SeaBlue Canada Submission on the Regional Assessment of Offshore Wind Development in Newfoundland and Labrador Committee's Draft Report: Protecting Marine Protected Areas

The attached is a submission by the SeaBlue Canada coalition to the Newfoundland and Labrador Regional Assessment Committee (the “Committee”) regarding its Regional Assessment of Offshore Wind Development in Newfoundland and Labrador draft report (the “Draft Report”).

SeaBlue Canada works collaboratively to ensure that Canada’s marine protected area (“MPA”) commitments are ambitious, equitable, and ultimately provide meaningful protection to marine species and habitats. The coalition comprises the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, the David Suzuki Foundation, East Coast Environmental Law, the Ecology Action Centre, Nature Canada, Oceans North, West Coast Environmental Law, and WWF-Canada. 

SeaBlue Canada supports the development of offshore renewable energy (“ORE”) projects as part of the clean energy response to the climate crisis. However, ORE projects, including offshore wind (“OSW”) developments, must be managed responsibly and sustainably to minimize impacts to the marine environment, and in a way that advances equity by providing benefits to local communities. 

SeaBlue Canada supported Bill C-49, An Act to amend the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Atlantic Accord Implementation Act and the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Resources Accord Implementation Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts (“Bill C-49”), which will enable the prevention or prohibition of offshore interests within offshore areas that have been identified for conservation and protection. Provisions of the amended federal Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Atlantic Accord Implementation Act (“Federal Accord Act”) will be essential to protect marine biodiversity and will help to facilitate the clean energy transition through development of offshore renewable energy while supporting the protection of marine biodiversity. The necessary provincial mirror legislation, Bill #90, An Act to Amend the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Atlantic Accord Implementation Newfoundland and Labrador Act is currently before the Newfoundland and Labrador House of Assembly.

For the reasons elaborated below, SeaBlue Canada does not support the development of OSW developments in legally protected and conserved areas in Newfoundland and Labrador’s offshore area. While we maintain a different understanding of the precautionary principle than that used by the Committee (see pg. 8 of this document) we support the Committee’s application of the precautionary principle, whereby the Committee removed a coastal buffer, marine critical habitat under the Species at Risk Act, MPAs including the South Coast Fjords National Marine Conservation Study Area, and areas near national parks and world heritage sites (i.e., Gros Morne National Park) as possible OSW Licencing Areas. We strongly support the inclusion of language explicitly recommending a set of actions that the responsible federal and provincial ministers and the Governor in Council (“GiC”) take, respectively, to ensure protection of MPAs now and in the future.