Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee members, for initiating the pre-study of this important piece of legislation, and thank you also for the invitation to appear before you today to discuss our proposals to improve Bill C-73. I'm a lawyer at Ecojustice, and I also direct the environmental law clinical law program at the University of Ottawa. I specialize in constitutional, administrative and environmental law.

Bill C-73 is welcome progress for nature. Canada contains a huge part of the natural world, which we are responsible for safeguarding. It has approximately 24% of the world's boreal forests and about 25% of the world's temperate forests. Its 1.5 million square kilometres of wetlands make up about 25% of the entire world's total. Canada also has the world's longest coastline, two million lakes and the third-largest area of glaciers in the world. All of that is facing decline at rates unprecedented in human history.

Canada needs a national law to coordinate and implement its commitments to halt and reverse nature loss, which were made at the landmark global meeting in Montreal in 2022. I am concerned, however, that the nature accountability act, as presently drafted, is weaker than its counterparts in other jurisdictions, notably the United Kingdom, and even weaker than its companion legislation in Canada concerning climate, which is the Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act.

Unlike those two laws, the NAA, as currently drafted, does not require that the government set any target or end goal for biodiversity. There is no clear purpose in the law for the planning and the reporting that it requires. It's kind of like outfitting a ship for an ocean voyage but not setting a destination. You're likely to get lost or go in circles.

With amendments to strengthen it, though, the NAA would help Canada chart a course to harmony with nature by 2050. Our proposed amendments would strengthen the NAA by directing the government to set national targets for nature and make detailed plans to meet them. This is very much like the U.K. legislation, which incorporates goals and targets directly into its regulations, including targets to reduce the risk of extinction and restore and create wildlife-rich habitats. The targets there are accompanied by detailed reporting obligations to ensure accountability.

National targets are required for laws like this one that implement global commitments, like the Paris Agreement for climate and the global biodiversity framework agreed in Montreal, and that's for two reasons.

First, Canada has a dualist system, which means that international agreements have no force here until Parliament—you—says they do. A law means that Canada has an obligation to act, and also shows the world that we are serious about our nature commitments.

Second, these agreements set a broad global ambition, with each country left autonomously to determine what they will do within their own borders to contribute. Specifying those contributions in law makes government accountable for achieving them, so these targets are very much in response to the commitments we've made internationally, but they are a made-in-Canada approach.

We have not met past nature commitments. The lack of a legal basis for those commitments was a key reason for that. The independent auditor found that the reason for failure was a lack of strong national leadership, including an integrated national approach that coordinates actions, tracks progress and makes the required corrections, and that is what the NAA, with our suggested amendments, would accomplish.

I want to say one word about jurisdiction, because it was raised already by my fellow panellist here.

The federal government has an important role in protecting nature, and so do provinces and indigenous nations. The jurisdiction of all governments must be respected, and they must be enabled to do everything within their power to protect the natural world.

It's for that reason that our proposed definition of national targets distinguishes between targets that are within federal jurisdiction to achieve and targets that are national in nature and that the federal government would necessarily seek to co-operate on with provinces, territories and indigenous peoples, and we emphasize that indigenous rights and jurisdiction must be respected and prioritized in target-setting.

In the brief accompanying our remarks, we've provided for you detailed suggestions for amendments to enable target setting, to improve reporting requirements so that the public gets a full picture of the progress being made towards those targets, and to ensure independent oversight and a whole-of-government approach to nature.

I will be very happy to answer any questions about those suggestions.

Let me close by saying that we, again, thank the committee for this important work. We urge it to support Bill C-73 and to endorse our amendments to make it even more effective.

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