Please write a letter or send an email to your local MP/MLA and DFO and tell them that the PNCIMA marine planning process is important for British Columbia and that you want to be engaged.
Click here for a sample letter for your MP/MLA
Click here for a sample letter to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans
Find mailing and email addresses for your local MP
Find mailing and email addresses for your local MLA
Why is it important to do this?
A comprehensive planning process that meaningfully engages stakeholders needs capacity and funding in order to be effective.
Although an initial attempt is being made to engage with stakeholders at the PNCIMA Forum in March 2009, it remains to be seen whether this engagement will be meaningful and comprehensive over the long term. At the end of the day it is the people that work and live on the coast who will determine whether a marine planning process is successful, as it will be up to those stakeholders to implement the recommendations that are produced. Stakeholders therefore need to be a part of the process that develops those recommendations, or there will be no support and buy-in for the final product.
Ottawa needs to hear from the people that work and live on the B.C. coast that the ocean and its resources are important to them and that they must be managed sustainably. The capacity and funding required to effectively engage stakeholders must be made available.
