ENVI Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

COMITÉ PERMANENT DE L'ENVIRONNEMENT ET DU DÉVELOPPEMENT DURABLE

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Tuesday, May 15, 2001

• 0907

[Translation]

The Chair (M. Charles Caccia (Davenport, Lib.)): Good day ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our witnesses.

[English]

We invite our witnesses to the table and welcome them all.

As you know, we are on our final stretch in hearing witnesses on Bill C-5, for the protection of endangered species, or wildlife at risk, however you want to call them.

For those of you who were not able to hear witnesses last week, the blues have been printed and they are available. I would invite you to have a look at the exchanges that took place on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, particularly the ones with the Canadian Federation of Agriculture and the Canadian Cattlemen's Association, and others as well, because a couple of issues emerged there that you may want to keep in mind when we go into clause-by-clause study.

• 0910

Today we are very fortunate to have a group of NGOs. As they are listed on our agenda, they begin with the B.C. Endangered Species Coalition, the David Suzuki Foundation, the Western Canada Wilderness Committee, the Conservation Council of New Brunswick, and the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

We welcome you all and invite you to make a presentation, if possible a very brief one, so as to allow for a good exchange of questions and answers, which usually brings out what is not on paper and sometimes information and material that is very useful and valuable for the clause-by-clause phase.

Who would like to go first?

Mr. Smith of the International Fund for Animal Welfare. Welcome.

Mr. Richard J. Smith (National Director, International Fund for Animal Welfare): Thank you very much.

It's a great pleasure to be here today.

[Translation]

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak with you today.

[English]

I am the national director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare, and I should say at the outset that the content of my presentation today will probably be somewhat different from that of the other R.J. Smith who presented to you some weeks ago. It's the curse of those of us with common names that we often get mixed up. So just for the purposes of clarity, I'm the R.J. Smith from the International Fund for Animal Welfare down the road, not from the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C.

The International Fund for Animal Welfare was founded in Fredericton just over 30 years ago. We now have offices in 14 countries that work on a wide variety of wildlife protection initiatives. The protection of species at risk around the world is central to what we do.

It has long been a professional interest of mine as well, and one of the outcomes of my doctoral dissertation was the authoring of a COSEWIC status report in 1996 that lead to the listing of a freshwater population of harbour seals that is unique to the province of Quebec. So I'm pleased to see that the results of many years of scientific investigation on the part of COSEWIC members may finally be given legal foundation as a result of this bill.

IFAW believes that national legislation is only one component of an overall strategy to protect and recover Canadian species at risk that also includes the provision of stewardship opportunities, compensation for affected land owners, and a spirit of cooperation between the federal, provincial, and territorial governments.

IFAW supports Bill C-5 in principle and we support many specific aspects of the bill. We're concerned, however, that the bill as currently configured is manifestly incapable of fulfilling the promise of offering substantive protection to Canada's species at risk.

I'd like to focus on three areas that require amendments in order for this legislation to really do the job for Canada's endangered species.

With respect to listing, we recommend according COSEWIC's current list legal foundation as the list of wildlife species at risk, and appending it as schedule 1 to Bill C-5.

We also recommend the automatic translation of COSEWIC's future listings into law. Failing this, Bill C-5 should provide for species listed by COSEWIC to automatically receive legal recognition unless the Governor in Council deems otherwise within 30 days after COSEWIC's list is published.

It's difficult to overstate the importance of these recommended amendments for the credibility of the federal government's species protection efforts.

Failing these amendments, upon its proclamation, Bill C-5 will be an empty shell applying to no species whatsoever, applying to not one acre of habitat, and providing the Canadian public with no certainty regarding its future application, no matter how endangered—objectively defined—the species may be.

IFAW also believes the bill's provisions for protecting species and their critical habitats need to be improved. Our concerns with the current approach of Bill C-5 to the protection of species and critical habitats are twofold: the overly narrow interpretation of the federal role; and secondly, the discretionary nature of the protection.

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In order to rectify these deficiencies, the prohibitions of Bill C-5, clauses 32 and 33, should be applied across Canada, and be waived in provinces whose laws provide equivalent protection to the species. In addition, the scope of critical habitat protection measures needs to be broadened to include all species at risk that are within federal jurisdiction, including birds protected by the Migratory Birds Convention Act, aquatic species, and species found on all federal lands, including the territories. The protection of critical habitat in these broadened areas of federal jurisdiction must be made mandatory through an amendment to clause 58 of Bill C-5.

Finally, the application of Bill C-5's critical habitat protections must be made mandatory when the federal minister of the environment finds that a province or territory is not effectively protecting an endangered species habitat.

Finally, we believe the bill needs further measures to enhance public accountability. IFAW recommends Bill C-5 be amended to include a provision for third-party review in cases of government non-enforcement, using a negotiated 1999 industry and environmental NGO position as a model.

I'm sure you've heard some of these concerns with the bill before, and I'm sure some of these will be echoed by some of my colleagues. To highlight the changes that need to be made to the bill, I thought what I'd do is try to bring this home to some specific species at risk.

There's no question that some endangered species are extremely difficult to recover, and even after years of protected efforts, their situations provide little, if any, cause for hope. The North Atlantic right whale, for instance, which is often called the most endangered large whale in the world, is one of these species. This whale has enjoyed complete protection from hunting since the 1930s, yet its population has shown virtually no signs of recovery. Certainly some of the reasons for this are that this whale has an extremely long migration. It traverses intensively fished waters along the eastern seaboard, through some of the busiest shipping lanes in the Americas, and whales are killed each year through ship strikes and entanglement in fishing gear. This is a very difficult problem.

On the other hand, some species should be extremely simple to recover. One example I'd like to use today is the Banff Springs snail, a rather obscure little animal, but one that I think makes the point. This species was listed as endangered by COSEWIC in 2000. The entire global range of the species is encompassed by five small hot springs on one mountain in Banff National Park, and the elimination of threats such as the tossing of pennies into the pools' waterfalls and the crushing of snails by humans and dogs would go a long way toward securing the species' future. There has been some progress on the part of Parks Canada on snail conservation measures, but there are other species on federal lands that are doing even more poorly. The five-lined skink, a threatened population inside Point Pelee National Park, is one example.

The Canadian public expects the federal government to take the lead on the protection of species at risk. In recent polling, which we provided to the committee, over 90% of Canadians support national endangered species legislation. Given the important weaknesses in the currently proposed Bill C-5, not only will the federal government not be able to offer the assurance that its bill will provide the framework to grapple successfully with the complicated recovery needs of species like the North Atlantic right whale, but the Canadian public will not be guaranteed that even species with absurdly simple recovery needs, such as the Banff Springs snail and others, will enjoy even a modicum of protection.

The reasons for this, quite simply, are that although demonstrably endangered, the snail may never end up on the legal list of species at risk, because the existing COSEWIC list, under the current formulation of the bill, will not automatically be given legal foundation. Even if the Banff Springs snail is listed for the purposes of the bill, and even though its entire global range is encompassed by a national park, the discretionary nature of the bill's habitat-protection provisions, even in areas of exclusive federal jurisdiction, means that the snail's tiny hot springs habitat, which amounts to a surface area, I'm told, not much larger than this room, may never be preserved.

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If a species is in an area of provincial or territorial jurisdiction, like the hotwater phisa, another snail species in British Columbia, and the province or territory does not act in a timely manner to meaningfully protect that endangered species and its habitat, the bill is unclear on when and how the federal government would invoke the safety net and intervene.

In conclusion, it's been nearly 100 years since Sir Wilfrid Laurier rose in the House of Commons to support the creation of the Commission of Conservation by stating that “It is only within the last few years that... the nations of this continent have commenced to realize how much we have lost of our natural wealth”. I'm sure the committee knows that two weeks ago, on May 3, COSEWIC completed its latest deliberations, bringing the number of species at risk in Canada to 380. Bill C-5 has the potential to be a historically important initiative and a significant contribution to stemming what Sir Wilfrid Laurier called the loss of our natural wealth as a nation. But in order to finally overcome the problems in this bill, some significant changes need to be made.

The objective reality is that the currently proposed bill needs a number of specific amendments before the Canadian public can be assured that endangered species with even the most simple recovery needs will have those needs met and will be preserved into the future.

I'd like to thank you for your attention today. I hope to see you at the reception we're hosting this evening in the Commonwealth Room between 5:30 and 7:30. We'll actually have six scientists there who have dedicated their careers to the study and protection of a variety of very interesting endangered species, and I look forward to your being able to meet them and talk about their experiences in their fields. We have a surprise for you all, furthering the pairing of that we made of members of Parliament with endangered species last year. So we look forward to seeing you later on. It should be an excellent reception. Thank you very much again.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Smith.

Who would like to be next?

Ms. Kate Smallwood (Campaign Coordinator, B.C. Endangered Species Coalition): I'll go next, if that's okay with you, Mr. Chair.

The Chair: Fine, go ahead.

Ms. Kate Smallwood: My name is Kate Smallwood. I'm with the B.C. Endangered Species Coalition. The coalition represents over 80 environmental community and religious groups across British Columbia that are concerned about species and habitat protection and the conservation of biological diversity in B.C.

Four of the groups here this morning have come to provide provincial context for Bill C-5, the Species at Risk Act. The consistent and very insistent message you will hear from all five speakers today is that an endangered species law that fails to protect habitat fails to protect endangered species. Bill C-5 in its current form is such a bill. It fails to address the root cause of species loss and decline in Canada, which is habitat loss.

Our secondary message—and I will be particularly focusing on this—is that the federal government must show leadership to the provinces and territories with this bill. It has not done so with the bill in its current form. In particular, Bill C-5 fails to show leadership in respect of the listing process. It's political rather than scientific, and we start with no initial list under the act at all. It fails to protect endangered species and their habitat to the full extent of federal jurisdiction, and it fails to ensure species and habitat protection will occur in the provinces.

I've already submitted a detailed brief to the committee. Although it relates to the former Bill C-33, the concerns outlined in the brief are the same in respect of Bill C-5.

As I said earlier, my presentation today is going to focus on the need for strong federal leadership, and I'm particularly emphasizing two areas. The first is habitat protection, and the second concerns the two safety nets in the bill. Key changes in both these areas will have a critical impact on species and habitat protection in the provinces.

First, on species protection in British Columbia, I can give you some context as to why these changes are necessary. As I'm sure you're aware, B.C. has the most biodiversity in Canada, with more living things than any other province or territory. As an example, B.C. is home to over 70% of all the bird and mammal species found in Canada, 49% of Canada's amphibian species, and 41% of Canada's terrestrial reptile species. And with over 3,000 species of plants, B.C. also has the richest flora in Canada. So what this bill does or doesn't do to protect that biodiversity is of critical importance to British Columbians and, I would argue, also Canadians.

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This remarkable natural heritage that we have in British Columbia is at risk. According to B.C.'s Ministry of Environment, we have over 1,000 species at risk in our province. We also have two of Canada's foremost endangered ecosystems, the antelope brush ecosystems in the south Okanagan and the Garry oak ecosystem around southeast Vancouver Island. To put this in a context that may be more obvious, reflecting the significance of B.C.'s biodiversity to Canada, just under a third of all species on the COSEWIC list come from our province.

So where is the British Columbia government at in protecting this biodiversity? The answer is, unfortunately, we may have the most biodiversity in Canada, but the B.C. government has historically done the least to protect it. We have no comprehensive endangered species legislation in our province. Instead, the government relies on a disparate and piecemeal array of legislative and policy initiatives to protect species at risk. And as I will now show, three key government reports have shown that these measures are simply not working to protect the remarkable biodiversity we have in our province. The B.C. government, by its own admission, is failing on the job of species protection.

The first document to show this—and I can get copies for the committee, as, I regret, it wasn't included with my brief—was an internal memorandum from the Ministry of Environment in 1997. It was in response to a failing grade awarded the province in a national report card. The conclusion was that B.C. was failing on the job of species protection. This was followed up last year with B.C.'s state of environment reporting for 2000. In the highlight section, looking over all the environmental indicators, the conclusion was that the poorest performance has been in the protection of natural diversity. Numbers of species at risk have gone up, range of species at risk has gone down.

The report also highlighted that although there are some measures available in British Columbia to protect species at risk, they're not being implemented. The same comment—and this is covered in detail in the brief—was in the 1999 Forest Practices Board annual report, when the retiring chairman said that important environmental resources and values in the forest, wildlife, scenery, and recreational values are still not adequately protected in British Columbia. And the reason, he goes on to say, is that the measures may be there, but they're not being enforced.

So what we have in the province with the most biodiversity in Canada is a failing performance in protecting it. And if this isn't a strong reason for the committee as to why we need strong federal leadership and strong federal endangered species legislation, I don't know what is. In particular, I hope this is a really strong argument as to why both safety nets in the bill should be mandatory.

So what will this bill do in its current form to protect species at risk and their habitat in British Columbia? The answer, sadly, is extremely little. Why? Because for all listed species, other than aquatic species or migratory birds listed under the Migratory Bird Convention Act, the key prohibitions will only apply to the 1% of our province that is federal land. By way of example, unless the Vancouver Island marmot wanders into a post office, a military base, an airport, or an Indian reserve and builds its den or nest there, neither the marmot nor its den or nest will be protected.

So what changes can be made to this bill to ensure that B.C. species at risk and their habitat are protected? The coalition's consistent position since the first endangered species bill was introduced has been that the protection of critical habitat should be mandatory for all listed species on all lands in Canada. And the reason for this is obvious: if you protect habitat, the number one cause of species loss and decline in Canada, you protect endangered species. If, however, the committee is not prepared to accept this position, there are still significant improvements that can be made to the bill in respect of both federal and provincial species and habitat protection.

• 0930

There are two key amendments I'd like to focus on briefly. The first is full federal protection for federal species and federal lands. The reason we want this is obvious: the federal government cannot expect the provinces to do the job right if the federal government doesn't have its own house in order. This means amending the bill in the following two ways. Firstly, as to federal species, we would like to see the bill amended to specifically address transboundary species, thereby ensuring that all federal species, not just some of them, are protected. Secondly, we would like to see mandatory protection of critical habitat on all lands in Canada for listed federal species—namely, aquatic species, migratory birds under the act, and transboundary species—and on federal lands for all other listed species.

I fail to see how the federal government can expect much in the way of species protection from the provinces if you haven't set your own federal house in order and led by strong example.

The Chair: Can I ask you to wrap it up?

Ms. Kate Smallwood: Yes.

The last point, Mr. Chair, is in terms of mandatory federal safety nets.

The concept of a federal safety net is a good one. There are two in the bill in relation to the basic prohibitions and the critical habitat. Unfortunately, and this is our primary concern, both safety nets are discretionary in nature and provide no real incentive for provinces such as B.C. to come to the table.

We'd like to see the following changes made to the safety net mechanism in the bill.

First of all, as I've just said, we want the safety nets to be mandatory. This will provide the necessary incentive for provinces such as B.C. to follow suit.

Secondly, in determining if a provincial law has an equivalent provision in place, the minister should consider not just the prohibitions under the law—we have prohibitions on the books in British Columbia at the moment—but how the law is applied on the ground and how it's enforced.

Thirdly, and finally, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, there should be greater accountability in the process. The act should allow for groups—non-profit groups and members of the public—to request of the minister that a decision be made on the equivalency and effectiveness of matching provincial laws.

In conclusion, if these changes are made—federal house in order, federal species, federal lands, and the improvements I've outlined to the safety net mechanisms—this will make a substantive impact in terms of how species are protected on the ground in the provinces.

Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms. Smallwood.

Who would like to go next? Mr. Coon.

Mr. David Coon (Policy Director, Conservation Council of New Brunswick): Good morning, Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen of the committee. My name is David Coon and I'm the policy director for the Conservation Council of New Brunswick.

Today I bring with me a couple of cautionary tales from New Brunswick for your consideration during your deliberations. In New Brunswick, of course, we don't talk about how much or how big we are. Those are the kinds of things for the more fantastical provinces. But in New Brunswick we talk about how old we are. Of course we're the site where European settlement first occurred in Canada, in 1604. Fortunately, Champlain and Dumont moved across the Bay of Fundy the next year to Nova Scotia to take up residence there, creating the myth that New Brunswick is the drive-through province, which surely we are not.

We have had an Endangered Species Act in New Brunswick for over 25 years now, and I want to share a couple of stories based on that experience that I think have relevance to your deliberations with respect to Bill C-5. The first one has to do with the listing process and the second one has to do with habitat protection.

In a sense, much of what's in the federal bill mirrors a kind of philosophical underpinning or approach that's taken in the provincial legislation and that runs to the listing process. As the bill suggests, here in New Brunswick the decisions about which species provincially would be afforded a legal protection are made by government drawing from recommendations made by a scientific committee.

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Now, in 1996—well, actually in the late 1980s, I guess—the first shot at amending the legislation and revisiting the species that were listed in regulation at the time was taken, and a committee was established of both independent and government scientists to review, in a sense, the status of species in the province.

Let me say I'm a little uncomfortable talking about... These endangered species acts are a little bit odd in a sense, because they extract the species from its context, from the ecosystem to which it's a part, and it sometimes ends up appearing to the listener a bit odd when you talk about this species or that species. It's like talking about them as if they were products on a shelf in a Save-Easy or Superstore rather than integral parts of an ecosystem. So when I'm speaking of these, I'm thinking about them in the context of their ecosystems.

In any event, in the late 1980s the committee began its work and ended up recommending a total of 51 additional plant species to be added to the list for legal protection. There was only one plant species at the time protected, Furbish's lousewort. Of these additional plant species, in fact, only seven or so of them were designated as protected by government under the act. The remaining 44 were afforded no legal protection whatsoever.

This caused great consternation among the committee members and ended up in two of them resigning—the curator of botany for the New Brunswick Museum, Stephen Clayden, and a scientist with the Canadian Wildlife Service, Peter Hicklin. Ever since, the committee has been moribund.

As quoted in the New Brunswick Telegraph Journal in 1998, Mr. Clayden said:

They felt that by protecting a large number of species—plant species especially—it would put up roadblocks in the way of every conceivable kind of resource-based development in the province.

I have submitted a brief today, which was only in English, so it has not been distributed, but I have attached to that copies of the newspaper story for your reference.

It was made clear to us that there was subtle pressure even within the committee to do what was achievable politically in terms of what they would be recommending to government for protection. It seems to us that if the federal bill remains in its current form, it's going to be set up for a similar situation. Will we see members of COSEWIC feeling subtle pressure to favour this or favour that, which might be more politically possible to get through the political process? Will we see members of COSEWIC resigning in disgust because species that they feel deserve legal protection are not afforded legal protection?

We're really concerned that by pursuing this process of listing based on COSEWIC's recommendations, it will become extremely politicized and lead to what I call a carnival of lobbying, so that every economic interest, which perceives some threat from some species that COSEWIC is recommending should be afforded protection, will at that stage enter the debate and try to avoid the designation or listing of that species. And similarly, we will have conservation organizations, particularly those who have the financial capacity to do so, trying to advance their particular favourite species to legal protection.

We believe that this could be avoided if in fact this first stage is seen as it really is, clearly distinct from the second stage in the bill, the second stage being the remedy. What do we do about the species once it's afforded basic legal protection and that is subject to the prohibitions that exist in the bill?

So the big question is where do we find the flexibility people are so concerned about. Clearly it's afforded at the stage in the bill where the remedy is developed through the development of the recovery strategies, which requires cooperation among various players and anyone the minister feels should be involved; consultation provisions for the recovery strategies; a cooperation provision for the action plans that are developed after the recovery strategies; the consultation requirements in the development of the consultation strategies; the public listing of the recovery strategies and the public comment period; and then the discretion to the minister that he or she may create regulations to effect these components of the recovery strategies and action plans.

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If we think about it in these terms, we feel it is at the remedy stage where the discussion rightly should occur about what in fact we do about this so that we effectively protect the species and help it back on its road to recovery but do it in a practical way. We sense that too many people feel this bill somehow reflects more of an American approach, the American act, which is very rigid, and once its wheels are set in motion it's very difficult to change things and it does very little to address realities on the ground.

We think these two things, separated as they are in the bill, should be conceived of this way in your deliberations to avoid the politicization process by automatically listing of the COSEWIC recommendations.

I know I'm running short of time. I want to give one short recommendation or example on this, and then move on to the habitat issue, which is brief.

COSEWIC recently listed the inner Bay of Fundy salmon stocks, which are terribly endangered now. They happen to spend the fall feeding in my neck of the woods, southwestern New Brunswick, off Deer Island and Campobello. And if you're thinking of vacations this summer, these are beautiful places to visit. This is also the site of very intensive aquaculture development. Most of the aquaculture industry for salmon is there.

About half of the hypotheses on what is happening to the salmon address interactions with aquaculture in the salt water. As you may imagine, the industry would clearly be concerned—if the bill stands as it is—about avoiding legal protection for the inner Bay of Fundy salmon, rather than talking about what the remedy should be.

Finally, let me touch on the issue of habitat. I want to deal specifically with aquatic and marine habitat here, which is under federal jurisdiction, and how the bill in a sense sets itself up as subservient to the Fisheries Act, because of the habitat provisions in the act.

There are many examples of how the Fisheries Act is failing to adequately protect habitat for fish being commercially exploited or recreationally used. The best example in New Brunswick is on the Petitcodiak River in southeastern New Brunswick. What we believe here... I guess I don't have time for the example of the dwarf wedgemussel, and the salmon and smelt and other fish that are its hosts, but it recently was extirpated from the river and declared extinct in Canada as a result. Its hosts were eliminated because the fisheries minister failed to order the owners of the causeway there to provide effective fish passage.

We believe the endangered species act should remove the discretion of the fisheries minister—in this case with respect to habitat protection—and trigger habitat protection under the Fisheries Act, so this kind of situation doesn't occur again.

You can read the details later. The example is of the dwarf wedgemussel, a quite remarkable little mollusc. The bill in its current form would not have avoided the extirpation of the dwarf wedgemussel, because of the way it creates a subservience to the Fisheries Act in its habitat protection provisions. We say this bill should be amended to ensure it triggers the habitat protection provisions in a meaningful way in the Fisheries Act.

Thank you very much.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Coon.

Mr. Foy, welcome to Ottawa.

Mr. Joe Foy (National Campaign Coordinator, Western Canada Wilderness Committee): Thank you. It's a great honour to be here.

It feels a little funny to be here. My mind keeps drifting back to the forest habitats, the ancient forests of British Columbia I often work in. And now thinking about Parliament and the seat of government... It's pretty neat to be here today.

I'm representing the Western Canada Wilderness Committee. We're a grassroots, citizen-funded environmental organization concerned with wilderness preservation. We have 27,000 members across the country, and a further 30,000-person donor base. We've been around since 1980.

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We primarily work on protected areas and wilderness preservation issues. Recently we published a little voter card on endangered species, on making the endangered species legislation—Bill C-5—stronger. We've sent this out to our members, and I have to tell you that in the last few days in our office the phones have been ringing off the hook. There have been very few times we've done such a popular thing.

Our members are very, very concerned about the species, about the wildlife, about quality of life and the beauty of Canada.

I've read and heard much of what has been said to the committee, and I sat and thought long and hard about what we could possibly add to this discussion, but we're going to give it a try. We're going to focus on one or two species in British Columbia and our experiences with them, our time in the forests, sitting down on a log or a stump trying to figure out what the heck is going on.

There are many species at risk in British Columbia. Certainly not all of them are forest-dependent, but the ones I'm going to talk about today are. You've already heard that B.C. doesn't have an endangered species act, but we do have a sort of patchwork of regulations concerning wildlife at risk. One of the main patches I've seen in action is the Forest Practices Code. The identified wildlife management strategy is the prime mechanism under our code to protect forest-dependent species at risk.

You should know that it's B.C. government policy that whatever the code does to protect forest-dependent species at risk over the entire province, it can't affect the rate of logging more than one percent. That's really frustrating. It's like putting B.C. efforts to protect forest-dependent species in a very tight-fitting straitjacket. And when you feel passionately about wildlife—as the majority of British Columbians and Canadians do—it's extremely frustrating to know your hands are tied, that your government has tied the hands of biologists before they can really do their job.

We have some celebrity forest-dependent species in the province—the Vancouver Island marbled murrelet—and we also have probably one of the most well-known ones in North America, the spotted owl. And it so happens that it lives near my home in New Westminster in the remaining pockets of ancient forest, so I'm familiar with what's been happening to its habitat, since I've been watching it throughout my life. What B.C. has done is pitifully ineffective at best, and dishonest at worst. That's what I'd like to talk about today.

I've been doing a little renovating in my home and lately I've been thinking a lot about foundations. If your thing isn't built on a good foundation, it's hard to do proper work. And I have to ask you whether or not Bill C-5 is built on an honest foundation.

Does Bill C-5 come out of a strongly held belief that it is wrong, morally wrong, to knowingly push species into extinction? Is it being built and introduced out of an understanding that it is this generation of Canadians' sacred duty to do everything it can do to halt the current human-caused process of the extinction of species? Is Bill C-5 being introduced to the overwhelming majority of Canadians, who are going about the business of their lives hoping the Government of Canada is doing what they want them to do... They want effective legislation to protect endangered species and their habitats, because they understand it's the habitat that needs protection.

• 0950

Is Bill C-5 built on a dishonest foundation? Is this legislation aimed at merely calming the fears of a concerned public, while not ruffling the feathers of industry? Is Bill C-5 a public relations exercise? It seems to me in timber country it may be intended to head off international boycotts and market campaigns by calming foreign consumers' growing anger over the continued destruction of Canada's endangered species habitat.

I'm sad to say today that Bill C-5 as it is now written will do nothing whatsoever to protect spotted owls near where I live, because the proposed legislation does not make critical habitat protection mandatory, does not require scientific listing of species, and is too narrow in its scope and application. In fact, I'm here to say that in its current form Bill C-5 is more likely to hasten the demise of the spotted owl, because it will serve to aid and abet trade in their habitat—the wild forests on which they depend—by dishonestly working to calm the concerns of international buyers of Canadian forest products.

In our opinion, Bill C-5 is more about the optics of species protection than the reality of species protection. I've told you it's a great honour to come here, and it's sad to say these words, but it's even more sad and frustrating to watch the process of extinction unfold as I've seen it near my home.

I've told you the Canadian biologists who work so hard to protect these species are in a straitjacket—they have their hands tied. I want to read you a segment from the spotted owl conservation plan: “The spotted owl population is predicted to decline over the short term (20-30 years)...”. The population has a 60% chance of stabilizing and possibly improving. It's important to recognize that the spotted owl recovery team, the biologists trying to do their work, would only support a management plan that provided a greater than 70% chance of the population stabilizing. The spotted owl management plan is thus a compromise between economics and conservation, which may or may not save the spotted owl.

It's important for you to know that the biologists who put this together gave the B.C. government a plan that would work, a workable option, and the B.C. government chose an option that would not work—a lousy 60% chance of survival. Those biologists, the people of my region, we are all counting on effective endangered species legislation that lets the scientists, not the politicians, have final say when adding lists of species needing our help, that makes habitat protection mandatory, and gives citizens the right to defend wildlife in the courts.

We're counting on you to widen the scope and make Bill C-5 an effective Canada-wide law for species at risk. And while all this is getting under way, we're counting on you to put in place interim protection for critical habitat, or we may lose species because we weren't fast enough. If you can't make recommendations to strengthen Bill C-5 to make it do what Canadians want, then get rid of it, because in its current form it's worse than nothing.

Thank you for allowing me to speak today.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Foy.

Now we have the most distinguished former MP for Skeena. Mr. Fulton, we're very glad to see you again.

Mr. Jim Fulton (Executive Director, David Suzuki Foundation): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm very glad to be here.

Picking up on the words of Mr. Foy, if you took the time to get the instructions cabinet provided in relation to the drafting of Bill C-33, and the reintroduction of Bill C-5, you'd probably find those eminent counsels to Parliament who drafted this legislation had been told to make it completely unworkable.

I've never seen a piece of law so unworkable. It's conceivable that you could tie up three different federal ministers, who then consult with their provincial and territorial counterparts, bringing 36 provincial and territorial ministers into the process. So you have three federal and 36 provincial and territorial ministers, plus the entire federal cabinet, which means you could have up to 60 people involved at the ministerial level in making a decision about protecting a piece of habitat.

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One would have to believe that the Prime Minister's Office or the cabinet were demonic in doing this, but clearly a decision was taken to do nothing about protecting endangered species. This bill is unworkable. I don't believe it's amendable.

For that reason, the David Suzuki Foundation believes that all 142 clauses should be voted down by this committee. We believe this committee should in fact take on the kinds of power and authority it deserves, as you see under the U.S. system and other areas of the world, where you actually go out and seek a mandate from the public. You should take the power that Parliament actually offers committees like this to go out and speak to Canadians and consult with Canadians, get the mandate that's out there.

More than 90% of Canadians want real endangered species legislation. They want real protection for species. It's not here. I agree with Mr. Foy that if passed in anywhere near its present form, it will in fact lead to more extinctions and more rapid extinctions than having no legislation at all. Canadians need to know that.

In fact, it doesn't even meet the basic test of article 8(k) of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity. One need look no further, of course, than Paul Martin's famous 1992 paper on this topic to realize that this doesn't even meet the Minister of Finance's own basic tests. I think he should be sought as an ally in cabinet, because he certainly hasn't expressed that so far.

Budget 2000 of the Government of Canada committed less than $1 per Canadian per year for three years for the national strategy. Mr. Chairman, one loonie is not a commitment to solutions when we're talking about habitat restoration.

We put almost no money nationally into basic taxonomy and systematics. Half of all of the insects in the national collection have never even been identified. Very little work has been done in Canada to expand our knowledge on life cycles of the 70,000 known species, let alone to document the thousands of unknown and unnamed species, subspecies and populations.

Our inventory is still a minority of all species, probably less than 15%. Our blueprint of how species are interlinked and interdependent is practically zero. We know some details of life cycles of less than one-tenth of 1% of all species.

The Western Canada Wilderness Committee's canopy research platform in Carmanah was the first ever in a temperate rain forest. Dr. Neville Winchester has found dozens and maybe hundreds of new species.

Since Canada committed itself to enacting an endangered species law in 1992, 149 species have been added to COSEWIC's list. Earlier this month, the Canadian Wildlife Service released their report, Wild Species 2000, in which they conclude that only 65% of Canadian wildlife species can be considered secure in their survival.

An eminent scientist in the field of biodiversity, who is associated with the David Suzuki Foundation, is Dr. Edward O. Wilson from Harvard. Almost a decade ago he estimated the grand total of living species to fall somewhere between 10 million and 100 million. The point he always makes on these numbers, however, is the importance of the relative abundance of species. Wilson's term for this is “equitability”.

Rare species tend to be genetically impoverished. If anything can be left from my presentation today, I want you to think about that: rare species tend to be genetically impoverished. We must be wary of only acting once a species becomes rare.

Life on earth consists not just of species and genes, but just as importantly of roles and relationships. We, as a species, are deeply embedded in that web of roles and relationships, except like a rogue cancer we are tearing at and severing those links.

Bill C-5 does not reflect any understanding of these basic concepts. Rather than ecosystems, it reflects a zoo mentality, saving a remnant if it doesn't cost too much. A few survivors of a species without their habitat are artifacts. An organism without habitat is not a full organism. A chimpanzee in a zoo is no longer a chimpanzee.

I must say, when David Suzuki travelled across Canada speaking on this issue last year, he drew overflow crowds everywhere he went. Thousands of people have continued to write to the foundation about this issue. I must say that almost all of them are astonished at the dithering by Parliament. Those who simply view the loss of an entire life form as a result of human action as the price of progress are misguided.

Politicians who refuse to act on the scientific evidence that the diversity within the web of life provides us with clean air, clean water, clean soil, and clean energy are breaking the trust of Canadians and Canadians as yet unborn.

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I urge you to open the Canadian Oxford Dictionary under H, and at the very least adopt the first definition of “habitat” it has there: “the natural environment characteristically occupied by an organism”. Even the dictionary definition is better than this bill, even its other definition: “an area distinguished by the set of organisms which occupy it”.

I urge you even more to take note of the definition of “endangered species” in the Canadian Oxford Dictionary: “a species in danger of extinction, esp. when formally designated as such by a government”. I think that really says it. If you use this bill to designate species, they will become extinct. This bill is that bad. This is tombstone legislation. It is so slow, so awkward, so inept, that it has catastrophic implications.

So what do we think you should do? We recommend that the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development go out to the public and hold hearings. Listen to Canadians about their love and concern for polar bears, which have lost 20% of their body weight in the last eight years. Ask yourself why is this, and where is that leading? What about lilies, puffins, woodland caribou, monarch butterflies, giant Pacific salamanders? And for God's sake, listen to the children, who really understand what this is all about.

This bill should lead with a legislated mandatory inventory of the health of the species in Canada's marine and terrestrial eco-regions. This inventory should include a forensic audit on the movement of exotic and invasive species and pollution. In the face of accelerating global warming and pollution, this inventory is crucial to intelligent, informed policy-making for resource industries such as forestry, fisheries, agriculture, and for human health, water quality, and a wide range of activities. Now 20% of all plants in Canada are exotic, yet we continue to bring in alien species, such as Atlantic salmon into the Pacific, without regard for their ecological effects.

The powers that conduct the inventory audit and reporting should be through an independent body such as the Auditor General. And you, above all, Mr. Chairman, know how important small additions to what goes on at the Auditor General's office can be. Together with COSEWIC, it should independently produce its analysis on the state of species and make public its ecosystem recommendations for protection, conservation, and restoration. This independent scientific body should be appointed by Parliament for seven-year non-renewable terms, and Parliament should, independently of the Minister of Finance, provide the budget annually for this body and for the restoration program. The body should consult with the public and appropriate ministers federally, provincially, and territorially, and with first nations. Special efforts must be taken to recognize and affirm the constitutional rights of first nations to fish, hunt, trap, and carry on traditional activities.

Bill C-5 must include a clear statement of authority to invoke prohibition on the destruction of habitat critical to threatened or endangered species on any lands or waters in Canada and, more importantly, to conserve sustainable populations of all natural species. This constitutional authority in Canada is called the criminal law power. A mechanism must be included in Bill C-5 to allow such invocations by the scientific body with the support of this parliamentary committee, not by some vague group of ministers who have never shown the slightest interest. This standing committee has a duty to stand up for the over 80% of Canadians who want real legal tools to conserve life, not just crumbs.

Canada's environment has suffered for decades at the hands of weak and disinterested ministers of environment, fisheries, energy, parks, and heritage. The public deserves access to and support from this committee to advocate science, to advocate protection and restoration, to advocate the real picture on inventory, on audits, on timely plans to eradicate alien species, on timely plans to protect healthy species as well as to restore endangered and threatened species.

A Parliament that is relevant is important. Doctors don't come to the Minister of Health to establish a patient recovery plan. If a patient is suffering from lung cancer from smoking, the doctor doesn't consult with the tobacco industry about what to do. If forest companies in a province or territory are destroying the habitat of woodland caribou and those jurisdictions won't legislate real protection of habitat, then Parliament should act.

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Bill C-5 is a maze of phoney delays, short circuits, hand-offs, deception, Mickey Mouse science, false solutions, and general snivelling. In its present form it should be thrown away. It is a tiny shadow to the U.S. and Mexican law and it reveals the Government of Canada as an international Pinocchio for signing the convention on biodiversity and doing nothing at home.

We call upon this committee to build a real Bill C-5, a law that can and will protect all forms of life in Canada. It's your duty.

In summary, Canada's marine and terrestrial life forms require functioning ecosystems to thrive and survive. Ultimately, human beings are dependent on the web of diverse living things for the most important things in life: clean air and water, new soil, our food, and clean energy from the sun.

Protection of biodiversity out of sheer self-interest should be the foundation of any legislation. It is entirely inappropriate to divide up the ecosystems based on artificial political and historical boundaries. The federal government has a vital legal and biological responsibility to develop overarching legislation that respects the natural ecosystems of Canada as a whole.

To apply a legislative and regulatory focus to federal lands, which is only 1% of the land base in B.C. and 5% of the land base in Canada south of 60 degrees, leaves over 95% of our ecosystems to the vague patchwork of legislatures that have shown poor leadership to date. North of 60 degrees climate change is already wreaking havoc, and those legislatures now need the strong support of federal legislation.

Parliament must face the protection and restoration of life forms in the same spirit as the Criminal Code, which applies evenly across all jurisdictions, but is carried out by jurisdictions cooperatively. I understand Dr. Gibson was here last week and informed the committee that this is a legislative power, a constitutional power this committee could build upon.

Birds, insects, mammals and fish, even plants move and migrate across provincial, territorial, and national boundaries. The Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development must vote down all 142 clauses of Bill C-5 and go out to Canadians and obtain a mandate for a code to protect, conserve, and restore Canada's life forms.

The code's authority should be drawn from Canada's criminal law power and it should be exercised by an independent scientific authority. The larger COSEWIC body should operate through the Auditor General for Canada and report directly to Parliament. The purpose of this body must be to conduct an ongoing national inventory of life forms and to evaluate the state of each ecosystem. The mandate must be to maintain all natural populations at sustainable levels.

It is frankly irresponsible to design legislation that only deals with species once they are threatened, endangered, extirpated, or extinct. Preventative action will provide better, lower-cost, and more successful solutions.

In conclusion, this committee should seek from Canadians a mandate to be the body that has final authority for signing off on action plans for inventory, audits, and conservation plans. The budget for the independent scientific authority should be made annually by Parliament, not left to the vagaries of the Minister of Finance.

Parliamentary committees must seek power and authority. We urge you, with the support of 94% of Canadians, to independently draft real life form protection for Canada.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Fulton, for your moderate comments and good advice.

We will now have a round of questions, and possibly two. You have five minutes each, beginning with Mr. Mills, Monsieur Lanctôt, Madam Kraft Sloan, Madam Carroll, and Madam Redman, then Madam Scherrer and Mr. Savoy.

Mr. Mills, please.

Mr. Bob Mills (Red Deer, CA): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, guests, for being here and testifying.

I'd like to explore several areas with you, one of compensation, one of listing, and one of the safety nets. Let me start with the compensation issue, one that's very important, certainly, where I come from and to a lot of Canadians I've talked to.

You talk about a lot more sticks than carrots. All of us want legislation that works; we want it to actually save endangered species. I have learned in environment that you have to make a lot of trade-offs. It can't be all over here and it can't be all over there; somewhere in here is what will really work environmentally. I believe some of your comments are over here and will mean legislation that won't work.

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I'd like to bring you to the first question. There's an endangered species on the land of the farmer, the rancher, the person who is earning a living for their family. They are told that 20%, or whatever percent, of their land can no longer be used by them to feed their family. This might be the economic base of that family; it might mean that in fact they can no longer succeed in that particular operation. How do we handle that situation in the area of compensation? How would you handle it? It's that endangered species versus that family.

Mr. Richard Smith: In the case of the situation you've just described, our organization would have no problem with a fair compensation scheme ensuring that this family, this person, is not unfairly penalized for finding an endangered species on their land.

I think the discussions that have been happening on compensation are good ones. It's a complicated issue. We're on board with the idea of a fair compensation scheme. Clearly, there are few people out there who might be inclined to take advantage of a compensation scheme if it's not well designed. And that would have to be something to guard against. At the outset of my comments I indicated that we're firmly of the belief that this legislative package is only part of a framework that will ensure endangered species protection, and compensation is part of that framework.

Ms. Kate Smallwood: Mr. Mills, perhaps I can address that as well.

First of all, to reinforce what Rick has said, there is strong support from the conservation community in terms of compensating landowners. The equally strong concern we have is setting a precedent in Canadian environmental law that non-compliance with any form of environmental regulation is subject to compensation. So, absolutely, we believe that no private landowner should bear the cost for protecting endangered species. That's a benefit that all Canadians share. However, there is a really strong concern at setting a precedent for the first time ever in this bill that for non-compliance with environmental regulation, you will automatically get compensation.

Where do you draw the line? It really becomes the thin edge of the wedge. We could then say excuse me, we're dealing with something as basic as zoning. So our message to you is, absolutely, we believe very strongly that the costs of protecting endangered species should be borne by all Canadians, not an individual landowner. How would you do that? Would you not feel it should be an absolute right to compensation enshrined in this bill?

Mr. Bob Mills: It will be a last resort, because a large percentage of the landowners I'm talking about have a vested interest in preserving their land and they know how to conserve that species probably better than legislation will force them to do it, particularly without compensation.

Let me get to the other issue of listing. I was of the opinion, coming into this whole thing, that scientists and science should be in fact the ones who would be solely involved in that. And as my biological background would tell me, if they followed true scientific practices, that should be the way it would be. Politicians probably would be less trusted and less likely to have any input. I have come to an awakening that there's a lot of politics within science as well.

Mr. Fulton, you convinced me a little further of the politics involved. I'd perhaps like to know what Dr. Suzuki gets paid for what he does, but I know it must cost a lot of money for him to travel across the country. And he needs a cause to raise that money, and that requires a lot of politics within your group.

So I'm not sure whether or not I trust the scientists quite as much. Perhaps we do need that political balance, because at least we can fire politicians; we can't fire Dr. Suzuki.

Listening to a lot of groups, I'm coming to the conclusion that perhaps it is good to have politicians take into account the socio-economic effects, all of those other factors, because at least they're accountable. Some groups may not be as accountable, and some scientists may be looking more at funding their project than they are in actually caring about what the cause is. So I'd like you to answer that.

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The Chair: A brief answer.

Mr. Jim Fulton: It's a very important question, and the reason we've suggested that the framing be that the scientists be appointed to an independent body for seven-year non-renewable terms is that it takes away the likelihood that they're trying to feather some kind of a nest in that body, that they get to stay there if they act in one way or another for some particular body.

So we believe the scientists should be there. They should be there under the auspices of the Office of the Auditor General so that they're actually separate from but reporting to Parliament. But we believe the sign-off on decisions that are made in terms of listing and restoration plans, and so on, should actually come back to this committee, because one of the things we see as problematic in this legislation is that if it's just three federal ministers, then you have only one party that's involved.

One of the things that we think would be healthy for Canada for endangered species is to have the scientific body separate, to have the inventory and audit and restoration plans made separately through a body that reports to Parliament, that gets its budget from Parliament, but that this committee actually take on some of the power and authority that you see in the U.S. Senate and in the U.S. House, where committees actually have power—

Mr. Bob Mills: I would agree with you there.

Mr. Jim Fulton: —and they actually sign off on very important decisions. We think that's fundamentally important.

Dr. Suzuki's travel last year was funded by the foundation. We never ask for, nor do we ever accept, any government money of any kind. So it's the people who came to those events, who paid $5, who actually paid for the travel and all the work associated with that. At every location all across Canada and in the territories, there were overflow crowds. So Canadians care about this.

You may not support some of the things that Dr. Suzuki says or does. Nevertheless, he's a highly respected scientist and a highly respected Canadian, and he thinks this legislation is not worth the paper it's written on, that it needs to have real oomph, and that this whole committee, an all-party committee representing all Canadian points of view, should have the final sign-off authority.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Mills.

Let us remember that we are operating not under a congressional system but under a parliamentary system, which is quite different.

[Translation]

Mr. Lanctôt, five minutes please.

Mr. Robert Lanctôt (Châteauguay, BQ): Thank you Mr. Chairman.

I am somewhat surprised that as experts or representatives from such important agencies, you should be requesting federal management of habitats, which I feel is indisputably a provincial jurisdiction, for Quebec and other provinces. You want management and also a safety net. These are both areas which I think would infringe on Quebec jurisdiction. I feel that the other representatives of provincial jurisdictions should be surprised.

You may disagree, and the provincial statutes may lack teeth, but you cannot ask the federal government to manage, pass legislation or supervise provincial laws. You should probably be doing what you are doing here in a parliamentary committee in the provinces so that they can approve habitat management instead of asking another level of government which has nothing to do with the area to do it for them.

You want a safety net. You are wasting your time in placing an emphasis on a jurisdictional problem. Both levels of government will try to pull the blanket over to their side, and this is not the way it ought to be. You are asking for habitat management. Such a request is logical, because this kind of management is needed. We need to protect animal and plant species, but why waste time and energy when we could be asking for the protection to be introduced at the same time? There needs to be co-operation between the provinces and the federal government. We are in a system of shared jurisdiction where the environment is concerned, but there are things that are already clear and established. As experts, you are proposing things that will cause more problems or disputes. I find this surprising.

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As an MP, I would like to hear it said that both levels of government ought to co-operate to protect animal and plant species and provide better management of the habitats of these species. There therefore needs to be proper discussion, and such a provision ought not to be included in a bill like C-5.

I agree with Mr. Fulton. It is completely unacceptable. Yes, animal and plant species must be protected. I agree and Quebec agrees, but there are ways of doing it.

After making these comments, I will ask you the following question. The federal government speaks of the double safety net of the two levels of government that work in the same field of jurisdiction. What do you think of this? According to the Bloc Québécois, this lowers the level of accountability of both levels of government and seriously complicates the attribution of responsibility. Whose responsibility will it be, if there is once again an overlap of jurisdictions which I feel ought not even to exist? What do you think of that?

The Chair: Thank you Mr. Lanctôt.

[English]

Who would like to answer Mr. Lanctôt's question?

Mr. Fulton.

Mr. Jim Fulton: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I welcome the question.

I would urge the member to look first at the rate of extinction that's now occurring on the planet. It's 10,000 times faster than at any known time in past history—I'm talking about millions of years. What's happening now in the rate of extinctions is happening at a planetary scale. In B.C. we now have over 1,000 species listed at risk. COSEWIC now has up to 380 species on that list.

If you look at what Canada signed in 1992 in the convention on biodiversity, which was recognized around the world as really the direction in which we have to start going, we need to start dealing at the national and international levels. So many species are migratory, so many exotic and alien species are starting to move, that this is something that nations have to move on.

I'm deeply sensitive to the issue of jurisdiction in terms of Quebec and all the provinces, but this is clearly a situation where plants and animals frequently move across international boundaries, national boundaries. What's happening in one ecosystem in Quebec might be occurring because of coal plants in Ohio or in Ontario that are affecting the forests in Quebec, that are affecting songbirds, that are affecting micro-organisms.

The constitutional power heads that there are for Canada indicate quite clearly that this is an area where there are clear opportunities for federal jurisdiction. There needs to be a safety net, because there is no serious foundation for endangered species that is working at the provincial or territorial level.

So there needs to be, and Canadians in Quebec and in all the provinces and north of 60 degrees have said over and over again, at levels in excess of 80%, yes, we want federal action, national leadership of Canada operating within our national boundaries, our continental boundaries, but also operating internationally.

If hearings were held across Quebec and the question was seriously asked of parliamentarians, if this committee went to Quebec, I believe more than 80% of Quebeckers would say yes, there needs to be national leadership from Ottawa on this issue. I think it's very different from other jurisdictional battles.

The Chair: Briefly, Mr. Foy.

Mr. Joe Foy: As I said in my presentation, it's hard to watch, in the forests around where I live, species like the spotted owl being driven to the ground. We will not have the spotted owl. And it's not just the owl in my region; it means if we don't have the owl, we don't have the ancient forest ecosystem and a whole bunch of species, including species we don't even know exist yet—the insects in the canopies. They go down too.

It particularly bothers me that the federal government of Canada goes to the international markets and tells consumers that it's okay to buy timber from this country when I know it's spattered with the blood of owls, grizzly bears, and God knows what else, because we don't have endangered species legislation. If the federal government is going to go out and spend my taxpayer dollars to peddle and sell the habitat of endangered species, I need to know.

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They have a moral obligation to tell the consumer that they are also guaranteeing that it's not ruining the environment where they live, and by the way, ruining the planet's environment, because every nation and every jurisdiction that depletes the natural biodiversity of this planet affects every citizen on this planet. So when our federal government makes claims that it's safe to buy Canadian wood, they must, in my opinion, take all actions they can to make sure those claims are true. Were they to do that, I would be out there helping them sell it. But they haven't.

[Translation]

The Chair: Thank you Mr. Lanctôt.

[English]

Madam Kraft Sloan, please.

Mrs. Karen Kraft Sloan (York North, Lib.): Thank you very much.

Mr. Foy, please pass on my best wishes to Adrianne. I'm sure this is a very exciting day for her. We will all be looking forward to the results in the B.C. election, to see how things are going to turn out.

I'm a third-time member of this committee, looking at this bill for the third time, and while witnesses express themselves in different ways, the message is essentially the same, certainly from the majority of witnesses who have come before the committee. It boggles my mind as to how bad this bill is and why we are where we are, considering that there is such huge widespread support for good endangered species legislation that makes biological sense.

While we don't have the same system as in the United States, a lot of people are talking about parliamentary reform, but what they forget is that members have the ability to vote their conscience, regardless of what side of the table they sit on. The testimony we've heard is overwhelmingly in support of making a better bill, and there are so many areas of agreement among a broad spectrum of witnesses. So I have a huge level of frustration with the bill and, as a CEPA survivor, with what might happen in the amending process.

I do have a question on the issue of compensation. A lot of concerns have been flagged on that, one of which involves the implications for other legislation, new legislation. And an increasing number of groups are sending letters to my office demanding compensation, for example, snowmobile associations—if we close a trail, they want to be compensated. So while it is incredibly important to understand the effects of species protection for private landowners, we clearly have to think about this legislation and the way it is currently drafted.

My question to you is, if you were a private landowner, what other kinds of provisions would you like to see in this bill to help you protect endangered species and to make you feel that the process is fair?

Ms. Kate Smallwood: The first comment I have, Ms. Kraft Sloan, is that if we put in an automatic right to compensation, basically for regulatory impacts of this bill, it won't just be the snowmobilers association, you will get a flood of requests. The precedent it would set if we include automatic compensation in this bill would be disastrous for environmental law in Canada.

The point Rick made earlier is that you can compensate in a variety of ways, and it doesn't have to necessarily be written into the bill. As to what can be done to assist and encourage private landowners, as Mr. Mills has said, most landowners—and we've seen this in B.C. in a number of instances—are prepared to go there of their own accord anyway. So you can look at a variety of financial incentives up front, and you can look at ensuring that the national habitats stewardship fund is adequately funded—and we still think it's too low. And there's education in the landowner, particularly the ranching, community as to the fact that these funds are available and support is there for them. So I don't think compensation as an answer has to be written into Bill C-5.

Mrs. Karen Kraft Sloan: Are there other provisions that are not financial that you would like to see in the bill for private landowners?

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Mr. David Coon: There are two things. First, it has to do with whether or not a reasonable remedy is worked out here. We're talking on either end of the thing. We're talking about the listing, and then we're talking about compensation, but it's the remedy that's the key—is it reasonable or not? If it's reasonable and it's going to do the job, then the situations you're talking about are not going to crop up very readily. And it's not just landowners, but you've got to think as well of the marine environment.

There's an example that comes to mind, the harbour porpoise and gill-netters, inshore fishermen who fish for groundfish. If you have a “one size fits all” solution, you've got a problem. In Maine the inshore fishermen were wiped out for their groundfish fishery because of the impact of gill nets there on harbour porpoises, the way their act worked. In Canada we took a much more sensible approach. The harbour porpoise is being protected by putting fingers on the nets and by avoiding the relevant areas at the time of year they're there. Inshore fishermen are still able to fish groundfish, if there are groundfish to fish, with fixed gear.

It's a question to me of whether the remedy is designed in an intelligent way to attain the goal, and whether, in doing so, it can be tailored to the situation as much as possible, to avoid those situations where there'll be demands for compensation, whether from a landowner or an inshore fisherman.

Mrs. Karen Kraft Sloan: Yes. Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you, Madame Kraft Sloan.

Did you want to make a brief intervention, Mr. Fulton?

Mr. Jim Fulton: The only thing I wanted to add—I think Mr. Mills has probably thought of this too—is that there are a number of activities that are growing very rapidly all over North America. For example, birdwatching is now the fastest growing hobby in North America. Many of the things David was just talking about need to be built in as part of the solution. Where there are rare or endangered species coming at certain times through Point Pelee, you get the cooperation of the public and the parks. Canadians are really ready to move on this—94% of Canadians want real solutions here. We have to give them a legislative opportunity to do that.

I think compensation should be the furthest thing from your minds in the legislation. Put your interest and your legislative capacity into making sure everything that happens from those early warning signs from COSEWIC and from the scientific community is worked into solutions along the way. There may be some compensation way down the line to the family. We all agree at this table that no individual family should suffer as a result of a designation on their particular farm in southern Alberta. But we think properly drafted legislation would mean that would be an extremely rare occurrence. In fact, the legislation itself would find a solution before you got to compensation.

The Chair: Mr. Foy and Mr. Smith, very briefly, please.

Mr. Joe Foy: I have a short comment, which may or may not be helpful. Polling shows that one of the things British Columbians are the proudest of is our quality of life. When asked what makes their quality of life, they answer that it is the natural environment.

On a personal level, my family has been in British Columbia for something like five generations. Earlier generations of my family used to be able to go down and dig clams and have a big clambake at a local beach, Crescent Beach. Well, pollution has stopped that. Does my family get compensated?

The quality of life in my region is in trouble. I used to be able to go salmon fishing quite regularly, but overfishing and overlogging mean that the opportunity to take my youngest son, five years old, salmon fishing, because of degradation to our environment, is really low now. Does my family get compensated?

In past times we used to burn our garbage in a big steel drum. We're not allowed to do that any more. My family agrees with that, but we don't get compensated.

The Chair: Mr. Smith, briefly please.

Mr. Richard Smith: I wanted to pick up on some of the quite unprecedented levels of support that exist for action among the Canadian population. Presumably, a large number of the 94% of Canadians who want strong national endangered species legislation are landowners. I just want to draw the committee's attention to some of the polling numbers that exist—66% of that 94% feel strongly that we need national protection.

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Canadians are willing to make some hard trade-offs. We asked them: given a choice between endangered species protection or mitigating the activities of some industries, what would they choose. The answer was very clearly that a large majority would like endangered species protection. It's also very clear that this desire for endangered species protection is part of a real resurgence of concern for the environment in general. For instance, the level of awareness of the Walkerton tragedy right across the country is really quite amazing.

The last thing I want to say is that the reason I quoted Prime Minister Laurier in my comments is that his was an exciting time in the history of conservation in Canada. The Laurier government and the Roosevelt government at the same time in the United States stepped in at a very critical time for conservation in North America and really expanded the horizons of what was possible with respect to the conservation of wildlife.

I know this is the third time around for this legislation. I know that a lot of committee members might be a bit tired of this debate, but the Canadian public clearly is not. I would urge the committee to look at what is really possible with this bill.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Smith.

Thank you, Madame Kraft Sloan.

Madame Carroll, please.

Ms. Aileen Carroll (Barrie—Simcoe—Bradford, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm going to pick up right where you left off, I think. I'm going to ask Mr. Foy and Mr. Fulton to comment as well. So just give me one minute to get all my notes out.

Mr. Foy said that if we can't amend it, we should dump it. Mr. Fulton said we should vote down all 142 clauses of the bill, because Canadians want real protection for endangered species and 94% of Canadians need to know that this bill is going to do just that.

Gentlemen, welcome to Ottawa. If we dump this bill, in my view, the next one, if there is one, could be weaker still. So I don't think that's an option for the people sitting around this table, and I'd ask you to stay on board with us in that regard.

I think you said earlier that British Columbians are the proudest of their quality of life. But I'm going to ask you what they're willing to pay for that. All of you come and quote that 94% of Canadians are behind this bill... the Pollara polls. I too read those, but I have a sense that the framers of this piece of legislation predicate their views of what this bill has to be and what it doesn't have to be on the firm conviction that Canadians really aren't willing to pay very much. It's very easy to fill out a poll and say—like the warm and fuzzy stuffed animals that were given out last summer in Winnipeg—that yes, we want our endangered species; yes, we want all these things. Are you really willing to give up your instant gratification lifestyle? Are you willing to stop driving SUVs? I really wonder how much we've tested that.

I want to hear they are, because I want you to give me those kinds of tools as I go about the job—to come back to my opening statement—of amending this bill, because that's what we have to do.

In that regard, just before I ask you to come on, because it's what you have to say that I think is very important, I would say you do need to put a little water in your wine. I think you need to give us what you think are the most important non-negotiable amendments to make this bill fly.

I would ask you to take into consideration the remarks of Mr. Stewart Elgie, from the Sierra Legal Defence, when he came before this committee and did pretty much that. I ask you to tell me what you think you need in addition to that. Or can you live with that? Because that constitutes my point of departure as I move to put forward amendments to this bill.

I've said my piece and I'm delighted to hear you say yours.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Jim Fulton: I sat on this committee for 15 years, and I don't think this committee should sit around with legislation that's this bad. This is the worst legislation I've ever seen. It's unworkable.

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The first time the public try to use this for a serious situation where there was an endangered species, it would go bananas politically on those members of Parliament who passed something that's this bad. Canada, in my view and the view of the David Suzuki Foundation, is better off without this bill. Just stop coming to the committee, or vote against it or do something else, if you don't want to fight for something that Canadians want.

Canadians have made it very clear where they stand on this issue over and over again. Canada in 1992 made what I believe was a faithful promise to the world—the first developed country to ratify the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity. Read article 8.(k).

For nine years we have sat and have failed to live up to our international obligation. Canada lied to the world about what we were going to do. We've only now come out with a tiny tepid report from the Canadian Wildlife Service about the fact that only two out of three species in all of Canada are secure in their own habitat. This is a very serious crisis and Parliament should respond. Canadians look to this committee very seriously to come forward with solutions—with legislation that is understandable.

Look at the whole middle of this bill—how different ministers have to consult and then they have to go to their provincial and territorial counterparts and then it goes back to cabinet and maybe cabinet will do something. All of a sudden, as I said, in some case you could have 16 ministers involved in making a decision. It's ridiculous.

This is legislation designed to fail—designed to fail species and to fail Canadians. Unworkable directions were given to the lawyers to draft this legislation, and I think it's an abomination. I think you should fight very hard with your own constituents and within your own caucus and within this Parliament to get something that Canadians can respectfully say is as good as that of the United States and of Mexico.

This is bad, unworkable, unconscionably poorly drafted legislation, and I don't believe the scope is large enough for you to amend it into a workable bill. I think this committee would be honoured. I think the media would stand four-square behind you. Dennis would write columns day after day, saying this is a smart committee, a smart Parliament; they're going to get Canadians behind them and go out to the public about it. It's time to fight.

Ms. Aileen Carroll: Mr. Fulton, you have addressed in your view whether we can fix it or not. My second question was to you and then to Mr. Foy as well. Do you think Canadians—unlike the way Mr. Cheney has used Americans—really are willing to make the changes, to stack up their opinion polls with an ability or conviction on their part to live with the consequences that some of the act might... You're not talking to someone who framed it. You're talking to somebody who wants to fix it. But I want you to tell me that those stats are very genuine and people understand the consequences when they check off yes, yes, yes to all of the things that were asked of them. Give me the answer to that one.

Mr. Jim Fulton: Yes. Let me give you one example, and then give it to Mr. Foy.

Let's take the province of Alberta. When Albertans were given the choice of going to clean wind energy, when they had a tick-off on their energy bill where they had to pay more for every kilowatt-hour that they bought, knowing it was clean, green energy coming to them in their home, whether in Calgary or Edmonton, they bought all of that energy—bang, within a matter of hours of when it became available.

So Canadians will do it. I think it's embarrassing that at the moment less than a dollar per Canadian per year is going into dealing with this. I think it's a disgrace.

The Chair: Very briefly, Mr. Foy, please.

Mr. Joe Foy: Yes. I'll make it short and sweet.

As I've said, I think that if this bill can't be greatly strengthened, it should be chucked. I believe that, because I think that Canadians deserve a fighting chance. By gosh, if you give them that fighting chance, if you alert them that this thing is widely off the rails and you need the Canadians forward, they will come forward.

I've seen some heartbreaking things in my home province—over 900 people arrested in Clayoquot Sound. They believed in the protected area legislation, and people who really didn't have much gave it all to protect what was there. I've seen people do extraordinary things.

I think most of us in this room have travelled outside our borders. My wife is from the Philippines, and I was recently in the Philippines. I can tell you that what makes Canadians rich is what's outside our doors. When you step outside your doorstep, that's what makes you rich and wealthy. I think Canadians would go and have gone a lot further than you give them credit for.

• 1045

In my home province, one of the great movements forward we've made in conserving what's outside our doorsteps is some successful market campaigns—going out into the world and telling the world what happens when you buy clear-cut forest products from the province of B.C. That's really helped move us forward in getting preservations for all Canadians in the ancient forests.

If this bill can't give mandatory habitat protection across all of this country, Canadians should be told by your committee that it can't do that. Because if it can't do that, it can't protect what Canadians want to have protected, and worst of all, it could maybe keep a single key Canadian sitting on the couch and thinking things are okay, things are handled, there's endangered species legislation, so they don't have to get up off the couch, get out that door and protect what's going down. Because by God, it is going down.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Foy.

Madam Redman, followed by Madam Carroll, and Mr. Savoy.

Mrs. Karen Redman (Kitchener Centre, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairperson.

I actually have three or four questions. I'll make my first one to Mr. Smith.

It sounds to me like you're supporting legal listing, but actually reverse listing, where the COSEWIC list would be adopted and then there would be accountability for why they're not on the list. I'm just wondering if you can reiterate why you support that, given the fact that the suggestion in the bill talks about both the COSEWIC list being on the public registry as well as the one that's adopted by the Governor in Council.

Mr. Richard Smith: Well, it's the difference between what would be our second choice.

Our first choice would be the adoption of the COSEWIC list automatically as the legal list, which is what happened in Nova Scotia. Certainly I think the federal government, if it wishes to exercise national leadership, needs to do at least as well as the province of Nova Scotia.

But our second choice would be this reverse onus, where the COSEWIC list stands as the legal list, becomes automatically incorporated into the schedule of the act, unless the Governor in Council makes a deliberate public decision.

The difference between that and what's laid out in the bill is that it's the other way around in the bill. Unless the Governor in Council acts, nothing is listed. So even in the case of something that you can actually count with the tip of your pencil in a little tiny pool in the middle of a national park in Alberta, the Banff Springs snail—it could not be more objectively endangered—there's no guarantee under the current wording of the bill that it would ever be listed.

Mrs. Karen Redman: You would get comfort out of the reverse listing, given that in that situation, at least the government would then have to be accountable for why it wasn't part of the list?

Mr. Richard Smith: We would be more comfortable with that if it were clearly laid out, if the Governor in Council's decision had to be clearly, publicly reasoned.

We've laid out some other aspects of our recommendations for COSEWIC in the brief. I think the wording of the bill needs to be improved with respect to ensuring the most eminent scientists possible are on COSEWIC, and that there's a good mixture of governmental and non-governmental scientists. So we have a variety of recommendations to improve the workings of COSEWIC, as well.

Mrs. Karen Redman: Thank you.

Mr. Coon, you said that COSEWIC could be subject to intense lobbying on the legal consequences that are attached to species-assessment recommendations, but at the same time you're demanding automatic listing. How do you explain how COSEWIC would be shielded from the kind of lobbying that could occur, given the possible ramifications of...

Mr. David Coon: Well, of course it wouldn't be shielded, but it would be less subject to the pressures brought to bear than would our political officials, our elected politicians, because politicians are elected to respond to these things.

If the listing were automatic, the decision is made basically by COSEWIC, then any lobbying that's going to occur is going to be at COSEWIC. But it's a different kind of institution to try to get at from individual politicians, cabinet ministers, and MPs.

Mrs. Karen Redman: Would you not consider it more transparent to have politicians being lobbied, as opposed to scientists?

• 1050

Mr. David Coon: Not at all, no. I don't think it's very transparent.

The point is that if the focus is maintained on what sort of remedy is going to be developed to solve the problem, the lobbying largely will get focused there, rather than up front. If it's clear that's where the discussion occurs, in terms of what you actually do about the problem, then surely that's where the lobbying is going to focus. And that will be a transparent process, with the consultation and cooperation, the cost-benefit analysis, and all that's provided for in here.

The point is to try to remove pressures that likely will develop in the front end of the process, and I just can't imagine much focus being placed on COSEWIC in what we're suggesting here. I just don't see how it would happen.

Mrs. Karen Redman: I also have a question for Mr. Foy.

Clearly, there are species at risk right across Canada, and in large part, the reason we actually have species existing at risk is because ranchers, fishers, farmers, and even members of the forestry industry are taking a cautious approach. They're protecting species at risk and being attentive to their habitats. If we didn't have that voluntary stewardship right now, we wouldn't actually have species existing, albeit they are at risk.

We've had forest management people come in and speak with an equal passion to what you have about protecting wildlife, and they've talked to us about good forest management. Yet you seem to say that nothing would be better than this bill, yet this bill is predicated on cooperative voluntary measures by people on the ground as well as provincial and territorial leadership.

That's one of the strengths we see federally, providing leadership but giving people an appropriate role to play. Yet you seem to, in my estimation, refute all of that and basically put it as them versus us.

If I can go back to one of Mr. Mills' comments, if you take a very extreme position, you lose some of that balance that invites people to the table in order to participate. I would reiterate, I think that's one of the strengths of this bill, the fact that we are asking people to participate in giving backstops, such as the safety net, such as compensation, as well as fines and even court appearances and jail time if people knowingly destroy species at risk.

Mr. Joe Foy: I hear what you're saying, and I, and I think most of the people I know in the conservation groups... I mean, if there were one doughnut left on the table, it wouldn't be me who got it. If there were one bus seat, it wouldn't be me who sat in it.

Having lived in my corner of the country, as I say, fifth generation, it seems pretty clear to me we've already lost a lot, and we're going to continue to lose a lot if we don't draw some lines and hold them. I wish it were otherwise.

You know, I've grown up my whole life living beside the Fraser River. One of the problems or difficulties we have, and I think I first heard it best said by Dr. Suzuki, is that as individuals we have a hard time really getting hold of the change that's happening where we live, and what we need to do is talk to our elders, to generations that have come before us to really get it.

Perhaps because I've been lucky enough to live in a landscape that's not that far separated from when it was under the stewardship of first nations people, when the depletion was not the way it is now—and it's really only been a few generations that this depletion has been going on—it strikes me as particularly hard.

And all people, those in the forest industry and all the industries, are a lot like me. We want to get along. But it's pretty clear to me now that we're doing this, and without lines, I guarantee you the spotted owl is finished. It's finished. And when the spotted owl goes, there's the Pacific giant salamander in the same area. It will be gone.

• 1055

When we go on vacation down to northern California, we see carvings of grizzly bears. All the people around are really nice, reasonable, and friendly. You know what? That's all we're going to have in southern B.C., carvings of grizzly bears. We'll be getting along and we'll all be really friendly, but it's going to continue to go down unless we draw lines.

The sad thing is that the vast majority of people want those lines drawn, because when there's strong, effective legislation, when there are lines drawn, people don't argue. People argue when their legislators leave them by themselves at the end of a logging road without the tools to get along civilly.

Mrs. Karen Redman: If I can just make a comment, I think that this legislation isn't predicated on us all getting along but on the fact that there's a shared value in protecting species at risk in their habitat. What we have to recognize is that there are many people with that same vested interest. If we come up with solutions we can all work with because we all agree that is a desirable outcome, we will get where we want to go.

The Chair: Thank you, Madam Redman.

[Translation]

Madam Scherrer, please.

Ms. Hélène Scherrer (Louis-Hébert, Lib.): Thank you Mr. Chairman.

I am new to Parliament. I was elected recently and was particularly touched by the confidence and recognition that you expressed today towards the ministers by saying that there was arbitrariness and discretion and that we should perhaps exercise a certain degree of power. The ministers and everyone who was there were on committees. I think that they also represent districts where, like myself and all the other MPs, they probably hear representations everyday in favour of this bill.

I would like to comment on a point that was raised at the beginning by Mr. Lanctôt. This has to do with the various jurisdictions. Canada is constituted in such a way that there are ten provinces and the territories. In each of the provinces, statutes were passed. Both in committee and in my office, I have heard people boast about the merits of provincial legislation and the positive effects it has. I believe that the bill in question is not a catch-all, but the end result of all the positive factors in each of the jurisdictions, without any infringement of provincial jurisdictions.

Madam Smallwood asked how we could expect the provinces to get together in terms of enforcing their statutes when the federal government is not a leader. I would like her to explain clearly to me what she means. I think on the contrary that many provincial jurisdictions function very well and that there are positive elements.

Do you really want us to forget everything that is being done at the provincial level, and not give due regard to the jurisdictions that have been established and the laws that are currently in force and come up with a federal statute that will set aside everything that is being done at the provincial level? I find that a rather broad allegation. You began by saying, “How can you expect it to work at the federal level when it is not working at the provincial level?” I have the impression that there are good things happening at the provincial level. In my view, this bill was developed to deal with the things that were missing in each of the provinces.

To begin with, I would like to know why you have problems with that.

[English]

Ms. Kate Smallwood: I have two responses. The first one relates to federal jurisdiction, federally regulated species, and why it is agreed among the groups working on this across Canada that the federal government still hasn't fulfilled its full jurisdiction in this area. Currently the bill only addresses aquatic species and migratory birds under the Migratory Birds Convention Act. The federal government also has without doubt constitutional jurisdiction over transboundary species.

The committee members have been given a brief from two of Canada's leading constitutional experts, Gérard LaForest and Dale Gibson, stating quite unequivocally that the federal government has the power to regulate both transboundary species and their habitat as well as habitat for migratory birds. Currently the bill doesn't do that, so that's the first area of federal jurisdiction where the bill has not gone to the full extent of federal power.

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The second one relates to federal lands. Under this bill the only mandatory protection of habitat is for a species “residence” as defined, which is the den or nest. There is no mandatory protection of critical habitat on federal lands, and that is also clearly recognized as the second area of jurisdiction.

For both Mr. Lanctôt and yourself in terms of intruding into provincial jurisdiction, which is a concern both of you have raised, what we're trying to ensure—and my understanding is with the safety net—is not an intrusion but a compatible level of protection across Canada. I would love the British Columbia government to come to this committee and proudly say, we match what you have provided in terms of species and habitat protection, and we've done better. The message you've heard from three of us today with respect to B.C. and from Mr. Coon with respect to New Brunswick is that the provinces aren't there yet.

What we're talking about is a level of equivalency. Why? Because this is an international responsibility. The Convention on Biological Diversity is something Canada was one of the first to sign. That's something we as Canadians should be proud of, but the language Mr. Fulton used, which I think is funny but accurate, describes Canada now as an environmental laggard. We're dealing with an international Pinocchio because we're not protecting the biodiversity we have here.

I do not want to see an intrusion into a provincial jurisdiction. I'd like to see some incentive for the provinces to come up to the plate and exceed it. That way we will have a basic level of species and habitat protection across Canada.

[Translation]

Ms. Hélène Scherrer: I would like to continue in that vein. Are you aware of what is being done at the moment? I am not speaking only of Quebec. I am speaking of New Brunswick and British Columbia, which through other groups came to tell us that remarkable things are happening in those provinces. Do you want this bill to acknowledge what is currently being done in each of the provinces and to cover only those areas that are not currently being covered by the provinces?

[English]

Ms. Kate Smallwood: In my testimony, I referred to the British Columbia government's state of environment reporting. They look at a whole series of indicators from water... look at some of the other ones they've covered: fish, wildlife, forest species, water use, groundwater, service water, greenhouse gas, air quality, and domestic waste.

Out of that entire review, their conclusion, which was presented publicly to all British Columbians—and I can quote—was that protection of natural diversity is our “poorest performance”. We've looked at all these indicators, and our poorest performance has been in the protection of natural diversity. A significant percentage of plant and animal species have been identified as threatened or endangered or candidates for these designations, and the range of several wildlife species has decreased. The key components of some legislation designed to protect natural diversity has not yet been fully implemented.

I don't know what else I can do to prove to you that my provincial government is failing on the job at protecting biodiversity. I would like the province I come from to do the job properly. The message I have to give this committee at the moment is that the province with the most biodiversity in Canada currently isn't doing that. If you limit this bill to just federal lands, which is only 1% of British Columbia, you are not protecting biodiversity. I think the way to do that in the two areas I outlined is to do the job properly in terms of federal jurisdiction and to provide sufficient incentive through the safety net mechanism so B.C. comes up to the plate.

[Translation]

The Chair: Thank you Madam Scherrer.

[English]

Mr. Savoy.

Mr. Andy Savoy (Tobique—Mactaquac, Lib.): Thank you very much for coming today, ladies and gentlemen.

Mr. Coon, I'm interested in your approach to the legislation, your site-specific solutions. As an engineer, I of course like to look at site-specific solutions. When incorporating that into legislation, how do you—and anyone else who can add light to this situation—propose that we move forward? How can you incorporate a site-specific solution into legislation?

Mr. David Coon: It seems to me that the flexibility to provide that is already in the bill, in the design of the recovery strategies and action plans.

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Surely we've learned from the fisheries catastrophe on the east coast that centralized, one-size-fits-all management doesn't work when you're talking about ecosystems. We have to have the ability to tailor recovery and action plans not to the site perhaps, but at least to the regional situation.

I hearken back to the example of the harbour porpoise. This is in the absence of any legal protection in Canada. The Grand Manan Fishermen's Association and the Maritime Fishermen's Union, Local 9, on the Nova Scotia side took the necessary action, we believe, to protect the harbour porpoise in ways that were far superior for everyone, including the harbour porpoise, to what happened in the United States, which basically banned that activity and wiped out that fishery for the inshore fishermen—

Mr. Andy Savoy: So you're satisfied that this legislation will allow us to look at site-specific solutions.

Mr. David Coon: I wouldn't call them site-specific—

Mr. Andy Savoy: Or situational specific.

Mr. David Coon: —but I see plenty of flexibility here to ensure that happens. Certainly an amendment could be contemplated that would explicitly provide, so that it's in people's minds, for tailored action plans that are appropriate to the region.

Mr. Andy Savoy: Thank you.

Go ahead, Mr. Fulton.

Mr. Jim Fulton: I have just a very short supplementary on that, Mr. Chairman. I'll leave with the clerk a document we recently produced at the foundation that deals with a new way of looking at one of the biggest industries in Canada, which is the forest industry. This kind of process could actually be applied to the redraft of this legislation, because it's based on what you leave rather than what you take. I'll just leave it as an example of how some parts of this legislation might be rewritten, if you choose to go that route, to allow that to occur. I think it also deals with Mr. Mills' point that we have to take a completely new look at how we practise, whether it's in the petroleum industry, agriculture, or forestry. It's based more on what we leave rather than on what we take. So I'll leave this with you. It's a quick and easy read.

Mr. Andy Savoy: Thank you very much.

My second question, which is addressed to Mr. Fulton and Mr. Foy, has to do with the U.S. legislation. I see that you're an opponent of the U.S. legislation. How would you amend it if you had the opportunity? What are your feelings on compensation? Of course the U.S. legislation doesn't deal with compensation. It deals strictly with punitive measures.

Mr. Jim Fulton: I think there are problems with the ESA. It's not an ideal piece of legislation. It's certainly much stronger than what we're talking about here today.

On the issue of compensation, as I said, I think legislation can be drafted that's much more solutions oriented in terms of how you actually do the assessment as to what are the critical habitat features involved in maintaining a natural and sustainable population. I think as that's intelligently worked out on a much more rapid timeframe... The timeframes in here are quite preposterous in some senses, allowing years and years and years for an emergency situation to drag on when there might be a practical solution that could be applied.

I think we should make it quite clear, at least in the preamble to endangered species legislation, to all resource users in Canada that we have to start looking at what we leave and doing a proper inventory and audit. The example I use is how is it possible that right here in the national capital only half of the insects in our national insect collection are even named? Is that the best we can do? I think we have to ask ourselves if we're really doing enough on inventory, audit, and restoration. Let's not wait until what Dr. E.O. Wilson warns us of. Let's not wait until we're dealing with endangered, threatened, and extirpated species, because once you get there, the genetic question really becomes, does the most valuable investment we can make lie in protecting organisms right before they blink out, as scientists call it?

Mr. Andy Savoy: Do I have time for one more, Mr. Chair?

The Chair: Yes.

Mr. Andy Savoy: This question is for anybody who wants to answer. As politicians we have to look at the socio-economic impacts of our decisions. There have been some concerns about the listing process, scientific versus political. If it were scientific, how would you take into account the socio-economic factors? They definitely have to be taken into account. You can't disregard them. Are there any solutions in that regard?

Ms. Kate Smallwood: The consistent platform from the environmental community is that you need to separate the issue of if you protect the species from how you protect the species. Listing is the prerequisite to protection under this bill, so we don't want to see it politicized with socio-economic factors coming in at that stage.

• 1110

The appropriate time, when you have all interested parties at the table, is at the stage, as David and Rick have said, when you look at how you protect the species, and that's recovery. We're not saying don't consider socio-economic impacts. In modern-day life that's part of making political decisions. We're saying that the time to make that decision is when you decide how you're going to protect the species in its habitat, and that's at the recovery stage, not listing.

Mr. Richard Smith: If I can just follow up on that, and getting back to something Mr. Mills asked at the beginning, of course there are disagreements within COSEWIC about the status a species should have, but the reason the COSEWIC process is preferred when it comes to making decisions about listing is that it's a methodical process, it's peer-reviewed, and it's based on objective criteria. Either there are 350 right whales in the north Atlantic or there are not. We can have some disagreement about the count, but at the end of the day the criteria used to evaluate that species are simple, clear, and objective.

The very foundation of this whole process has to be a science-based listing process. Quite frankly, there's no way we could support a piece of legislation that had anything other than that, and it would also be indefensible to the Canadian public.

Mr. Andy Savoy: But with a variety of renewal mechanisms, let's say, which would be negotiated. You're saying that they should all be listed based on scientific data, which is fine, but depending on the socio-economic factors and the level of endangerment, let's say, you could look at a variety of solutions. Is that what you're saying?

Mr. Richard Smith: That's right. I think it's useful to think of this as a two-part process. We need to have those hard discussions about trade-offs between what's necessary for the survival of the species and socio-economic considerations. That needs to happen with different stakeholders around the table. The only context in which to have that discussion is in the recovery phase of the species protection process, not in the listing phase.

Mr. Andy Savoy: But this totally flies in the face of the U.S. legislation. In the U.S. we see situations such as in the cattlemen producers' magazine—I forget what it's called—where an advertisement says 320,000 acres for sale, so much scrubland, so much grassland, and guaranteed not to have endangered species on this property. You know why it says that. It's because they've been eradicated. I don't want to be responsible for putting in place legislation that leads to that. I agree with the situational analysis. I'm really concerned about the U.S. approach. You cited the U.S. approach, Mr. Fulton.

Mr. Jim Fulton: Just for the record, all I was saying is that the U.S. law and the Mexican law are significantly stronger. The process is clearer. The public in Mexico and in the United States actually know they have a piece of legislation that has some functioning equipment and teeth in it. This has neither. This is dysfunctional legislation.

If someone from anywhere in Canada who had a peer-reviewed document that either had or even hadn't been to COSEWIC were to try to make use of this legislation to develop a recovery plan or anything else, they would never get anywhere. There are three different federal ministers to consult. Then there's the interjurisdictional consultation process. That part of the bill was designed to bog down a group, no matter how well-heeled, well-oiled, well-focused, and functional it is, from getting anywhere.

This is quicksand legislation for the public, and they hate it. I recommend strongly that the committee get rid of the bill and go to the public.

I realize, as our chairman pointed out, that this isn't a congressional body in the sense of the United States or even in terms of a committee of the Bundestag, but it is time for some parliamentary reform. I think this committee, above all others, on the issues of environment and sustainability would find a very welcoming public. If you went out and said you want COSEWIC to be moved over to the Auditor General's office, with powers of audit, you want Parliament to budget it directly, and in every Parliament the committee will sign off on the recovery plans and so on, I think the public would say thank you very much, that's exactly what we're looking to Parliament for. I really believe that.

The Chair: We'll go to Mr. Foy for a brief intervention, and then we'll have a quick second round.

Mr. Joe Foy: On the issue of the rancher selling property and saying there are no endangered species on that land, I talked in my presentation about the foundation of this legislation and do we really believe it's morally wrong to take part in this orgy of species extinction. I believe Canadians really do believe that.

• 1115

Currently in British Columbia I can think of a place called the Elaho Valley, an ancient forest. You have a company there that's pushing roads into a grizzly bear habitat. It's not fair to those company representatives who can quite fairly say they're doing everything by the law. It's not fair to the people who desperately want to hold on to the grizzly bear. It would be far fairer and far more moral to have a law that says you don't do that to this population of grizzly bears. Then that small segment of society who wants to behave in an anti-social, immoral way at last are outed; they're there and you can see them.

Perhaps your legislation hasn't got them yet, but you've shrunk the number. They're there for us to see, for Canadians to work on improving... in getting those folks. Right now we're losing habitat all over. Some of the people who are driving that habitat loss are esteemed members of our society who are destroying far more habitat through their decisions than that one rancher. How are we ever to get a handle on that without legislation?

We think we have less of a problem because you don't have an example to push forward like that. In fact, we have a greater problem because it's under... That's the risk weak legislation puts us all at.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Savoy.

I have two or three questions I would like to ask at the end of the second round.

Mr. Mills.

Mr. Bob Mills: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

One of the problems with not having compensation in the bill is that you're saying to the landowner, trust us—government says trust us. I think you have a big problem there.

Mr. Foy, you have a lot of negatives. You have a very pessimistic view of life. I would welcome you to come to my constituency, where we have a ton of voluntary programs, Ducks Unlimited programs, all kinds of positive things where landowners are cooperating and working hard to preserve the environment and endangered species.

I'm very proud to say that just last night in city council they voted to start using wind energy for the city's power supply. That's positive. Perhaps I just look at positives; I don't know. Perhaps you just look at negatives. There are some awfully good stewardship examples out there. Let's give those people credit. Let's not say they're all bad and killing everything, because that's not true.

Also, I think you really need to answer Ms. Carroll's question about the polls. Are people really saying they will go and live in a cave, at the extreme case of this whole thing? What are they willing to give up? Let's address that poll question, not today, but let's think about it and listen to the question she asked.

We talk about safety nets, the possible alienation of provinces and the federal government and territories and so on. One area we seldom talk about is the possible conflict that will exist between first nations and government legislation. Here's the problem, and again I'll put it graphically.

A farmer or a rancher is living here and he's subjected to this particular piece of legislation on an endangered species. Here's a first nation that decides no, because of traditional law and because of treaty rights, we do not have to protect that species. The conflict that exists there is serious and it will have serious repercussions. How do we deal with that?

Mr. Joe Foy: I'd like to address some of your earlier comments.

I'm sorry if I've given the wrong impression. I am a very optimistic person. I'm optimistic because I believe that Canada is about the finest place in the world in which to live, and that my particular corner of Canada, if you'll excuse me, is the finest of the fine.

Mr. Bob Mills: You'll get arguments there.

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Mr. Joe Foy: I also believe we have a tremendous future, because we have a good standard of living, a very high level of education, and a very good understanding of why we are the finest place in the world to live.

Therefore, we have to ask ourselves why we are the finest place. And I think it's because every Canadian takes it upon his or her responsibility, to a certain level, to pass that on to the kids.

What are we willing or not willing to live with? I'm not willing to live with polluted streams. I'm not willing to live with hauling out the old family books to explain to my kid what it was like to fish salmon. I'm not willing to tell my grandkids what it was like to have the hair on the back of your head stand up when you see a grizzly pawprint in the sand. I'm not willing to do that and I don't have to do it, and I don't have to live in a cave to do it. I'm educated and I've lived in this country my whole life and I know I don't have to live in a cave to do it. I absolutely reject that, and I know you don't believe it either.

With first nations we need to move forward together with respect. Whether it's first nations or provinces, I think Canada has to do one of two things. It has to say to its citizens and the world either we continue to sign these treaties on protecting the global environment because we as a federal government have the ability to deliver on our promises, or the Government of Canada needs to go to the world and say we can't deliver.

Ms. Kate Smallwood: The request came through earlier from Ms. Carroll and also from yourself, Mr. Mills, in terms of what the cost is. So we hear that 94% of Canadians want strong endangered species legislation, but when it comes to paying out of their pocket, where are they at?

Rick, I think you have more numbers on this.

A recent poll conducted on January 26 of this year is an indication that in fact, as we've all said, Canadians are really there. This is such an important issue to them that they will deal with it out of their pockets.

In terms of private land, rural residents were asked how much of their land they would be willing to leave in a natural state if that land were needed for endangered wildlife. One-third of the respondents reported that they would be willing to leave as much of their land as was necessary, which is incredible. Of those who offered a percentage, 67% said they would be willing to leave 35% of their land in a natural state.

In terms of impact on the economy, this is a question that is consistently being polled in British Columbia, and I'd be happy to send you the latest round of results. Canadians were asked about the limitations on forestry and mining from this legislation, because that may affect the economy. Respondents were asked how strongly they would agree with the law to protect endangered wildlife, even if that law limited activities such as forestry and mining.

Some 86% of respondents strongly agreed you could have a law that impacts the resource sector. There was no significant difference, interestingly enough, in support between regions or between rural and urban dwellings. The polling that has been done in British Columbia over the last decade, and I can't speak over the last decade for the rest of Canada, has consistently shown that British Columbians value, as we've said, the natural environment. And if there's a cost to protecting that, they're there. So I hope that helps to answer your question.

The Chair: This is just a reminder. Last week, when the International Woodworkers of America president appeared before this committee, he certainly gave us a completely different message about the legislation this committee should pass. I doubt very much that the poll you just mentioned would have given that result if the membership of the IWA had been polled. So there are two different bells ringing here.

Madam Kraft Sloan, please.

Mrs. Karen Kraft Sloan: Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Perhaps the reason your remarks are somewhat controversial, Mr. Foy, is because there is such a strong element of truth in what you're saying.

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I don't think we can hide from the reality of what's happening to endangered species in Canada and why it's happening. As far as I'm concerned, this bill misses the reality in such an incredible way that it really requires a lot of work and a lot of amendments to make it even passable.

One of the things that's been very disturbing through this process is constant references to the American Endangered Species Act. There is a huge mythology about that act. We've heard, particularly the last time around, from witnesses telling us about how communities were closed because of this legislation, stopping projects and all kinds of things.

The reality is that you have a greater likelihood of stopping a project in the United States by having an airplane falling on it than you do through the Endangered Species Act. So if we want to talk about reality, I think we have to look at what is real and what isn't.

Another myth that has been perpetrated is this idea of shoot, shovel, and shut up. I have asked almost every witness before this committee to provide me with documentation, particularly your namesake, Mr. Smith, from the United States, who claims that the shoot, shovel, and shut up syndrome is rampant in the United States. But I have yet to receive any clear documentation that can be substantiated and is peer-reviewed.

I'm wondering if you can provide us with any documentation on shoot, shovel, and shut up, because it's my contention that the provisions in this legislation are predicated on the shoot, shovel, and shut up syndrome as well.

Ms. Kate Smallwood: I'd be delighted to answer that question.

We've had that argument consistently, not just from the ranching community but in particular from some sectors of the forest industry. I want to make it clear that not all those in the forest industry are the bad guys here. There has been willingness to move through the Canadian Pulp and Paper Association, for example. We've asked the same question; we've asked them to give us the documentation to support that position. All the material I've found, and we've done extensive research on it, shows just the opposite.

There was a United States Congress General Accounting Office report done of five years' experience under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. Their research showed, as you indicated, that 99.9% of proposals under that act went ahead. Is it stopping development? No.

In terms of the argument I'm sure you heard from the IWA when they testified, that this will have a disastrous effect on communities, the same question again is give us the economic research to substantiate that. A consensus report by Dr. Tom Powers, and signed by 66 economists throughout the Pacific Northwest, said just the opposite.

Similarly, in a book by Alan Durning, Green-Collar Jobs, his position, based on extensive research, was that in fact the decline in the timber industry in the Pacific Northwest had little or nothing to do with environmental regulation. It is a change that has been occurring in the resource sector in the west over a period of years and is ongoing and starting to hit British Columbia now.

So I can tell you from all the research we've done, we found just the opposite to the shoot, shovel, shut up attitude or that it kills development. I've made the same request, saying “I'd love to respond to your research. Where is it?” Since I began working on this in 1996 I haven't seen anything in terms of peer-reviewed research that substantiates their position.

Mrs. Karen Kraft Sloan: Thank you.

The Chair: We hope to have someone from south of the border who has experience with that legislation appear soon before the committee.

Madame Kraft Sloan, do you have another question?

Mrs. Karen Kraft Sloan: I don't want to sound too frustrated, Mr. Chair.

The Chair: Fine.

There are three practical questions I would like to put to you. In doing this, you have to keep in mind that what this committee has been given is a piece of legislation that is probably an accommodation of a variety of conflicting interests. They come from a variety of sectors—the commercial, the industrial, the scientific, the environmental, and citizens at large.

What the government is attempting here to do is to pass legislation that in its wisdom it thinks accommodates the non-convergence of this interest in order to make them converge somehow, somewhere, in the not too distant future.

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Whether this is the desirable approach, whether this is the wise approach, is an item for discussion, no doubt. But the government has taken upon itself to accommodate these various streams of interest, and the committee will be able to operate within the four corners set by this legislation, as you know, Mr. Fulton, according to the rules of the House. What can be done within those four corners is something we will discover as we go through the bill clause by clause.

With that as a background, you should know that when witnesses appeared before the committee last week there was considerable discussion on mandatory habitat protection and the fact that in four provinces where there is a considerable agricultural sector, provincial legislation with mandatory habitat protection has been in place. When we asked whether that has caused the cattlemen or the farmers any hardships, the witnesses were not able to answer the question because they were not aware of provincial legislation of that kind in four provinces—namely, Manitoba, Ontario, Alberta, and Quebec.

With that in mind, the question it would be helpful to have an answer to today is on this argument we heard that automatic mandatory habitat protection at the moment of listing is not feasible because it takes too long to determine what the critical habitat of a species is. Would you like to comment on that particular observation?

Mr. Jim Fulton: I think there are others at the table who know more about that than I do, Mr. Chairman, but it seems to me that by the time COSEWIC and other bodies have taken a look at a species it has tumbled to the 1,000 that are rare now in B.C., to extirpated, to threatened, and so on. That downward evolution in terms of numbers of organisms is occurring, but if one were to establish the process I spoke about earlier, which is a better inventory, and that's what Canada committed to in 1992... We've just had our first one from the Canadian Wildlife Service now, yet they were only able to look in some cases at about 2% of the organism baseline in Canada.

So we don't really have a very good idea, but it seems to me that if we flesh out the inventory and audit function, then at the time of mandatory listing it seems to me there would be an abundance of information available on what the minimum habitat requirements are for those numbers of organisms that are left.

I think it would be a huge error to have any legislation that didn't have a mandatory habitat protection measure that came at the time of listing. I think we have to design what occurs in advance of a listing much better. In fact, as I said earlier, and David Suzuki believes in this very strongly, not enough thought is being put by this Parliament, or by any of the provinces or territories, on how we generate a situation where we're not getting to extirpation and not getting to extinction, and not getting such a rapid evolution of at risk.

I think that's where more thought in terms of the legislation needs to occur, and that comes with good inventory work and good knowledge of known species. This will allow the public to do what Mr. Mills and others seem to sense is part of the solution here, which is if you get the information out to the public that a particular species is about to become at risk and is about to have these things occur to it, then you can have a much greater and relevant role for the public to play.

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But as Joe and others have pointed out, the public has to know that at a certain point there are lines in the sand. Otherwise, it is going to be market campaigns, it's going to be a much more violent response from the public, as Canadians come to understand what the rate of extirpation and extinction is now becoming in Canada. There have been 149 more listings by COSEWIC since we signed. We were the first developed country—you were there, Mr. Chairman—to sign and ratify the convention on biodiversity, and where are we?

The Chair: We just signed it, we did not ratify it.

Mr. Jim Fulton: Yes, we ratified it following that.

The Chair: This is very helpful, what you just said. A supplementary to that question, Mr. Fulton, is this. Many witnesses told us last week that having protected habitat through mandatory provisions poses considerable economic hardship on those who are living off the land, and that is the reason we should go for compensation. Could you tell us whether those provinces that have mandatory habitat protection provide compensation, and whether we should assume mandatory habitat protection automatically leads to severe restriction in land use?

Mr. Jim Fulton: I don't know the answer, and I think you may have to look to your fine researchers to find it.

Mr. David Coon: Can I say something about this question of critical habitat, Mr. Chairman?

The Chair: Yes.

Mr. David Coon: I think it's important to get on the record that the critical habitat for many species will change through the seasons and will change over the various stages in their life history. It's a complex situation in many cases. What is a critical habitat in the fall won't be a critical habitat in the summer, if you will. This is important in thinking about these questions. The fact is, we don't know very much about what constitutes critical habitats through the seasons or through the life history of very many species. In the example of our fisheries, with those fish that have been subject to commercial fishing for a very long time, we don't in most cases know what their critical habitats are, where they are by season or through their life histories. I was shocked when we first started looking at the fisheries crisis, as a biologist, to discover that the information doesn't exist in many cases.

So it is a difficult problem, and it calls into question whether we're putting sufficient resources into our public interest research through government to get at these questions. We believe we're not.

Mr. Richard Smith: I think that point's well taken. I think there's this idea with the protection of critical habitat that the only way to do it is to put up a fence around an area and not let anybody in, when in fact some important critical habitat protection, for instance with right whales in the Bay of Fundy, may be seasonal, hence closures of certain areas or the rerouting of shipping. In the case of these wonderful little lizard species, skinks, in Ontario, which are being widely poached for the exotic pet trade, even in Point Pelee National Park, the protection of critical habitat may very well be just trying to clamp down on the collection of these animals during the height of the exotic pet trade meetings, for instance.

The protection of critical habitat is often presented in stark, black and white terms. Quite frankly, that has no biological basis.

The Chair: Thank you.

Yes, Mr. Foy.

Mr. Joe Foy: I have a short comment on something I've observed. I believe it's so ingrained in Canadians that it is morally and in every other way wrong to drive species into extinction. If you look at the archives of ads and things the forest industry has said, things the fishing industry has said, things the ranching industry has said, things individuals have said... I've was always brought up to believe, when the land was vast and not much industrial development had gone on, that whatever was being taken was being replaced. Whether it was in fishing or forestry or mining or ranching, things were taken, but of course they were being replaced, and of course these wonderful things would always be there.

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You can go back for decades and listen to what was being said to me and to every other Canadian. It bothers me now that the land is not so big, that there are so many more roads, that machines are so much bigger, we're hearing things like, well, wait a minute, if you don't want us to snuff these things out, you have to pay us. There has been a promise made, and there has been a promise over a long time that we're putting things back.

I don't want to forget that promise, because I think it comes from what's inside all of us, and in the end we have to ask ourselves as individuals and as heads of companies or owners of ranches, are we willing to snuff things out by taking away their habitat?

Ms. Kate Smallwood: Mr. Chair, if I could briefly respond, you focused on the issue of mandatory protection of habitat at listing stage. Certainly from the coalition's perspective, that is our first option; that is what we would like to see. However, if you look at the current mechanism in the bill, as you know, it's two-stage. So there is protection of a species residence on federal lands, and then it's entirely optional. Nothing further is done about habitat protection until the recovery stage.

It's not mandatory to identify habitat through recovery, which we would like; there's no prescribed time period for action plans, part of the recovery process, which we would also like; and once habitat has been identified, it's not mandatory to protect it. So we'd like those three changes on habitat through the recovery process.

The big one, which even groups like the Species at Risk Working Group, which includes industry representatives, have pointed out is that at the moment we're dealing with a residence protection on federal lands here, and nothing until one, two, or three years down the road, and it's not even guaranteed at the recovery stage.

So if the committee decides to go with the two-pronged approach to habitat protection, we're calling for some form of interim habitat protection, as has SARWG, because unless you address the issue of habitat protection, you're not addressing species protection, and an ongoing delay of two or three years for species that are already seriously at risk is not going to solve the habitat problem.

The Chair: Yes, thank you. The interim approach is one that some of us, at least, are very interested in, and we would certainly like some advice on that.

The other argument that was given to us last week by witnesses was that voluntary stewardship should be sufficient and that it is not necessary to legislate stewardship. What is your answer to that argument?

Ms. Kate Smallwood: There was a poll done on factors considered important in motivating Canadian organizations to take action on environmental issues. It was done by KPMG in 1994. The sector results include financial institutions, manufacturing, natural resources, retail and wholesale, and service sectors. What they found is that the number one motivating factor to get people to take action on environmental issues was compliance with regulations—92% overall. In terms of voluntary government programs, the “Trust us, we'll deal with it” kind of thing, it was only 16%.

The point really being made by all of us is that if the regulations and the laws are on the table, you have the line in the sand. People know what they're expected to do, how, and when. When that's there, you'll get compliance on environmental issues.

So we would certainly advocate that leaving it all voluntary, that we may or may not protect habitat, is not going to provide the level of protection you need. Having that line in the sand, as Joe said, in fact ensures greater compliance.

The Chair: Thank you for refreshing our collective memory about that study. We used it in Bill C-32.

Mrs. Karen Kraft Sloan: To great effect, I might add.

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The Chair: Mr. Savoy has the last word.

Mr. Andy Savoy: Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

It's interesting about the poll you just noted. If they had asked the same question, does your company support environmental stewardship, what do you think the results would have been?

Ms. Kate Smallwood: I think if you asked any company in Canada, in this day and age, if they support environmental stewardship, the answer would be yes.

Mr. Andy Savoy: And if you asked citizens if they support environmental legislation for species at risk, they would say yes also.

Ms. Kate Smallwood: Right. They support environmental stewardship and what will actually get you to the table to do something about it.

With respect, Mr. Savoy, this poll showed what took people to get to the table; 99% overall was having some form of law or regulation on the books. That was their primary incentive for getting these sectors across the table.

Mr. Andy Savoy: I understand that, totally. But if you asked them as general a question as, does your company support environmental stewardship, they're going to say yes.

It's just like if you asked a citizen, going back to your original poll of 94%, do you support species at risk legislation, they would say yes. But if you said do you support species at risk at this cost, the issue may be different; the answer may be different from your citizens. I'm just pointing out how polls can be varied and how the question phrased can be varied.

Ms. Kate Smallwood: They can certainly be varied. I think it will be beneficial to the committee to submit some of the recent B.C. polling, which has asked a lot of the harder economic questions you're referring to.

When it comes down to numbers, when it comes to impact on a resource sector in B.C. like the timber industry, would you be prepared to take a cut to that industry, the answer is yes. So the polling data we've seen extensively over the last 10 years in B.C. shows that when you ask the next level down beyond the motherhood “do you support”, that there's going to be an economic cost, they're still with us.

Mr. Andy Savoy: Going back to the discussion about the actual legislation, aside from Mr. Foy and Mr. Fulton, would the other three groups—starting from Mr. Smith, and then Mr. Coon and Ms. Smallwood—support the approach that we either scrap it or change it?

Mr. Richard Smith: What I've outlined today are necessities, as far as we can see. We would love nothing more than for the necessary changes to be made to the legislation, and on the day that this legislation is proclaimed, Parliament can say this is going to do the job, and we'll be able to say yes, you're right.

Quite frankly, given the combination of discretionary listing, discretionary habitat protection, unclear definitions, and that in pretty much every crucial part of the bill where it should say “shall”, it says “may”, there is just no way that Parliament and the Government of Canada can pass this and say this will protect endangered species for years to come. The few simple things we've presented today are really bottom-line positions for us. We would not be able to support legislation that had anything less.

Mr. Andy Savoy: Mr. Coon.

Mr. David Coon: Change it.

Mr. Andy Savoy: Or scrap it.

Mr. David Coon: No, we're saying change it, and you have the ability to make the necessary recommendations to do that. So just change it. It's as simple as that.

We need this legislation in New Brunswick because it speaks to provincial legislation. For our legislation in New Brunswick to be more effective in protecting habitat, which it has a provision for, it needs this legislation to define what that habitat is.

So I say change it. We need it. Get on with the job.

Mr. Andy Savoy: Okay.

Ms. Smallwood.

Ms. Kate Smallwood: I think it's remarkable that no Canadian environmental organization is supporting this bill in its current form. The movement is very diverse; it reflects the natural biodiversity we have in Canada. So we can't give you a more solid message from our constituency: no to this bill in current form. But as David and Rick have said, change it, improve it. We have an incredible opportunity as we go into Rio +10 next year to say here it is, and we're proud of it.

As Rick has outlined, in the baseline areas we've talked about, that he has covered off and I have covered off in detail in my brief, the top-line ones we've addressed today around habitat protection listing and the level of discretion, I want more public accountability, and I want to ensure that there is sufficient incentive for the provinces to do the job right.

At the end of the day, when the bill is announced, we would like to stand with the Liberal government on the lawn and say “What a fantastic job—we're proud of it”. The message we're giving you today is that the bill in its current form isn't there.

You have the opportunity. The legacy is there. Please seize it.

Mr. Andy Savoy: Of course our challenge is that we have to stand with both parties, both groups, on the lawn. Do you understand that?

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Ms. Kate Smallwood: As you've heard from Mr. Mills, and I've met with Mr. Forseth, and in terms of other parties around the table, the overall support for this is cross-sectoral. It's not a Liberal issue; it's an Alliance issue, it's a Bloc issue—

Mr. Andy Savoy: No question.

Ms. Kate Smallwood: I haven't met Mr. Herron but I've read his feedback in terms of the committee.

So we have the opportunity, from all parties, to come up with a bill that all Canadians can be proud of. We want to be there with you when you release the bill that we're all proud of.

Mr. Andy Savoy: Okay.

The Chair: Mr. Fulton.

Mr. Jim Fulton: I have just a quick point on the stewardship issue, particularly in terms of what many public interest groups and corporations often, if not always, talk about, that being a level playing field.

The document I'm going to leave with the clerk for members is a good example of that. A deal has just been negotiated in B.C. These principles on ecosystem-based management will apply to 70% of the B.C. coast north of Vancouver Island. The problem that comes with this kind of move forward is that if all the companies aren't in, and you don't have a level playing field, it makes it much more difficult for Interfor and West Fraser and Western Forest Products to actually adopt this and implement it if the independent truck loggers aren't there at the table, or if one of the other companies aren't there. That's why the legislative...

I mean, this was voluntarily developed with the forest companies, with the unions, with the communities, with the first nations, and it's there and it's working. But we also know that the legislative mechanism in terms of endangered species, which you're dealing with here, is far better for everybody involved. Stewardship by public interest groups, by Ducks Unlimited, by any coalition of companies and so on is great, but you're not actually going to get everybody moving in the right direction as quickly with a level playing field, as Kate pointed out from that poll, unless you have a legislative regulatory framework.

That's why Parliament exists, to do that, and to do a good job of it so that everybody at least knows where the table is, and when they come to the table, it's a table. This effort took about 20 environmental organizations in B.C. a decade to put in place because government wouldn't do it. The forest companies came to the table willingly, and have willingly adopted it, because it's better than the legislative framework.

Mr. Andy Savoy: Thank you.

The Chair: Madam Kraft Sloan, last word.

Mrs. Karen Kraft Sloan: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

With regard to these polls, first of all, the polls I've seen clearly break down elements within the legislation and ask people if they support different things—for instance, scientific-based listing, mandatory habitat protection, etc. So it's not fuzzy stuff. It's very clear about what it asks people to support.

The other thing I would like to put on the table is, who's the public? If you get your little phone call at night, and you're the head of a CEO, do you say, “I'm sorry, but I'm not a member of the public, so I'm opting out of the poll”? There are business owners, large and small, there are workers, there are members of unions, large and small, there are private landowners, and as has already been pointed out, there is not that much of a numbers difference between rural and urban Canadians. I think that's really important to remember.

A lot of discussion has been focused on the fact that it's one thing for Canadians to talk about what they want to do, but let's talk about what Canadians actually do. If you take a look at the KPMG study—and this was put together by KPMG, which is a very reputable, business-based organization—when they actually looked at the number of companies who had environmental management plans, it ranged from zero to 5% or 7%, sector by sector. Some sectors had a big fat goose egg and some sectors had as many as 5% of their companies with actually rudimentary environmental management plans.

So when a company says “Yes, I believe in this kind of stuff, and we would like to do environmental stewardship”, if you actually look at what they're doing, they're not doing it. I think we do need, as Monte Hummel says, a spongy stick. It's the job of government to regulate and make legislation that actually works.

The Chair: Thank you.

Madam Smallwood, Mr. Fulton, Mr. Foy, Mr. Coon, and Mr. Smith, thank you very much.

This meeting is adjourned.