The third week of January, I received an unexpected email message from the House of Commons committee on Fisheries and Oceans, inviting me to address the committee for its study on Canada’s Marine Protected and Conserved Areas. 

After swallowing hard, I realized that I had to accept, although recognizing that it might be the most difficult education assignment of my career. 

World authority

My friend, Dr. Paul Snelgrove, former director of the Canadian Healthy Oceans Network (CHONe) and Memorial University associate director of the Ocean Frontier Institute, is well-versed on the policy implications of Canadian marine science so I suggested I bring some deep-sea coral samples with me to illustrate for the committee what Canada’s Marine Protected and Conserved Areas can actually conserve, noting that I am a world authority on deep-water coral science. 

So, I dusted off my notes from training for scientists on how to talk with the media, steeled my nerves, packed up some coral samples and bought a ticket to Ottawa. As part of my preparations, I watched an online recording of a previous committee hearing and was shocked by the aggressive and disrespectful treatment some members of Parliament (MPs) gave previous witnesses in November of last year.

I thought seriously about cancelling. 

After I arrived in the country’s capital and it was my turn to address the committee, I passed around samples of cold-water corals from Newfoundland and Labrador waters.

I pointed out that each skeleton the MPs held had lived longer than anyone in the room and that some species live for hundreds of years, with some corals building structures that grow continuously for more than 2,000 years.

I explained the importance of corals in providing habitat for other animals, including commercial fish species such as redfish.

I linked the coral samples in their hands to the Marine Protected and Conserved Areas where they had been collected, and I described the importance of the conserved areas in preventing damage to the long-lived animals by bottom-contact fishing or other human activities.

I touched on some of the challenges with designing Marine Protected and Conserved Areas and some negative consequences of ignoring relevant new scientific information. 

When each of us finished our five minutes of prepared comments, it was time for questions for the four expert witnesses. 

Some MPs appeared sincerely interested in the science behind the corals and the Marine Protected and Conserved Areas and topics such as how best to monitor them, or in successes and challenges of local Marine Protected and Conserved Areas implementation.

But quite a few of the questions we were asked were simply antagonistic, with the aim of discrediting scientists or the organizations they worked for.

Some of their questions were deceptive, seeking to confirm an opinion that reflects a (woefully) incomplete understanding of the numbers around Marine Protected and Conserved Areas on the part of the MP asking the question.

Other questions were divisive, arguing that by establishing Marine Protected and Conserved Areas, Canada was selling out Canadians to the United Nations, or disingenuous, suggesting that Canada’s Convention on Biological Diversity commitment to protect 30 per cent of our lands and waters by 2030 is ideologically driven, rather than considering the scientific analysis.

After my answer to one question about the area of Marine Protected and Conserved Areas in British Columbia waters, the MP who asked the question rephrased what I had said, falsely claiming that my answer to his question supported his assertions.

Those antagonistic questions felt like political grandstanding for an audience that was not even present.

“Many of their questions did not seek information or understanding from the witnesses but rather aimed to push their own political agenda.”

I was reminded of the days of watching Rick Mercer’s “Talking to Americans” segments on CBC’s This Hour Has 22 Minutes. 

I came away from the hearing with the impression that much of the discussion was political theatre, and that some MPs only used the committee hearing and questions to witnesses to advance opinions they already held.

The politicians’ actions undercut the term “study” that was the intended purpose of the hearings; many of their questions did not seek information or understanding from the witnesses but rather aimed to push their own political agenda (they are politicians, after all). 

At the end, the scientific insights, or lived experiences, that we expert witnesses brought to the committee will go into the public record . . . and then what? 

I came home to St. John’s from Ottawa deeply discouraged.

Wake of 1992 cod moratorium

The following week, Premier Wakeham announced that the provincial government was withdrawing its participation in the feasibility study for the proposed South Coast Fjords National Marine Conservation Area (one variation of Marine Protected and Conserved Areas) on the southwest coast of Newfoundland.

The feasibility study for this proposed Marine Protected and Conserved Areas had been announced in 2022, the very same day that the federal minister of Environment and Climate Change had greenlit the proposed Bay du Nord oil project in the Flemish Pass.

The Town of Burgeo had been quietly pushing for the South Coast Fjords National Marine Conservation Area for nearly two decades as a means of sustainable economic diversification that could capitalize on an ecologically special region of Canada’s coastline to potentially bring federal government investment and ecotourism business to their region in the wake of the 1992 cod moratorium. 

“Newfoundland and Labrador has a dreadful history of ignoring scientific evidence about our environment, our fisheries and sustainable economic development.”

During his election campaign in the summer of 2025, Premier Wakeham had promised to kill the South Coast Fjords National Marine Conservation Area, and he intended to keep that promise.  

Like some other politicians in the Fisheries and Oceans Committee, apparently, Mr. Wakeham’s mind was made up, and no amount of scientific insight, economic analysis or feasibility study would change it. 

Ultimately, cancelling the feasibility study means not allowing questions to be asked, not allowing scientific evidence on the effectiveness of protected areas or economic evidence on their financial benefits, or the environmental and economic risks of inaction, to be heard and applied to our region. 

Newfoundland and Labrador has a dreadful history of ignoring scientific evidence about our environment, our fisheries and sustainable economic development — the most obvious example being the warnings from scientists about overfishing of our cod stocks in the years before the 1992 cod moratorium.

How long will our politicians keep repeating the same mistakes?