John Kerry Launches Star-Studded Climate Coalition

John Kerry said that while some members of his coalition might advocate for certain climate measures, the coalition is not aimed at promoting any particular plan.Credit…Mary Schwalm/Associated Press

WASHINGTON — John Kerry, the former senator and secretary of state, has formed a new bipartisan coalition of world leaders, military brass and Hollywood celebrities to push for public action to combat climate change.

The name, World War Zero, is supposed to evoke both the national security threat posed by the earth’s warming and the type of wartime mobilization that Mr. Kerry argued would be needed to stop the rise in carbon emissions before 2050. The star-studded group is supposed to win over those skeptical of the policies that would be needed to accomplish that.

Former presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter are part of the effort. Moderate Republican lawmakers like Arnold Schwarzenegger, the former governor of California, and John Kasich, the former governor of Ohio, are on the list. Stars like Leonardo DiCaprio, Sting and Ashton Kutcher round out the roster of more than 60 founding members. Their goal is to hold more than 10 million “climate conversations” in the coming year with Americans across the political spectrum.

With a starting budget of $500,000, Mr. Kerry said, he and other coalition members intend to hold town meetings across the country starting in January. Members will head to battleground states key to the 2020 election, but also to military bases where climate discussions are rare and to economically depressed areas that members say could benefit from clean energy jobs.

“We’re going to try to reach millions of people, Americans and people in other parts of the world, in order to mobilize an army of people who are going to demand action now on climate change sufficient to meet the challenge,” Mr. Kerry said in an interview.

The launch of the new group on Sunday comes as diplomats gather in Madrid on Monday for global climate negotiations aimed at strengthening the 2015 Paris Agreement, from which President Trump has vowed to withdraw next year. Earlier this week the United Nations found that the world’s richest countries, responsible for emitting more than three-fourths of planet-warming pollution, are not doing enough to keep Earth’s temperature from rising to dangerously high levels. Net carbon emissions from the two largest polluters, the United States and China, are expanding.

Sarah Matthews, a spokeswoman for Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign, said in a statement that the administration “continues to advance realistic solutions to reduce emissions while unleashing American energy like never before.” Asked to comment on the new bipartisan group, she also criticized efforts to force the United States to cut emissions, arguing “the largest emitters like China and India won’t do the same.”

Mr. Schwarzenegger in an interview this week dismissed as “bogus” the Trump administration’s argument that China must do more to curb emissions before the United States acts.

“I always say to myself, what is happening here? America never ever in its history has said, ‘Let some other country do something first.’ We should lead,” he said.

Mr. Kerry said while individual members might personally promote specific climate policy proposals, like a tax on carbon dioxide pollution, or the Green New Deal, the coalition is not aimed at promoting any particular plan.

“We’re not going to be divided going down a rabbit hole for one plan or another,” he said.

The Green New Deal envisions addressing climate change and income inequality in tandem, with a federal job guarantee and federal mandates like ensuring the country’s power and electricity systems run entirely on renewable energy by 2030. The Sunrise Movement, a climate activist group that promotes the Green New Deal, has been critical of global warming efforts that do not embrace that vision, but its leaders held their fire on Mr. Kerry’s group.

Some members of Mr. Kerry’s coalition hold positions that many in the environmental movement oppose, like support for natural gas as a transition fuel from coal.

Combustion of natural gas emits about half as much carbon dioxide as coal and 30 percent less than oil, and its expansion is widely credited for helping the United States curb emissions in the past decade. It also produces methane, a fast-acting greenhouse gas with enormous short-term impacts on the climate.

United Nations scientists have said the world needs to cut carbon emissions in half by 2030, and must eliminate them by 2050 to limit warming to relatively safe levels. To do that, the United States would need to phase out all fossil fuels, including gas, as rapidly as possible.

Mr. Kasich said in an interview that he believed in finding a consensus among Americans to tackle climate change, and saw a solution in both putting a price on carbon and increasing the research, development and deployment of renewable energy. He also said natural gas would continue to play a part, especially gas produced by hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” which has brought jobs to his state.

“If I’ve got to sign up to be an anti-fracker, count me out,” Mr. Kasich said.

Katie Eder, founder of The Future Coalition, a network for youth-led organizations that helped organize climate strikes around the country in September, supports the Green New Deal and is a member of Mr. Kerry’s coalition. She said people who cared about climate change needed to look past their differences.

“While I may be disagreeing with some of the things that other folks involved in World War Zero believe, that doesn’t mean we can’t work together,” she said. “Collaboration is our key to survival.”

Harbour Air to test fly world’s first commercial electric plane

A Harbour Air plane can be seen in Victoria’s Inner Harbour in this file photo. Photograph By ADRIAN LAM, TIMES COLONIST

Harbour Air plans to test-fly what it calls the “world’s first fully electric commercial aircraft” on Dec. 11 at Vancouver International Airport’s south terminal.

The Beaver seaplane is retrofitted with a 750 horsepower all-electric magni500 propulsion system, Harbour Air said.

The airline said that the following has been completed for the upcoming test flight:

• All batteries are installed.

• A battery-management unit is installed.

• All systems are connected and tested.

• Power is turned on and static testing is completed.

• The plane’s propeller has turned using only battery power.

• Full-power test runs on the ground have been done.

• Wings are installed.

• Flight controls are rigged.

The next steps include continuing to check systems, and testing to ensure crews are prepared.

Harbour Air’s 450 employees operate up to 300 daily flights using 53 planes in B.C. and Washington state.

The company is a pioneer in trying to get Transportation Canada and the U.S. Federal Aviation Authority to regulate electric-powered, commercial planes — something that neither currently does. Harbour Air also says it is North America’s largest and first fully carbon-neutral airline.

Its plan is to eventually have a fleet of electric seaplanes, but it may be several years before any electric planes carry passengers for extended flights.

Harbour Air CEO Greg McDougall said current electric technology is only appropriate for shorter Harbour Air flights, such as between Victoria and Vancouver, and Nanaimo and Vancouver. SOURCE

Ford, Moe and Higgs to announce deal on development of small nuclear reactors

© Provided by The Canadian Press

TORONTO — Three of Canada’s premiers will announce Sunday a plan to fight climate change by working together on small nuclear reactors, a company that’s developing the technology said Saturday.

New Brunswick-based ARC Nuclear Canada said in a news release that its president will attend a signing ceremony Sunday between the provinces of New Brunswick, Ontario and Saskatchewan to work in collaboration on the modular reactors “in an effort to mitigate the effects of climate change.”The Ontario government said Premier Doug Ford will meet with Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe and New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs for an announcement at a hotel near Pearson International Airport on Sunday afternoon.A spokesman with Moe’s office confirmed the announcement is connected to an agreement on technology for small modular reactors, while a spokeswoman for Ford’s office said it’s an agreement to work together to determine the best technologies for the deployment of small modular reactors in Canada.Moe said earlier this month that nuclear power has to be deployed in a big way around the world to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, noting his province is well positioned to support more nuclear power with its large reserves of high-grade uranium ore.All three of the premiers are opponents of the federally mandated carbon tax.

ARC Canada, which has its head office in Saint John, N.B., says its mission is to commercialize an advanced small modular reactor that it says “provides safe, reliable, economically competitive and carbon-free energy.”

The company said it hopes the three provinces coming together will demonstrate the role the small reactors can play in helping Canada reach its climate change goals.

Moe has said that Saskatchewan will address climate change over the next decade by looking to carbon capture and storage technology and by increasing research efforts around small modular nuclear reactors.

However, the possibility of bringing nuclear power to Saskatchewan could still be years away.

After October’s throne speech in which the alternative power source was also touted, Environment Minister Dustin Duncan said Canada could see small modular nuclear technology before 2030, but it likely wouldn’t be in Saskatchewan as the province doesn’t have any nuclear sites, unlike Ontario and New Brunswick.

In June 2018, the New Brunswick government committed $10 million to help establish the province as a leader in small modular reactor technology.

NB Power, which operates the 660-megawatt Point Lepreau nuclear generating station near Saint John, has said the technology can be scaled for designs with an output of between five and 300 megawatts. The units can be constructed and shipped to locations where they are assembled on site.

ARC Canada’s website says its design “creates a ‘walk away’ passive safety system that insures the reactor will never melt down even in a disaster that causes a complete loss of power to the plant site.” SOURCE

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Canada’s most corrupt Premier: Doug Ford or Jason Kenney?

It’s a close call.

Since being elected, Doug Ford and his government have been embroiled in scandal after scandal. A poll conducted in July showed that about 60% of Ontarians considered his administration to be corrupt.

Jason Kenney now appears to be following in Ford’s footsteps, entangling himself in a web of unscrupulous behaviour and sketchy dealings.

Both Premiers have a penchant for shady governance, but who stands above the other as Canada’s most corrupt Premier?

Doug Ford: King of patronage and nepotism

Right out the gate, Ontarians got a glimpse of Ford’s proclivity for doling out cushy jobs and appointments to friends and allies.

In July 2018, Doug Ford rewarded his friend and former Progressive Conservative Party president, Rueben Devlin, with an obscure appointment that paid $350,000.

The Ontario Premier’s real troubles began back in late 2018 when he attempted to appoint his long-time friend Ron Taverner as the OPP commissioner. Ford’s government even lowered the requirements of the hiring process so that Taverner could be eligible. He would end up being handed the job but later stepped away from the controversial appointment after public backlash.

By the spring of 2019, Doug Ford had overseen a growing list of patronage appointments. His family lawyer was handed an appointment with a six-figure salary. Failed PC candidates received high-profile jobs in the public sector. Former staffers and lobbyists alike had their fair share of roles to play in Ford’s new government. Most notably, Ian Todd, a senior staffer on his campaign, was appointed to represent Ontario in Washington, D.C., a position which would pay him $350,000 a year.

Things came to a head in June of 2019 with the now-infamous Dean French scandal. French, the Premier’s chief-of-staff, was handing out public jobs to his friends and family. Perhaps the most shocking of all was the appointment of Tyler Albrecht, a university graduate who played lacrosse with French’s son. The 26-year old Albrecht had no substantive work experience, but he was a friend of the French family. That, it seems, was enough under the Ford government to give him a $164,000 a year appointment to represent the province in New York.

Ford and his government went into full crisis management mode. A cabinet shuffle, a promise to change the appointments process, and a 5-month disappearing act — they were all meant to make sure the public forgot about his cronyism. However, if the federal election results are any indication, “the people” remember.

Jason Kenney: A Graft-y Fraudster

Kenney was dogged with scandal from the day he became Premier. His leadership race was riddled with irregularities and an alleged ‘kamikaze’ candidate that ensured Kenney won the UCP’s top spot.

Shortly after arriving in office, Kenney announced a wave of patronage appointments, packing Alberta’s public boards, agencies, and commissions with UCP loyalists. Failed candidates, donors, and campaign staffers all got a piece of the pie. Instead of spreading out his patronage like Ford, Kenney rammed his crony appointments through in one blow.

Then came the news that Kenney had used $16,000 in public funds to fly fellow Conservative Premiers on private jets. The misuse of taxpayer dollars to facilitate a partisan photo-op was just the beginning of Kenney’s most recent problems.

Shortly after, his closest advisor came under fire for using public funds to pay for trips to London, fancy dinners, and luxury hotel accommodations. In the span of a few months, Kenney’s right-hand man spent $45,000 on just four trips to the United Kingdom.

On top of all this, there came the discovery of graft in Kenney’s inquiry on ‘foreign-funded’ climate activists. The inquiry’s commissioner had spent more than a third of his budget on fees to his son’s legal firm. Commissioner Steve Allan, appointed by Kenney himself, had given the firm a sole-source contract worth $905,000.

Now Kenney has fired the Elections Commissioner — the one man capable of thoroughly investigating the ‘kamikazee scandal’ from the UCP leadership race — and announced plans to roll back election finance laws and open a floodgate of dark money into Alberta election campaigns. One can only imagine the forms of corruption this wave of corporate money flowing into Alberta politics will create.

And the winner is…

While Doug Ford has a head start on Kenney, it appears that Alberta’s Premier has learned from Ford’s early mistakes in his efforts to reward his buddies and political allies.

While Ford has thus far received more public blowback for his scandals, Kenney’s interference in election oversight and campaign financing suggests that he is — shockingly — already overtaking Ford as Canada’s most corrupt Premier. SOURCE

 

Electrical energy can be captured as liquid air

The result might give grid-scale batteries a run for their money

In the past few decades wind and solar power have gone from being exotic technologies to quotidian pieces of engineering that are competitive, joule for joule, with fossil fuels. Those fuels retain what edge they have only because of their reliability. The wind may not blow, or the sun may not shine, but—short of a blockade or strike—a coal or gas power station will always have something to burn.

To overcome the reliability problem requires cheap grid-scale energy storage that can be scaled up indefinitely. At the moment, the market leader is the lithium-ion battery (see article). Such batteries—already the workhorse of applications from mobile phones to electric cars—are reliable, scalable and well understood. Most proposed alternatives are clumsy, poorly understood, unscalable or all three. But there is one that, because it relies on putting together pieces of engineering used routinely elsewhere, and thus proven to work, might give lithium-ion batteries a run for their money: liquid air.

At a temperature of -196°C, all of air’s component gases will liquefy. Doing this is a routine, electrically driven industrial procedure. Storing liquefied gases in bulk is also a routine piece of engineering. The result occupies a 700th of the volume of those gases at room temperature—so, when liquid air is warmed and allowed to expand, it does so forcefully. Using a device called a Dearman engine (after its inventor, a Briton named Peter Dearman), that forceful expansion can be employed to spin turbines, and thus generators, thereby recovering part of the electricity used to liquefy the air in the first place. MORE

 

Climate solutions for Nova Scotia?

The technical report from the Ecology Action Centre in Halifax this week sets out in some detail what it would take to get the province off coal by 2030. A one-two punch of increased energy efficiency and expanded renewable electricity supply results in a grid that is over 90% run on wind, hydro and solar. In addition to the 90% drop in greenhouse gas emissions from the grid, the scenario achieves a 48% reduction in personal vehicle tailpipe emissions and a 69% reduction in emissions from the chimneys and boilers of residential and commercial buildings. And all this by 2030.

The efficiency measures, and especially the deep energy retrofit of the buildings, make room on the grid for a growing fleet of electric vehicles and a massive move away from oil heating, still the largest source of building heat in Nova Scotia. Electric resistance heating is phased out in favour of heat pumps for space and water heating and this, combined with the building retrofits, allows renewable electricity supply to cover 90% of Nova Scotian’s electricity consumption in 2030. Wind generation doubles over current levels. The existing Maritime Link cable and a proposed new interconnection with New Brunswick allow more hydropower to be brought in from Newfoundland and Quebec. A combination of rooftop solar and a few solar farms round out the supply scenario.

We have the technologies we need. Innovation has opened a door to the low carbon future, if only we would step through it. The technologies included in the scenario are available and most of them are well established in Nova Scotia. The economics of the pathway are also fundamentally sound in the sense that large investments of capital now will be balanced by the savings in fuel and electricity costs down the road.

What does set this scenario apart is the pace of deployment. After decades of dilly dallying (I first engaged on the climate issue in 1988), if there was ever any slack in how fast we needed to move, there is no slack now. We must go big, and we must go fast. Quoting American climate activist Bill McKibben, “With climate change, winning slowly is another way of losing”.

The required investments are large, but so what? We routinely do expensive things; indeed, the entire low carbon scenario for Nova Scotia in our report could be implemented for less than what is routinely spent on single fuel and electricity megaprojects. The low carbon scenario described in the Ecology Action Centre’s report implies an annual level of effort about equal to half of one percent of the province’s economic output, less than the provincial government raises in sales tax every year. It practically pays for itself, even with our high-end assumptions about costs, even without taking any credit for the inevitable cost declines that will accompany widespread deployment, and even without putting any value on stepping back from the brink of climate disaster.

The challenges are not technological and cost, but financing and logistics. When we squeeze the pump handle at the gas station, or when we flick a light switch, we activate enormous organizational and financial infrastructure. Tens of billions of dollars of investment are made in some of the most expensive megaprojects on the planet, employing tens of thousands of people in hundreds of interconnected organizations in the public and private sectors. But to the consumer it is a dollar a litre or pennies per kilowatt-hour. We need the equivalent soft infrastructure for the investments required to respond to the climate emergency. There is no more reason, for example, why a homeowner should have to raise the capital for a deep energy retrofit of their home than they should have to take out a bank loan to finance the utility’s next power plant or the gas company’s next drilling rig. Innovative business models and financing methods are a key to victory in the fight against climate change.

“With climate change, winning slowly is another way of losing” — Bill McKibben

Equally urgent is the training of the workforce needed. We need a wartime level of mobilization of both labour and productive capacity. The residential energy retrofit program in Nova Scotia by itself will require a workforce of five thousand or more, including architects, engineers, building technologists and skilled tradespeople. We need this work force to be trained and mobilized in the next three or four years and to be at full force by 2025.

And we need the public investor to be fully engaged. The carbon transition is largely about making capital investments that will reduce expenditures on fuel and electricity. With the long-term cost of borrowing for the government well under two percent, the public investor can move this transition forward in a way that the private investors will not.

The Ecology Action Centre low carbon scenario for Nova Scotia released this week is just one possible pathway to a low carbon future, and it focuses on the technologies and their costs. We need many more such studies, but even more urgently we need innovative strategies for the financing and logistical challenges that will be present in any pathway that is an effective emergency response to climate change. The low carbon future looks good, certainly compared the future we get with climate change. Let’s go! SOURCE

Challenges in restoring Canada’s marine biodiversity

Weaknesses in Canada’s efforts to sustain healthy oceans need to be addressed. For five deficiencies, the Royal Society of Canada has options.

Photo: Shutterstock, by Pascal Vosicki

The coastal marine environment constitutes a biological, geochemical and physical milieu without which life would not exist. Phytoplankton and other microbes, the base of food webs, transfer mass and energy to organisms higher up in the food chain, many of which play key roles in marine ecosystems, provide important sources of protein for humans and contribute to socio-economic health.

Canada’s oceans embrace the world’s longest coastline, encompassing areas of the seas within the country’s jurisdiction that are more than twice the size of India. The oceans have long provided habitat for species of traditional and cultural significance to Indigenous peoples. Sustainably exploited and farmed seafoods have the potential to provide long-term, secure access to food. To fully realize this potential, the challenge lies in recovering and maintaining the health of ocean ecosystems. Canada has a checkered history in this area.

In 2012, an expert panel established by the Royal Society of Canada reported its findings on the impacts of fisheries, aquaculture and climate change on Canada’s ability to sustain marine biodiversity. Sustaining Canadian Marine Biodiversity concluded that Canada faced significant challenges in achieving fisheries sustainability, regulating environmentally responsible aquaculture and adapting to climate change. In its policy and statute implementation, Canada’s progress had not been substantive relative to that achieved by others, such as the US and the European Union.

The expert panel was not alone in its conclusions. Since 2012, the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development has been critical of Canada’s efforts to implement existing policies, regulations and statutes that explicitly or implicitly concern marine biodiversity. The Commissioner’s reports include audits pertaining to marine protected areas, sustainability of fish stocks and aquaculture (a topic also recently addressed by Canada’s Chief Science Advisor).

The challenges Canada faces today are as daunting as they were in 2012, perhaps more so. Less than a third of Canada’s major fish stocks (29.4 percent) are considered healthy. There are deficiencies in how risks associated with salmon farming are managed and mitigated. Indigenous traditional knowledge and co-governance capabilities have yet to be fully realized in ocean-related decision-making. Recently, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) highlighted the “urgency of prioritizing timely, ambitious and coordinated action to address unprecedented and enduring changes in the ocean.”

In their 2019 electoral platform, the federal Liberals committed themselves to better protection of fish stocks and marine habitat; bringing in a federal Aquaculture Act; transitioning from open net-pen salmon farms to closed-containment systems in British Columbia by 2025; protecting 25 percent of Canada’s oceans by 2025; grounding ocean conservation efforts in science, Indigenous knowledge and local perspectives; and pledging $255 million to establish a Canada Water Agency and other measures to protect oceans, fish and coastal communities. Funds were also budgeted for natural climate solutions, although no specifics were provided on their application to aquatic ecosystems.

Now that the Liberals have formed a minority government, the question is whether these campaign commitments are likely to be met and, if they are, whether they will be sufficient to achieve the Liberals’ stated goal: to “protect the health of Canada’s oceans.” To this end, the Royal Society tasked a policy briefing committee (made up of the co-authors and contributors of this article) with tracking developments in public policy since its 2012 expert panel report on marine biodiversity and with identifying the policy challenges and leading options for implementation that lie ahead.

In its November 2019 report, Sustaining Canadian Marine Biodiversity: Policy and Statutory Progress (2012-2019), the committee concludes that Canada has made moderate to good progress in some areas. Of overarching significance was the federal government’s 2015 prioritization of ocean stewardship and strengthening of the evidentiary use of science in decision-making. Examples of specific accomplishments are best reflected in changes to key pieces of legislation.

The amended Fisheries Act strengthens implementation of the federal fisheries department’s sustainable fisheries policy framework: for the first time since the original act was passed in 1868, it includes a requirement to rebuild depleted fish stocks (albeit to a minimally sufficient target and without timelines). The revised act also requires consideration of Indigenous traditional knowledge in decisions about protection of fish habitat. When making a decision under the act, the minister is now required to consider any adverse effects it could have on the rights of Indigenous peoples.

Amendments to the Oceans Act facilitated creation of marine protected areas that allowed Canada to exceed its international obligation to protect 10 percent of coastal and marine areas by 2020 (Canada now protects 13.82 percent).

Some progress has been made in strengthening ministerial accountability. This was achieved by the public release of mandate letters, which outlined the Prime Minister’s expectations and key priorities for 2015-19. Before 2015, ministerial mandate letters were not made public. These efforts to renew legislation (including consultations on a new Aquaculture Act) and increase ministerial accountability align with recommendations by the 2012 expert panel.

However, notwithstanding some progressive actions, little or no progress has been made to address emerging and longstanding weaknesses in Canada’s efforts to sustain healthy oceans. The Royal Society’s policy briefing committee identified options for addressing five of these deficiencies.

Ensure climate change impacts and projections are incorporated into decision-making and planning processes related to oceans. 

Climate change has ramifications for overall ocean productivity, species distributions, disease outbreaks, acidification, sea level rise and other ecosystem changes, with consequences for the wild fisheries and aquaculture that our oceans support. Protection of key marine ecosystems and the rebuilding of depleted populations can help mitigate climate change impacts. Failure to incorporate climate change in ocean-related policies will reduce Canada’s ability to address unprecedented and enduring changes in the ocean with the urgency and ambition highlighted by the IPCC and the 2012 expert panel.

Resolve regulatory conflicts of interest within Fisheries and Oceans Canada. 

The department has responsibilities both to conserve and to exploit biodiversity. The 2012 expert panel concluded that this regulatory conflict compromises the integrity of regulatory science and decision-making as well as public perception of that integrity. Each stakeholder (the public, industry, nongovernmental organizations, coastal communities) is placed in the position of having to ask, with respect to each regulatory decision, whether its own interests have been unduly compromised by the interests of others.

Limit ministerial discretion in fisheries management decisions. 

The 2012 expert panel found that Canada’s progress in meeting its obligations to sustain marine biodiversity had been impeded by the absolute discretion afforded to the minister of fisheries and oceans. Other countries, such as the US, have curtailed ministerial discretion on matters related to fisheries sustainability, limiting the ability of government to make decisions — such as increasing catch quotas for severely depleted fish stocks — that conflict with policy objectives.

Clarify ambiguities in application of the precautionary approach (PA). 

The PA provides an internationally agreed-upon template for achieving sustainable fisheries in the foreseeable future. Its key operational elements include the setting of rebuilding targets. The PA can be misused by any stakeholder intent on pursuing their objectives to the exclusion of others. Measures are needed to minimize the probability of misuse and misinterpretation of the PA in Canada’s sustainable fisheries policy framework. These measures should include providing unambiguous definitions of the roles of science, fisheries management and stakeholders in sustainable fishery policies and ensuring that science advice is always publicly available, enabling society to compare fisheries management decisions, on matters such as catch quotas, with science advice.

Advance and implement marine spatial planning. 

Conflicts on all coasts are growing because large infrastructure projects, fisheries, aquaculture, shipping and marine protected areas are using the same spaces. In addition, climate change threatens ecosystems and, by extension, coastal communities. Indigenous co-governance and co-management measures are evolving, strengthening the spatial protection of waters adjacent to Indigenous communities. Meaningful, respectful and coordinated efforts to advance and implement marine spatial planning have potential to mitigate conflict as pressures on the use of oceans multiply.

Strengthening marine biodiversity conservation strengthens the capacity of Canada’s oceans to provide ecosystem services that contribute to the resilience of marine life and the well-being of humankind. The previous Liberal government arguably achieved greater policy and statutory progress in sustaining Canadian marine biodiversity than did any other government. There is no reason why this progress cannot continue, and every reason why it should. SOURCE