Photo Credit: Handout/LNG Canada via The Financial Post
On Sept. 29, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced that he would dedicate $1.2 billion to ocean protection over the next five years at a press conference in North Vancouver. According to the Government of Canada’s website, the money will be used to "strengthen ocean conservation,” “protect marine life,” and "strengthen Indigenous partnership.”
His proposal aims to achieve these objectives by renewing the Ocean Protection Plan, protecting ecosystems from new projects on the West Coast (such as the Pacific Link pipeline and the Roberts Bank Terminal 2 port expansion), supporting research on monitoring and reducing disruptive underwater noise, and working with Indigenous communities.
In his speech, Carney also stated that the government plans to “protect 30% of our oceans and 30% of our land by the end of this decade,” a global target set by the UN.
Carney made the announcement about ocean protection shortly after he announced the expansion of Roberts Bank Terminal 2, and just prior to his announcement that the Pacific Link pipeline (which will run between Alberta and BC) had been designated a project of national interest.
Carney’s efforts have been welcomed by some, while others say that his government is failing to protect Canada’s oceans.
Two days following Carney’s announcement about ocean protection funding, the Georgia Strait Alliance (GSA) responded on their website, saying that Carney’s plan was “insufficient to protect […] the species that call the Salish Sea home.” They called the measures “ultimately insufficient to protect the Southern Resident killer whales [...] from both the baseline conditions of the last decade, as well as the increasing industrial and legislative onslaught this bioregion is facing now and into the future.” The GSA says that while the government’s measures are necessary, more needs to be done.
The organization also criticized the timing of the announcement, saying that its closeness to the government’s announcements of the pipeline and the terminal expansion “cannot be coincidence,” according to their website.
To them, Carney’s measures are a distraction from the projects they called “catastrophic… for the health of the Salish Sea.” They stated that Carney “wants to show that [he] takes ocean conservation seriously, but analysis of [his] promises show that there is little meaningful substance behind them.” They also said that the government planned to “destroy the ocean, but… invest a lot of money in cleaning it up.”
Carney’s announcement comes shortly after the European Commission launched the OceanEye initiative with Canada. The initiative, according to the European Union’s website, will “lay the foundation for smarter and more effective ocean observation.” The plan is intended to combat climate change, as well as bolster the EU’s economic operations at sea.