:
We're going to call this meeting to order. We have quorum.
I apologize for the delay. I believe everybody was in the House listening to the ruling by the Speaker, which of course is still taking place. We'll have to catch up with the news after the committee meeting.
We do want to welcome everyone to our twelfth meeting. We're going to continue with our study on the Species at Risk Act, under section 129, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2).
We have a number of the NGOs joining us today. From the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, we have Éric Hébert-Daly, national executive director.
Thank you for joining us.
From the World Wildlife Fund--Canada, we have Peter Ewins, a senior officer for species conservation.
Welcome.
Presenting together, we have, from the David Suzuki Foundation, someone who's no stranger to this committee, and that's Rachel Plotkin, their biodiversity policy analyst; and from Ecojustice Canada, via video conference from Vancouver, Keith Ferguson, staff lawyer.
You have someone there with you, Mr. Ferguson.
:
Thank you very much and good afternoon.
First of all, I would like to thank you for this opportunity to share the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society's views on your five-year review of Canada's Species At Risk Act.
My name is Éric Hébert-Daly and I am the National Executive Director of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, or CPAWS. With me is Aran O'Carroll, National Manager, Legal and Regulatory Affairs and CPAWS' national lead on our Boreal Campaign.
Our presentation will focus on the challenges and opportunities of implementing the Species At Risk Act, based on our longstanding interest in conserving Canada's boreal forest, and in particular, on our work to protect the iconic boreal woodland caribou. The image of the caribou appears on your 25 cent coin. The caribou is also a barometer of the health of the boreal forest.
[English]
CPAWS is Canada's pre-eminent community-based voice for public wilderness protection. We've played a lead role in establishing over two-thirds of Canada's protected areas since 1963. That includes, of course, one of the big campaigns around the Nahanni, and the big success that we had by this particular Parliament.
With 13 chapters in nearly every province and territory, and the support of over 40,000 Canadians, CPAWS is one of the larger grassroots organizations in Canada. Our vision to keep at least half of Canada's wilderness and public wild spaces wild forever is a vision that we've been promoting for the last little while. It's certainly one that we share with our partners at Mountain Equipment Co-op, who have worked with us on the “Big Wild” campaign, people on the Boreal Leadership Council, which includes oil and gas companies as well as forestry companies, conservation organizations, and first nations.
CPAWS has played a supportive role in the establishment of SARA. It is something we've been taking very much to heart. We're members of the minister's species at risk advisory committee, and my colleague Aran co-chairs the national advisory group on the recovery strategy for the woodland caribou.
Across Canada, CPAWS staff have been instrumental in developing recovery plans and gaining habitat protection for woodland caribou in their regions.
[Translation]
We fully agree with the comments of our SARAC colleagues in their presentation to this committee to the effect that SARA is fundamentally well designed. If we take a closer look, we see that it is the implementation of SARA that has proven to be the biggest challenge for us. I have provided the clerk with a document that goes into more detail than I ever could in the ten minutes allotted to me.
[English]
We'd like to put three recommendations before you today. First, ensure you get SARA implementation correct, particularly around the boreal woodland caribou; second, adopt a bold new federal leadership role in wilderness conservation and look particularly at issues of collaboration; and third, take immediate action in a very urgent case that's happening right before our eyes, which is the work that's happening around new park establishment and how SARA can tie into that.
[Translation]
Critical habitat is defined under SARA as the habitat necessary for the survival or recovery of a species at risk. The minister is responsible under the act for approving recovery strategies for species that identify critical habitat, to the extent that it is possible to do so, based on the best available information and the measures outlined to conserve this habitat.
[English]
Woodland caribou are a perfect example of why we need a more coordinated approach to conservation in Canada. With a vast range, woodland caribou in the boreal are listed under SARA throughout the country, with the exception of the populations on the island of Newfoundland, although even those populations are on the decline.
An umbrella species that really signifies the health of the boreal forest and its wetlands, woodland caribou require large intact wilderness areas to survive. If their habitat is fragmented by roads, farming, logging, mining, and/or energy development, the predator-prey dynamics change, because it allows the predators to have better access to the caribou. It tips the balance against the caribou, which, as we've seen, can disappear within a few decades.
We've been trying for about seven years to in fact address this particular problem. We know that the problems of implementation of SARA have been at the heart of our issues. The good news is that the effort has resulted in a state-of-the-art scientific assessment of the critical habitat needs of the species. The bad news is that we still await recovery strategies under the act, and while they were originally expected in 2007, they are now expected in the fall of 2011. Meanwhile, caribou populations continue to decline.
[Translation]
We have learned from this experience that the Species At Risk Act has great potential as a federal tool to conserve the habitat of species at risk. However, on it own, the legislation is inadequate. Wilderness conservation on the vast scale required by wide-ranging species such as the woodland caribou calls for concerted action by many stakeholders.
[English]
As a country, we really need to apply our collective abilities to become a global conservation leader. That means we need to bring together governments’ legislative powers to protect species and establish protected areas, industry’s ability to adopt more sustainable practices, aboriginal people’s traditional knowledge of our ecosystems, scientists’ growing understanding of conservation biology, and the citizenship of conservation organizations such as our own.
We recommend that the federal government kickstart a new era of integrating nationwide and federal government-wide initiatives for conservation and work collaboratively with provincial, territorial, and aboriginal governments and major industrial and conservation groups to find a world-leading conservation vision for Canada that will protect our natural heritage.
[Translation]
An important part of this process would be the development and implementation of a joint strategy, one that involves all stakeholders and not just people who work in silos, with a view to conserving the critical habitats of boreal woodland caribou. Such a plan would go a long way toward securing resilient, healthy ecosystems that will provide a future for generations of Canadians.
[English]
Last year, as I mentioned earlier in my remarks, with the support of the Dehcho First Nations, the Government of the Northwest Territories, and CPAWS, Parliament unanimously approved a significant expansion of the Nahanni National Park Reserve in the southern portion of the South Nahanni River watershed.
Now Parks Canada is planning in fact to create another park, called Nááts'ihch'oh, a national park reserve in the headwaters of the South Nahanni watershed. This is in fact a park that covers a pretty important part of caribou habitat, breeding grounds, and in fact it is a place where caribou spend winters in the adjacent Nahanni National Park Reserve. With the right boundaries for Nááts'ihch'oh, virtually the entire range of the woodland caribou herd could be protected within these two parks put together. But the current proposed boundaries for the park leave out parts of the South Nahanni watershed that are in fact critical to the future of woodland caribou in the Nahanni.
By ensuring that the boundaries of this latest park protect the critical woodland caribou habitat, the federal government could, in a very real way, demonstrate what it is that we need to do in terms of a coordinated approach to conservation so that the work of Parks Canada and the work of this particular act can achieve real outcomes for wildlife on the ground.
[Translation]
In summary, we urge your committee to take the following action: show that SARA can be effective and can work well with a national recovery strategy for boreal woodland caribou; adopt a new federal leadership role in wilderness conservation, while working of course with the provinces; take immediate action as a new national park is established in the Northwest Territories to ensure that federal conservation tools work together, in this case, SARA and the creation of new parks.
[English]
Thank you.
Good afternoon, and thank you all for this opportunity to share WWF's experience and views with your committee.
We have supplied a full 12-page written submission to your committee, but here we will present only highlights. We've also supplied for the translators today a copy of these shorter remarks.
My name is Peter Ewins, senior officer for species conservation. With me is Jarmila Becka Lee, who's our conservation science adviser.
SARA and its associated programs have great potential to help recover Canada's disappearing species and prevent more species from being added to the list. However, the steadily lengthening COSEWIC list signals very clearly that the combined efforts of international conventions, domestic laws, accords, agreements, policies, programs, stewardships, and partnerships are not yet working properly. Efficient and effective implementation of SARA has yet to be achieved. Today we'd like to elaborate on four main recommendations.
One, critical habitat should be identified in recovery strategies based on best available information, recognizing that at least for currently occupied species ranges, key habitat needs to be fully protected. The federal government's reluctance to do this to this point has been contrary to the purpose of SARA and some of the legislation's underlying principles and requirements.
Two, the multi-species approach, using ecosystem-based management tools reflective of regional variation, should be utilized widely now in order to swiftly address the backlog of required recovery strategies and action plans, and thereby to efficiently achieve SARA's goals.
Three, conservation agreements under SARA sections 11 and 12 should be used widely by the Government of Canada as well-proven mechanisms for enhanced stewardship and fair incentives for achieving multi-species recovery, including by designing an approach that integrates the section 73 permitting with conservation management needs.
And four, on conservation financing, the federal government must promptly review the available innovative mechanisms and then develop and sustain significant new funding vehicles in order to radically improve implementation of SARA via effective partnerships and financial leveraging.
The WWF has learned a few things in conserving Canadian species at risk in the field over the past 40 years, including co-founding COSEWIC, serving on various recovery teams, and funding hundreds of species at risk projects, especially via the multi-partner endangered species recovery fund, ESRF, which we administered for that period. This and our global experience on similar issues will underpin our submission to you today.
For 20 years, since 1988, the ESRF provided support to high-priority species projects that assisted in the recovery and protection of at-risk wildlife in Canada and their natural habitats. Over that period of time, $10 million was awarded to over 770 species at risk field research and recovery projects, led by scientists and local conservation partners. Further, matched at least one to one by the recipients, over $25 million was ultimately invested into species recovery efforts across the country.
Sadly, two years—2007 and 2008—of delayed federal funds to the ESRF partnership model forced field project crews to front-end the costs of approved projects, and with no firm evidence of major change to this untenable situation, WWF has since been unable to continue with the ESRF partnership funding model. The federal government's main SARA funding vehicle, the habitat stewardship program, HSP, is similarly hampered by consistent delays in project approvals and funding delivery.
Turning to critical habitat, since 2003 there has been abundant evidence from various species with good ecological survey data that, contrary to the wishes of Parliament in enacting SARA, government departments have been highly resistant to identifying and protecting critical habitat. Clearly, SARA goals cannot be achieved until this situation is reversed.
Your committee will already have read of this in the 2006 Stratos evaluation and the 2008 Auditor General's office report, and heard it on June 2 of last year in the submission by the minister's advisory committee, SARAC, of which I am a member.
It has been suggested to you that federal protected areas and habitat protection and stewardship programs were taking care of habitat needs of SARA-listed species--i.e., instead of identification and protection of their critical habitat. However, a recent Conservation Biology journal paper by the University of Ottawa clearly refutes this, as regions in Canada with the most threatened species have few or no protected areas.
The multi-species approach, currently, relating to 359 endangered, threatened and extirpated species listed by SARA, really tells us that there are only 76 finalized recovery strategies posted on the SARA registry, of which 65--or 86%--are single species, and only 11 are for multi-species strategies, with a range of two to nine species per recovery strategy.
In other words, we have a huge backlog in the system of now overdue recovery strategies, and the multi-species approach has been totally underutilized to help clear this backlog.
Past federal reviews have recognized that the single-species approach to recovery is slow and inefficient overall, but four years later remarkably little concrete progress has been made. Two good multi-species recovery initiatives under way include those for the 34 endemic freshwater mussel species in southwestern Ontario, and also for the 100 species at risk in the Garry oak ecosystems of southern British Columbia.
The multi-species ecosystem-based approach should be applied much more extensively in Canada. SARA goals can only be achieved with very strong integration of long-term species recovery strategies and values into regional land and resource use planning, the comprehensive regional strategic environmental assessments that are required now, and careful sequencing and coordination with other government department programs, policies, and financing. This will all greatly help reduce the recovery strategy backlog and prevent the addition of new species to schedule 1.
Conservation agreements: SARA sections 11 to 13 clearly outline stewardship and conservation agreements as very important tools for species recovery and prevention of species from becoming at risk. But as of April this year, no conservation agreements are in place under SARA. This is very troubling, given the experiences in Canada and elsewhere in the world.
I'll give you just three examples of how conservation agreements are working quite well for multiple species and their habitat needs.
Firstly, in the mid-1980s, as part of the broader prairie conservation action plan, WWF initiated Operation Burrowing Owl, which engaged 2,500 farmers and landowners in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Alberta.
Secondly, Ducks Unlimited Canada has secured and enhanced millions of acres of wetland habitat through such conservation agreements with private landowners, ensuring strong implementation of the North American waterfowl management plan.
And thirdly, for the past 30 years in the U.K.—and I was involved with these programs—under legislation comparable to SARA, successful species habitat conservation has been achieved via conservation agreements with numerous landowners.
Therefore, WWF recommends that the Government of Canada quickly initiate a top-priority global review of conservation agreements used in biodiversity conservation, and then develop and implement plans for using SARA’s conservation agreements with tenure-holders across Canada, ideally linking to any section 73 permitting.
And finally, conservation financing: past reviews of SARA have all recognized that implementation and results have been challenged by low financial priority afforded to species recovery programs. WWF has been at the forefront of some major initiatives around the world, working to set out creative new approaches to financing. These initiatives illustrate very well the biodiversity and local livelihood benefits of creative conservation financing mechanisms.
One example is the monarch butterfly conservation fund, which involves an expanded forest reserve to protect the monarch's wintering habitats in Mexico by addressing the socio-economic needs of local communities. Endowed with a $5-million grant from the Packard Foundation, $1 million from the Mexican government, and $0.25 million from local states, and facilitated by WWF Mexico, most of the 38 communities living within the reserve boundaries have now signed up with the fund and are committed to protecting the forest, and hence the monarchs.
Also, a recent report by the United Nations Development Programme, the Global Environment Facility, U.S. Forest Service, and the Commission for Environmental Cooperation highlights how market-based schemes can preserve species at risk by incorporating the cost of habitat destruction into the costs of development.
We urge the Government of Canada to look very thoroughly at the spectrum of financing mechanisms available for species recovery and to develop and sustain significant new conservation-financing vehicles in order to radically improve on SARA's implementation.
In conclusion, Mr. Chair, all recommendations of the past reviews of SARA's implementation should be addressed swiftly and in full by the federal government. Canadians clearly do not want to see the species at risk continuing to grow. We urge your committee to make bold recommendations for the Government of Canada to elevate the priority and efficiencies afforded to SARA's implementation.
Thank you. We'd be happy to answer questions.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, for the opportunity to present before you today.
I'm Rachel Plotkin, with the David Suzuki Foundation.
On the screen before you are Keith Ferguson, staff lawyer for Ecojustice, and Susan Pinkus, scientist for Ecojustice.
As the chair mentioned, Keith and I will be going back and forth delivering the presentation.
Our four organizations—the David Suzuki Foundation, Ecojustice, Environmental Defence, and Nature Canada--submitted a comprehensive written brief to you in July 2009. We submitted an update to that brief to you last week. As well, hopefully you have before you the deck from which we're going to be making our presentation today.
Three of our organizations are also members of SARAC, and we helped draft the documents you received from SARAC, which represent the first stage of industry/NGO collaboration to assist you with your review.
We do hope that further collaboration will allow us to provide you with an additional collaborative brief.
Please note that throughout our presentation, when we say “scientific”, we mean western science, aboriginal traditional knowledge, and community knowledge on the biology of a species.
If you're following your deck, on the second deck there is a slide is entitled “General consensus: SARA shortcomings”. As you have heard, implementation of SARA, to date, has been disappointing. The good news, however, is that we do believe that things are starting to improve on some fronts.
I will now hand over to Keith, who is going to walk you through some of these recommendations.
:
Okay, thank you. Let me jump in.
Some of the improvements in implementation are, we believe, a result of some of the legal challenges brought under SARA. The number of such court cases brought by environmental groups has been small and they were brought as a last resort to address draft policies and decision-making that appeared clearly inconsistent with SARA. For example, two court cases addressed the identification of critical habitat. In both cases, the court found the decision-making to be contrary to law and commented on the inconsistency of draft policies with SARA.
As these cases show, failure to identify critical habitat has in a number of cases been due to draft policies that were inconsistent with SARA rather than due to the lack of science. We provide details on these cases in appendix 23 to our original brief and update.
If you'd like to follow along with me in the slides, I'm now at the slide headed “Recommendations”, with a list of ten recommendations. We do not recommend a change to the fundamental structure of SARA, but we do have what we call the top ten. These we believe are the most important and feasible recommendations at this time. I'll briefly go through each of the ten.
Number one is “listing”. Obviously, great care needs to be taken if a species assessed as at risk by COSEWIC is not to be listed, given that not listing could result in the eventual disappearance of the species from Canada. However, we have seen significant inconsistencies in listing decisions between different types of species, between species located in different provinces, and among the agencies, as detailed in our brief last summer. One of the reasons for such inconsistencies appears to be a lopsided consideration of costs and benefits. Potential short-term economic costs of listing are considered, but the long-term cultural and ecological benefits are often not taken into account. Our recommendation for listing is that all such costs and benefits must be carefully considered before any decision to not list a species.
Moving onto the next slide, recommendation two is “critical habitat”; as you've heard, loss or degradation of habitat is the primary reason for about 84% of Canadian species being at risk. Identifying critical habitat and recovery strategies is a key first step. Only after being identified can it be protected or at least considered in decision-making.
Now, some presenters have proposed to you that socio-economics should be explicitly required at this identification stage. We disagree for two reasons. First, there appear to be some misconceptions as to what happens after critical habitat is identified. Identification of critical habitat does not lead to automatic protection in most cases. Protection of critical habitat is totally discretionary other than for aquatic species or if the critical habitat is on federal land. The second reason is that socio-economics are already taken into account at three other stages under the act: first, at listing; second, if an order to protect critical habitat is passed and if so, a regulatory impact analysis statement is required; and third, socio-economics are again taken into account at the action plan stage. We therefore submit that there has to be at least one step in this sequence that remains scientific, and that should be the identification of critical habitat.
Moving along to number three, “recovery strategies”, there are a few improvements we recommend. First, we recommend they should, to the extent possible, include tolerance thresholds for disturbance. This would help clarify what can and can't go on within a critical habitat if it is to support species survival and recovery. It would also help interpret later steps under the act, such as what would destroy and what would effectively protect the critical habitat. To ensure that the best possible science is included, we recommend that all recovery strategies be drafted by teams that include independent experts from outside of government.
Moving on to number four, “definitions”, as you know, there are a number of key terms that are not defined in SARA. I would refer you to the SARAC definitions text for collaborative recommendations on a number of these terms. Two of the most important ones included in that text are the terms “survival“ and “recovery”. We recommend that survival should be defined as a high probability of long-term persistence, and we recommend that recovery should be defined as a well-distributed population to meet the values of the species as noted in SARA's preamble, such as to perform its natural ecological functions.
Moving on to number five, “action plans”, as you've heard, there's very little experience to date with action plans. Only one has been completed. We therefore simply recommend that a mandatory deadline for action plans be added to SARA, and we also recommend that SARA require both recovery strategies and action plans to be updated when significant new information becomes available.
On number six, “safety net”, as I've already mentioned, for most species across the vast majority of Canada SARA's protections do not apply automatically. In such cases, SARA relies on the provinces to provide primary protection, although of course SARA does allow the federal government to step in and make a safety net order if a province is not effectively protecting. This might be thought of as an equivalency provision.
Unfortunately, this safety net has never been used in the six or seven years under SARA, and it's never been used despite, for example, the environmental community asking for it to be used for the spotted owl. At the time, there were only about 20 or so in the wild, but no safety net order was issued. Today the number of individuals in the wild is down to just seven, and the species is expected to be extirpated from the wild in the near future. We recommend, as an important first step to making the safety net process work better, clarifying the meaning of effective protection. Again, I would refer you to the collaborative SARAC definitions text, which provided the recommended elements of such a definition.
Under item number seven, “permitting”, there are a few obvious gaps that we recommend be filled, such as explicitly requiring that subsection 73(3) preconditions be met before all types of permitting. As you know, these preconditions require that impacts be minimized and that there be no jeopardy to the survival or recovery of the species.
Some presenters before you have suggested that long-term permits be made available. We certainly understand industry's desire for more certainty when they are making investment decisions that cover decades, compared to the kind of certainty that a three- or five-year permit can only give. However, we stress that if long-term permits are to be allowed, there must be sufficient safeguards in the act, and in particular, we recommend three things: first, a requirement for ongoing monitoring and reporting; secondly, regular review and sign-off by the competent minister as to whether the preconditions continue to be met; and thirdly, if those preconditions are not met, the minister must be required to amend or cancel the permit.
With that, I'll hand it back to Rachel to finish this up.
Thank you very much for being here, everyone. Merci d'être ici aujourd'hui.
And thank you for coming in by camera; you look good on TV.
I want to explore a couple of themes that I think cut across all three of your briefs and your comments today. I take from a lot of what you said here today that SARA isn't working. It's not working. I think that's conclusion number one.
Number two, I take from all three of your briefs--you've all said this explicitly or implicitly--that there's a real opportunity for federal leadership through a national approach to conservation and species at risk.
I also see frustration with the fact that in the last several years you've seen all kinds of processes undertaken that haven't made a dent, whether it's the references to previous recommendations or past reviews of SARA by Stratos, the minister's round table in 2006, the non-advertised minister's round table of 2008, or the commissioner's report for 2008.
I want to ask you how important it might be for a federal government to convene a very serious first ministers meeting on species at risk. We've already called on the government, for example, within 90 days of the motion that was passed in the House on climate change recently. We asked the Prime Minister to call together a first ministers meeting to deal with the issues of climate change and the crisis in energy. We haven't heard back from the government, but on this file, given the federal-provincial differences, some of the very creative mechanisms that have been designed in the United States using ecological fiscal reform are fiscal measures that can help us achieve good habitat protection and other goals.
We've got SARAC, we've got NACOSAR, we've got ministers' round tables, we've got COSEWIC, and we've got an aboriginal traditional knowledge subcommittee of COSEWIC. Those are five processes that I can count. Would it be beneficial for us to have a national government admit that this is not working and that we need to re-examine how we do species at risk and conservation in the country? Would that be helpful to all three intervenors?
Éric, what are your thoughts?
:
Those were really good briefs and really thorough presentations. They were greatly appreciated.
I particularly appreciated the effort you took to actually make recommendations on legal amendments. I think they'll be really useful to our committee. They certainly will be to me.
There are so many issues and there is so much we need to discuss. I'm probably going to be able to ask you only some of my questions. But I really appreciate the effort you've made to brief us.
I would like to start off with this issue of the safety net. It seems to be the running theme, which frankly has been with us for quite some years, not just under the current government. It's this issue of putting friendly federal-provincial relations ahead of anything to do with environmental protection.
I think you've already testified to the effect that the federal Minister of the Environment's power has never actually been exercised. As an Albertan, I have to say that I'm happy to see all the testimony about the woodland caribou. I can't even begin to count the number of presentations made to me, even before I was elected, on how desperate people are for action by the federal government on this because of the failure of the Alberta government. As my colleague has pointed out, the famous CEMA committee actually had a recommendation for action in the tar sands area, and the provincial government refused to act. I guess that raises this very question: at what juncture will the federal minister intervene?
Keith, I noticed that right away you raised the spectre of equivalency, which was my immediate reaction. Of course, that's the term used in CEPA. I'm wondering if any of you would like to speak to the issue of whether you think, perhaps, the provisions in law may be inadequate. Should we perhaps be taking the approach that's taken in CEPA? That is, the federal government will intervene unless the provincial jurisdiction or the territorial jurisdiction has what's considered to be equivalent legislation and an equivalent enforcement compliance strategy.
Now, it's been pointed out to me, in my reading, that the federal government doesn't have, I don't think, an enforcement compliance strategy on this act yet, and shame on them if they don't. I wish I could have raised that with the government.
What do you think? Keith raised this; or Rachel, or anyone else, might want to address this. It seems to be an issue that a lot of the witnesses have raised. I would welcome your elaborating a bit on how we address the problem of this provision. We have a species listed, but nothing is happening.
:
Well, thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, friends, for coming and bringing some very important information before the committee.
I just want to bring to the attention of members here that today, when I was looking at the species at risk website of Environment Canada, I saw actually a summary of the Scientific Review for the Identification of Critical Habitat for Woodland Caribou, Boreal Population, in Canada and the Working Together to Recover Boreal Caribou document, which are now published on the species at risk website. So it looks like Environment Canada is moving in that direction, and I'm sure that your organizations will be responding to the call for input on this very important issue.
I remember when I was a national park warden at Jasper. I was a back country warden at Willow Creek district north boundary. I remember riding into the Willmore Wilderness Park one day, and as I came over the crest of the hill I saw three woodland caribou down in a valley. I sat there for an hour and watched, and it was one of the better days I had as a national park warden. I remember being somewhat frustrated at the fact that this population.... It's been in decline. There is no secret about that.
This specific question is for you, Éric. As a Parks employee, it was very difficult for me at the time to bring this issue up. But if you take a look at particularly the range of the boreal caribou, we know that basically for the Howse Pass, the population there is extirpated. We know that in Banff the population is extirpated. We have recommendations here--this is a legislative review of SARA--yet Parks Canada, I believe, has a policy of no predator control; at least it did at the time when I was there.
If you take a look at some of the critical factors affecting boreal caribou, it would seem to me that some of these things within Environment Canada itself need to be addressed. I know that predator control is a sensitive issue, because obviously it irks...some of those deeper feelings. But when you have such tight ranges, such small areas as we do in our national parks, and such critical habitat, without effective management within those things....
I understand the philosophy and the ideal--I truly do--of letting natural systems take their course. I'm surprised there isn't a recommendation coming, particularly from Parks and Wilderness, along this line.
Would you care to comment on that?
:
Well, you're talking about the edge effect and all the things that happen along that line, whether you have a “no burn” policy, which creates some of the issues, or secondary succession, or forage--all of these things.
At any rate, I do understand that it's a sensitive issue to get into. In all fairness--although Aldo Leopold would disagree with me--I do think that predator control is actually a critical issue, and I think Parks Canada truly does. I would like to see somebody come forward with the courage to say that maybe we need to get at this.
The reality is that you can control all of these things outside the realm of national parks, but until you actually address them within the context of inside the boundaries of national parks.... I know it's sensitive, and I know it's a difficult issue, but I think it truly is the limiting factor that we have there. We have very few roads and highways through national parks. We have tried, to the best of our ability, to build wildlife corridors and bridges to make sure they're not impacted. We've got fences all the way along down the road, Highway 1 in Banff National Park, yet the population of woodland caribou still managed to disappear. So from that perspective it is frustrating.
I want to talk a little more about this whole concept of national parks, because it's very near and dear to my heart. When I went to university, we basically looked at a plan at the time that said about 12% of each of Canada's bio-zones, each of the ecologically sensitive regions, should be protected or preserved. There were nine when I was there. I don't know what has happened to those; these things change over time, of course. That 12% or 13% of each of these zones will likely come under irreversible alteration, whether building cities or roads or whatever the case might be, and the other 75% was left for sustainable development and sustainable management.
When we take a look at the Species at Risk Act and its implementation in conjunction with national parks, I do like the recommendation that we need to build more parks in areas where we have less than that 12% representation. Extending the Nahanni is a great thing, but we need to bring more protected and preserved areas into that.
Through this plan in species at risk, it doesn't directly address the habitat as well as it should. I think the problem with the implementation is that it's so broad, I actually feel sorry for any bureaucrat or anybody who has to implement SARA. I don't think it would matter if it was a Conservative government, a coalition government, or a Liberal government. I'm not looking to point fingers here; I think this thing is very hard to implement because it's so broad and wide-reaching that it loses some of its effect.
I would actually like to see more effort being put into preserving the ecological integrity of certain percentages of an area and let the natural systems take care of themselves and work within those kinds of parameters.
Do any of you want to comment on that?
:
Thank you very much, Chair.
I'd like to start with a question, following up on what Mr. Calkins said on the issue of predator control.
I remember when I was first visiting, as a child, Banff National Park. I saw the great tunnels under the highway that were for the caribou, for the woodland creatures. Someone said, “Oh, yes, they're great; the wolves just park themselves beside them and know that their prey will come along through.”
So there is a concern that our development is making things easier for predators, but I understand as well that the solution can't be simply to eliminate all of the predators, because there's no guarantee that the prey would then come back, if indeed, as Ms. Pinkus says, the protected area doesn't look large to a caribou.
For me this highlights one of the big issues that I've brought up a number of times, the implicit question. Much has been made, and rightfully so, about the expansion of the Nahanni Park by this current government. For me, the question of basing an ecological or an environmental strategy on creating more parks always begs this question: if you're protecting a particular percentage of Canada's territory, what are you implicitly saying about every area that you don't protect? I think that's the issue that SARA is here to address.
I have to say that I'm quite concerned. The testimony we've been hearing from industry, from ENGOs, and even from government has demonstrated that SARA is flailing, is not reaching its goal. There is a breakdown somewhere along the line. COSEWIC seems to work great. The science on identifying the species in peril is fine. It breaks down around habitat, and it breaks down specifically around protecting that habitat, actually implementing the recommendations that science is making.
I understand the desire to not be overtly political in all of this, but I'm wondering if indeed what Mr. Calkins said is true, that no government, given our current economic challenges and our current challenges as a society, would be able to implement SARA properly to protect our species at risk, and perhaps we should all just give up and just try to protect certain areas and hope that a few species end up surviving in there--which is not exactly what Mr. Calkins said, but is certainly one of the projections that one has to have.
I would like each of you to respond to that in the time available.
Rachel.
Thank you all for being with us today.
I think no matter what view you take of it, it is a challenging subject. As someone jokingly mentioned, we haven't had caribou around here for 200 years, and clearly that's because of the gradual interplay between human and natural environments. So we want to do what we can in an intelligent and thoughtful way to, as Rodney King would have put it, all get along together.
I was impressed by a comment in the World Wildlife Federation's submission, which I will just read back:
Most people involved with SARA have recognized for some time that the single-species approach to recovery is slow and inefficient overall. The well-attended December 2006 Minister’s Roundtable (MRT) on Species At Risk identified the urgent need for a much stronger government lead on a multi-species and ecosystem-based approach to species recovery. The 2006 STRATOS review also made this recommendation (#16), and the government response agreed.
Now, I don't know all there is to know about that, but I happened upon some information regarding the natural areas conservation program, which, as of September 2009, had secured over 136,000 hectares of land protecting habitat for species at risk. That was over 60% of the target for the entire program, and it has been delivered in less than three years. Over the next few years, the program is expected to encompass more than 200,000 hectares of ecologically sensitive land across southern Canada. Another $79.4 million needs to be transferred. It's expected that an additional two, or perhaps three, years will be needed to fully utilize the $225 million, the almost quarter-billion dollars, dedicated to that program.
Am I right in making the connection that the program is a multi-species and ecosystem protection-oriented program?
I'm looking at Mr. Ewins because it's the World Wildlife Federation's submission, but first of all, I should ask you, are you familiar with that program?
Thank you to our witnesses for appearing here today.
I'm enjoying this, not just as a legislator, but a bit as a spectator as well, because some of the discussion is wide-ranging. We've been talking about national parks, and yet in my area--Essex is as far south as you can go in Canada--we measure on a much different scope, I think, a lot of our victories in habitat restoration. We measure in either single, double-digit, or low triple-digit hectares. We have more plant and animal species at risk than anywhere in Canada, and our challenges are pretty acute, so how this act plays out is of some real significance.
Potential new approaches for the government are also interesting. I'm looking at a Canadian response to the Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge in southeast Michigan and at whether there's a new approach that can be pioneered to bring new tools to bear in an area where most of the land is already occupied with agricultural, municipal, and other uses like that. Habitat restoration poses some significant challenges given competing land use.
I want to bring some of the discussion back to what the committee is actually charged with. And this is a legislative review; it's not a policy review and it's not a number of other things. We're looking at a specific piece of legislation and recommendations on what, if any, changes need to be made to that.
I was concerned about some of the preamble of a couple of our Liberal colleagues, who almost suggested that SARA should be tossed out the window and a new approach should start again.
I just want to start by getting on the record from each of our witnesses whether they accept that the fundamental architecture of SARA is good as a principled starting position, and then we'll work toward subsequent questions.
I'm not sure who wants to start on that answer.