Harper Government to Eliminate Habitat Protection Provisions in the Canada Fisheries Act.

To date the Harper government has shown little regard for the protection of the environment and over the past few years has supervised the almost total elimination of enforcement of the habitat protection and the pollution provisions of the Canada Fisheries Act (Sections 35 and 36 respectively).

During the Cohen Inquiry in 2011 data was presented to show that pollution and habitat violation investigations have been greatly reduced and convictions of violations in BC and indeed throughout Canada is now almost non-existent.

The Fisheries Act of Canada was put in place in 1868 and is one of the oldest and most tested pieces of environmental legislation in the world. In 1975 many people worked hard to get a proper section added to the Act to protect fish habitat in Canada.

Section 35 (habitat protection) was passed by Parliament in 1976 and has been extensively used across Canada over the past 36 years. In B.C., the Federal and BC governments largely quit enforcing the pollution and habitat sections of the Act in favor of allowing industry to self govern their own environmental project’s ‘needs’ and monitor their own self compliance. This has proven to be a disaster wherever it has been attempted elsewhere in the World.