Thanks. I appreciate the question, a huge question, for sure.
I would have to start by saying that, personally, I worked as a lead negotiator for the conservation community on the Great Bear Rainforest agreement, pushing for the implementation of ecosystem-based management in terrestrial management, and I think we're a long way from that on the ocean side. What can DFO and the federal government do?
My organization, Living Oceans, and many others have been working for a long time to try to move the PNCIMA process forward, the integrated management plan, and I think part of that multi-stakeholder process, which would be very similar to the LRMP processes on the terrestrial side, would be to discuss how ecosystem-based management can be applied to the marine ecosystems under federal and sometimes provincial responsibility.
Fundamentally, I think that we need to start looking at how to define the marine ecosystems, how to define functioning ecosystems and place boundaries in order to enable area management, how to gather baseline data that tells you what the healthy ecosystem looks like and how it has been degraded by current activities. It is critical to look at cumulative impacts, and I think that's another area where the federal government could make changes in the CEAA process, because CEAA tends to look at things in isolation rather than looking at the carrying capacity of an ecosystem, the baseline health of that ecosystem, and what the cumulative impacts already are. When we talk about a salmon farm going into a new area, we shouldn't only be looking at whether there are other salmon farms, but whether there's a pulp mill, or log dumps, what other human activities are affecting the health of that ecosystem and how would a potential farm interact with those as well as what the ecosystem can sustain and still provide us with healthy and abundant wild salmon populations and other marine resources.