:
I will now call this meeting to order. We have quorum, but just barely. We're going to continue on with our study on the Species at Risk Act, as was assigned to us by the House.
We have a number of witnesses here with us today, and I want to welcome all of you to the table.
Representing the Canadian Cattlemen's Association, we have Peggy Strankman, who is the manager of environmental affairs. Joining her is Lynn Grant, who's the chair of the environment committee for the Canadian Cattlemen's Association. Welcome.
From the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, we have John Masterson, who is the manager of federal regulatory affairs for CAPP; Peter Miller, who is the legal counsel from Imperial Oil Resources; and Journey Paulus, who is the regulatory and environmental legal counsel for EnCana. Welcome to you.
From the Canadian Electricity Association, we have Eli Turk, who is vice-president of government relations, and Gary Birch, who is a senior technical adviser for B.C. Hydro.
Representing the Canadian Hydro Power Association is Ed Wojczynski, who is vice-chair of the SARA working group with Manitoba Hydro; and Pierre Lundahl, who is an environmental consultant with Lundahl Environment Inc.
Welcome, all of you.
I do ask that you keep your opening comments under ten minutes so we can have a fulsome discussion after your presentations.
:
Good morning, Mr. Chairman, committee members, fellow presenters, and observers.
First I would like to comment that this is environment week, so in addition to happy birthday, we'll have a happy environment greeting.
Thank you very much for the invitation to present to this committee. It is important to begin comments about changes to the Species at Risk Act with a statement that the Canadian Cattlemen's Association supports the intention of the act to protect and recover wildlife species at risk in Canada. The CCA actively participated in the consultations leading up to the act being passed in 2002. We, as an organization and individual producers, continue to participate in activities that support the protection of species at risk.
This morning I will briefly summarize six issues that we think are most important to consider in effectively implementing the act. The Canadian Cattlemen's Association has elaborated on these points and others in a written brief submitted to this committee.
The preamble to this legislation strongly supports a stewardship approach to protecting and recovering species. We have presented three recommendations that will encourage and reward that stewardship. We encourage the government to do everything possible to implement an act that is truly based on a stewardship approach.
We also recommend that there be more support for good management practice, education, and awareness to landowners for implementation of this act. I think it's important to realize that if land managers, specifically the agricultural producers, have the right information, they will do the right thing. We all depend on the land and the health of our soil for our livelihood, so essentially anything that is good for the environment, for our soils, and for our ecosystems is going to be good for our bottom line as well as any species that rely on the land that we operate.
We also recommend exploring the use of economic instruments such as payments of ecological goods and services to conserve the ecosystem. I would like to turn the psychology of some of the legislation around so that we can make the presence of some of these wildlife species an asset to the land manager rather than a potential liability that might bring restrictions on his mode of operation.
We recommend that the government utilize the sections in the act that allow for conservation agreements as a way of engaging the agriculture community in their recovery of species at risk. The decisions that agriculture producers make can be positively supported to create a landscape that produces a variety of ecosystem services necessary for the long-term sustainability of agriculture and the future health and prosperity of all Canadians. A conservation agreement would allow producers to lay out a management plan according to accepted agronomic practice. It would clarify what the producer would or would not do and it would support any stewardship efforts that would be clearly defined.
A permit system for agriculture would be cumbersome and unwieldy. We have some 327,000 agricultural producers, so I guess it would be very unwieldy to get a permit system that would permit activities for that number of producers.
The definition of “critical habitat” has been a problem in the implementation of the act. As managers on the land, I guess we have a hard time defining what is critical versus what is just habitat. If we're going to use terms in the act like “critical”, then we need a little better definition of how it gets used and implemented. For those of us on the land, habitat is habitat, and we're not quite sure what you would mean as far as critical versus just regular habitat is concerned.
The act does permit the minister to pay fair and reasonable compensation for extraordinary harm. We would like to see regulations and guidelines as to how that would be implemented.
We are very supportive of the government's work to move towards an ecosystem approach. Our whole livelihood depends on a very viable, functional ecosystem rather than on pinpointing specific species within that ecosystem. Rather than management for just one specific species, a very functional, dynamic, highly working ecosystem is going to be better able to withstand any challenges to it and any of the species that rely on it.
For cattle producers and other stakeholders in the protection and recovery of species at risk to do the right thing and make appropriate management decisions, good information is needed. Good information through appropriate channels is a critical component of a stewardship approach. The more we learn about how our ecosystems function, the more we realize there's a lot we don't know. So we're asking that more effort be put into studying and research so we have better information to make better decisions.
Essentially, rigid prescriptions in a very diverse system like agriculture don't work. We would like the legislation and the administrators of the legislation to empower the people on the ground to make decisions. They're the ones who are working with the land managers, and we think they're going to make better decisions than somebody who is here in Ottawa making a prescriptive one.
We would like to look at the system as a coaching system, as you develop the information and knowledge we need to make better decisions. We would like to see you putting coaches in the field rather than regulators. We think a carrot approach is better than a punitive approach. We have a lot of faith in our producers and in people in general. If you provide them with the right information and the right tools to make the proper decisions, they will make the proper decision-making on the land.
We have a little information in our notes about the Canadian cattle industry, but I think you're all aware of the importance of agriculture and its association with the environment and soil. We're all on the same team. Let's just treat ourselves as a team rather than adversaries.
Thank you.
Permitting and authorizations are an important feature for industry, and they are already provided for in the legislation. CAPP agrees with and supports the key issues that are raised—and you will hear about them today—by the Canadian Hydropower Association and the Canadian Electricity Association as well as the Forest Products Association of Canada, specifically in relation to conservation agreements about which we will not specifically speak, but they are important to us as well.
The five years of experience we've had now with the legislation convinces us that the existing permit and authorization system—the exemptions systems for incidental harm—are not working effectively. These exemptions and authorizations include permits and agreements under sections 73, 74, and 78, as well as the section 83 exemptions. Authorizations should be available on a multi-species and ecosystem basis and should be more accessible under existing approval processes. So when the legislation was first drafted, we were thinking entirely in terms of specific individual species, and I think we're finding we have to look at a broader spectrum of activity in an ecosystem.
We've done a considerable amount of work on trying to understand and to make the permitting process work. In fact, we started in our meetings with the department, and we set the B.C. Hydro example, which you may hear a bit about later, as the prototype of how to make this permitting process work. Unfortunately, three years later and after extensive discussion, in fact to the point where everybody agrees on a solution, when that is presented further up the line here in Ottawa, I understand the response we get back from the Department of Justice is that the act is not clear and does not provide the certainty that we're able to implement this permitting process the way everybody agrees to it. So we think there are some simple amendments required to enable the permitting process to work effectively.
This is very important to us and our industry for major projects like the Mackenzie gas project and for all oil sands projects. We have not implemented these yet, because we're at the approval stage, but we're truly looking for the first out of the gate, the B.C. Hydro example, to work for us. And as I say, in three years it has not been able to work. We think we understand why it's not working and we believe legislative changes will fix that. You will read about those in our detailed submission.
The timelines set out in SARA are unrealistic for larger, long-term industrial projects. Resource development projects often have a life span of twenty to fifty years, and a simple three- to five-year cycle both is inefficient and fails to provide the regulatory certainty that industry requires to make major capital investments. That short-term cycle, I think, initially had in mind specific scientific research type projects, and we've taken that concept and tried to apply that to a wildlife management legislation, which has become now a regulatory regime for all activity in the wilderness and simply doesn't apply to major resource development projects.
So again, a simple reconsideration of those timeframes would help that part of the act work effectively.
Finally, the stewardship activities you've heard about from agriculture are also very important to resource developers and should be the focus of our efforts under SARA legislation. In particular, conservation agreements must be available to us and be utilized to deal with creative solutions, but at the same time, then, they must offer an opportunity to ensure compliance with the legislation itself. We believe, as agriculture does, that species at risk will benefit more from voluntary measures from all directly affected parties than from an enforcement-based approach.
Speaking about recovery planning, again, five years of experience with the act has taught us that the original design of the act, the command and control, legalistic, enforcement-based approach, will not achieve the objectives of the act. The unreasonable and unattainable goals that were set in the legislation for the government to write recovery strategies for each and every species in a very short time period have been a major subject of frustration to all parties and to the government itself in these first five years.
Neither the science nor the resources existed to reasonably accomplish these goals in the timeframe that was set by the legislation. This reality has resulted in frustration on the part of all parties and in difficulties for industry in obtaining project approvals. I think when we got into seriously considering this challenge, we realized that a legislative model based on individual species is not workable. Though it is convenient, clear, and legally enforceable—and this is what I say is the very simplistic command and control model—and very efficient from a legal point of view, it is just not workable because it does not reflect the complexity of ecosystems and the interface among species. This requires, we believe, a minor amendment to change the focus of the legislation from individual species in recovery planning to an ecosystem approach and a multi-species approach.
Finally, many species are listed both provincially and federally, providing an opportunity for the efficient use of resources to specifically allow for the use of provincial recovery documents in the administration of SARA. What we have seen over the years is that the courts have interpreted the legislation to require discrete processes for each statutory decision-maker to exercise his or her responsibility. It will simply take an amendment to legislation to enable a more collaborative, efficient process.
I think the economic realities of the day that we've seen in the last year or so compel us to be much more creative than we have been in the past. We have to recognize that this legislation was drafted five years ago, but it really started 10 years ago, with a mindset of a completely different economic reality. What we are proposing today is that we be much more creative, much more efficient, and much more collaborative in the way we administer this legislation and this program.
Thank you.
:
I'm going to speak briefly on critical habitat and consultation.
The identification of critical habitat has been a slow and very contentious process. Currently, it has resulted in our having 16 species with partially or completely identified critical habitat listed on the SARA registry. This inability to identify critical habitat has led to delays in the recovery of listed species, uncertainty for entities operating on the land base, and delays of projects.
There is no guidance provided on the process for defining critical habitat or the activities that destroy it. This has resulted in inconsistent approaches by the various recovery teams, Environment Canada, and DFO. The current approach to critical habitat does not result in the most cost-effective solutions to protect species at risk and allow for their survival or recovery. This is inconsistent with the preamble of SARA, which states: “community knowledge and interests, including socio-economic interests, should be considered in developing and implementing recovery measures”.
The definition of critical habitat is resulting in dramatically different interpretations today. In the extreme, the draft critical habitat for the Sprague's pipit, a prairie bird, included all areas with a 10% or better probability of being occupied by that bird in a specific part of its range. If this approach were taken throughout the range, it would result in the identification of most of the prairies. It is hard to understand how this is compatible with a view that this is essential to the recovery or survival of the species. A similar approach was taken for the boreal caribou. The socio-economic impact of these decisions is significant and was not considered in determining critical habitat.
SARA must be amended to clearly state that the purpose of identifying critical habitat is to ensure that human activities are managed in a way that is consistent with maintaining the functions of the habitat necessary to ensure the survival or recovery of the species. This means that human activity will not, in every case, be completely prohibited in an area. Critical habitat must only be the habitat that's actually essential to the survival or recovery of the species or ecosystem. Thus, in some cases critical habitat is not the way to effectively protect a species or an ecosystem.
CAPP recommends an amendment to SARA whereby habitat, as opposed to critical habitat, is identified at the recovery strategy stage, along with a specific plan to manage, monitor, and assess the habitat for the purposes of identifying critical habitat or other ways of effectively protecting the species at the action plan stage.
A number of CAPP's member companies that are directly affected parties have not been asked to participate in the recovery teams or to participate in any manner in the recovery planning efforts. As a result, recovery strategies have been developed over long periods of time, with many person-hours and dollars spent, with no input from directly affected companies. Companies are potential sources of valuable resources and scientific information on the species located in the lands where they operate. For example, recovery strategies for the tiny cryptanthe and Sprague's pipit were drafted with no meaningful consultation from our sector. The strategies indicated that oil and gas activities were a threat to these species. So there was an awareness that there were directly affected parties, and yet no consultation occurred.
CAPP recommends that SARA be amended to incorporate a definition of directly affected parties and that a regulation be created for one transparent, collaborative process to be followed at all stages of SARA.
In conclusion, a command and control approach is the opposite of what we need to have; we need a collaborative, cooperative approach. Minor changes to the act are all that are required to enable this approach. CAPP looks forward to working with the federal government to find ways of effectively amending and implementing SARA to meet all of our needs.
Thank you.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Members of the standing committee, on behalf of the Canadian Electricity Association and its member companies, I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to appear before the committee this morning.
First, let me say that the CEA president and CEO, Pierre Guimond, would like to have been here, but unfortunately, a long-standing commitment prevented him from appearing today.
I'm Eli Turk, vice-president of the Canadian Electricity Association, and I'm joined today by Gary Birch from British Columbia Hydro. Ken Meade of Nova Scotia Power, who chairs CEA's SARA working group, is also here with us today. We're pleased to be here before this committee to provide the Canadian Electricity Association's perspective on the Species At Risk Act.
You've already received both a briefing note and a comprehensive legal analysis of SARA from CEA. Thus this presentation will focus on three priority issues for CEA members: first, the problem of immediate non-compliance of facilities; second, incidental effects and automatic prohibitions; and third, permit prerequisites, durations, and renewals.
[Translation]
You have already received both a briefing note and a comprehensive legal analysis on the Species at Risk Act from CEA.
So, this presentation will focus on three priority issues for CEA members: the problem of immediate non-compliance of facilities, the incidental effects and automatic prohibitions, and finally the permit prerequisites, durations and renewals.
[English]
The Canadian Electricity Association, founded in 1891, is the national voice of the Canadian electricity industry. CEA members generate, transmit, and distribute electricity to industrial, commercial, residential, and institutional customers across Canada on a daily basis. From vertically integrated electric utilities to power marketers, all are represented by this national industry association.
The Species at Risk Act implementation is a critical issue for the electricity industry, with cross-cutting implications for generation, transmission, and distribution functions of the electricity business. We support the fundamental architecture of SARA and are committed to protecting species that are endangered, extirpated, or threatened. In fact, the protection of biodiversity is enshrined in the CEA sustainable electricity program, which was officially launched by the CEA board of directors in February 2009.
A key commitment under the program requires members to manage environmental resources and ecosystems to support species recovery and prevent or minimize loss. However, as currently structured, SARA does not provide an expeditious way for facilities to achieve compliance with automatic prohibitions. It is vital that the electricity industry be given greater operational certainty and clarity under SARA, so that we can continue to provide Canadians with energy while continuing to protect species and comply with the act.
The philosophy of SARA is grounded firmly in a cooperative and voluntary approach to species protection, supplemented by compliance and enforcement measures. However, since the enactment of SARA, far more attention has been paid to the prohibitions and enforcement provisions than to the promotion of stewardship.
The SARA five-year review provides an opportunity for the federal government to make legislative amendments that would allow mechanisms for industry compliance with the Species at Risk Act.
With regard to automatic prohibitions, let me talk a bit about the problems facilities face with regard to immediate non-compliance. CEA members operate facilities constructed many years ago, which despite best efforts may have unavoidable incidental effects on species at risk. As currently interpreted, sections 32 and 33 of the act often present the electricity industry with an impossible choice. When a species is listed under the act, a facility with any incidental impact must either shut down or continue to operate in non-compliance with SARA. This uncertainty cannot continue. An amendment should be made to exempt facilities from automatic prohibitions, provided they have either applied for a SARA permit under section 73, engaged in recovery planning, or engaged in the development of a conservation agreement under section 11.
Let me talk a little about permitting for incidental effects. Frankly, the current permitting system under SARA for incidental effects is broken. While there have been many permits issued for scientific research and activities that benefit a species, very few have been issued under the incidental effects provision. A well-functioning permitting system must provide an expeditious way for facilities to comply with the act when, despite best practices, they cannot avoid all incidental effects on species.
Viewing the statute as a whole, it is clear that the type of incidental effect that Parliament intended to permit under section 73 is more than a trivial or de minimis effect, but not so serious as to jeopardize the survival or recovery of the species. CEA would encourage an amendment to the act that would allow for incidental effects that may violate the automatic prohibitions but would not be so serious as to jeopardize the survival or recovery of the species.
With regard to duration and renewal of permits, permits under section 73 are currently limited to three years and agreements to five years. This duration is not consistent with the long capital cycles in the electricity industry. Many facilities operate for 40 to 60 years, or in some cases even longer. The assignment of a three-year time limit for permits seems arbitrary and unrealistic, particularly if the lifespan of the affected species is much longer.
[Translation]
There is also no regime in place for dealing with permit renewals. Given that the maximum duration of a permit or agreement is three or five years respectively, the renewal process is absolutely critical for members of CEA with long-term facilities and operations.
[English]
CEA recommends that an amendment should be made to section 73, subsection (9), to allow for longer permits tied to facility operation permits and approvals granted by the regulators. The SARA permits may be reviewed and updated in respect of new risks to species and non-compliance with the terms and conditions of the permits.
Other concerns related to socio-related economic factors, definitional issues around critical habitat and residence, and harmonization with other federal and provincial legislation are covered in the CEA position paper, which I'd be pleased to discuss in the question period.
The Canadian Electricity Association appreciates the opportunity to appear before this committee to outline our key concerns on SARA. This is an extremely critical issue for the electricity industry, and we hope the committee will consider our recommendations so that the industry can better meet the objectives of SARA going forward.
Thank you. Merci.
Before I start, I wish to express appreciation on behalf of CHA and all its members for the privilege of participating in this important forum. Protection of species, and particularly the SARA, is important to the environment, to society, and to our industry, and we expect a review will assist in improving this protection.
In addition to Pierre Lundahl and me, in the audience we also have Jacob Irving, the new president of CHA, who just took over last week from Pierre Fortin, our esteemed former president, whom some of you will know.
And we have Janice Walton, of Blake, Cassels & Graydon in Vancouver, who helped us prepare our submission; and Nadine Adm of Hydro-Québec, who was one of the participants in our SARA working group.
As you already have our fairly extensive submission, which we provided about a month ago, and some more recent, briefer notes, I'm not going to waste your time going through all the suggestions in there. I'm going to give a brief summary of the one main issue we were focusing on, which we see as being critical to be dealt with in the short term. And I will provide a little bit of emphasis that's not contained in our submission itself.
But before I do that, I want to say that a lot of people don't have good background on the hydro power situation in Canada. Hydro power today produces over 60% of the electricity in Canada. And contrary to some people's understanding, there is enough potential to develop additional hydro right across the country to triple the amount of hydro power we have. So it's not a resource that has been exhausted. Some of that will not be able to be developed, for environmental or economic reasons, but a very large portion of it could be.
As evidence of that, over $50 billion in planned capital investments are actively being planned at this time. We all think of the oil sands as being a huge area for investment, while here we have $50 billion in renewable hydro.
CHA and its members support the objectives, the principles, and the fundamental structure of SARA. However, there are some key gaps in the current drafting that, first, have contributed to the implementation of SARA being slower than anybody wants and, second, in our case, have created some serious difficulties for hydro power that we believe and understand were not the intention of the original drafters.
Our recommendations would assist in faster implementation of SARA, and it would provide more effective protection for species and a resolution of the most severe difficulties for the hydro power industry. We recognize, to be realistic, that there is a low likelihood of major changes to the SARA legislation, and in our understanding, any major changes would have to come in the future. But we feel some relatively small wording changes can be done that are critical. We are making two priority suggestions that would be relatively easy to draft and are short.
The most important issue for CHA--and you've been hearing that from the other industries as well today--is the authorization of activities at existing and new hydro facilities. For the others it's not hydro, obviously. Despite all the hydro power industry's best efforts, it is not physically possible to guarantee that no incidental harm to aquatic species will ever occur. For this reason, there is a need for a mechanism to authorize the hydro power facility to operate even if incidental impacts occur. However, of course this would have to be under strict conditions designed to avoid impacts or mitigate impacts and assist in species protection.
So we could have a situation whereby an effort at a project or a system is helping the species overall to do better, but with the legislation that's set up now, the concern would be what if you kill one individual member in your facility, rather than the focus being what if you saved or created 100 or 1,000 more members somewhere else. So we think the emphasis in the implementation needs to be different, and our suggestions will help with that.
Currently SARA allows for permits or agreements authorizing incidental harm but as you've already heard, these are limited to only three or five years' duration. This is simply not viable for a hydro power facility that can take up to 10 years to plan and build and is anticipated to be operational for up to 100 years. Without adequate provision for authorization of activities, many hydro power facilities may not be able to operate in compliance with SARA once it is fully implemented. And Eli just explained that. Without the ability to have any degree of certainty over long-term permitting under SARA, some proposed new hydro power facilities may not be able to secure financing because of the uncertainty in the long term, and thus can obviously not proceed.
There are two areas in SARA that the CHA believes can be revised to deal with this problem. The first is the permitting provisions themselves. This is what CEA just discussed, so we won't repeat any of that. We support what they were saying.
Second is provisions in relation to conservation agreements as a stewardship tool to protect species in their habitat and to aid in compliance with SARA. What we're looking for is not a tool to avoid compliance with SARA; we're looking for a tool that would be practical for industry to work with government to make sure we can meet the requirements of species protection. So we're looking for a compliance tool.
SARA allows the minister currently to enter into a section 11 conservation agreement with an organization or person to benefit a species at risk or enhance survival in the wild. However, these conservation agreements do not provide any protection or exemptions from SARA's prohibitions and incidental harm, even though an entity is acting in full compliance with the conservation agreement.
Conservation agreements would allow for management of species in critical habitat, tailored to the needs of the species, the activities of the agreement holders, local communities, and government. The CHA specifically recommends the following: (a) allowing conservation agreements to be authorized for activities specified in the agreement, and that would be in section 11; an d(b) providing exemptions from SARA's prohibitions for entities that enter and comply with conservation agreements. That's a couple of small additions to section 83.
Of course, these conservation agreements would need to be enforceable, and there needs to be assurance of accountability. The agreements could be done in parallel with preparation of recovery strategies, or even before them, and then be reviewed upon completion of the strategy if required. This could assist in speeding up such recovery strategies rather than slowing them down.
These suggestions, as well as the ones contained in our written submission, would enhance application of SARA and protection of species for four reasons. There would be clear means for government and industry staff and other stakeholders to implement SARA. There would be reduced opposition to listing of certain species due to concern over risk of extreme socio-economic impact. So today, with the way SARA is drafted with those gaps, there will be certain species to which there would be a lot of opposition to their being listed, because of the major socio-economic ramifications. But if these gaps were addressed, there wouldn't be that same fear over what will happen if they get listed.
Third, government, industry, and other stakeholders can focus on protection of overall populations of species at risk, rather than a few individuals who might be incidentally harmed.
The fourth is that the current--and you've heard this from CAPP--conservation agreements are a good way to allow an ecological approach to deal with multiple species rather than one species at a time.
Moving forward, CHA has taken initial steps, with others, to work together with other industries to develop a multi-stakeholder proposal. The CHA anticipates that by the fall of 2009, it and the others will have developed a more detailed proposal as to how conservation agreements and permitting could be used as a compliance tool and what changes to SARA are needed to make that happen.
The CHA supports wildlife and ecological conservation and submits recommendations that we believe will enhance, not detract, from SARA's ability to achieve real results in species protection.
Thank you.
:
Good morning to all of you.
Like Ms. Paulus, I am a wildlife biologist ,with a particular expertise in woodland caribou. If that is helpful to any of you, let me know. I am also a businessperson. I have three small businesses and I strongly agree with your basic premise that cooperation is a lot better than non-cooperation, that carrots are better than sticks, wherever possible.
As a biologist, it seems to me that for most species at risk we need two strategies. We need a long-term strategy, which is mostly habitat protection, and a short-term strategy, which ensures the survival of gene pools and populations. I hate to see us being drawn into choosing one or the other; we really need both. Similarly, we need a long-term plan to make our industries more sustainable, but we also need to hang on to a few endangered species as well. So striking a balance is a good thing.
I noted what I think is an inconsistency. The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers seems to be saying two things: on the one hand, you want flexibility; on the other, you want very long-term agreements so that you can do long-term planning. Those two positions are at odds. First you say that three- to five-year planning terms are too short; then you turn around and say that things change—technology changes, information changes—and we need to be flexible.
Does this seem as inconsistent to you as it does to me?
:
It varies by a few percentage points from year to year, but today on an energy basis, 60% or just above 60% of the electrical energy produced in Canada comes from hydro power. There used to be a projection from NRCan that it was going to go down, but in more recent years that has actually been reversed and the hydro power percentage is going back up again. It is projected to continue doing that.
Secondly, in terms of how much hydro power potential we have left in Canada, our organization did an extensive survey with a consultant four or five years ago. It was a little bit surprising to find out how much technical potential there is, and I don't remember exact numbers, but if you developed all the technical potential in Canada you could have something like 350% of the amount we already have today. However, not all of that is going to be developable either, because it's on heritage rivers or very sensitive or just too expensive. So a doubling or tripling, probably closer to a doubling, is practical. Now, what would that do to the percentage of electricity generated in Canada? It would go up, obviously, but I don't have the percentage it would go to.
Once Ontario shuts down its coal, they have to find out where their alternatives are going to come from. There are real possibilities out there. I don't expect hydro will ever be 100%, and I don't think that would be desirable. You want to have a bit of a mix of resources. Hydro is a good backup for wind, for example. Also, for some baseload, like nuclear, there are some advantages to having hydro, which is flexible.
There is no optimal number I could give you, but we're unusually high in Canada compared to other countries, that's for sure.
Thank you, witnesses, for being here. It is very interesting to hear a real, practical industrial perspective on the impact of SARA and about some of your challenges and recommendations.
The importance of certainty within the industry to see investments in technologies that are using renewable fuels and hydroelectric was touched upon. We've just come back from a study in the oil sands. We went to Fort Chipewyan, and there was a major focus on the oil sands being a cause of a lot of the issues they're dealing with. We're continuing that study next week. One of the issues was water levels in Fort Chipewyan. Some were focused on the oil sands as the cause. As we heard from more witnesses, it became convincing to me that the W.A.C. Bennett Dam may have been one of the major causes of changes affecting the levels. Hydroelectric projects can have consequences that may not be evident until years later.
For the duration, the consultation is where I'd like to focus my questioning.
Madam Paulus, you commented on the importance of consultation with industry. We are looking at recovery strategies and at very prescriptive timelines. Because of those tight timelines, often the people on the front line--industry--are not being consulted in an adequate way. We consult science, we consult the aboriginal communities, but I think I heard you say that we're not consulting you on the front lines--industry--which is creating uncertainty.
As we want to move to cleaner, better technologies, that means investments. How important is the consultation process, and how important is it that SARA have realistic timelines? That seems to be a common complaint as we're doing this legislative review. How important are those timelines, and how important is it to consult you?
:
I would say that more recently it has dramatically improved, at least in British Columbia. When the recovery strategy for white sturgeon was first in draft form, which would have been around 2006 or 2007, there was no consultation with industry whatsoever in the drafting of that plan or in the recovery potential assessment that came with it. We didn't even get a chance to comment on it until science reviewed it at their PSARC review, a review they undertake each summer of some of these things.
Since there was a delay in issuing that recovery strategy and it has been brought around again, we have been consulted. We can debate whether it's adequate or not, since our comments often aren't listened to, but generally I would say that we are adequately consulted now, and I think that's a credit to DFO's efforts to improve its delivery of SARA.
If I might just make a comment to the timeline issue, we're all arguing for longer timelines on permits, etc., but we're not foolish enough to assume that those kinds of permits would go on for 25 or 50 years without review. We fully expect in our case, with white sturgeons, that there will be five-year reviews at the very least, and in our latest negotiations over conservation agreements, we're in the middle of those negotiations.
We're talking about fairly significant reviews in about 10 or 15 years, so the agreement would go on, but there would be a substantial review at some significant point, at which point we would completely revisit the conditions and deliverables associated with that ongoing agreement. So we think there are ways to build in adaptive management while at the same time delivering long-term permits.
Mr. Chair, I'd like to begin my comments by addressing why it is that I think this is such an interesting and difficult issue. My thoughts were triggered by something that Mr. Trudeau had to say earlier, and I regret that I didn't note it down word for word. I think it's useful for us to have regard to the preamble of the act, because in fact the act itself does not set up a contradiction between the preservation of wildlife and the necessity to take into account the cost factors of doing so.
The act itself, in the preamble at least, strives to achieve the kind of balance that Mr. Hyer was talking about. I would specifically like to draw your attention to that part of the preamble that recognizes that community knowledge and interest, including socio-economic interests, should be considered in developing and implementing recovery measures. In addition, the preamble recognizes that there will be circumstances under which the cost of conserving species at risk should be shared. Indeed, elsewhere the preamble refers to cost-effective measures, and it refers to the economic reasons for preserving wildlife. I think the act itself was intended to balance those factors. I thank the witnesses for bringing to our attention the fact that the specific provisions of the act don't necessarily carry through on that.
In particular, my first question is around section 41, regarding a recovery plan and what must be in it. There is indeed nothing in section 41 that is consistent with the terms of the preamble that I read, other than possibly paragraph 41(1)(e), which says that the minister can take into account matters prescribed by regulations. I wonder—and I know this is a lawyer's question—if any of the witnesses can tell me whether there are any regulations that do set out socio-economic or cost considerations to be a necessary consideration in a recovery strategy.
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What I was speaking about was the use of resources in society. We recognize that the way the act has been interpreted now by the courts and by the department requires every decision-maker to conduct an extensive activity of their own, an investigation. We do not have effective means to collaborate that way, both federally and provincially and within departments. We need to find a way to save public resources on the cost of transacting this business.
Another issue that has come to our attention is the fact that this duplication we see among government departments is placing a very severe burden on first nations, who have a right, a duty, to consult. They're being approached multiple times by different people discharging their statutory duties. It imposes a great burden in terms of resources and in terms of cost.
I'm simply saying that at this time, when we have to reassess the way we do things and the effectiveness of our activities, we have to apply this in the way that SARA is administered. But definitely we agree with the objectives of SARA. We want to make it work more effectively and in a way that is more collaborative and more forward-thinking, with more planning as opposed to the concern of enforcement, the concern of what might go wrong.
You mentioned incentives under the act. The real issue is that companies wish to undertake activities that encourage species to flourish in proximity to their activities, but if you do that and you increase the risk of incidental harm and punitive consequences of enforcement, that's the disincentive. If you take that disincentive away, there's much incentive to work with communities, to work with first nations, and to work with stakeholders to create good habitat, a good environment for species.
I want to go back to questions of compensation. In the briefs I've received, the CEA does not mention compensation. The Canadian Cattlemen's Association talks about the fact that there is power to compensate but doesn't speak of the merits of it. It doesn't tell us what it means to move to develop appropriate regulations to permit compensation. CAPP is silent on compensation, unless I missed something.
I want to go back to the fact that in the early debate around this act in the late 1990s and 2000 I can recall our government having asked Dr. Peter Pearse at the time, one of B.C.'s leading ecological economists, to try to help craft a way forward on how we would value, how we would move with valuation, if we were seriously willing to compensate landowners, agricultural or otherwise, for doing the right thing. It speaks to our decision as a society as to whether or not we want to put ecosystems, ecological services, and ecosystem management first.
Dr. Pearse at the time was building on the work our government had undertaken— at the time the National Roundtable, which I headed up, was undertaking—to expand the change, the tax treatment for the donations of ecologically sensitive lands in order to encourage landowners who had ecologically sensitive lands to donate them to land trusts and get the appropriate capital gains tax exemptions, the use of a fiscal mechanism to achieve a good environmental outcome. From my understanding, we're just nowhere on this compensation question. We had a debate about it in the late 1990s and the early 2000s, and we're nowhere, partly because, I understand, we're deferential to the provinces and territories for the lands that are not under federal jurisdiction. And it's hard to achieve this. I need to get some insight and some help from you.
If we're going to engage Canadians, particularly landowners in rural settings, dealing with the challenges of migratory species or otherwise, what are your insights? What are your thoughts on this compensation issue? How can we move forward to stop the fiction that we can continue managing as cattlemen, as electricity generators, as oil producers to draw down natural capital, compromise ecosystems, and not manage from a holistic point of view, understanding that we're all in this together with these species as well? How do we do this? How do we move this compensation issue forward?
Who wants to go first?
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I'll bring the car around back, then.
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
Mr. Jeff Watson: Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to our witnesses, of course, for appearing as this committee undertakes the statutory review of the Species at Risk Act.
As an opening question, since we are reviewing the legislation and taking a look at our approach to how we will assess it, is the basic framework of SARA sound? Are we looking, for example, at simply making some adjustments to it, or is its fundamental approach in the wrong direction? Should we be looking at a different approach to it?
This will help us assess where we are, at the five-year mark, with this law. Is its fundamental approach right? Is the architecture sound and we just need to look at making some minor adjustments, or are we looking at perhaps a new approach to this?