry, which also requires adequate and consistent levels of funding for research.
We must ensure that scientists in the federal government are free to publish their research,
speak openly with the media about their findings and are encouraged to increase scientific
literacy for all Canadians. Moreover, Greens support the creation of a new position for
Parliamentary Science Advisor as an Officer of Parliament, independent from political control
and able to report objectively on the science behind government programs.
We must also implement coast to coast to coast monitoring of pH levels so that we might
better research how we can adapt to ocean acidification, while simultaneously working
aggressively to combat its cause: anthropogenic climate change. Marine scientific research
must be properly funded, heeded and implemented; any less leaves Canadians, and our
environment, at risk.