Subcommittee of the Standing Committee on Finance on Bill C-38 committee  I think you should get a list of the Department of Fisheries' priorities and see how many times the word “habitat” appears in them. I haven't seen it in 20 years. I'll bet nothing has changed. There's very little in it, if anything, that has to do with fish habitat. I know when they hand out the funding, if you're not at the top of the list...as for the situation at the central region, I believe there were 160 pink slips handed out in your region, Bob, a region that's had successive cuts under both parties in government for the past 25 years.

Subcommittee of the Standing Committee on Finance on Bill C-38 committee  I would say that's right. My advice is if your objective is to see that fisheries are protected, make the regulations very specific. Don't leave anything to chance. A very conservative minister or a very left-wing minister have different interpretations. What we want as citizens is consistency and consistent good habitat protection.

Subcommittee of the Standing Committee on Finance on Bill C-38 committee  I think that's right. If it were just the wording of the bill, I would probably not be concerned. As someone who has spent 22 years in Fisheries and knows how ministers and deputy ministers interpret wording, I know that once the word “habitat” is out of there, there would be no attention paid to it.

Subcommittee of the Standing Committee on Finance on Bill C-38 committee  I was a member of Fisheries and Oceans when those same two ministers put the habitat revisions in the bill. As I am sure they will tell you, there were some very good reasons for it.

Subcommittee of the Standing Committee on Finance on Bill C-38 committee  Obviously the flooding of reservoirs did, if you count things like high mercury and the abolition of food for native people, but we don't want another case of that happening. The problems with the Athabasca fishery are that they haven't been properly investigated. We know from both the word of native fishermen and Environment Canada employees who worked in that area for 30 years that there has been an increase in tumours in the fish.

Subcommittee of the Standing Committee on Finance on Bill C-38 committee  I might if I didn't see what's happening to the departments in parallel. I don't see how it can happen when all of the habitat people for DFO are getting pink slips. The DOE projects to work on habitat are being cut. They've had very few biologists at all. I really don't see how any but those key species will even be looked at.

Subcommittee of the Standing Committee on Finance on Bill C-38 committee  I suppose it's possible. I would prefer to see it specifically worded in the legislation, though, and not left to the whim of a minister who has no scientific background, period.

Subcommittee of the Standing Committee on Finance on Bill C-38 committee  I can comment for Alberta, which is where I was. DFO did very little, but the province did very little as well, specifically on the oil sands. We heard all the rhetoric about duplication and four million data points being collected. After six panels reviewed the data, they found that we have not had a reasonable monitoring program, period.

Subcommittee of the Standing Committee on Finance on Bill C-38 committee  I would say if it were more specified, it would be a good thing.

Subcommittee of the Standing Committee on Finance on Bill C-38 committee  I think the standardization would be a good thing. I think, though, the way I would go about it is more uniform training and in some regions more people. I know that at one point people in DFO were very frustrated. One of my fellow scientists who was doing reviews exclaimed that he had 400 before him, ranging from an individual road culvert up to a pulp mill in size, which he was expected to do rapid screening on and declare them as ones that could be handled by an individual officer or had to go to some higher level of review, the highest being a full federal-provincial review.

Subcommittee of the Standing Committee on Finance on Bill C-38 committee  I think it's positive that they can. I would prefer to see some more specific language. I always get very nervous when I see the word “may” rather than “must”. The minister “may”, to me, means that a lot depends on who the minister is and what side of the bed he gets up on. If I look at it from the standpoint of a potential investor, that would make me very nervous because I couldn't see a clear path.

Subcommittee of the Standing Committee on Finance on Bill C-38 committee  I would say that I don't see that being done. If that were being done, I would agree with you. But I know what's happening to Fisheries right now. I have many colleagues there. Anything to do with habitat and contaminants is being cut. So how will we ever know whether they're being contaminated or whether these non-target species are dying and causing problems?

Subcommittee of the Standing Committee on Finance on Bill C-38 committee  How are we going to know that, when at the very time this is happening, Fisheries is cutting off its habitat officers and the people who study northern contaminants? Northern contaminants in fish is a big aboriginal concern. How will we know whether these things are happening if eliminating this from the act is used as an excuse not to study them?

Subcommittee of the Standing Committee on Finance on Bill C-38 committee  Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I have given Mr. Lafleur several copies of my presentation. It has some figures, and as a result I will not read it. I've always had a thing about somebody giving me something to read and then reading it to me, which is usually one-tenth as fast.

Environment committee  I think the big danger would be their leaking through the many wells that will be driven through freshwater aquifers to reach those very deep saline ones. Somebody earlier referred to a pincushion effect. My guess is that we'll have tens of thousands of wells drilled through freshwater aquifers to reach bitumen, and for carbon sequestration, to even deeper levels.