Scientists say fish habitat no longer protected under federal act

John Post, a professor of biological sciences at the University of Calgary, says the federal government changes to the fisheries legislation have eviscerated the ability to protect habitat for many of the country’s fish species.
Photograph by: Riley Brandt, University of Calgary/Calgary Herald

Scientists say fish habitat no longer protected under federal act

By Colette Derworiz, Calgary Herald November 8, 2013

A new study suggests that federal changes to Canada’s fisheries legislation have taken away the ability to protect fish habitat.

The assessment by scientists at the University of Calgary and Dalhousie University suggests recent changes to the Fisheries Act were political rather than scientific, putting entire ecosystems at risk.

Read more here: http://bit.ly/1aBrQUS

Controversial changes to Fisheries Act guided by industry demands

Photo, courtesy Darryl Dyke for Globe & Mail

 Who would have guessed?

Controversial changes to Fisheries Act guided by industry demands

by Gloria Galloway, The Globe & Mail, Aug 5, 2013

The federal Conservative government consulted with both environmental organizations and industry associations before making controversial changes to the Fisheries Act last year, but listened primarily to industry.

When a section of one of the government’s massive 2012 omnibus budget bills limited the scope of the legislation governing the protection of fish and their habitats, some ecologists said it was the biggest setback to conservation law in more than 50 years.

Read story here: http://bit.ly/13IIDDg

I want strong laws for fish...

Bow River Shuttles writes:

In the Spring 2013 issue of 'Currents', Trout Unlimited Canada CEO Jeff Surtees writes about the challenges facing our fisheries that have resulted from the downsizing of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, the changes to the Fisheries Act, the Navigable Waters Protection Act, the Environmental Assessment Act, and (soon to come) the Species at Risk Act.

Near the end of the article, he states: "If you want to learn more about the legislative changes that have take place over the past year, check out the excellent analyses done by West Coast environmental Law (wcel.org) and by Ecojustice (ecojustice.ca)."

WITH THAT IN MIND, HERE IS A POST TODAY (JUNE 18, 2013) FROM WEST COAST ENVIRONMENTAL LAW:

Tell the Prime Minister - Fish Need Protection

Fisheries Minister promoting ‘flexibility’ for water pollution

Changes to the Fisheries Act will give the government more options to allow industries to pollute fish habitats.

Photograph by: Handout , Marine Harvest Canada

Fisheries Minister promoting ‘flexibility’ for water pollution

Digital Journal

June 29 2012

Vancouver - Canadian Federal Fisheries Minister Keith Ashfield has created controversy and drawn harsh criticism from environmental advocates over statements in a letter recently released where he promotes options allowing the industry to contaminate fish habitats.

On March 31, Ted Hindmarch, President of “Nature Alberta”, formerly the Federation of Alberta Naturalists, wrote an open letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper in connection with the announced amendments to the Fisheries Act. The letter was referred to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) Keith Ashfield who replied on June 13.

In his reply, Mr. Ashfield discusses the proposed amendments to the Fisheries Act included in Bill C-38, the “Jobs, Growth and Long-Term Prosperity Act”, which was tabled in the House of Commons on April 26, 2012. The amendments, says Mr. Ashfield, aim to support Fisheries and Oceans Canada's focus on protection efforts for fish that support fisheries relevant to Canadians and the threats to those fisheries.

Further down in his reply the Honourable Keith Ashfield refers to the pollution prevention provisions contained in Section 36 of the Fisheries Act and acknowledges that those provisions have played a decisive role in preventing pollution of Canadian waters and that they remain very valuable. However, in the same paragraph he adds the following:

“There are currently few tools to authorize pollution other than by detailed regulations. For example, the amended Fisheries Act will provide flexibility and establish new tools to authorize deposits of deleterious substances.”

“Nature Alberta”, the former DFO Minister Thomas Siddon, and organizations concerned about the quality of the environment, have expressed uneasiness about such statement from the minister. The interpretation is that Ashfield suggests the existing Fisheries Act should be changed since it doesn't provide enough options allowing industry to disrupt or contaminate fish habitats and that more flexibility and new tools are needed to approve pollution of water courses. Allowing or facilitating fish habitat pollution goes against the Minister’s constitutional mandate and responsibility.

The proposed amendments to the Fisheries Act include removing existing controls prohibiting pollution or harm to fish habitat and replacing those with new requisites to prevent "serious harm" to specific fisheries. Other changes would eliminate the need for environmental assessment of new projects, weaken protection measures for species at risk and limit public involvement in environmental reviews of industrial projects, reports Canada.com.

According to The Vancouver Sun, Ashfield has declined a request to explain his remarks. He relayed the queries to staff in his Department which in turn is passing on the questions to Environment Canada. The Sun reports that no one in Environment Canada was available to provide a comment.

LINK to original story, which contains useful links

Related Story:

Budget offers new tools to "authorize" water pollution, says Harper minister

By Mike De Souza,

Vancouver Sun

Postmedia News

June 25, 2012

Read story here

Federal government slammed for 'gutting' fisheries protection program

Green party leader Elizabeth May says Fisheries Act 

changes are "an ideological targeting of science 

and especially fisheries science."
Photograph by : Herald Archive, Reuters

Ottawa 'gutting' fisheries programs

Biologist warns of increased environmental damage risk

Peter O'Neil, Calgary Herald

Published: Thursday, June 28, 2012

The Harper government has announced major cuts to its fisheries habitat-protection program, prompting a retired federal biologist to warn Wednesday of a dramatic increase in the risk of environmental damage.

The cuts coincide with Fisheries Minister Keith Ashfield's launch of a public consultation process seeking input on how Canadian fisheries should be managed.

The announcement was mocked by government critics who predicted that Canadians will react cynically to being asked for their input long after the decision was made to make sweeping fisheries policy changes.

Retired federal fisheries biologist Otto Langer painted a grim picture of the effect of the job cuts on the environment.

"This puts (the department) back where it was in the early 1980s" in terms of staff and offices, Langer wrote in an e-mail.

In the West, B.C. is facing a wave of new industrial projects, including Enbridge's Northern Gateway pipeline, new gas lines and gas liquefaction plans, the New Prosperity gold mine, the Site C dam project on the Peace River, and the Roberts Bank port expansion.

"Never in the past 50-year history of habitat protection have we seen such great cuts in staff in the face of upcoming massive industrial development that can and will harm habitat and our fisheries of the future."

Ashfield, who has dismissed warnings that the Fisheries Act changes are intended to help industrial projects, said he now wants advice from the public.

NOTE: All bolding is ours

Part 4: Green gets mean with Ottawa

'We don't take it when we are bulldozed,' says Joe Foy, national campaign director for the Wilderness Committee, referring to the Harper government's plan to give tax authorities more power to question the political activities of charities.

Photograph by: Ward Perrin, PNG , Vancouver Sun

Green gets mean with Ottawa

Conservatives' proposed dilution of environmental laws, attacks on groups has created backlash

Fourth in a four-part series

By Gordon Hoekstra,

Vancouver Sun

June 8, 2012

Discord between the Tories and environmentalists began when the federal natural resources minister maligned environmental groups as radicals. It escalated with the introduction of Bill C-38, a package of new laws, some directly targeting charities and environmental protections.

Now it's war.

Environmental groups are fighting back after the Conservatives accused them of hijacking public decision making and using foreign funding to damage national economic interests. Their target is Bill C-38 which opponents say weakens fish habitat protection and strengthens the taxman's powers to question charities. The changes will bring more scrutiny to foreign funding for charities and also how they use money for political purposes. Charities will also have to take more responsibility for the political activities of groups to which they give money.

It will give bureaucrats new powers to suspend the charitable status of groups, a designation that helps organizations raise money by allowing them to issue receipts for tax deductions.

And Bill C-38 will give an extra $8 million to the Canada Revenue Agency for stepped-up audits of those groups.

Now that Prime Minister Stephen Harper has a majority, his government will be able to push through the new laws before parliament breaks for the summer.

Environmental organizations that operate in B.C. are fearful of the changes, but not cowed.

Read more here

Part 3: Stakeholders wary of slippery slope that comes with changes to Fisheries Act

Larri Woodrow stands outside his former property in Walnut Grove area of Langley, which he sold in 2011 for townhouse development. The avid fisherman and hunter said the fisheries setback requirements eroded the value of his property, and that the Fisheries Act should be more flexible for special cases. He now fears Bill C-38 is going too far in gutting the Fisheries Act. n with Larry Pynn’s story, “fish concerns” as part of series on Bill C-38.

Photograph by: Kathy Woodrow, Vancouver Sun

Part 3: Stakeholders wary of slippery slope that comes with changes to Fisheries Act

While farmers and municipalities would like to see some flexibility, they worry the Harper government's omnibus legislation goes too far

Third in a four-part series

By Larry Pynn,

Vancouver Sun

June 7, 2012

A seasonal stream flowed through Larri Woodrow's one hectare hobby farm in the north Langley neighbourhood of Walnut Grove.

Although the property, purchased in 1970, was outside the agricultural land reserve, Woodrow personally favoured the area remaining rural. But that's not what happened.

Over time he found himself surrounded by townhouses and compact single-family homes. Woodrow accepted his fate and decided to sell his property for development, too. At least that was the idea.

Salmon never reached his property and the stream dried up in summer. But, as a tributary of coho-bearing Yorkson Creek, a 15-metre setback applied under the Streamside Protection Regulation of 2001. The provincial legislation was meant to complement the federal Fisheries Act - the subject of controversial changes pending under Bill C-38.

Combined with a BC Hydro easement, that left just .37 hectares on Woodrow's property that could be developed.

He tried to be creative, hiring a consultant to propose relocating the tributary and building new habitat in the hydro easement, thereby allowing for more developable property to attract a buyer.

Government officials rejected the idea.

In 2011, local developer Lanstone Homes finally bought the property and built 13 townhouses - marketed as Woodrow Lane, a relatively modest project for that area.

Woodrow has since bought a 1991-built single-family home in Walnut Grove.

"When people think of landowners' property going to development, they think of windfall profit," he said.

"We couldn't get enough money to buy another similar hobby farm anywhere in this area."

Woodrow understands the need for rules and regulations, but wishes there could have been a way to appeal his case and reach a compromise.

Unlike some property owners who quietly cut down trees and fill in wetlands to enhance their chances of development, he said he planted firs and cedars to enhance his property's streamside habitat.

"There has to be some means of fairness applied to these regulations," he said.

Despite his experience, Woodrow remains a strong believer in fish habitat protection and is concerned that the federal government is watering down protection under the Fisheries Act.

"It's sad," said the hunter and fisherman, a regional representative to the B.C. Wildlife Federation.

"We need protection for the fish, we have to have habitat, and we're losing it every which way."

Read more here

Part 2: Conservationists, scientists fear Fisheries Act changes

 Otto Langer, a retired biologist who worked for the federal Fisheries
 Department for 32 years, believes the Conservative government’s 
plan to limit protection of fish habitat will result in a 
major setback to conservation efforts in Canada.

Photograph by: Ian Lindsay , Vancouver Sun

Part 2: Conservationists, scientists fear Fisheries Act changes

Second in a four-part series

By Larry Pynn

Vancouver Sun

June 7, 2012

Otto Langer has devoted his adult life to protecting fish habitat.

Now he wonders if it was all for nothing.

The retired head of habitat assessment and planning for the federal Fisheries Department in B.C. and Yukon describes the Conservative government’s planned changes to the Fisheries Act as the biggest setback to conservation law in Canada in half a century.

And he takes it very personally.

“I feel I have wasted my lifetime, that I should have done something else,” says Langer, who now predicts a gradual decline in fish habitat if the changes take effect.

Through a massive package of proposed laws in Bill C-38, Ottawa plans to limit federal protection of fish habitat to activities resulting in serious harm to fish that are part of a commercial, sport or aboriginal fishery. Across the country, hundreds of scientists have condemned the change.

“It’s going to remove freshwater protection for most fishes in Canada, which can’t be a good thing,” says University of B.C. zoology department professor Eric Taylor, who also co-chairs a federal committee that advises the government on species at risk.

“Habitat is not just a place to live; it’s a place to breed, rest, avoid predators, get food.”

Taylor argues the Fisheries Department should be fighting for biodiversity. “They should have an interest in protecting Canada’s aquatic biodiversity — for all Canadians. They now seem to be abandoning that.”

Read more here

How the Conservatives' brief love affair with environmentalism came to an ugly end

Tides Canada CEO Ross McMillan poses in Vancouver, B.C., May 31, 2012. 

McMillan was the architect of the Great Bear Rainforest agreement.

Photograph by: Arlen Redekop , PNG

How the Conservatives' brief love affair with environmentalism came to an ugly end

First in a four-part series

By Peter O'Neil, 

Vancouver Sun 

June 4, 2012

OTTAWA — When a deal to protect B.C.'s Great Bear Rainforest was brokered in January 2007, one of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's most trusted lieutenants singled out the environmental and social justice organization Tides Canada as being crucial in Ottawa's decision to contribute $30 million to the plan.

John Baird, then Harper's new environment minister and now head of foreign affairs, said the Harper government acted due to fear that the unprecedented $60-million contribution raised by Vancouver-based Tides - the vast majority from U.S. foundations - was in jeopardy of being lost to the total $120-million fund.

"I was tremendously concerned . . . that we could lose that, particularly the money coming from abroad, so we didn't want to have that happen," Baird said at a Vancouver event where he shared the stage with first nations leaders, and Tides chief executive Ross McMillan.

Baird spoke emphatically in Vancouver about the importance of habitat to 355 species in the 6.4 million-hectare rainforest. He also stressed his commitment to keep working with environmentalists and first nations.

"I hope that this is a beginning, not an end."

Flash-forward to late 2011 and the world has turned upside-down.

Harper warned last November that "significant American interests" are funnelling money through "environmental groups and others" - presumably first nations - to stop Enbridge Inc.'s $5.5 billion Northern Gateway oilsands pipeline from Alberta to the B.C. coast, where huge tankers will cruise the waters near the Great Bear Rainforest.

Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver followed a few weeks later with an open letter denouncing environmental groups as foreign-funded "radical" organizations determined to "hijack" Canada's need to develop natural resources.

Tides was the only organization Oliver named in interviews.

The letter was like an aerial bombardment to soften up the enemy before a ground assault - a March federal budget which gave $8 million to the Canada Revenue Agency to step up audits and enact other compliance measures targeting groups that accept foreign funding for alleged political activities.

The budget also included the promise of significant amendments to major federal environmental protection tools, notably the Fisheries Act and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act.

Read more:

Federal Fisheries Act amendments could spell disaster

From Trout Unlimited Canada: "This is a very short but well thought out editorial from today's Globe and Mail. It explains the point that everything is connected in the natural world. The author's states "All this does not take into account the fact that oceans, rivers and lakes are ecosystems. Species are interdependent. The bill’s creation of a class hierarchy among fish could well invite disaster.""

A fisherman hauls up the netting of a fish compound at the Goose Berry Cove Cod fish farm near Goose Berry Cove, Newfoundland. (Greg Locke/For The Globe and Mail)

Globe Editorial

Federal Fisheries Act amendments could spell disaster

The Globe and Mail

Sunday, Jun. 03 2012

Fish species do not simply live in isolation from other fish species. That is why the amendments in the federal Fisheries Act in the 452-page budget implementation bill should themselves be amended.

If these changes are enacted, fish useful in very specific ways to human beings will have a privileged status. In the bill, there recur phrases such as “the contribution of the relevant fish to the ongoing productivity of commercial, recreational or aboriginal fisheries” and “serious harm to fish that are part of a commercial, recreational or Aboriginal fisheries, or to fish that support such a fishery.” When, for example, the fisheries minister considers a new regulation, he will be required to think about whether it will benefit those categories of fish.

All this does not take into account the fact that oceans, rivers and lakes are ecosystems. Species are interdependent. The bill’s creation of a class hierarchy among fish could well invite disaster.

Among the opponents of the amendments are two former Progressive Conservative fisheries ministers, John Fraser (also a former Speaker), and Tom Siddon. Moreover, John Cummins, the decidedly conservative Leader of the reinvigorated Conservative Party of British Columbia, agrees: “There is that potential for serious damage to the fisheries resource, if we move in the way that’s prescribed.”

In a sense, the current Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, Keith Ashfield, confirms that the bill would narrow the scope of fisheries policy: “We are focusing our fish and fish-habitat protection rules on Canada’s fisheries,” adding as a rhetorical flourish, “not in farmers’ ditches.”

It is true that some parts of the Fisheries Act amendments are good; some of them strengthen enforcement. But the amendments need revision – or, preferably, they should be moved into a separate bill, where they could be studied knowledgeably the Fisheries and Ocean Committee of the House of Commons – not by the Finance Committee, which the omnibus bill has desperately overburdened.

LINK