ENSU Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

COMITÉ PERMANENT DE L'ENVIRONNEMENT ET DU DÉVELOPPEMENT DURABLE

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Tuesday, October 27, 1998

• 0904

[English]

The Chairman (Mr. Charles Caccia (Davenport, Lib.)): Good morning. We have a quorum and we are ready to move ahead.

[Translation]

Pursuant to Standing Order 108 (2), we continue our study of the need for a global information system on biological diversity and Canadian biodiversity.

• 0905

[English]

I can't think of another way of putting it this morning. It is an initiative that stands in part with the Museum of Nature here in Ottawa and the Biodiversity Institute, and in addition to that several departments, including Environment Canada and Agriculture and Agri-food and Natural Resources and Fisheries and Oceans, and of course in addition to all that and last but not least, a report by the commissioner of the environment and sustainable development, which saw the light of day earlier this year. I believe it is chapter 4, is it?

So we have a terrific opportunity here. The background material prepared by the research people of the parliamentary branch is in a briefing note dated October 27. I trust it is in your hands. If it is not, the clerk will perhaps be in a position to give you an additional copy.

The wealth of material that accompanies this venture, so to say, is considerable. There is a report by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada entitled “Biodiversity Initiatives”—one on producers and one on agri-food. There is a study by the Federal Biosystematic Group. There is also a backgrounder entitled “President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology”, the president being in Washington. There is a Canadian Forest Service network news that deals with that issue as well. And then there is a collection of items, which I would like to ensure my colleagues are aware of, that deals with biodiversity. There is “Caring for Canada's Biodiversity”, for instance, by Environment Canada, several different issues...

I couldn't be accused of being too fast this morning, but that's roughly the kind of background that will accompany the presentations this morning. There is also a letter by Dr. Bruce dated June 10, 1998, which was probably circulated to you a long time ago, which provides an explanation as to what the four departments are endeavouring to do in conjunction with the Canadian Geospatial Data Initiative, initiated by ENERCON and in conjunction of course with the Museum of Nature and so forth.

On page 2 of that letter there is a reference to some requirements in money of $20 million over a period of time for these interdepartmental projects and a listing of possible impediments. Mr. Martin is not mentioned in that list.

• 0910

The last, the letter by Dr. Bruce—and I would like you to pay attention to his comments—concludes that “this is truly alarming for a country like Canada”, not to be able to “assess what problems are very serious, what's getting better or worse, and which of our environmental protection and management strategies are working”. This of course is meant in relation to the lack of coordinated and well-integrated data and information.

Here ends the introduction that I felt would be necessary. Before I open the meeting to our witnesses, whom I welcome very warmly, let me draw the attention of the members of the committee to the fact that last week the Minister of the Environment, Ms. Stewart, produced the reply of the government to this committee's report on enforcement. This report is on your desks. It came with a covering letter by the minister. It is a report that is certainly worthwhile reading for a number of reasons we don't want to invest time in right now. Nevertheless, I would urge you to do that, because possibly before the end of the year we will want to have a meeting just to go over that. That concludes this introduction.

I welcome you and on behalf of the committee members I invite you to take the floor in whichever order you wish to proceed.

The first speaker, according to pre-arrangement, would be Brian Emmett.

Mr. Brian Emmett (Commissioner of Environment and Sustainable Development, Office of the Auditor General of Canada): Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to be here today.

With me from the commissioner's office is Wayne Cluskey, who is the principal in charge of the preparation of our chapter on biodiversity, which, as you noted, was tabled in the House of Commons in May of this year.

Our work on biodiversity stems from a kind of larger view. In my May 1998 report I noted Canada is very active internationally: it's party to over 230 international environmental agreements. In the last 18 months I've reported in detail on Canada's participation in four of these. These include the Basle Convention on movement of hazardous waste, the Montreal Protocol on substances that deplete the ozone layer, and the United Nations conventions on both climate change and biological diversity.

In general, what I've found has been quite disturbing. I believe Parliament and Canadians should know whether we are meeting our national and international commitments and obligations, because among other things Canada's international reputation is at stake. The fact is the federal government does not know the extent to which it is meeting many of these commitments.

Last Thursday I spoke to you about the importance of climate change and the problems associated with Canada's efforts in this area. In my view, the biodiversity is of equal importance. I think the title of our chapter, “Canada's Biodiversity Clock is Ticking”, indicates the degree of urgency with which we perceive this issue.

The protection of biodiversity is important to Canadians economically, environmentally, and morally with respect to our stewardship obligations. Biodiversity is the living mosaic of animals, plants, and micro-organisms, from the simplest forms to wild animals and birds. It's crucial to the survival of the planet and to our own health and our enjoyment of life.

• 0915

The scientific capacity needed to understand the impact of our biodiversity initiatives must be enhanced. The amount of work left to do is staggering according to some of the numbers you will see in our chapter. For example, only about 50% of species thought to exist in Canada have been named and only 1% have been studied.

Six years after Canada signed the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, there's still little information on how well Canada's doing in protecting its plants, animals, birds, and habitats. I'm concerned that biological diversity does not receive the attention it deserves. In terms of Canada's effort and in terms of the public policy debate, biodiversity seems to me to be the poor relation among the major conventions.

The immediate challenge for Canada is to manage biodiversity in a concerted and integrated manner and to report the results of these efforts so that we can rigorously evaluate achievements or the lack of achievements.

[Translation]

Mr. Chairman, our audit findings confirmed that little progress had been made. So little, in fact, that we scaled back the scope of our audit.

Canada's key response to the Convention on Biological Diversity has been the development of the Canadian Biodiversity Strategy. This is an important starting point. However, as my May chapter pointed out, steps to implement the Strategy have been slow and key deadlines have been missed. The bottom-line is, we do not know if Canada's biodiversity is being adequately protected.

[English]

I believe the government must produce a federal implementation plan to ensure that biodiversity is fully integrated into all federal activities. That plan should include timeframes, deadlines, resources to be allocated, performance indicators, and expected results.

At the same time, this is an area again in which the federal government cannot go it alone. It needs to work closely with the provinces, who share jurisdiction for most environmental matters. Therefore, dialogue at the federal-provincial ministerial level must be enhanced to ensure that national efforts are concerted and integrated.

Reporting at all levels of government needs to be improved to better reflect the extent to which we are achieving our national goals and meeting our international commitments. Canadians are concerned about the future of the environment, and they need concrete assurances that positive steps are being taken to protect it.

Given that we truncated our initial investigation, I intend to revisit this issue, which I believe is of critical importance in the foreseeable future, meaning within the next two to three years. I hope, Mr. Chairman, at that point we'll have something more to audit and be able to do a complete job.

Thank you. We'd be pleased to answer any questions you may have.

Ms. Karen Brown (Assistant Deputy Minister, Environmental Conservation Service, Department of the Environment): Thank you for inviting us to appear today. My colleagues and I welcome the opportunity to report on progress that we made with respect to the issues just raised by the commissioner. We're also very pleased that you've chosen to focus on the issues of biological knowledge and an information base. We believe it's fundamental to the conservation of biodiversity and the sustainable use of biological resources in Canada.

First let me respond to the opening statement of the commissioner by reporting that notable progress has been made even in the short period since the release of his report. Some of this is captured in the three-point plan distributed to you in advance.

At the time of the release of the commissioner's report, only two of the federal reports on the implementation of the Canadian biodiversity strategy had been released. Five reports have now been released, with an additional three to be completed by the end of this fiscal year.

Copies of these reports have been provided to you. They address federal biodiversity plans with respect to forestry, agriculture, wildlife, protected areas, and education, along with Canada's first national report on implementation of the convention. Together, these reports will constitute the federal government's implementation plan, along with a synthesis document, with respect to the Canadian biodiversity strategy.

• 0920

Just as important as the plans and activities captured in these reports, however, is the new ground being broken in the way we address these complex and cross-cutting issues and the new partnerships that are being created in the process. A real attempt is being made here to transcend individual departmental interests so as to take a more ecological approach to federal planning.

The ecological management report currently in preparation will be a good example of this. Setting time-bounded, measurable results for biodiversity is an important challenge, given its scientific and inter-jurisdictional complexities. We are also very much of the opinion that it's more important to build targets than to set them. Only when all the key players agree to the validity of the targets and are committed to achieving them will real progress occur.

The targets that have been agreed to under the North American waterfowl management plan are a case in point, as is the target agreed to by federal, provincial, and territorial governments to complete Canada's network of protected areas by 2000.

Notwithstanding the challenges, we do recognize the need for a better articulation of results. We're addressing this need through our work on the performance measurement framework for biodiversity. Working with federal partners, we expect this important work to be completed on time and to be incorporated into the next planning cycle of the federal government and into departmental business plans.

Discussions are also under way at the national level with the federal, provincial, territorial working group on biodiversity as well as with the Canadian biodiversity forum, our multi-stakeholder advisory group, on ways and means of measuring progress nationally on the implementation of the Canadian biodiversity strategy. Achieving consensus on key national results will be important both for domestic reporting purposes as well as for reporting internationally on progress.

Defining results and measures that are practical, meaningful, scientifically defensible, and compatible with regional, provincial, national, and international programs is challenging for an issue as complex and pervasive as biodiversity, which touches all living things and resource sectors. It's particularly challenging in light of the serious deficiencies that exist in our current scientific understanding, as pointed out by others, of species and ecosystems and the way we manage information about them. These deficiencies are not just felt in Canada, but are of global concern as well.

Good baseline information on our biological resources and effective data management systems that make the information accessible to decision-makers is essential. It underlines our ability to implement both the Canadian biodiversity strategy and the convention, not to mention our ability to develop sustainably. It's key to being able to monitor and report internationally on our national performance and the achievement of key results.

It's also an important prerequisite for empowering and building the capacity of other levels of government and local communities in making important land-use and resource-use decisions. Many feel that the battle to save biodiversity will be won or lost at the local level. The prerequisite for integrated local planning, however, is good science and good information in the hands of those who make decisions.

Good biological information is also essential if biodiversity is to be factored into environmental assessments. If a community does not have good information about the species found in a local watershed and their survival needs, how can they mount a successful case for the conservation of an ecologically sensitive ecosystem?

For many of our resource-based industries, good biological information is also of profound economic importance and will determine their future competitiveness in world markets. I suspect this is the primary reason that the U.S. is taking the issue so seriously.

You will have received a copy of the report of the President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology entitled Teaming With Life: Investing in Science to Understand and Use America's Living Capital. The biodiversity and ecosystems panel of that committee, which produced the report, concludes that to protect national capital or biodiversity, it's necessary to have an extensive and frequently updated environmental knowledge base.

Here in Canada, we've taken some modest but important first steps in this direction. Environment Canada is currently host to a federal consortium that includes Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Museum of Nature, and Environment Canada. That consortium is beginning to develop a vision and a plan of what we need to do to enhance the capture, management, exchange, and accessibility of biological data in Canada. A brief description of the Canadian biodiversity information initiative was included in advance material provided to you. It will be the subject of a short presentation by John Herity later in the agenda.

• 0925

In turning the floor over to my colleagues from the other resource departments, I will close with the following observation. The considerable effort, both federally and nationally, that has been devoted to addressing biodiversity with all of its associated challenges has highlighted the need for a far more integrated and collegial approach to biodiversity in general and science and information underpinnings in particular.

It cannot be business as usual. These issues cannot be addressed within individual departments, sectors, or jurisdictions. They require a new paradigm for addressing issues that cross borders and disciplines.

I think important steps have been taken toward creating that new paradigm nationally through the Canadian biodiversity strategy and federally through the federal biosystematics partnership and the Canadian biodiversity information initiative. I'm hopeful in the coming weeks we'll finalize our federal biosystematics partnership by signing an MOU that's currently circulating.

I think we need to continue to invest in these kinds of partnerships and made them work to our collective advantage. I look forward to working with my colleagues in building on this foundation of cooperation to advance the biodiversity agenda in Canada.

Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, Ms. Brown.

Dr. Graham, please.

Dr. Mark Graham (Director of Research, Canadian Museum of Nature): Mr. Chairman, it's a pleasure to be able to make this presentation on behalf of the Canadian Museum of Nature. This brief talk will focus on systematics, the scientific practices that are essential in understanding the diversity of plants and animals in this planet.

The context of this is to emphasize the importance of managing these living resources in a sustainable fashion. The result of this type of work then is ecosystem and human health, the maintenance of cultural richness, and untold economic potential.

...there will be winners and there will be losers... The next century will be the “Age of Biology”, just as this one has been the age of physics and astronomy. Specifically, those countries who best know how to correlate, analyse, and communicate biological information will be in the leading position to achieve economic and scientific advances.

That quote comes from Sir Robert May, who is the chief scientist for the U.K. He's referring to the winners and losers as countries. The “Age of Biology” refers to our ability to master or fail the management of biological resources.

Biological information is a body of knowledge like that coming from the human genome project, which will tell volumes about how to manage human ailments. It can also be a body of knowledge that describes our biodiversity and provides us with the power to be much more effective in managing our resources nationally and internationally.

When we look at the state of our biodiversity knowledge base right now, nationally or internationally, what we know is enough to realize that we know too little. What we know is that ecosystems provide essential services to this planet that are far too expensive to replace and without which we cannot survive. Having a sound knowledge base provides a means to make an economic case for ecological services. A greater number of different plants and animals increases the resilience of ecosystem services in the face of disturbances. The amount of diversity determines the size of the planet's insurance policy that those services can be delivered.

We also know through human developments and many natural occurrences that there's a continual delivery of such disturbances. We also know that our ability to provide correct conditions for those ecosystems to perform is poor. There's a lot of information and some expertise, but we must become much better at finding the fragments of information and linking them and organizing how to add to our knowledge base.

We also know that when biological diversity decreases through extinctions, it's difficult or impossible to restore. This is of obvious importance, as evidenced by the legal obligations of many countries to recognize and protect their endangered wildlife.

Knowing these points leads to a clear message for caution in the management of natural resources and utilizing the best-possible knowledge base. It's clear that some actions for the improvement of that knowledge base are needed.

• 0930

This is what's meant by ecological services; this is a list of the very biggest ones. Gas regulation is the service of plants on the land and in the oceans to provide oxygen and remove carbon waste. This is closely related to climate control and events such as the greenhouse effect. Disturbance regulation is another way of saying flood control, which is provided by vast expanses of river deltas, flood plains and wetlands.

Terms such as water supply, food production, and raw materials are as self-explanatory as the recreational and cultural services that are part of healthy ecological conditions.

Soil formation, nutrient cycling and waste treatment are events that are not easy to see happening, but are fundamental in supporting our way of life. Pollination is a huge event that is dependent to a large extent upon insect species. Refugia are the many spaces for plants and animals to live, such as coral reefs, and biological controls are the many natural checks and balances that occur, usually within feeding relationships.

Systematics research is based upon field work, the processing of specimens, real plants and animals brought in to the laboratory, and the publishing of those findings. Ideally, the specimen holdings and the information about them should be available electronically for the best access by everyone. The results of this research process provide answers to very fundamental questions that are the biodiversity knowledge base, such as: What is the species' name? Where does it live? How is it related to the others around it? Is it rare? How does it make a living? How does it interact with its neighbours? How did it come to be the way it is?

The Canadian Museum of Nature has been doing this type of research for many decades and has a large, important national collection of study material. The museum's research division is one of the largest concentrations of systematics expertise in Canada—and that's not a big concentration. It also has a state-of-the-art holding facility and laboratories to facilitate this kind of work. It has in-house expertise on conservation of natural history specimens, to ensure that museum holdings will endure. Perhaps most importantly, it's taking the role of coordinating other collection facilities into a national consortium that will assist with future access and development of collections.

There are good reasons for having a winning knowledge base, which relate to human and ecosystem health, saving and making money, and legal and political interests.

In many cases, ecological health is directly tied to human health and money. As an example, New York City recently decided to purchase $1 billion worth of land in the Catskill Mountains to protect the watershed that was a main water supply. It did that instead of allowing human development to continue in the watershed and instead of purchasing $8 billion worth of treatment facilities that would require $300 million a year to maintain. Those sorts of decisions provide for human and ecosystem health, save billions of dollars nationally and trillions internationally.

An estimate of the value of ecological services worldwide—just those ones that were listed previously—if we had to duplicate them with our technology, would far overtake our global gross national product.

It makes sense from a legal perspective, because there's a desire to protect endangered species. In order to do that properly, an expertise in systematics research and an effective knowledge base must be in place to measure what is endangered and then to prescribe wise conservation measures.

There are several political considerations. Human population and developments create large-scale implications for the living conditions of plants and animals providing those ecological services, and for humans. It's in the best interest of the public that this kind of research be done, and it makes sense that federal departments and agencies lead in doing the work. But the research often does not have an industrial application, the development opportunities that create wealth or jobs. It should be recognized that the impact of this base of knowledge is primarily important to human and ecological health and to cultural richness.

Further to that, Canada will be continually invited into international efforts that will require our participation and the information about our natural resources, and we need to be much better prepared than we are now.

To be able to participate fully in these activities and to improve our knowledge base, we need to have a coordinated government lead that is signified by a clear agreement on how to operate. This will require government departments and government and non-government agencies to participate appropriately. There is a great need for a program of activities to improve our body of expertise, which would include incentives for graduate studies, research jobs, research funding and public education about the importance of these issues. Implicit in all of this is that the knowledge base will be improved. This will require all of the above and a careful action plan.

• 0935

Thank you very much.

The Chairman: Thank you, Dr. Graham.

The next speaker is Dr. Schueler, please.

Dr. F.W. Schueler (Associate, Canadian Biodiversity Institute): Mr. Chairman and committee members, my presentation is about a biologist's reaction to government planning for biodiversity conservation and about the circumstances in which systematists work.

The word “biodiversity” is a contraction of “biological diversity” and it is widely touted as the single most important concern of conservationists. Yet when biologists read plans by government or industry to deal with biodiversity they often feel a central vacancy or discordance as if the heart of the matter were missing. For years I've wondered why this should be so, but by reflecting on the history of the concept I've recently come to understand it.

Beginning in the 1960s, ecologists and systematists developed and population geneticists found the techniques to measure many biological concepts that had previously been purely verbal or theoretical: genetic diversity, species diversity, evolutionary relationships and community structure.

The classic example of such a measure is one of the first of these, the Shannon-Wiener index of species diversity. This is the probability that in a random sample the next specimen encountered will be a different species from the last, which measures the diversity of species in the sample. There are many measures of genetic distance, niche breadth and overlap, outbreeding, structural similarity, the consistency of evolutionary hypotheses and a myriad of other genetic, ecological and evolutionary concepts.

By the mid-1980s the use of the new numerical measures had become routine throughout the biological literature. While there was no single index of biodiversity as such, these many numerical measures of diversity led biologists to talk about diversity as if it were something measurable rather than an amorphous general concept.

Hearing biologists speak in this way, and worried their previous emphasis on endangered species had focused conservation action on only a few species with special status, the conservation and environmental movement picked up biodiversity as a slogan that represented concern for all levels and kinds of biological diversity.

Since this one-word summary of all the conservationists' biotic concerns carried a sense of compelling necessity, governments and foresters incorporated the word in their plans, but they did not incorporate the original quantitative measures. “Biodiversity” had become a buzzword among people who did not understand its quantitative background. When governments and industry picked it up it came without the original quantitative implications.

In an environment in which the measurement and planning of work are increasingly important, industry and government then tried to measure biodiversity using data they were already collecting about the species they were already interested in. They seem to have been unaware that the concept of biodiversity originated in what ecologists and population geneticists considered easily assessed quantitative measurements.

If government and industrial plans continue to ignore biological measures of diversity and continue to try to reinvent the wheel with new measures centred on economically important species, they will miss the point of the biodiversity slogan. People must understand and acknowledge the consequences of their actions on the kinds of organisms they have previously ignored.

In order to measure human impacts on biodiversity we must employ the methods of quantitative ecology and population genetics. This must be combined with solid support for the exploration in systematics, which will tell us which species occur in Canada, and for teaching the Canadian people about their biota.

The core of Canada's biodiversity strategy must be to list and describe the species that occur in Canada and their distribution; to measure the effects of human activities on ecosystems, species, and genetic diversity of all taxa throughout Canada; and to communicate these findings to technical and popular audiences.

• 0940

Assessing the effects of human activities on biodiversity means being able to recognize and monitor ants, beetles, soil mites, salamanders, land snails, caddis flies, zooplankton, fingernail clams, and hundreds of other kinds of organisms all across Canada. These measurements depend on knowing which species are present and on training and supporting people who know the species and who can identify them and teach others to identify them.

There has been little support for this work. My personal systematic work is even less directly supported than the description of species diversity, yet it is potentially just as important for understanding people's impact on the world.

I study geographic variation as evidence of organisms' response to differences in ecological conditions, but since I received my doctorate in 1979 I have never found any direct support for this work. There has been very little support for the preliminary work of documenting species' geographic distribution and the spread of exotic invaders.

When I took Ed Raney's ichthyology course at Cornell, he told a story about how, as a child, he looked into a silvery seine haul of fish and knew he had to be an ichthyologist. Most systematists have had a similar conversion in their youth and devote themselves mind and soul to the taxon they study.

They are not able to compete in a world where a person is assumed to be in a self-aggrandizing career. If they are to do their work well they need consistent lifetime support so that they need worry only about their taxon and the scientific problems it poses.

It takes a lifetime to do systematics right because there's so much to know about so many species and so many relationships. It's not an expensive science, but it is a science that needs consistent support. And in some ways it's even slower than it used to be, because so many more quantitative data are required for modern methods of classifying organisms.

As Mark has said, the benefits of taxonomy are so widely diffused as to not be identifiable. So it must be supported either by the whole human community or characteristically by individuals who take on the responsibility for this support themselves.

The programs of the Canadian Biodiversity Institute and the Eastern Ontario Biodiversity Museum, which I'm representing here, seek to teach people about biodiversity, to promote research and to actively facilitate biodiversity conservation.

We try to expose young people to the diversity of the other species they live among, to provide naturalists with ways to contribute to our overall knowledge of Canada's biodiversity, to provide systematists with collections and a place to work, to publish, assemble and archive biological knowledge and documents, and to see that all these groups communicate their interests and knowledge.

We hope that we will make it possible for many people of all ages to come to see the diversity of life around them, and for some of them to see there their life's work. We hope we will be able to do this in an increasingly sympathetic rather than in an indifferent or hostile social climate. Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you, Dr. Schueler.

Next is Dr. Morrissey, please.

[Translation]

Mr. Brian Morrissey (Assistant Deputy Minister, Research Branch, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[English]

Mr. Chairman, could we have your indulgence for just a moment to get four slides set up, around which I'd like to give the members a little perception of what's been done in agriculture and food up to this point in time, and where perhaps the future may take us?

On the first slide, Mr. Chairman, is a little background on what's happened in agriculture and food over the years. Back in about 1886 two positions were set up, one the dominion botanist and the other the dominion entomologist. They were set up primarily to help identify what could grow in Canada's hostile climate, what was indigenous to the country, what might be imported, and in terms of insects and fungi primarily, what could help or hinder that growth, and especially what could be done to identify and help prevent the disease and pest importations that might occur to Canada.

Mr. Chairman, the main emphasis was on the growth of crops and animals in this country, and on the hitchhikers that might come with those crops and animals as we took them in, meaning fungi, bacteria, weed seeds and so on. The effort was concentrated primarily on crop plants and on the insects and fungi that might affect them.

• 0945

In about 1940 we began to receive significant requests from other departments and agencies across the country, some of which are around this table, and others such as the RCMP, to extend the identification work we had been doing ourselves in order to facilitate the work of other agencies. In that context, Mr. Chairman, we realized early on that the very first step in controlling what came into this country and what was helpful and what might not be was its identification, because without identifying what we were dealing with, we really couldn't take the second step.

The last comment I'd make in this context is that we have created a series of gene banks across the country, where we have conserved genetic repositories of material of a crop nature that we felt was important over the years to Canada.

The last hundred years have left us with two contributions that I'd like to bring to the committee's attention. One is a contribution to the knowledge base of Canadian biological resources, primarily helping other players in the field identify, classify, and document vascular plants, insects, and fungi occurring in Canada; and secondly, in addition to the knowledge base, a series of physical collections located across the country, mainly in plants, insects, and fungi, as I mentioned earlier. We have one muted gene bank in Saskatoon and a number of secondary gene banks located in labs across the country. We have about 30 scientists working directly in this domain, with a total of about 100 staff, if you count technicians and so on.

With regard to the response, Mr. Chairman, to the Canadian biodiversity strategy, we have put forward the action plan that you mentioned this morning, and which Karen also mentioned. We have placed considerable emphasis on partnerships both within the country and with players outside, and we initiated the memorandum of understanding on partnerships, which is now being circulated to the other players at this table. Our understanding as of yesterday is that it's either signed or will be signed by all of the members to whom it has been circulated.

In the context of partnerships, we convened a workshop in 1997 on natural history collections among key stakeholders, and the purpose was to stimulate and strengthen the cooperation that already existed. In 1998 we held a further workshop on the biodiversity information initiative entitled Biota of Canada. Its purpose was to try to create, as a pilot project, an on-line information system in this field, with a network of collaborators across the country and using as a prototype for this on-line database butterflies in Canada. This is a cooperative effort with Karen's people in Environment and ours in Agriculture and Agri-Food.

Finally, on the international front, we would hope to cooperate with the integrated taxonomic information system, looking at identifying and classifying living organisms in North America.

Looking towards the future, Mr. Chairman, as I mentioned in the last slide, our emphasis is on partnership, mainly because I don't think any of us in this country can do it by ourselves, and I don't think any one nation can do it by itself. So within the family around the table, we would like to emphasize the spirit and letter of the memorandum of understanding on partnerships, which has been circulated, and on a larger scale to work with partners around the world, because it's our perception that the identification of living organisms is increasingly becoming a function of specialization in different countries around the world and of cooperation between those disciplines; and, secondly, that the maintenance of collections is such an expensive function that our perception is that's also being specialized around the world, with cooperation as need be.

[Translation]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

[English]

The Chairman: Thank you very much, Dr. Morrissey.

We'd like Dr. Hardy to take the floor.

[Translation]

Dr. Yvan Hardy (Assistant Deputy Minister, Canadian Forest Service, Natural Resources Canada): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is a pleasure for me to be here on behalf of my department, Natural Resources Canada, which views biodiversity as an integral part of its mandate. Our department is a leader in the field of biodiversity.

As you know, we were actively involved in the development of the Canadian Biodiversity Strategy. We also produced the first implementation module at the request of the Commissioner.

• 0950

[English]

We've been commended by the commissioner for it.

[Translation]

Biodiversity issues are addressed in detail in two documents of major importance to the mining and forestry sectors, namely the National Forest Strategy, and the Whitehorse Mining Initiative.

[English]

Biodiversity should be, in our opinion, integrated within our operation and should not be left by itself. We believe, as the commissioner has suggested, the vehicle would be the sustainable development strategy of the government. Biodiversity has definitely been integrated into our S and D strategy, as well as in the criteria and indicators, both domestic and international, to which Canada belongs for defining the nature of sustainable development as applied to forestry.

The Canadian Forest Service, part of NRCan, believes more effort should be focused on biodiversity for many reasons. First of all, more science is needed. As it stands now, the understanding of biodiversity is very incomplete, and it is for that reason one of our ten research networks is entirely dedicated to biodiversity. That involves the effort of about 30 to 40 person-years in directing their work towards description; measuring the elements of biodiversity and human influence, including the impact of forest management; conservation techniques; and so on. The three-year multiple action plan in terms of biodiversity that we produced outlines some of that work.

As has been pointed out a number of times, Mr. Chairman, biodiversity is a huge issue. It's not a simple issue, and no single department or branch within government can tackle this issue. It's an issue that has to be taken in partnership not only within government but also outside of government, including universities and specialized institutes.

Biosystematics, which has been discussed by a number of witnesses here, is a good example where the Canadian Forest Service has been working with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada for years, if not decades, in pooling our resources, despite the fact that we at NRCan are conscious that our efforts might not be as strong as they should be.

However, despite very difficult odds during program review, a very conscious decision was made at the Canadian Forest Service to maintain our regional natural collections that we have in five of our centres. We even moved one step further and had almost our complete fungal collection at the Pacific Forestry Centre right now put on line and available to the whole community.

Another thing I would like to point out to the committee, Mr. Chairman, is the effect of global trade on biodiversity. Global trade poses a new threat by allowing for the coming of exotic species to Canada, species that are not in their natural environment. Lately there was an episode on the west coast of Canada, but this is true for the whole of the country, where foreign insects are coming to this country through all kinds of packaging, shipping, and so on. It is the second worst threat after habitat lost to biodiversity in this country, or in any country, actually. This was recognized a long time ago, when the international plant protection conventions were signed in 1952, way before the biodiversity convention.

• 0955

So recognizing exotic pests, knowing what they can do and what they cannot do, and how they can affect our current fauna, and so on, is something that is a must.

Another trend that has to be reversed is the one dealing with biosystematics. Biosystematics has been let in the back door to let more of what I would call sexy science come forward in the last 20 years. But it has been pointed out, and with reason, that most of our biological baggage is not known yet in this country. For that reason, the Canadian Forest Service has a gene bank in situ and ex situ in the form of provenance tests and in the form of a tree seed centre that's being kept in Fredericton, New Brunswick.

We think improved access to information should be a must. NRCan has taken an initiative with the CGDI, Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastucture, to make available that kind of information, not only to government but to the whole of the community.

A similar initiative should be made for biological information. I don't believe CGDI can accommodate that, but we believe very strongly that a similar process should be put forward. Somebody should take the lead on that, some department, and work together with other departments.

I will terminate my remarks by saying that NRCan would be more than a willing player in that game of having a government approach to biodiversity.

Thank you very much.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Hardy. Our next speaker is Mr. Powles.

Mr. Howard Powles (Acting Director, Fisheries Research Branch, Department of Fisheries and Oceans): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am pleased to respond to the invitation of the committee to provide information on what the Department of Fisheries and Oceans is doing for conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity.

Conservation of fisheries and oceans resources and of aquatic ecosystems is central to the mandate of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. Conservation of biological diversity has always been recognized as essential in the department's activities, although the term "biodiversity" has only entered common usage in the past several years.

[English]

Conservation focused on single species and populations for many years because of course of the direct interest in the fisheries they support. Fisheries are the largest industry in Canada based on the harvesting of wild animal species.

As long ago as the early parts of this century, considerable scientific effort was devoted in Canada to understanding population structure of exploited species such as cod, herring, salmon, and others, through tagging and studying variations in morphology, and this knowledge was applied by spreading harvesting effort over the different populations that make up these species in Canada.

More recently, the strong conservation measures taken by ministers of fisheries and oceans for Atlantic cod, where fisheries remain closed or severely restricted over much of the species distribution to ensure rebuilding of all the populations, and for Pacific salmon, where severe restrictions were imposed on fishing in 1998 to protect specific populations that were at risk, testify to a strong commitment to conservation of the units of biological diversity.

More recently concern has grown for protecting all species and populations, not just those supporting commercial activities. With the signing of the Convention on Biological Diversity and the development of the Canadian biodiversity strategy and associated activities, the department has moved to a broader focus on marine ecosystems.

We have adopted an ecosystem approach to conservation as a guiding principle in our sustainable development strategy, and the department has established an oceans sector through which we're developing new approaches to conservation of ecosystems and conservation of biological diversity.

Implementing an ecosystem approach is a complex challenge, and much remains to be done, but I'd like to provide you with a few details on some of our recent activities for biodiversity, conservation, and sustainable use.

• 1000

Monitoring biological diversity has been an important activity in the department for many years. Recently we have taken steps to bring together diverse sources of biodiversity information, along with information on the marine environment, and to make this more accessible. We've been conducting surveys for commercial species on a routine basis for decades, and these provide valuable information on the distribution and abundance of commercial species and also of the non-commercial species that are vulnerable to capture by the methods used.

The trawl survey information from our Atlantic databases has been brought together with similar information from the United States into a common database called ECNASAP. We now have an image of bottom fish communities over an area stretching from Labrador to Cape Hatteras over a period of about 25 years. The information from this database and from the earlier and more recent surveys in Canadian waters can now be used to monitor long-term changes in biological diversity in these communities over this large area.

We're also working to bring together data on a critical non-commercial component of the marine ecosystem, the plankton. Plankton, of course, are the tiny plants and animals that drift in currents and that are at the base of most marine food chains. A number of studies and surveys of plankton have been carried out over the years covering different areas and periods of time, and we've also supported for some years a long-term monitoring program for zooplankton, the hardy plankton recorder program.

So there's a lot of information on diversity, distribution, and abundance of plankton, along with associated environmental information, in the various research centres on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. To bring this together and to make it more usable, we're developing a distributed database linking all of these data sets. The architecture of this system is now being developed, and it should be operational within the coming year.

This information system will provide easier access to historical data, but it will also support a recently developed ocean monitoring program for the Atlantic region, which will bring together standardized monitoring activities for plankton, chemical and physical variables, and fish from the trawl surveys. This system has now been designed, and it should be operational over the next year or two. We're also looking at putting together similar programs for the Pacific and Arctic regions.

The Pacific salmon management plan for 1998 provides a good example of the stringent measures that the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, with the support of the department, can take to ensure conservation of biological diversity. There were several populations of coho salmon that were assessed to be at high risk, to the extent that continuing declines in population abundance would occur even if there were no fishing mortality. Because animals from these populations were mixed with other more abundant species at sea, it was necessary to impose severe restrictions on the mixed stock fisheries to ensure maximum survival of these rare and at-risk populations. The measures led to considerable controversy and some resistance because there were significant economic losses, but the measures were implemented and will be required for several years. Guidelines for the long-term conservation of Pacific salmon populations will be released soon, and these will make conservation of population diversity an explicit objective.

The department is also developing a policy on gene banking for aquatic species, and this will be applied in the first instance to Pacific salmon. This will further contribute to the conservation of population level diversity.

Passage of the Oceans Act in January 1997 provided the minister with new tools for ecosystem level conservation in the oceans, and these will be used to address the conservation of biological diversity. The Oceans Act provides for the creation of marine protected areas, for the development of integrated coastal zone management protocols, and for the application of marine environmental quality standards. An oceans strategy outlining how these tools will be used for the conservation of ocean ecosystems is being developed in wide consultation with stakeholders, and this should be completed in 1999. Two pilot protected areas were announced on the British Columbia coast in September, and others are in development.

I hope this brief outline will provide you with a flavour of some of the steps the department is taking for conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity. We will be participating actively over the next several months in the preparation of the aquatic module for the Canadian biodiversity strategy, which should provide a more comprehensive picture of what has been done and what will be done. We look forward to being a full partner in the federal biosystematics partnership and to continuing to work with the other departments on conservation and the sustainable use of biological diversity.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

• 1005

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Powles.

Mr. Herity, please.

Mr. John Herity (Director, Biodiversity Convention Office, Environment Canada): I'm the director of the Biodiversity Convention Office, Environment Canada. My job this morning is to inform you of a specific government initiative that is aimed at addressing a number of the concerns that have been put in front of the committee this morning. This is the Canadian Biodiversity Information Initiative.

This initiative has been developed interdepartmentally in the federal government to respond to the need that we have heard expressed this morning for an extensive, accessible, and authoritative biological knowledge base in order to address Canada's conservation objectives. The early phases of this activity have resulted in a confirmation of some of the rather significant barriers that we have to the creation of that knowledge base.

We have identified, for example, that many of our data holdings are unknown. We have found that many of the data holdings are not shareable or accessible. Many of them are privately held by individuals or corporations. Some of them are stored in file cards in people's basements, some of them are in old books in archives. It is very difficult to get electronic access to these data.

We have also identified a problem with the authoritativeness of existing biological information. We have not adopted a taxonomic standard here on a nationally accepted basis, and this is also impeding this sort of work.

Existing data are not actually well documented. That is to say we don't have meta-data about the data. We don't understand the characteristics, the circumstances under which data were collected, what the data is about and how it might be able to be used. If we were to be identifying ways of resolving these sorts of issues, which in fact this initiative is intended to do, we will find in the end that the data—as has already been pointed out to us this morning—are really not sufficient, in that we have only identified the names of about half the species we think there are in Canada. We have not investigated yet, aside from the more prominent ones, the way in which they function within ecosystems and the threats and needs and interactions they have.

With these difficulties in mind, the government set about establishing the Canadian Biodiversity Information Initiative. The vision of this initiative is to increase our national ability to access authoritative biodiversity information for sound resource management.

The mission of the initiative is to facilitate the formation of a broad Canadian partnership with the content, the expertise, the tools and the willingness to share authoritative biodiversity information. Its focus is going to be on biological data and meta-data management. This will be for the purpose of data capture adaptation and exchanging methodologies.

In particular, the Canadian Biodiversity Information Initiative is a partnership of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, the Museum of Nature, Environment Canada, Natural Resources Canada, and the Canadian Forest Service. It's a rather unique partnership, Mr. Chairman, but it is reflective of the way in which business is becoming more and more undertaken within the federal system these days.

With this initiative we have a scientist from Agriculture Canada working under the coordination responsibilities of Environment Canada, operating out of an office space provided by the Museum of Nature and accessing financial resources provided by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Environment Canada, and Natural Resources Canada. It's a unique and interesting partnership and it is working very well.

We have a steering committee involving the partners, which keeps the work on track and well focused. In fact the work has now completed an initial year of fact-finding, confirmation of objectives, confirmation of impediments and pathways through. And we have also identified a strong support on a national basis for the provision of an ongoing activity in this area, particularly into a second phase, which we are now involved in.

• 1010

The second phase activities in a general way are to create more of a focal point leadership for national and international activities in this area. The intent here is to harness the considerable effort that is already under way in Canada, focusing on biosystematics that often are undertaken in isolation. We intend to consolidate a national network of expertise in this area and to initiate infrastructure development through initially the undertaking of some pilot projects.

The very specific objectives for the current year for the Canadian biodiversity information initiative are to adopt a Canadian taxonomic information system based on the integrated taxonomic information system currently seen as authoritative in North America, particularly in the States. We intend to create a clearing house of meta-data standards that will enable us to understand what data are available out there and what the characteristics are. This will be a prototype for biodiversity data sets.

We are also undertaking some biodiversity mapping initiatives. There's a project in British Columbia in particular that is intended to focus biodiversity information and biological taxonomic information on land use planning in a particular area of British Columbia.

We are beginning the creation of a biota of Canada, the documentation of the biology of Canada beginning with a prototype module on butterflies being organized out of Agriculture Canada, and we are continuing an extensive series of networking seminars and workshops throughout the country. In fact the principal investigator on this file is currently in British Columbia now talking this up with silviculturalists during the course of this week.

Thank you very much, Chairman.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Herity.

We have on the list of members indicating a wish to ask questions Mr. Gilmour, followed by Mr. Lincoln, followed by Madam Kraft Sloan and Mr. de Savoye.

Mr. Gilmour, would you like to start?

Mr. Bill Gilmour (Nanaimo—Alberni, Ref.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Welcome. That's quite a panel.

I spent 25 years as a professional forester in British Columbia, and I agree with Dr. Schueler that in the early 1980s we were not aware of anything other than largely commercial species. Then we slowly came forward to what we used to talk about as the slugs and the bugs, which were the bigger picture.

Various provincial governments have moved forward on this, particularly the present government with protected area strategies where 20% of the province will be set aside as either parks or protected areas, and also the way in which we manage our forests. B.C., for example, is owned 95% by the people of B.C., held in trust by the province. The federal government has little input into that through the Constitution. The CFS is there at the Burnside lab, but basically is a minor player.

How does this get down to the provincial level? I see the province doing quite a few initiatives, but I don't see a lot from the federal side. I tend to agree with Mr. Emmett that we've had some glowing reports from Environment Canada and Natural Resources Canada, but I think we are not as far ahead as some would have us believe.

How do we get the players to work together? In my mind, the province is doing it much on its own. Where is the push needed? Is the federal government truly behind this, or are we getting lots of words and little action? That is kind of where I see this happening.

Ms. Karen Brown: Perhaps I can try to respond.

One of the elements that's so important about the partnership arrangements that we have is the provincial and territorial partnerships. You're quite right in identifying that as an area that needs constant attention.

• 1015

The provinces and territories are very key partners in the development of the Canadian biodiversity strategy, which is a national strategy that was developed with their input. We have an ongoing working group that continues to try to monitor and encourage the development of all of the associated pieces. Most provinces and the two territories currently have under development protected area strategies. All of these modules are in fact in the delivery and identification of those things that we will do to implement the strategy.

So we have coordination and it's ongoing, but that's not to say we can't do better. We certainly are going to be working with ministers over the next year to try to bring some of this information together in a very holistic way. It crosses all of the disciplines, as you can imagine. It involves all of the ministers responsible at the various provincial and federal levels, from parks, fish and wildlife, forestry, and agriculture. So it's a big challenge, but we are working toward doing that.

The Chairman: Because of the possibility of a vote, we will try to complete the first round by allocating five minutes to each member. We'll then come back for a second round after the vote.

Mr. Graham, would you like to make a brief comment?

Dr. Mark Graham: I wanted to also emphasize the importance of B.C. as a province participating in a federal program. The things your province is doing such a good job at, such as cataloguing the distribution of the different plants and animals, would stop at your provincial border, but that's not where the distribution stops. The information that you have is therefore very important to building an information base on the national distributions of things. The information you have will be linked up with information from other provinces, so it's very important that everybody participates like that to build that view of the country.

The Chairman: Dr. Hardy, please.

Dr. Yvan Hardy: Since the question dealt very much with forestry, maybe it would be a good idea to mention a few things.

The Canadian Council of Forest Ministers is very active and meets formally once a year, with ministers and deputies involved. There is a host of working groups, and in each case there is full participation of the provinces on initiatives like the criteria for and indicators of sustainable forest management. These are initiatives that are coming forward. They have been put together by the CCFM and are being implemented afterwards in the provinces. It's the same thing with the national forest strategy, and I could name a host of other initiatives like that.

Maybe more important is what the federal government is doing in forestry in the country. It's more on the research side of things, so we are structuring ten networks. Through the CCFM, the provinces have a mechanism—not only an ability, but an open door—to influence the research program to suit their general needs in terms of what research should be done and so on. You'll see that with NABFOR—the national advisory board on forest research—and with many other ongoing networking partnerships as a way of doing business. It's more a separation of duties rather than one major player and other minor players. We're all doing something essential in our own field, our own jurisdiction, so to speak.

The Chairman: In other words, we are strong on butterflies and weak on fleas.

Mr. Lincoln, please.

Mr. Clifford Lincoln (Lac-Saint-Louis, Lib.): First of all, Mr. Chairman, I would like to say how much I have appreciated the work of Mr. Herity over the years. With almost no resources, what he has done is pretty remarkable.

In that vein, I was struck by the remarks of Dr. Hardy regarding information and what Mr. Herity was saying: that in regard to research, monitoring and data collection, we are way behind; that we don't even know where the collections are; that we have the names of only half the species in Canada. Dr. Hardy then said somebody should take the lead in information gathering.

I was going to ask this, and it's in the same thrust carried out by the president's advisory council. The importance is to concentrate and integrate all these factions. Mr. Herity or Ms. Brown, do you see the convention office as being the central gathering point and lead institution for this, and should that be the case?

• 1020

Mr. John Herity: First of all, I thank you for your very kind words. They are very much appreciated, and it has been a pleasure for us to have been working with you over the years as well, Mr. Lincoln.

I might say that the issue of a focal point is rather important in this whole issue. For people throughout the country and internationally, there needs to be an identifiable centre that they can come to in order to understand and get authoritative information about what is going on with respect to Canadian biosystematics. Where that is located is less important.

The thing that has been emphasized this morning—and which I would also emphasize—is the importance of a collaboration of the different agencies that have responsibilities in this area. If that collaboration comes together, then we will effectively have the focal point. Whether it resides in the Museum of Nature, in my office, or at Agriculture Canada is less of an issue than is a commitment of all of the agencies involved in this to work together toward common objectives.

A commitment is becoming more and more manifested in a number of initiatives that are coming forward now, and it's very encouraging that this is happening. If I may say so, my own office has tended to act as more of a catalyst for some of these initiatives, as a starting point for them, but it has not not necessarily provided an ending point for them. It remains very much to be seen and discussed among the departments as to the most logical residency of that type of responsibility in the end.

Thank you.

Mr. Clifford Lincoln: If I may say so, I think it should stay in the convention office. There has to be a lead place, and I would think that should be the natural one having the responsibility for international representation.

In regard to resources, I don't know where the combined resources are. I do see that in the president's advisory committee they are stating now that the Centre for Environment and Natural Resources in Regard to Biodiversity has $460 million U.S. at its disposal. They said this is nowhere near enough, that they need another $200 million. That would put it pretty close to $1 billion Canadian. So if I translate it into Canadian terms, we would need about $100 million for this work. How much do you have now?

Mr. John Herity: Well—

Mr. Clifford Lincoln: Don't blush, Mr. Herity.

Mrs. Karen Kraft Sloan (York North, Lib.): It's not televised.

Mr. John Herity: I don't know. It's necessary to understand the breadth of this biodiversity activity. It can be said to cover the entire spectrum of responsibilities of Environment Canada. It covers responsibilities in the other resource management departments as well, along with the museum. If one were to add it up, it does add to many, many millions of dollars.

I'll just mention one of the things that we are attempting to do with the initiative we now have underway on informatics. We are trying to identify the various activities that are underway in Canada and are aimed in this direction. We can then bring them together and consolidate them, and we can in fact divert resources perhaps more into priority areas. But the implication of your question is that we probably have less resources aimed at this than our colleagues to the south. I think that's a fair observation.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Lincoln. We'll hear next from Ms. Kraft Sloan, followed by Mr. de Savoye, Mr. Jordan, Mr. Charbonneau and last, from yours truly, the Chair.

Ms. Kraft Sloan.

[English]

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

Last spring this committee had endangered species legislation before it. We received a letter signed by 300 scientists from right across Canada. It urged the government to ensure that certain elements were in the endangered species legislation in order to make it effective endangered species legislation.

• 1025

When I take a look at the three departments—Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Fisheries and Oceans—I can see your commitment to biodiversity in the briefs you have submitted. Agriculture Canada has “a century of work in developing Canada's capacity to do work in this area”. Natural Resources Canada says that biodiversity is a priority and it “must be integrated into federal government operations by linking it to sustainable development.” DFO says that “conservation of fisheries and oceans resources and of aquatic ecosystems is central to the mandate of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans”. Will you be supporting good, effective, endangered species legislation this time around?

A voice: Like Mr. Caccia's.

Mrs. Karen Kraft Sloan: Yes, like Mr. Caccia's. Mr. Caccia's legislation has the elements that the 300 scientists from across this country wanted in the original legislation that came before the House last year.

Ms. Karen Brown: I will try to answer that question on behalf of my colleagues.

Mrs. Karen Kraft Sloan: I'm sorry, Mr. Chair, but the question was directed to Natural Resources Canada, Agriculture Canada, and the DFO.

The Chairman: Can we have a response from those departments, please?

Dr. Yvan Hardy: I can start, but I unfortunately won't be able to give a nice answer to Mrs. Kraft Sloan.

I wasn't involved in that particular file or in the evolution of our presentation of our department's position, and I'm still not involved directly in that file. So I'm unfortunately the wrong person to answer that particular one.

The Chairman: Mr. Powles.

Mr. Howard Powles: Yes, Mr. Chairman, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans will certainly support the principles and objectives of endangered species legislation, especially strong endangered species legislation. Any concerns that we have might relate to making sure it's in line with the mandate of our minister under other legislation, and to making sure it can be effectively implemented. There are a lot of implementation challenges in a strong bill, but the department will support new endangered species legislation. We've been working very closely with Environment Canada over the past months on consultations with stakeholders, in discussions with provinces, and so on, and we look forward to going on with that over the next month.

The Chairman: Dr. Morrissey.

Dr. Brian Morrissey: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I don't feel I'm capable of committing our minister in terms of what future decisions he might take on future legislation.

The Chairman: Thank you.

Does that answer your question, Madam Kraft Sloan?

Mrs. Karen Kraft Sloan: Thank you.

The Chairman: Do you want to hear any further answers?

Mrs. Karen Kraft Sloan: No, that's fine.

Ms. Paddy Torsney (Burlington, Lib.): Did you want her to give an answer?

[Translation]

The Chairman: Go ahead, Mr. de Savoye.

Mr. Pierre de Savoye (Portneuf, BQ): We've heard three things mentioned, although there's one thing that we haven't heard. Several of the witnesses noted that biodiversity was important from a biological, economic, legal and social standpoint. I trust that you are preaching to the converted.

Two of the witnesses indicated that their department had carried out certain activities within the framework of the Strategy. That's reassuring to hear, but the reason why we're here is because the Commissioner has said there is no overall federal implementation plan in place insofar as the Biodiversity Strategy is concerned. That is the real issue. Even though two departments may have carried out a number of initiatives, there is no timetable in place and the resources needed to move forward are inadequate.

One thing you failed to mention, except when my colleague Mr. Gilmour raised the issue, are the initiatives that the provinces and Quebec are taking in this area. For those who may not know it, in April of 1996, Quebec adopted an implementation strategy. It is moving forward on the biodiversity issue.

• 1030

Clearly, financial resources are in short supply, but provincial partners are nevertheless taking action in this area. How is it that no one mentioned their efforts in the presentations, even though the Commissioner has observed the following:

One of the impediments to federal-provincial coordination and to developing momentum for implementation of the Strategy appears to be the absence of predictable, planned opportunities for high-level inter-jurisdictional discussions of biodiversity issues.

In light of what you have heard, Commissioner, are you optimistic?

Mr. Brian Emmett: Thank you for your question.

[English]

I like to think I was born an optimist; otherwise, I don't think I would be in this job very long.

With respect to what I've heard, I think it's only fair to say we have not revisited the issue since May. We have not gone in and asked the departments pointed questions about what their activities are. We had a truncated audit in May, and I think I just need to reserve any definitive comment until we see what departments have done once they've had time to put their plans in place, as has been discussed today.

[Translation]

Mr. Pierre de Savoye: Commissioner, what's stopping the departments from developing and implementing plans right now? What's the problem? Is it a lack of money or a lack of interest? Which is it?

[English]

Mr. Brian Emmett: That's something that goes to the heart of the work that we've done in a variety of areas. When we looked at climate change, we found problems very similar to those that we find on biological diversity with respect to managing that file.

It's difficult to have a partnership that works well. It seems that it's particularly hard in the federal government—maybe that's an unfair observation—to select a leader and to have clear agreements between partners about what they're going to do and at what point in time, or what the fallback plan is going to be if those challenges are not met and if the product is not delivered and the results that have been promised are not defined.

Personally, I do not think it's necessarily a problem of a lack of finances. I think it's a problem of a lack of attention to some of the details of making things work on the ground. Perhaps there's a systemic undervaluation in Ottawa of implementation issues relative to broader issues of policy and science.

Mr. Pierre de Savoye: I have one short question. What could this committee do to change this and have action?

Mr. Brian Emmett: I think the central point of my work since 1997 has been that there is an implementation gap with respect to the government's ability to meet the promises it has made to Canadians and the international community. In my view, that implementation gap is largely due to failures of management in terms of being able to establish partnerships that work and result in things that mean things to people. I might also say that failure has come in terms of communicating them to Canadians in such a way that they can understand and become engaged in these issues. I think the one thing a committee like this can do is emphasize the importance of that element of the agenda.

Leadership certainly needs a vision at the end of the day, but it also needs action. It's vision multiplied by action. If you don't have the action there, the result of that multiplication is very little. In fact, it's zero. So I think my objective has been to try to get a little bit of balance in the way the government thinks about executing its responsibilities, placing more emphasis on the implementation side.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. de Savoye.

[English]

Mr. Jordan, followd by Mr. Charbonneau and Mr. Herron.

Mr. Joe Jordan (Leeds—Grenville, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I want to thank our guests today. This is an incredibly interesting topic and an incredibly important topic. I think I share some of the frustration that my colleague has implied in his tone, as has Madame Kraft Sloan. We've heard today that this is a very complex issue, but I think it's a very simple issue. I think we're talking about the species that inhabit this planet. I don't think there's any halfway here. Either it's important that we preserve these species, or it isn't important that we preserve them. I'm just wondering how we can justify taking the middle road here, because I don't think there is any middle road.

• 1035

One of the things I've experienced in this committee, both in working on these issues in the last year and in the climate change debate... We're currently looking at CEPA, and at the action the government took on MMT and then untook on MMT and the sulphur-in-gasoline issue. Even with the endangered species issue, it's the tobacco debate revisited. We're constantly being confronted with this need for science: show me the science; I want to put my hand in the wound to make sure this action is required.

On a personal level, it's extremely frustrating. I'm not a scientist, but scientists breathe and I breathe, and putting MMT into the air is not a good idea. I don't think I need to do any research to prove that. That's part of the frustration.

Now the thing that I find interesting—and I'm thinking out loud right now, so this could get scary—about the presentation on biodiversity is that I think it's really what an environment committee talks about. I think it's really what the environment issue is. If I'm understanding what I heard right or if I've absorbed it right, then the science will be the link that shows the impact of whatever actions man takes, that shows the “human disturbances”—I think that was the word used—that man is inevitably going to cause in the ecosystems' services.

When we pollute, I think climate change and the preservation of biodiversity are the same issue. I think they're all issues dealing with biodiversity. Rather than being the poor cousin, I think this particular issue should be the central focus of what we do. If we can show that degrading the air is affecting species, then I think that might close the loop. But again, as I say, my knowledge of this subject is in its infancy, and I think that underscores the importance of you being here today.

My question is for Mr. Herity, and it's on the Canadian Biodiversity Information Initiative. It seems like a good, solid idea, but I have some of the concerns Madame Kraft Sloan has in terms of the people who make up the steering committee. I would hope the steering committee will be made up of people who would view the issue as one on which we can't compromise. I would also hope we don't have to fight the steering committee. I wouldn't want anyone on that steering committee to say that we have to have good science on issues that seem painfully obvious to me.

I was struck by one of the things Dr. Schueler said. In part of his presentation he perhaps talked about the reasons why the data holdings aren't known. When I look at that steering committee, has there been any effort to engage people like Dr. Schueler into that process? I think that seems to be missing. Maybe there should be some attempt to engage the private biologist who, just by some sort of God-given direction, has decided that these things are important and has incredible knowledge and holdings. Those kinds of people might improve the initiative.

The Chairman: Your question is for Mr. Herity, is that so?

Mr. Joe Jordan: Yes, and I'm hoping for more than a yes or a no.

The Chairman: All right, Mr. Herity, and please be brief.

Mr. John Herity: Thank you very much for the question.

The steering committee is made up of very knowledgeable individuals from within the organizations that are contributing the resources necessary to keep the initiative alive. However, a significant aspect of the initiative itself is to reach out to people such as Dr. Schueler and others across the country, to the provinces, to the educational institutions, to the museums, to botanical gardens, and to those who hold information, manage it and do something about it. In fact, one of the prime responsibilities of the initiative is to do exactly what you're suggesting. If this is the focus of your question, it's certainly not out of the question, but we have not yet brought in individuals from the outside to serve on the steering group.

The extent to which the initiative is reaching out includes holding workshops, for example. There were a number last year, and there will be others during the course of this year. They did and will involve people from all parts of Canada and from all areas of responsibility with respect to biosystematics. This is the way we will generate partnership, and this is the way we will generate the best scientific input for this initiative.

The Chairman: Mr. Charbonneau, followed by Mr. Herron and the chair.

[Translation]

Mr. Yvon Charbonneau (Anjou—Rivière-des-Prairies, Lib.): Mr. Chairman, I'm pleased to see that, with the help of our clerk, this meeting has taken on a high profile.

• 1040

Today's meeting is a follow-up to a preliminary meeting that the Chairman and I had in June with representatives of the Museum of Nature who drew our attention to the biodiversity issue. Today we welcome to the committee representatives of the various departments or agencies working in some capacity in this field.

Initially, we heard from the Commissioner of the Environment who said that we weren't making much progress on biodiversity issues, that implementation plans had not been drawn up and that some shortcomings had been observed.

However, the representative of the Department of the Environment has told us that some progress has in fact been made since the Commissioner first made these comments last May.

I recall what you told this committee regarding climate change. You said that some decisions needed to be made and that Environment and Natural Resources must work together. You also said that the different players weren't coordinating their efforts very much, that responsibilities should be shared, that someone needed to exercise some leadership in this field, and so forth.

You have heard the overall initiatives that the various departments, the Biodiversity Convention Office and the Canadian Institute have taken.

What approach should be taken in terms of producing implementation plans? Before we go any further, could we hear your views on the subject? How should we proceed? Who should be responsible for overseeing the plans' initiatives? In my opinion, it's not enough to say that all players need to work closely together; that's a common refrain and a given. Who should oversee implementation initiatives? Who should play a leading role?

I heard the official from Natural Resources say that this department views biodiversity as an integral part of its mandate. Of course, Environment Canada also sees this as one area of responsibility. The same can be said for the other parties seated around the table. No one is denying that responsibilities should not be shared, but who should be overseeing biodiversity initiatives?

Unless we answer that question, I don't think that we will be able to come up with a viable plan. That's why I would like your opinion, now that all of the cards are on the table.

Of course if anyone else would like to comment, I would be interested in hearing what they have to say. However, I'm especially interested in hearing the Commissioner's opinion, since in some respects, he is a neutral party. Given his knowledge of the way government works in general, I'm sure he could give us some understanding of the situation. Before we commit any further, I'd like to hear what he has to say, instead of seeking his opinion later, once we find that things aren't going as well as we would like them to.

Mr. Brian Emmett: Thank you, Mr. Charbonneau.

[English]

I apologize for having become so predictable.

One of the things that strikes me about the conversation is the extent to which people work in compartments in Ottawa. I think it's true with respect to individual subjects and it's true with respect to different subjects that have a lot in common, like climate change and biological diversity.

I have the opportunity to look at them both together, and I see many elements in common. They're both global. They're both extremely important to the future of the planet. They both require partnerships, internationally. They require partnerships among departments. They require partnerships among levels of government, and so on.

Our experience on climate change is that those partnerships in that area have not worked well. Mr. Schueler made the point that he hoped the people working on this issue wouldn't be reinventing the wheel with respect to scientific information. I would certainly hope that people would be learning the lessons from the climate change file and applying them to biological diversity.

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In terms of the sort of advice I might offer, I'd suggest looking at the climate change chapter. There's a matrix there—I think it was attached last week—that indicates 19 different elements we would look for. I don't have an MBA or special expertise in this area, but it strikes me as being common sense.

One of the things we said is that in a partnership you need a leader. If you look at law firms, they don't have, for example, coordinating partners, they have managing partners. I think it's up to the Government of Canada to choose who that managing partner will be, but it's awfully difficult to make a partnership work just by being a collaboration without defined relationships.

The second thing that is really important is the relationships between the partners have to be described clearly. In our work on climate change—and again, we haven't done the same sort of investigation on biodiversity—we found that relationships were largely undefined or verbal or there was a certain murkiness to them. Participants today have referred to a memorandum of understanding with the departments, and I think that's a step in the right direction. Without that kind of leadership department, we found that poorly defined partnerships can be an invitation to buck-passing.

Third, I would look for a definition of results. What do we want our partners to do, by when—and I think the final part of that phrase is the important one—and what are we prepared to do if they don't deliver? What is our fallback plan?

The Chairman: Mr. Herron, second round.

[Translation]

Mr. Yvon Charbonneau: May I ask a supplemental?

Thank you for clarifying that, Commissioner. Among other things, you said that we should look for inspiration to initiatives that have been taken in the field of climate change. The solution retained in that case was to establish a secretariat to coordinate resources from various sources. Are you suggesting that a similar secretariat be set up to oversee biodiversity initiatives? Are you suggesting that this is the appropriate course of action to take?

[English]

Mr. Brian Emmett: Certainly that's one avenue the committee might explore, but I'm not suggesting that's a preferred one. On climate change we will be coming back to that in 2000, at the request of the committee. We'll see then how well the secretariat mechanism has worked.

I think you need a focal point of responsibility of some sort, either a department or another mechanism that has the ability to command resources, set agendas, and that sort of thing.

The Chairman: Mr. Herron, please.

Mr. John Herron (Fundy—Royal, PC): The witnesses we have today should be relatively happy to be working on this particular issue. This is an issue where you're on the side of the angels, because Canadians want effective environmental legislation that protects our species at risk.

I don't necessarily know what was in the memorandum of understanding, but essentially to have good, effective legislation we need to have legislation that ensures we don't kill species at risk, we don't destroy their homes, and we give them a place to live.

On that same vein, with respect to the previous Bill C-65 and section 33 that related to those points, can we have some kind of preliminary indication, since we're in the consultative phase right now, before the legislation gets tabled, likely in February, whether will we see something similar to section 33 or an enhanced version in February?

Ms. Karen Brown: At this stage it's too early to say. The ministers are still in a very large consultation process that involves not only the large workshops we just concluded last week, which you probably saw in the newspaper on Thursday and Friday, but regional consultations beginning today in Winnipeg and running right across the country so we can talk with resource sectors and people who own the land who have stewardship responsibilities from coast to coast to coast—hopefully we'll go north as well. At this stage we're in the very early beginnings of trying to find some consensus around some of the major issues.

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What I can tell you, though, is that at the wildlife ministers' meeting at the end of September, the federal, provincial, and territorial wildlife ministers agreed to actively explore the safety net approach, where a safety net would apply to all endangered species and not just those that cross international borders. So they're working together to try to define what that means and how federal, provincial, and territorial legislation policies and programs would have to work together to make that happen.

Mr. John Herron: Cross-boundary species requirements in the legislation are perceived to be relatively weak, so I encourage you from a constructive perspective to pursue that particular avenue.

I also have a question with respect to the role of science in terms of listing. I find it very hard to believe that parliamentarians or legislators, with very few rare exceptions, really have the academic credentials or knowledge-based credentials to be able to determine what should be classified as a species at risk. Will COSEWIC be the sole body that actually determines what species will be deemed to be at risk, so the legislation we see will not be susceptible to any kind of political interference? Ultimately they're the scientists and we're just mere legislators.

Ms. Karen Brown: The ministers approved the terms of reference for COSEWIC at the last meeting, and it is very clear COSEWIC is the scientific body that will determine and assess the status of species at risk in Canada. At the end of the day, Parliament will decide which of those species will be actually listed under a bill, but certainly the assessment will be done by scientists under COSEWIC.

Mr. John Herron: My simplistic version of endangered species legislation is don't kill them, don't wreck their homes, give them a place to live, and make sure we have, as you alluded to, mechanisms that encourage public participation with respect to stewardship. So I wish you well in seeing very effective legislation in February.

Ms. Karen Brown: Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Herron.

We have time for a second round of questions. Before doing that, there are a couple of questions from this end of the table. They are addressed to Mr. Emmett.

Mr. Emmett, in your submission this morning you made a reference in point 9 to the fact that key deadlines have been missed. Are you in a position to indicate to them specifically now, or would you rather do that by way of a memo?

Mr. Brian Emmett: I believe the deadlines we were referring to were in the report in May. They were the deadlines for submission of our strategies to the UN.

The Chairman: That is one deadline?

Mr. Brian Emmett: Yes.

The Chairman: What are the others?

Mr. Brian Emmett: I'll just ask Wayne Cluskey if he could fill us in on some of the details here.

Mr. Wayne Cluskey (Principal, Audit Operations, Office of the Auditor General of Canada): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The eight planning modules we referred to that were to be prepared by several departments were originally due in early 1997. One department came within a month of meeting that deadline. The other department got theirs done in February—this was at the time we were doing our audit in February. As Ms. Brown said, three more have been completed. So it was the planning modules we were concerned about that were supposed to ultimately form the national implementation plan. The other was the report to the UN, which was due in December 1997. At the time of our audit it had not been completed. I'm not sure what the status of it is now. So those are essentially two key deadlines that were missed.

The Chairman: Can you give us the dates they are expected to be produced?

Mr. Wayne Cluskey: I would have to defer to my departmental colleagues to provide the dates when all this information will be completed, or in the case of the UN report, whether it has been submitted to the UN.

The Chairman: Are they prepared to give us an indication? Ms. Brown?

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Ms. Karen Brown: We have three more reports that are due this year: the ecological framework, the international one, and the aquatic biodiversity strategy. We anticipate that those will be done this year.

The report was tabled with the UN on time, and we've also since then put together Canada's first national report to the Conference of the Parties. That was prior to the COP-4 meeting in Bratislava.

The Chairman: If the committee could be supplied with a complete list of what has been done and what is still to be done with deadlines, that would be very helpful in understanding the full picture.

Mr. Emmett, Canada went to Kyoto and signed an international convention of some importance. That convention, of course, requires for its implementation the cooperation of various departments, NGOs and the like. Therefore, it was felt necessary, in order to pull through various separate responsibilities, to set up a secretariat. Therefore it is natural to follow up on the question asked by Mr. Charbonneau and again put that question on the table.

It seems there are similarities here between the procedural complexities of the two issues. They are both international, both require several departments, both are complex, both are indirectly provoking competitive instincts in various departments, and so on. Therefore, the solution offered by the secretariat seems to have some appeal. Even if, in your reply to Mr. Charbonneau, you indicated you are not quite sure whether certain requirements have been met, the fact that the secretariat is still under your sharp microscope, so to say, doesn't mean we shouldn't look seriously at the idea of a secretariat in order to bring together and move ahead this complex issue.

Could you comment again please?

Mr. Brian Emmett: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for an opportunity to clarify what I said.

Certainly I did not mean to indicate I felt the secretariat was a flawed institution in conception. I just meant to say that the ultimate test of any of the arrangements one might think of—whether it is a single department in the lead, the use of a secretariat, or other institutional arrangement the government might decide to use—is whether they work and produce the product. In that sense, it's hard to judge in advance whether a secretariat is the ideal instrument.

Certainly it's a way of bringing parties together and trying to integrate across a complex array of scientific and other sorts of considerations. There are other ways to do it as well. One might be to have an unambiguous federal lead, or something along those lines. There are alternative ways to do it. I certainly do not have anything in advance against the secretariat.

The Chairman: If an unambiguous federal leader, to use your terminology, were easy to find, it would have been found by now, don't you think?

Mr. Brian Emmett: I think that's an astute observation. I'm slightly at a loss for words here for a moment. In some sense it suggests the government isn't well structured to handle horizontal issues, and a secretariat therefore is required to overcome those sorts of problems.

The logical implication of that is since more and more of our problems on the environmental side and the sustainable development side are horizontal, we need to think fundamentally of new ways of doing business. We have new tools such as sustainable development strategies to try to get a clear understanding of what departments wish to do on the environment and how they might be coming together to form a sustainable development strategy for the government as a whole.

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At the end of the day, I'm not really sure what the best approach is. It's an empirical question.

The Chairman: It seems to me, Mr. Emmett, you are putting the finger on a very important factor here, which is that because we have entered a phase of more and more complex issues, and because the organization of government is vertical, it becomes therefore necessary with certain types of issues to devise horizontal processes. That doesn't mean it reflects badly on the department. Not at all. It could also mean that all these departments are so eager to be in a lead position that they are aggressive and ambitious. Therefore, somehow the system has to find an answer to accommodate these competing interests through horizontal structure.

I don't think it necessarily reflects badly on the system we operate within, or the departments. It seems to me you made an important observation here that we may have entered a phase in which maybe more and more secretariats will be required because of the global community getting together to resolve some very complex issues.

Mr. Brian Emmett: I guess I would say that's exactly right. We need new ways; we need partnerships. At the end of the day, we fundamentally need partnerships that work. I think our work on climate change, which I think is relevant to biodiversity, indicated or tried to come to defining some elements of partnerships that work. I referred to those earlier on. Making partnerships work might require a secretariat, but there may well be a menu of other sorts of things the federal government might prefer to do. That's certainly its job and its mandate: to choose how it sees fit to carry out its promises.

The Chairman: All right, thank you.

We can now start the second round, but Mr. Pratt has just indicated his wish to ask a question and he hasn't had a chance before. Mr. Pratt.

Mr. David Pratt (Nepean—Carleton, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chair. Actually, the question I have is a follow-up to one of the questions you asked.

I was curious, if Mr. Emmett could respond, about how Canada compares with some of the other developed countries in terms of meeting reporting deadlines under the biodiversity convention. Are we at the back of the pack? Are we somewhere in the middle?

Mr. Brian Emmett: We didn't do that comparison in our audit work. We did have a look at climate change, where we found we were roughly in the middle of the pack.

Mr. David Pratt: Okay.

The Chairman: Thank you. For the second round, I have indications only from Mr. Lincoln, Monsieur de Savoye, and Madam Kraft Sloan.

Mr. Clifford Lincoln: Mr. Chairman, if I may disagree with you, I'm just a little worried about this idea that every time we need coordination we start a new secretariat, because in the end, whether you have the secretariat or not, who leads it politically?

That's a key question, because what we have done in climate change was started a secretariat as a sort of crutch to avoid the fact that we've got three ministries now that are taking decisions, and there is a question of which one leads which. There's Environment, Foreign Affairs, and Natural Resources. Natural Resources seems to be the leading ministry right now, but when they go to the actual convention itself, Environment takes over. I think we have decided on a hybrid that I don't see other nations following at all. There's one lead ministry in charge and responsible politically. I think this is a key issue.

In regard to the biodiversity convention, it's traditionally been—it's always been—the environment ministry. There's a convention office, which should serve as a secretariat. It's already there. Why invent another hybrid? We've got the convention office, we should beef it up. That should be the secretariat. The key question is which minister politically is going to be answerable to the Canadian people, to the Prime Minister, and to Parliament? I think it should be the Minister of the Environment.

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What we're doing more and more is casting the environment ministry like a little junior somewhere in the system, because we say it doesn't have enough resources. What's been happening... If you take the Atmospheric Environment Service out of the budget, it's got a budget of about $250 million, which is so puny, it's sad. And more and more it's losing its clout within the system.

I think as an environment committee we should sustain the idea that the convention office be the clearing mechanism, because it includes biosafety, the indigenous peoples question, endangered species legislation, and all the various facets we're talking about. It should be the clearing house and it should be answerable to the Minister of the Environment, with all the participation of the other ministries. I think that should be the formula.

Could I ask a question of Miss Brown? What I want to know is in regard to endangered species legislation. The big question last time when the legislation failed—we can say that, as it was certainly not a success—was the question of habitat. Are we going to have better legislation than last time in regard to habitat?

Ms. Karen Brown: The minister has been working very closely with her federal, provincial, and territorial colleagues to try to define the new elements of a bill that she would feel comfortable tabling. One of the key elements has been to what extent habitat can be protected through legislation, and to what extent you can legislate “stewardship and voluntary action”, which is so essential, ultimately, to the survival of species, particularly in the prairies and many areas where land is owned privately. It is an important issue. It is one she is addressing and one we hope will be able to strike a balance between legal protection and voluntary stewardship.

Mr. Clifford Lincoln: So you don't say whether it's going to be an improvement over last time, do you? Is it going to be an improvement over last time, as you see it? It wouldn't take much, in itself.

Ms. Karen Brown: I wasn't involved last time. But the approach... The strongly held belief, I think it would be fair to say of all wildlife ministers, is that you must have complementary legislation; you must also have policies and programs to complement that. You can't legislate them from going out of being just because you legislate it to be so. I mean, it is really on the ground delivery, with all of the people involved and engaged actively in the protection and stewardship of the resources as well.

So from the view of complementarity of working with all of our partners, we hope it will be better.

The Chairman: Thank you.

[Translation]

We'll hear first from Mr. de Savoye and then from Ms. Kraft Sloan.

Mr. Pierre de Savoye: Commissioner, in point 4.34, mention is made of reporting at the international, federal and provincial levels. Environment Canada had this to say in response to the concerns you expressed:

Added to the scientific complexity are the inter-jurisdictional complexities.

I have a question for you, Commissioner. It seems to me that theoretically, Environment Canada should be saying that because of the synergy with its partners, it is able to do more and in less time. Here, the department seems to be saying exactly the opposite. It is saying that jurisdictional problems exist, that two levels of government are involved in managing endangered species and that consequently, it can't make appropriate decisions concerning endangered species. What about synergy? What's going on here? Where is this negative attitude coming from? Why not take advantage of the presence of two levels of government to improve efficiency?

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[English]

Mr. Brian Emmett: I'm all in favour of synergy; I am against overlap and duplication. I hold all sorts of very correct economic views in this area.

What I am for is partnerships that work. Our problem is that in a lot of areas that are very similar to biological diversity we've seen partnerships that for one reason or another do not work at the end of the day. They do not deliver the goods. They do not deliver the results.

First of all, my mandate is basically confined to the federal government. I don't look into the workings of other levels of government. I'm certainly not against synergy. I'm certainly not against partnerships. I'm certainly not against innovative arrangements. But at the end of the day, we have to close the implementation gap and keep the promises we made to Canadians and our international partners.

[Translation]

Mr. Pierre de Savoye: Commissioner, the report refers to difficulties arising from jurisdictional overlap and duplication. I have a problem with this. An endangered species is an endangered species. Biodiversity knows no borders. Money is not in such abundant supply that one jurisdiction can afford the luxury of saying to the other: I'll handle it, don't you worry about it. What explanation can there possibly be for this lack of synergy?

[English]

Mr. Brian Emmett: Thank you again. One thing I would say is that, again, as we went into this, we found that activities on biodiversity were confined to planning. Of the activities that were available at that time with respect to planning, two out of the eight modules, for example, were to be delivered. So at the end of the day there were a lot of things we didn't look at in detail on biodiversity. We will be coming back to those in 2000 or 2001, and commenting in detail.

Again, I don't think there's any reason in theory that partnerships should not be able to work if they're properly designed. I think there are design issues. At the end of the day, I think it really is a very pragmatic thing: what works and what doesn't? What are the arrangements that minimize overlap and duplications and maximize the value of synergy to the process? What are the things that don't work at all? What are we learning as departments work hard to try to come to grips with these increasingly horizontal issues?

[Translation]

Mr. Pierre de Savoye: Ms. Brown, would you care to respond to the Commissioner's comments? Why do you claim to have some difficulties, whereas the Commissioner says that synergy should be encouraged?

[English]

Ms. Karen Brown: The difficulties relate only to the fact that provinces and territories control and are directly responsible for many of Canada's natural resources, if not a good deal of them. The federal government has some responsibilities in terms of constitutional authority for natural resources.

The challenges are to identify together actions that will protect and enhance Canada's biodiversity. That's not an easy thing to do while respecting people's jurisdiction and their own need to act locally. It takes time to build partnerships to address those challenges. There's no question that we felt that we were a little optimistic perhaps in terms of the length of time we thought we would take to get some of those fundamental partnerships in place. I think we're working on it and making progress, but there are many actors involved in this.

The Chairman: Maybe Dr. Graham would like to make a comment.

Dr. Mark Graham: I have a general comment about a couple of things relating to that.

I notice there's a focus on endangered species and a concern about that, which is very important. There was a point made earlier in one of our presentations about how only half of the species in Canada have actually been described. The species we're talking about being endangered that have been described are usually big things that are easy to see, and those are important to us to protect. I should emphasize that as for the other half of those species, we don't even know if they're endangered because we never described them before.

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I think it's very important to also focus on the information, expertise, and cooperation required to do that extra work as well. I just hope this is also one of the important things we discuss.

The Chairman: Thank you.

Madam Kraft Sloan.

Mrs. Karen Kraft Sloan: Thank you very much.

I just wanted to echo the concern Mr. Lincoln put forward that certainly the Convention on Biological Diversity can act as a good clearing house for a lot of the work that's being undertaken, but we also have to make sure that political responsibility resides in one place for these activities. When you get into shared jurisdictions in Ottawa, it's complicated enough, let alone when you're dealing with provinces.

I wanted to go back to Dr. Schueler's presentation. I found it very interesting, particularly when it got to some of the fundamental concerns around how the whole field of biodiversity has been evolving. I thought it was rather interesting when you pointed out that there was this long-standing history of the development of biodiversity within natural sciences and how it has evolved there. But when industry and government have taken this word on, they start to study species they're most interested in. So species that are economically important are the ones that are sort of the focus. In many respects this is very understandable, because government and industry have certain sorts of mandates.

I'm wondering—Dr. Schueler or anyone else can comment on this—how this plays out in government policy. How does it play out in resource allocation? If you can give a little more flesh to your words on this, it would be helpful.

Dr. F.W. Schueler: I'm not sure how it goes into government policy.

Here's what I would like to see. I've been involved in this with the model forest program. Say foresters plan to preserve biodiversity at one core level of species diversity. Instead of looking at the species diversity of the trees they're already harvesting and directly affecting by their harvesting and planting and other activities, they would put out insect traps in the woods. They would collect the insects they trap in the regular way that entomologists trap insects. They would get those insects identified, calculate the species diversity indices that apply, and then use measures of community ecology as the indicators of how their harvesting and other management activities influence biodiversity.

At the model forest biodiversity workshop, those from the Abitibi model forest said they had this list of species that were supposedly indicators. They had 50 species. They went to the Ministry of Natural Resources and asked them what they knew about these. The Ministry of Natural Resources had no information about any of those species. They wondered how to do it.

My answer was that I didn't do this kind of ecology myself, but as somebody who reads the biological literature, I said that once you've said you're committed to studying biodiversity, you wouldn't expect the species you already have data on to be the species you're going to be concerned with. You have to go out to the bugs and slugs and start measuring the diversity of the bugs and slugs.

Consider the techniques used for going out to build a bridge: engineers don't try to reinvent the physics of how strong an I-beam is. If you're going to measure biological diversity, you go into the ecological literature and find out how community ecologists measure biological diversity. And then even though it means you have to hire the kind of people you haven't previously dealt with, that you have to train people to do things they haven't already done, you just go out and measure biological diversity in the habitats you're affecting.

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On this question of lead agency, for the first three quarters of this century the national museum was the lead agency with agriculture for insects because they had the collections and they had the systematists. The way the federal government could take the lead would be to see that there was a unified national museum of natural sciences, with sufficient depth in researchers to lead the research and documentation in Canada's biodiversity.

Dr. Mark Graham: I'd maybe just put that in a slightly different way. People who make policy in government are going to continually be asked to make decisions about wealth creation and things that will enhance this. In the same way that you will read things from economists that allow you to make those kinds of decisions, you should be able to also balance those against how that will impact on the kinds of services that biodiversity provides.

At this point there is information, but Canada doesn't have a sufficient base of knowledge to make those kinds of balances yet. And those kinds of decisions are really tough decisions, because the country has to generate wealth and create jobs. How do you balance that against not wrecking the environment, or not wrecking the many types of ecosystems that exist? That is a very difficult decision. This knowledge base we are talking about creating in a cooperative way, or with a lead agency or however it happens, is meant to provide a better way of making decisions.

Mrs. Karen Kraft Sloan: Do you have a comment, Mr. Emmett?

Mr. Brian Emmett: No, I don't.

Mrs. Karen Kraft Sloan: If we follow the words of E.O. Wilson, who certainly dedicated many years of study to the issues around biodiversity, all of our material and cultural wealth is based on our biological wealth, so it can't be a narrowly cast study of certain species; it has to be the bugs and slugs and the soil and all kinds of other stuff, because that's what supports this species that we make our livings from, so to speak.

Dr. Brian Morrissey: In agriculture and food, as I mentioned this morning, we have spent a hundred years trying to identify, describe, and predict the behaviour of living entities in Canada associated with crops, insects, and fungi. In a first period of time, what I have heard this morning is quite true. We look at those problems that we know to be problems, or those opportunities that we think can feed us. But because we don't know for example the next fungus that is going to cause a problem, or the next insect, we need to identify the whole population out there, so that when an issue does come up we can identify what is happening.

So while the brief we have been given has been to deal with agriculture and food, to handle the unknown of the next case you need to classify the whole entity.

Thank you.

The Chairman: Ms. Kraft Sloan, a brief question.

Mrs. Karen Kraft Sloan: Part of the Convention on Biological Diversity talks about indigenous peoples, and I'm wondering what attempts are being made to integrate traditional ecological knowledge with more western-based science.

Mr. John Herity: That's a very important question. I believe that we in Canada are seen around the world to be leading in the thinking with respect to this dimension of the Convention on Biological Diversity.

What we have been doing over the past few years with respect to this issue is to ensure that we have a good collaboration with Canadian indigenous people so that we are able to advance policies and ideas for Canada, and from Canada, for the rest of the world in a solid partnership and with confidence that the indigenous populations in Canada are behind us and in fact are leading in these ideas.

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To this end, Mr. Chairman, we have created an interesting body within Canada. It's a broadly based indigenous working group that is convened by my office. It is almost unique, I believe, in that it incorporates explicitly on its executive representatives from each of eight national indigenous organizations from both the north and across the country.

This group, which meets twice a year to advance research and activities with respect to traditional knowledge in Canada and for the global convention as well, is steered by this indigenous executive. We are in fact in the final stages of planning this fall's meeting—it's coming up around the end of November, if I'm not mistaken—to further advance research in these areas, specifically with respect to the integration of traditional knowledge and modern sciences, one of the big issues on a global basis that we're attempting to address. Also, one of the more difficult matters has to do with the property rights associated with traditional knowledge, which we are also trying to get a handle on.

We have also been instrumental in the international field in the development of a special working group to attack indigenous issues in the discussions of the biodiversity convention internationally.

Thank you.

The Chairman: Mr. Herron, followed by the chair, and then we'll adjourn for votes.

Mr. John Herron: My comments won't be that long. I did want to echo Mrs. Kraft Sloan's and Mr. Lincoln's comments. We went from a Department of Environment that was approximately seventh in size around 1993 to a department that is now about 21st in size.

I see that trend in the importance the Department of Environment is going to be having around the cabinet table; it will continue to be watered down. Every time we actually see an issue that has a degree of importance, that is rather critical, we end up setting up another bureaucratic body to administer it. That's what we've chosen to do with respect to climate change, and perhaps we'll leave that debate for a later day.

But in terms of biodiversity, this would be something that I think, Ms. Brown, your department should quarterback, and ultimately it would be one that you should actually go ahead and defend. Otherwise I see a very dangerous trend, which has happened with the Department of Environment over the last six years. It's slowly becoming a department that will essentially be a minister of state, and I think that would be wrong. That would not be in accordance with the environmental legacy this country has had—I might add a political jab and say particularly between 1984 and 1993. That was intended to be a joke, but honestly, I think this is something your department should defend.

Ms. Karen Brown: The biodiversity convention office is housed in Environment Canada. John is the director. It has been in existence since Canada ratified the convention. It functions, for all intents and purposes, as the secretariat for the implementation of Canada's biodiversity strategy.

We use that office to second folks from departments of all the folks around the table so that we can have an integrated focus. From that point of view, we are the lead department and our minister is the lead minister. Your point is well taken.

Mr. John Herron: Thank you.

The Chairman: I have one final question before concluding, but Mr. Charbonneau has a question. Go ahead. I will follow and then we'll conclude.

[Translation]

Mr. Yvon Charbonneau: Mr. Chairman, I have an unusual question in that it is directed to you. Could we possibly conclude our exchange by recommending to the Prime Minister that some follow-up action be taken in response to what we have heard today?

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Perhaps we don't need to do this right away, given that some members aren't here, but perhaps we could come back to this and conclude our discussion by recommending action on our specific areas of concern and a response from the government so that some progress on this matter can be made.

Clearly, much goodwill exists and a great deal of energy is being expended. Several parties feel responsible for this issue. We also know that we could end up going around in circles for the next two years. Couldn't we try to ensure that we move forward on the biodiversity issue?

The Chairman: We could make a recommendation of that nature, but as you said, perhaps it would be better to wait until opposition members are present. Perhaps you'd like to draft a proposal which we could then discuss and vote on at our next meeting.

Mr. Yvon Charbonneau: Fine then. Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

[English]

Dr. Graham, I would like to ask you a question in connection with the comprehensive biodiversity information system, which is the one that you elaborated upon extensively.

You must have some preference as to how that system ought to be carried out, within the governmental system or outside, or as a combination of the two, or whatever.

In other words, it would be very helpful to this committee if you could indicate what your thoughts are as to the profile of the agency that would be in charge of this particular assignment. Could you do that, please?

Dr. Mark Graham: My own way of thinking about this is that there are several departments that do this kind of work or use this kind of information as part of what they do all the time. They have mandates to deliver on, and they may be doing that with their expertise and they might not see the obvious way to collaborate.

There is a whole lot of collaboration that goes on right now, but obviously, from what everybody has been saying, there's a lot more that needs to be done. If there was a lead agency, I think that would be less effective than if there was in place all the talent and activity that goes on right now, with a clear understanding of how everyone would contribute, with timelines and things that would be delivered, and how much it would cost.

So that's what I think would be the most productive way to attack that sort of thing. It would obviously be a federal lead, but this group and the arrangement they would work under would need to get the cooperation of all the provinces. The kind of information that needs to be brought together is not all in federal hands; it's all over the place, we've been learning. So this group would obviously be a focal point and a point that would bring in the many areas that they would contact and use to deliver whatever it was that they would be promising to contribute.

That's my view of what would be most appropriate.

The Chairman: You're coming fairly close to answering the question, but not quite. We would find it helpful if you were to sharpen the clarity of your answer so as to indicate precisely what you envisage. Evidently it is a very complex unit that you are describing. Where should it be placed, who should lead, and how broad ought it be?

Dr. Mark Graham: Right now, what is being presented to four assistant deputy ministers and the president of the Museum of Nature is a memorandum of understanding of how those agencies should operate, and I'm very happy to find out today that everybody apparently is prepared to sign that agreement. To me, that is a tremendous and very positive first step.

The next step I would look for would be for those executives to say what they would expect in the way of us, or whoever it was they were going to appoint to that committee, to put together a plan of action. I think that is a very important next step. It should be consistent with some of the comments that have been made from Mr. Emmett and the things that need to be accomplished.

The Chairman: To me, at least, this has all the elements of an après toi, Alphonse scenario in which everybody is bowing politely to the other and hoping someone will move through the door first. That is not reflective of the urgency of this issue as described by Mr. Emmett in his presentation this morning.

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Therefore, we need to know as a committee—it will be helpful, at least, to know—how you see the design, and where this group, entity, corporation, agency, secretariat, or department should... This morning you heard a variety of interventions defining where it ought to be located. Let us hear now what you think as to where it ought to be located.

Dr. Mark Graham: Could I start with perhaps a more concrete example of something that could nucleate the activities of all these groups?

Mr. Herity mentioned the Canadian Geospatial Data Initiative, the initiative that pulls together, using many federal agencies, the physical data about this country—maps, where people live, weather—all those sorts of things that are so very important.

What would be one way of nucleating the sorts of activities we're talking about would be to provide an initiative that's very similar to that except for the biological components—a Canadian biodiversity information initiative. What could be done is to assemble what everybody already has in place that's in line with producing such an initiative, very much the same way the memorandum to cabinet was produced for the CGDI, and then to outline what new money might be needed if everything were to go ahead immediately. These things are expensive to do if you do everything all at the same time to produce what's needed.

That would at least be a summary of what everybody has, what everybody could contribute, and what extra would be needed. So there's a concrete example of what could happen, in our wildest dreams, if everybody were to do this sort of thing.

The Chairman: What you are describing is very helpful and it could be a body without a head. Let me ask you this question then. Do you see the Canadian Museum of Nature being the head of this responsibility?

Dr. Mark Graham: It's been mentioned in the past that the Museum of Nature has played that role. It could do that in the future as well.

My only hesitation is I'm fully aware of the sorts of appropriations we have to run a museum, and to carry out such an initiative we certainly could play a role in coordinating the various components that need to come together.

You also probably appreciate, as a crown corporation—

The Chairman: Let me stop you here for a second. Having performed a coordinating role, where in your opinion should the political responsibility rest?

Dr. Mark Graham: Again, it's a difficult question, because the departments that are performing this have other mandates they have to fulfil, and I think politically it is really split among several agencies.

No one here today has mentioned Health Canada, which also uses systematics expertise to carry out some of the things it does. So it would be difficult to point the finger at one agency. There are many that use this and that are responsible for this sort of...

The Chairman: Should it be a prime ministerial responsibility then?

Dr. Mark Graham: Sorry?

The Chairman: Should it be a responsibility to be assigned to the Office of the Prime Minister?

Dr. Mark Graham: I'm going to give you a personal opinion. The reason you have that document from the United States is that the President of the United States has a committee that gives him advice on matters of biological interest. One of those has to do with biodiversity. I'm sure the fact that the Vice-President and the President listen to that committee is why they have such huge amounts of money going toward such initiatives. I'm not sure our Prime Minister gets that kind of advice at that level. This is a blue-ribbon committee of the best minds who think about biodiversity matters in the United States having a direct pipeline to the President and essentially advising him.

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So if you're asking me if we need to have such a thing in Canada, I think that would be wonderful, Mr. Chairman. It would be very helpful not just to the museum but also for Canada.

The Chairman: The bells are calling, so we must adjourn.

We thank you very much. It was a very worthwhile morning for all of us. We learned a lot. We hope to see you again.

The meeting is adjourned.