The will to protect

According to the Auditor General of Canada, the DFO has failed to protect salmon habitat through a combination of poor management, ineffective policy and an overall lack of enforcement of the laws that are in place to protect fish habitat.5,6 In an opening state- ment to the federal Committee on Public Accounts in 1998, the Auditor General, reporting on progress within the DFO with regards to sust [...] The complex arrangement of authorities and the over-lapping and sometimes conflicting to habitat mandates and regulations they are responsible for creates inconsistencies and gaps in the monitoring realm of habitat protection. [...] It is difficult to see how budgets of this size, which devote such a small portion of the overall budget to fish-habitat protection, can represent a serious effort to administer and enforce the habitat protection provisions of the Fisheries Act and protection of fish habitat in general. [...] In par- DFO for its ticular, key steps to protect and manage Pacific salmon are yet to be completed.” inability to Eventually, however, the DFO seemed to be getting the message that reform in the areas achieve its of fisheries and habitat management was necessary and in 2000 proposed a new “Wild Salmon Policy” which was designed to guide decision-makers in the protection and con- conservation serv [...] The aim was to “…make it [the program] more effective in protecting and conserving fish habitat, efficient in the delivery of its services, integrated with the interests and responsi- bilities of others, and relevant to Canadians.” In 2005, the Department unveiled their new program and called it the Environmental Process Modernization Plan (EPMP).