The Panagia Thalassini oil tanker passes in the harbour behind Prime Minister Mark Carney and Minister of Fisheries Joanne Thompson as they announce funding for ocean protection in North Vancouver on Tuesday.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
Prime Minister Mark Carney announced $1.2-billion on Tuesday to protect Canada’s oceans, the first pillar of a new national ocean strategy, days before Ottawa is expected to designate a proposed oil pipeline from Alberta to the southern B.C. coast as a project of national interest.
“It’s not just what we build, it’s how we build,” Mr. Carney said in Vancouver, describing what he called a “protect-while-we-build approach” to the pipeline and other projects.
With growing trade bringing more ships into the Port of Vancouver, he said, “we must scale up our systems to protect marine life in the event that something goes wrong.”
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The largest share, more than $740-million over four years, will renew several measures under the Oceans Protection Plan, a federal program launched a decade ago to improve marine safety and spill response, and expand the Canadian Coast Guard’s capacity to monitor marine traffic. It will also extend radio and radar coverage, build a national nearshore forecasting system for emergency response and equip fisheries officers with drones and body-worn cameras.
A further $136-million over four years will fund a national oil-spill response plan for marine mammals and monitoring of underwater noise on all three coasts. Another $186-million will go to the Northern Shelf Bioregion Reconciliation Framework Agreement, which supports conservation and collaborative governance in the Great Bear Sea region of British Columbia’s north and central coasts. The government is also funding Indigenous-led stewardship and restoration of the Lower Fraser River estuary, where the Roberts Bank Terminal 2 port expansion is planned.
Samuel Schooner, president of Coastal First Nations-Great Bear Initiative and elected chief of the Nuxalk Nation, welcomed the federal investment. Major projects across northwestern B.C. are expected to more than triple shipping traffic by 2040, he said in a statement.
“Protecting our coast is not a barrier to economic prosperity, it is the source of it,” he stated.
Fisheries and Oceans Canada confirmed the $1.2-billion is new funding, but did not say how much of it goes to renewals.
“It’s not a rollover,” Fisheries Minister Joanne Thompson told The Globe and Mail, adding that renewed programs are reviewed for what has worked and retargeted “to meet this moment.”
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Ms. Thompson said her ministry leads the ocean strategy with other federal departments, including Transport Canada and Environment Canada. The strategy’s other two pillars, securing Canada’s waters and building the ocean economy, will be released in the coming months.
The announcement follows Canada’s ratification of the High Seas Treaty last week and its $82-million pledge to the OceanEye global ocean-monitoring alliance. In May, Halifax will be the host city for the 2027 Our Ocean Conference, an annual international gathering where governments, businesses and conservation groups make commitments to protect the ocean.
“Getting ocean protection right is the prerequisite for sustainable growth,” Mr. Carney said. He mentioned that the proposed pipeline would follow a southern corridor similar to the existing Trans Mountain line, and that the north coast tanker ban would remain in effect. The Prime Minister set a goal of holding ocean noise around Vancouver at 2023 levels as vessel traffic grows, through what he called “rigorous conditions around construction and investments in noise reduction.”
Conditions on Roberts Bank Terminal 2 will protect killer whale habitat, he said, adding, “To put it simply, if the killer whale gets too close to the site, work must stop.”
Ms. Thompson said the goal is to establish protections, including measures to mitigate harm and offset damage to habitat, before projects move ahead. “It really is about ensuring that whatever comes forward in terms of projects or ways to grow an economy, we have the strategies in place,” she said. “We can do both. We will do both.”
Beatrice Frank, executive director of the Georgia Strait Alliance, a grassroots conservation group, said Mr. Carney’s announcement focused on spill response, enforcement and emergency forecasting rather than protecting the ocean itself.
“This doesn’t seem to me ocean protection. It seems a plan for when a pipeline spill happens in the south,” she said.
Ms. Frank questioned the government’s choice of 2023 as a baseline for noise, saying it was already a very noisy year for the Salish Sea’s endangered southern resident killer whales. Many protections for the whales remain voluntary, she added.
“We inherited these oceans, and it’s our obligation to pass them on better than we found them,” Mr. Carney said.