Good morning.
Honourable members of the standing committee, on behalf of the Association of Professional Biology, I would like to express our appreciation at being invited to provide input on this important national endeavour. Before I begin I would like to provide a brief background on the association so that you may have a better understanding of the important role we and our members play in the development of conservation policy at all levels.
The APB has formally represented the interests of biology professionals in British Columbia since 1980. The association was originally formed by academic, government, and private sector interests to collectively bring recognition, credibility, and legislative accountability to the professional practice of applied biology. Our members represent and adhere to the highest standards and expertise in the application of science and professional ethical conduct across a broad range of disciplines, and that varies from conservation biology to environmental toxicology, land and resource management, and impact assessment, just to name a few.
I'd also like to point out that we are the only group who are governed by an act in Canada. So that makes us rather unique here in British Columbia. The perspectives from our members on what is required to ensure a successful national conservation plan in Canada are as diverse as our areas of expertise. The following attributes or must-haves represent a sampling of what is deemed essential as a starting point for this process to be effective.
Main components need to include the following: recognize that habitat loss and degradation is the primary, present threat to species and ecosystems in Canada; protect the habitat species need to carry out their life processes, and to survive and recover if they’re at risk, whether this habitat is inside a park or in the areas between; locate and acquire parks, buffers, and connective areas where primary habitat for species at risk exists; manage and design parks, and the areas between parks, with climate change adaptation and mitigation in mind.
How do we view a more detailed vision for a national conservation plan? First, think like a landscape. As Aldo Leopold said, “To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.” The foundation of effective conservation planning must include the identification and protection of a diverse range of ecological communities, with a focus on those of high conservation importance. Such communities typically support key survival habitat for a range of common and at-risk species and maintain biodiversity across multiple scales. Their connectedness must be maximized, and conversely, this means fragmentation must be minimized with areas in between included in the landscape equation.
One of many tools to maximize on the challenges of maintaining landscape connectivity when faced with protected areas that become habitat islands is to invest in creative conservation financing, such as funding compensatory land acquisition and incentives for stewardship on private land. A good example of that is the federal habitat stewardship program.
Second, maintain natural processes. To remain resilient in the face of long-term natural shifts in native species' population dynamics, interspecies relationships, ecological succession, and energy flow must be allowed to occur in as complete and unimpeded a state as possible. Admittedly the notion of what is truly a natural process versus those that are the result of centuries, if not eons, of human intervention may be debatable. However, a significant amount of scientific, defensible, and quantifiable research on thresholds and tipping points for these processes has been, and continues to be, made available to guide planning and decision-making. An example of these types of natural processes is predator-prey relationships. Some of the most explicit ones in the media right now are things like dealing with predator control around wolves and caribou, managing the effects of invading non-native species, and allowing for natural processes in flowing water systems. This includes the natural movement and shifts of highly productive areas like flood plains and deltas. While there will always be situations that will need careful consideration in this regard, the interventionist approach of the past to force natural processes to meet human needs has only served to exact costly and irreversible effects on our natural assets.
Third, water is essential. Linking surface, groundwater, and marine resource protection is fundamental, whether working at the local watershed level or nationally. Water, in particular fresh water, is not only essential for all life but directly and indirectly tied to the maintenance of our economies.
A national conservation plan should reflect this and embody undertakings to maintain the highest values in water quality, reduce competition and conflict over water rights between human and non-human interests, and ensure that conserving water resources continues to be supported across all sectors.
Fourth, identify common ground. The APB recommends that a national conservation plan be inclusive across geopolitical, sectoral, and cultural boundaries. Ensuring effective collaboration while identifying conflicts to be resolved before they stall or undermine the processes will be essential to achieving this plan. Science-based interests and industry must be integrated with traditional ecological knowledge resources, i.e., first nations, as well as the vast public infrastructure of citizen science and environmental non-government resources. Bringing together this mosaic of interests has distinguished Canada in the past as an international leader in environmental protection and conservation.
Fifth, plan for the future now. Given present growth trajectories and resource development pressures, conservation planning must incorporate the potential for land-use activities to occur that impact the landscape in the future. While the public, resource managers, and decision-makers may be at odds over where, how, and to what degree this should occur, it is prudent to identify areas of potential conflict sooner rather than later, where resource development overlaps with areas of conservation importance.
This will assist with both conservation and resource development planning for the future. As well, cumulative environmental impacts will be avoided if high-priority conservation areas can be protected by legislation now and therefore be avoided during future activities. Greater certainty can also then be provided to industry by identifying where development may occur or requiring greater mitigation measures before activities are even planned.
In a global context, the scientific consensus and recognition of the present and long-term effects of climate change and biodiversity loss must not be ignored. It is important that the public and decision-makers be committed to scientifically informed choices. Do we wish to see ongoing conservation planning that is focused solely on a “last chance to see” approach around species and ecosystem protection? Or do we want be proactively supporting the necessary research and adaptation actions that will address present and future impacts, and protect as high a level of biodiversity and ecosystem goods and services as possible?
Sixth, best science and informed decision-making is not optional. Recently proposed legislative changes suggest the federal government is on a path contrary to a commitment to sound conservation principles. This is especially relevant with respect to conservation and impact mitigation, and includes: issues around changes to the federal Fisheries Act; limits placed on government scientists to directly communicate with the public, a number of whom include registered biology professionals in British Columbia; using changes to tax legislation to limit activities of environmental organizations, again a number of which employ registered biology professionals in this province; publicly stated support by federally elected decision-makers for major infrastructure projects before environmental and cumulative impact assessments are even developed, much less completed; changing standards for environmental assessments, including timeline restrictions; and recent significant cuts to Parks Canada and other natural resource ministry staff involved in species conservation and protected areas establishment. All this is happening with no visible support for the environmental science and resource management professionals who will be expected to provide the expertise to address the outcomes of these changes.
In closing, a robust national conservation plan must be based on best science, inclusive collaboration, and strong precautionary laws and policies that effectively protect species and habitat across multiple scales and jurisdictions.
However, the Association of Professional Biology is faced with a conundrum. How do we continue to further support something so fundamentally essential as a national conservation plan, when we feel it is only being done through a façade of federal commitment to protecting and sustaining Canada’s biodiversity?
The APB would be happy to provide its extensive expertise in the evolution of a national conservation plan. However, this must be based on a mutual recognition that conservation science and protecting Canada’s rich ecological capital are as integral to the federal government’s decision-making processes as components to the country’s economy.
We look forward to working with you further when we can be confident that this is the case. On behalf of our board of directors and our membership, thank you for your consideration and listening today.
For those of you reading along, I'll be doing a slightly shortened version of my presentation.
My name is Chloe O'Loughlin. I'm the director of terrestrial conservation at the B.C. chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society. We are Canada's voice for public wilderness protection. It's our vision to protect at least half of our public land and coastal waters. In Canada, 90% of the land and all of the oceans are public—they belong to the governments.
Today I will explain how a well-framed conservation plan would play out in British Columbia and give you on-the-ground examples at the provincial and community levels. My colleague, Alison Woodley, presented in Ottawa about the nationwide play-out, and I wanted to talk to you about how it would look in the small communities.
In 2009 and 2010, we celebrated with the federal government, the provincial government, and the related first nations two wonderful achievements. One was the establishment of the national marine conservation area around Haida Gwaii, and the other was the announcement of a national marine conservation area around the southern Gulf Islands. These are huge achievements that were received very well by the public, and there is lots more that needs to be done.
We believe that a successful national conservation plan should focus on four elements, at least. These are to protect, connect, restore, and engage the public.
Protection includes completing and caring for a network of protected areas for Canada, including the completion of the system of national parks and marine protected areas.
Connection means connecting the working landscape with these protected areas so that wildlife can move between the protected areas, through the managed landscape, and around industrial development. This is best achieved through regional land use and marine spatial planning, and then ensuring that there's a strong framework of environmental laws.
We strongly support the restoration of degraded ecosystems, and we encourage you to include Canadians, especially children and youth, in conserving nature. In British Columbia, we're working with the federal government in establishing new national parks in northern B.C., in the South Okanagan-Similkameen, and in the expansion of Waterton Lakes National Park into B.C.'s Flathead Valley.
Just yesterday we released our national report called “12 by 2012”, which assesses the degree of progress that has been made towards establishing 12 new key marine protected areas in our coastal waters, four of which we're working with you on in British Columbia.
National parks and marine protected areas are an important part of our national and provincial identity. They are as popular as hockey and the Canadian flag.
Around the world, protected areas are recognized as the cornerstone of conservation strategies. Our national parks and marine conservation areas are not only essential to achieving our mutual goals of protecting wildlife and healthy ecosystems for future generations, they are also immensely important to preserving Canadian identity and culture, supporting healthy citizens and communities, and providing substantial economic and job development benefits to local communities, the province, and the entire country.
In my position I have travelled all over the province and have met thousands of citizens from diverse backgrounds. I can tell you that the Government of Canada connects in a highly visible and positive way with citizens in the smaller communities through your national parks and marine protected areas.
In the face of a rapidly changing climate, it's also important to ensure that these protected areas are connected together in a way that allows plants and animals to move and shift in response to these changing conditions.
The national conservation plan can integrate two fundamental elements—the protected areas and the well-managed land and seascapes—under one framework. Success depends on doing both in a coordinated way. As I said before, the plan will only be successful if it is supported within a strong framework of environmental law.
Protected areas, such as national parks and marine protected areas, contribute significantly to our prosperity in British Columbia. According to the report, which is called Economic Impact of Parks Canada, in B.C., the established national parks like Mount Revelstoke National Park, on average, contribute $37.1 million per year to our province's GDP. They provide labour revenue of $25 million—this is per park, per year—and tax revenue of $3.5 million.
Visitor spending, which is very important in these communities, is on average $49 million per year. The economic benefits are enormous. In addition to that, each national park hires between 20 and 25 permanent jobs, and 570 spin-off jobs, such as extra people in the hotels and motels.
These parks and protected areas help our tourism sector immensely—locally, provincially, and across Canada—to gain international recognition, grow new emerging markets, increase our competitive advantage, expand the length of stay in the shoulder seasons, and significantly increase visitor spending.
Marine protected areas help support our sustainable fisheries in British Columbia, the province in which seafood production alone was valued at $1.4 billion in 2010. Marine protected areas act like fish nurseries, so the abundance of the fish increases significantly. They also tend to be larger and they have more successful reproduction. The marine protected areas are crucial to our fishing industry. They contribute as well to economic diversification, opportunities for investment, and population diversification.
I'm working to help establish a new national park in the South Okanagan-Similkameen, so I've talked a lot to the people in those communities. Oliver has no hotel, and they really would like to have a hotel. They believe that if there's a national park, they will be able to get investors to invest in a new hotel, which is important to their community.
In Penticton, they are always worried about losing their airport. They believe that if there's a national park they could encourage an additional carrier, which would ensure their local airport stays in place.
Osoyoos is comprised of a lot of retired people—a high percentage of retired people in the Okanagan—and at this point they're going to lose their high school. They believe, and it's been proven, that young people will move to be near a national park. The population diversification that's so important in the Okanagan could ensure that Osoyoos gets to keep a high school. The local citizens are really interested in the new permanent jobs that will result from the national park because this will allow their family members to stay in the community and their children to have summer jobs locally that will last the entire summer. These are important at the local level.
The national parks and marine protected areas help Canadians connect better to nature. Multiple independent studies have shown that spending time in nature improves both the mental and physical health of Canadians. We would support programs in the national conservation plan that would reconnect kids to nature. By working in partnerships with others, this is really possible.
In summary, the plan could make significant differences to conservation on the ground, provincially, and in the small communities across B.C. and across Canada, if it focuses on six outcomes.
One is to complete the network of protected areas for Canada, specifically completing all of the national parks in Canada and the marine protected areas that are part of the system's plan, ensuring that the protected areas are nested within the landscape and within seascapes that are managed to sustain wildlife and healthy ecosystems. In order to do this, we need to have regional planning and marine planning as well, throughout the country and on all three of our coasts.
It would position Canada as a global leader by committing to exceed the current international biodiversity targets of protecting 17% of land and 10% of the oceans by 2020. We have the opportunity to do this. We could be world leaders, ensuring that the conservation initiatives are grounded in strong science, traditional knowledge, good environmental laws. This should be a national conservation plan for all Canadians, inspiring all Canadians to participate in your plan, and then providing the programs and partnerships that reconnect our children and youth to nature. It could be inspirational in leadership and provide a legacy for generations to come.
:
Good morning, committee members. Thank you for this opportunity to provide comments on the initial steps in developing a national conservation plan, a plan I think will be welcomed by many environmentally conscious Canadians in light of recent announcements associated with the budget bill.
Let me first say that in my opinion the four-page document provided—the backgrounder and the national conservation plan—is a very good starting point, particularly the first paragraph that emphasizes the importance of nature to Canadians.
The backgrounder reads like a strong commitment of government to protect our iconic landscapes, seascapes, and wild species. I sincerely hope that the commitment is real, that nature will be valued as more than a driver for our economy, and that the value of the ecosystem services provided to Canada will be better appreciated and protected for generations.
Success in developing this plan is going to have its challenges, but if my experience over 30 years with Pacific salmon throughout British Columbia is representative, we will be able to draw on a wealth of experience, expertise, and stewardship from community organizations, universities, industries, and NGOs.
However, to build strong collaboration and to use this expertise, I suggest that we begin this NCP process by describing a set of national goals and setting out the commitment of the federal government to achieve them. Without a strong will to implement this plan, there's little point in building great expectations in the public or expending the effort required to achieve a national program.
I want to limit my comments to three major points in building the NCP and to describe one example of an effective conservation policy already developed in Canada—Canada's policy for wild Pacific salmon.
There are three priority issues I want to emphasize in developing the plan. First, in a country of the scope and diversity of Canada, the national plan should be hierarchical in structure, with national goals and principles, and a regionally specific implementation that recognizes the diversity of landscapes and biological systems across Canada. It's appropriate to have consistent principles across our country, but we have to recognize that ecological systems vary by region and are determined by the interaction of landscapes, climate, and biological systems. Within these ecological zones, measures of biological diversity or the use of key species as indicators define another stratum for consideration within regions.
Second, the plan should be a science-based process in the delineation of ecosystems. This should comprise terrestrial, fresh water, estuaries, and marine environments so that the methods are repeatable, make use of available knowledge and expertise, and include monitoring to track successes or failures and to learn from our experience through time.
We are not starting from zero in this effort. There is an extensive literature related to these methods. For example, there is the work of the Nature Conservancy at a website called conservationgateway.org, and a publication that describes what we're undertaking, Conservation Area Design. It provides an excellent starting point for the structure of the plan.
Third, the development of the NCP should be inclusive and involve localized stewardship groups to incorporate their local values and interests, to monitor their environments, and to monitor progress towards regional objectives. These community organizations provide exceptional value in labour and local knowledge, as well as an important tie between communities and the local natural environments. This is not a new recommendation. An excellent statement of the potential value of local stewardship called “Canada's Stewardship Agenda“was published by Environment Canada in 2002.
The example I want to present was developed by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and is entitled Canada's Policy for Conservation of Wild Pacific Salmon. It was completed in June 2005 after six years of extensive public consultations and more than a decade of scientific debate. I provided you copies of this yesterday, on your tour.
This policy has subsequently been applied to Atlantic salmon in eastern Canada and is widely recognized as a model framework for the sustainable management of Pacific salmon to maintain their adaptability to environmental change and for the inclusion of communities in decision processes that affect them.
You might think of the policy as the result of three intersecting circles. One circle represents the physical landscape and climate that determines the major ecological zones in British Columbia. The second circle represents the biological features of Pacific salmon populations, the dynamics of their interactions between populations—I mean the spawning aggregations—and the ecological interactions that define the productivity of the salmon population. We use productivity in the sense of how many progeny are produced from a pair of spawners. The third circle represents the human impacts overlain on the salmon and their environment.
With this intersection, these circles describe the conservation need for a particular Pacific salmon group or species. To address these issues within one national policy—the wild salmon policy—the consultation process agreed to five strategies or action steps within the policy.
One is to define the geographic range of each salmon species and population, and for each to describe management targets and a monitoring plan to understand the state of these resources. Second is to, within each conservation unit, assess the habitat quality and quantity and monitor habitat trends over time. Again within the conservation unit, the third is to assess the ecological conditions within the unit, assessing both the value of salmon to local ecosystems—for example, the marine nutrients provided as salmon return from the sea—and the importance of local ecological processes to the productivity of Pacific salmon, such as, for example, the availability of fresh water or the condition of local estuaries for juvenile salmon. Fourth is to develop an open and transparent process to involve local community groups in decisions that will directly affect their communities. And the last one is to conduct periodic evaluations to assess progress and to adjust as we appreciate changes that are necessary.
There actually is a sixth strategy, which you'll see in the policy, but it pertains to the annual implementation of fisheries management decisions, since the intent of the policy is long-term but fisheries must be managed on an annual time scale.
While this example may not seem directly analogous to your task to develop a national conservation plan of much greater scope, I would suggest that the steps involved are analogous to your task and would be particularly useful at the regional level of organization for many other species.
Now, Mark, I don't say the next part as any criticism at all; it's a statement of fact that I want to emphasize for a specific salmon that we talked about yesterday. The comment is simply that given the current concern about changes in the Fisheries Act and habitat provisions, I feel that I have to emphasize that the diversity of Pacific salmon that we enjoy in Canada is a direct reflection of the diversity of habitats available and the direct tie between salmon and those habitats. We can't have healthy, productive Pacific salmon without protecting the diversity of their habitats and the functioning ecosystems that they exist within. Pacific salmon really are a direct reflection of their habitat and the ancestral lineages that led to what we see today. The wild salmon policy will protect both, through time and under various climate changes.
What I think will be different in your task at the national level, compared with the regional wild salmon policy, is how to incorporate what I simply refer to as “big picture” issues that will be overlain on the current status of species and our habitats—for example, the management and conservation of fresh water in Canada. I also include climate change responses and impacts in B.C. of particular interest, such things as mountain pine beetle interactions, and we have marine impacts in the Strait of Georgia.
I also think we need to draw attention to the care and protection of Canada's three oceans and their biodiversity. I draw your attention to the very recent publication from the Royal Society of Canada on marine biodiversity status. It's available on the RSC website.
Finally, for consistency with international obligations that Canada has already signed on to, I would think that the structure of the program will have to very much be hierarchical in nature. It's possible, then, that these larger issues might be addressed by specific advisory processes to assist you in how to identify what these pressures are and provide an appropriate response to them within the national plan.
I very much look forward to more discussion on this very worthwhile task. I expect you will receive a lot of advice and opinions, but I hope you will make use of the extensive expertise in Canada, make use of the many past efforts and publications, draw on communities' local knowledge and willingness to assist you, and of course, in my reference to “communities” I most certainly include the first nations of Canada with their local and traditional knowledge.
Thank you very much for your attention.
:
Thank you Mr. Chairman.
I want to thank the committee on behalf of our organization for the opportunity to appear today and to make submissions. My name is Jeff Surtees. I'm the CEO of Trout Unlimited Canada.
Our organization is a national habitat conservation organization. We were created 40 years ago, in 1972, with the mission to conserve, protect, and restore Canada's freshwater ecosystems. We were started by anglers, by people who like to fish, and we're now supported by anglers and non-anglers alike across the country. We're governed by a volunteer board of directors and have volunteer chapters in the Maritimes, in Quebec—well, we have one in Quebec, but we're going to have a lot more soon—in Ontario, in Alberta, and in British Columbia.
We work with communities and we work with local volunteers. We take pride in being an action-oriented organization. We are completely non-partisan and non-political. The bulk of our funding comes from Canadian individuals and corporations, and only a small amount from government sources at this time. We've always worked cooperatively with industry and governments of all stripes. Our members believe we've earned our place at the table by being an organization that fixes things. We like to do more than to talk about doing.
Our habitat work involves stream restoration, monitoring, and assessment, all based on sound science. To our members, a cold-water stream or river is a place of almost infinite beauty, a place where life begins. Our work also involves educating schoolchildren through our Yellow Fish Road program. In that program, thousands of participants go out with their class or community group and paint a small yellow fish on a storm drain in their community to remind people that everything in the physical world is connected. Storm drains are connected directly to rivers, and by pouring something down a drain you're pouring it right into some animal's house.
We were provided with five questions to guide our submissions today, and I'm going to focus my remarks on just the third and fourth of those questions, which were: what should the guiding principles of a national conservation plan be, and what should the conservation priorities of a national conservation plan be? Then we'll make a short comment on the fifth question, which is, what should the implementation priorities of a national conservation plan be?
The first question—which is the third question—is what guiding principles should govern in a national conservation plan. We have four guiding principles to suggest. They are very consistent with the comments that have been made to you by the other people giving testimony today.
The first guiding principle that we suggest is that the national conservation plan must be based on sound science. Conservation and restoration require a deep understanding of the biophysical conditions and processes that create habitat where animal and plant populations live. A conservation plan must use the best science available to ensure that we maintain and restore these biophysical functions. When we say “based on sound science”—and we hear that phrase in a lot of contexts these days—to us it means that the plan is guided by information that is measurable and is measured; that it identifies the links between physical structure and the actual functioning of a watershed or landscape; and thirdly and very importantly, that it addresses the cumulative effect of all activities within the watershed or landscape.
The second suggested guiding principle relates to scale. Conservation planning must be done at an ecologically relevant geographic scale and on an ecologically relevant time scale. We submit that the proper geographic scale for the individual components of the national conservation plan must be, at a minimum, the scale of the entire ecosystem or the entire watershed in question. The proper time scale must be very long. The decision has to be based on thinking that is at least decades, if not hundreds of years, into the future rather than on the expediencies of the day.
The third suggested guiding principle is that the national conservation plan should strive to educate all Canadians about ecology. We just have to raise the bar of common knowledge. Increased ecological literacy should, we believe, lead to a deeper level of caring, which should, we believe, lead to positive participation in community action. People who care and people who know a little more will care more and will do more in a positive way.
The fourth and final guiding principle that we suggest is that the implementation of a national conservation plan must be adequately funded and resourced. It absolutely must have long-term support from all levels of government. If the plan includes work to be done by groups like all of ours here at the table, there must be mechanisms in place to help those organizations within the non-profit sector to remain sustainable. Many very good organizations spend a great deal of time and effort just trying to stay alive.
I'm going to move to question four, the conservation priorities that should be included in the national conservation plan. Our belief is that if we get the guiding principles right, the conservation priorities should flow directly from them. I'm only going to comment on conservation priorities that fall under Trout Unlimited Canada's mandate as an organization, which is dealing with small freshwater streams and rivers. Many other priorities that other organizations will probably put forward will be equally valid.
Guiding principle number one that we have suggested is that the plan must be based on sound science. The science that we have put together shows that work can be prioritized and be made more effective that way. The prioritization we use is this. The highest priority work to be done on small streams and rivers is that work which improves water quality. First, you think about quality. The second highest priority is work that maintains or improves the quantity of water in a system. The third and fourth highest priority work would be to improve physical habitat, and to work directly on managing fish populations through stocking or removing fish from a system, and in both cases, focusing on the maintenance and restoration of native species before non-native species. Again, the conservation priorities to be consistent with the guiding principles would be implemented on a minimum of a watershed scale in a manner that can be sustained indefinitely.
I'll move to question five. I have a brief comment on it. What should the implementation priorities of a national conservation plan be? This is a very difficult question for us. We had a lot of debate among our board members, and I have received a lot of calls from our members about it. It's a difficult question for us to address right now because, Mr. Chairman, we were asked to stick to the agenda—the matter directly before the committee, and I will do that—but everything is connected.
The work that is being done under Bill , the changes that are being made, directly affect the work of this committee. It's a fact. When we're asked for recommendations about implementation plans, we think, “How we can do that?” We have to know what the regulations are going to say that are being brought in under the changes to the pieces of legislation in the bill. That's where the implementation is going to be. It is connected to the national conservation plan. As I say, we will work cooperatively with whatever system our elected representatives put in place. We will work under that, and we will offer our services to help. We believe, as an organization, that if an activity, industrial or otherwise, causes harmful alteration, disruption, or destruction of fish habitat, an environmental assessment must be triggered. That is being changed, we think. We have to be against that.
A national conservation plan, to live up to its name, has to be a big thing, a grand thing, a thing of great vision, something the whole country can be proud of, and something that is supported across all levels of government—municipal, provincial, and federal. The whole of government has to act in a way that is consistent with that theory, or little will have been accomplished.
I thank you for your work on this committee and look forward to participating further. Those our submissions.
Thank you to all of our witnesses for being with us today.
We had a fascinating day yesterday, touring sites on Vancouver Island of stream restoration and various projects. British Columbia salmon are iconic here, and on Vancouver Island we had a lot of habitat destruction because of the interaction of humans with their environment. We saw some great examples of restoration yesterday.
Your organizations, both the Pacific Salmon Foundation and Trout Unlimited, have been big time involved in working with local groups, habitat enhancement societies, various agencies such as B.C. Conservation Foundation—with us yesterday—and Streamkeepers, organizations like that. I think Dr. Riddell mentioned some 350 organizations that the Pacific Salmon Foundation has worked with.
Yesterday we saw the Millstone River in an urban area of Nanaimo and the great work that has been done. There are two kilometres of spawning channel through a park that now has a whole community's support behind it, with children helping to see that salmon come up through the stream, connecting the watershed there with very promising returns.
I wanted to just take us back up to where we were yesterday, for the record, and that's Nile Creek, one of the other projects we saw. Nile Creek restoration has been going for a number of years and has been described by many as a model of stream restoration.
I just wonder, Dr. Riddell, if you'd take a moment to describe what makes that particular project what many consider to be a model for stream bed restoration.
:
You get the pipeline, yes.
Is the variation in Pacific salmon populations natural? Absolutely. Does it explain all of the fluctuations? Absolutely not. There are local environmental effects. There can be long-standing effects due to overfishing that we're still correcting. There can be the combination of several factors that lead to the cumulative effects that Jeff spoke about in his presentation.
I tell people that Pacific salmon are very difficult to summarize quickly because there are 4,000 locations of streams and Pacific salmon in British Columbia, and there is a wide diversity of different types of pressures. But there isn't any question that what we're seeing determining salmon returns in British Columbia now is in the ocean. What's particularly interesting is that as we apply new scientific methods, we're really determining that a lot of the variation in survival is determined in the first few months at sea—so in Canadian coastal waters. And close to us, the particular area of concern is the Strait of Georgia.
So yes, natural is a big player, definitely, in the long-term trends, but it doesn't exclude that there are localized pressures we have to deal with that can be related to development, urbanization, water extraction, and so on.
You asked about the pipeline. I'll make a quick comment on this, because of course with Pacific salmon we're definitely concerned about this development.
This, to me, is the epitome of a risk assessment in that if you built this system and it worked fine, ultimately the environment would heal and people say, “You know what? We can have both.” The problem is that the risk is a function of the.... What's the risk of something occurring? What's the probability of it occurring? What's the effect of it when it occurs? And the effect could be enormous.
So this is the epitome of risk assessment, and that's what really has people concerned. It will cross 778 streams and rivers from Alberta through B.C. It will cross three major drainages with very important salmon populations. You're really talking about a very heartfelt concern in the local communities here.
I challenged one fellow recently who was tackling us with “Why can't we have pipelines if you have forestry?” Well, it's not the same. And it's not to imply that we don't regulate forest-cutting, for heaven's sakes, right?
So yes, it could actually work, but they have to acknowledge that pipelines do leak. They will certainly not tell you that they don't leak. All we have to hope for, if it comes through, is that we do it in the very best way possible and minimize the risk to freshwater ecosystems. We need to have very rapid response, because they will leak; it is only a matter of time.
The tankers are another big story. I personally think that tanker traffic.... If you look at the history of tanker traffic around the world, the incidents are very rare. But I'm sorry; we have examples on the west coast of some very bad experiences. We lost a ferry because somebody simply fell asleep and ran into a rock. These things will happen when you have very large volumes of traffic, and how do you minimize that risk?
:
Thank you very much, Mark. It's a pleasure to appear before the standing committee, and we will focus on the six questions. I believe you do have the presentation in front of you. I will be speaking to the presentation, and my colleague, Neil, will assist me in answering questions during the question and answer session.
The B.C. Wildlife Federation is one of the oldest conservation organizations in British Columbia. Its vision is to lead the conservation and wise use of British Columbia's fish, wildlife, and habitat. Conservation and sustainability is the priority of our over 40,000 members, who include 110 different clubs distributed through the province. Our members donate over 30,000 hours per year in stewardship activities, many of which are focused specifically on habitat conservation.
The pie graph says that most of that comes from a small section of our membership, so there's certainly room to grow in terms of our members and the public contributing towards conservation.
B.C. Wildlife Federation's goals are there for your review. I don't think I need to read them out to you. We need to get on to the six questions, but I think as an organization we want to become a recognized, credible leader of conservation of the province's fish and wildlife resources, and there are a number of different strategies we are using to move that forward. I think one of the most important strategies, and one I think is important for the national conservation plan, is moving forward through strategic partnerships with a range of organizations that have the same long-term vision for the sustainability of fish, wildlife, their habitats, and ecosystems.
Our strategic priorities certainly increase the investment in fish, wildlife, and habitat management in the province. I think funding is always an issue in terms of maintaining resource sustainability. Certainly our members' primary interest is conservation, but we certainly have a focus on increasing opportunities for hunting, fishing, and outdoor recreation.
One example of a stewardship program we have is the B.C. wetlands education program. It's fairly focused. Its objective is clean water, functioning habitat, and healthy fish and wildlife populations. It has been going on for 16 years. It focuses on stewardship training and education, and it delivers projects in communities throughout the province. The result on any annual basis is 100 to 150 people who are trained in wetland stewardship and doing four to five projects, but the knock-on effect is that they are able to continue to do these stewardship activities on an ongoing basis throughout communities and landscapes throughout the province, particularly for wetlands that are very sensitive to habitat alteration.
As for the national conservation strategy, the first question is what the purpose should be of this conservation strategy. I think simplicity is important in communicating what the strategy should be. We believe it should be to protect, maintain, and restore the natural capital of Canada by protecting, enhancing, and restoring the sustainability and resilience of natural systems.
The emphasis is on protecting, enhancing, and restoring the sustainability and resilience, and I think that if these landscapes and ecosystems are functioning—they're natural, sustainable, and resilient—it is an outcome everybody can agree to.
I think the goal of the national conservation strategy should be simple. I think Canada should be the recognized world leader in conservation, given its tremendous natural capital from coast to coast, and particularly here in B.C., given its abundant range of species and ecosystems and habitat. That's the goal. That's the outcome we want from developing this plan.
I think the national conservation strategy's guiding principle is natural capital. You can define that as habitat, ecosystems.... It's an all-inclusive definition, but it's best conserved by protecting and enhancing existing natural habitats.
Effective conservation initiatives must be implemented and evaluated on a landscape or watershed scale, or their marine equivalents. Landscapes and watersheds have finite capacity, after which natural capital is lost. It's sort of like the medical analogy that prevention is worth a lot more than a cure, and often, it's a lot less expensive.
I think we need to implement adaptive management approaches, supported by science and experience, at a number of different levels. This is something that should be a collaborative approach. I think there is a place for command and control, but I think you would get much more done through collaboration with communities and first nations on a landscape scale than you would with a single, top-down national strategy. I think it has to be inclusive and collaborative, with both communities and first nations.
On conservation priorities, I think maintaining the natural capital is the long-term outcome. There are certainly species and habitats at risk that need to be addressed. Certainly I think we need to move from a single-species approach to more of a community and ecosystem approach in dealing with species and habitats. The ultimate outcome we want in a national conservation plan is to maintain the sustainability and resilience of natural landscapes and ecosystems in both the terrestrial and aquatic environments.
What are our implementation priorities? In B.C., we have a good conservation framework for species and habitats. What it doesn't have is the legs to implement it. We need to increase monitoring and reporting on a landscape scale in both the marine and aquatic habitats. I think our future is with the next generation, and increasing opportunities for information and education in schools has to be a key component. The more people become separated from the natural environment, the less relevant and important it becomes. Information and education are critically important.
Finally, fostering collaboration between communities, first nations, and various levels of government to deliver conservation solutions is important. You had a tour with Brian Riddell of the Pacific Salmon Foundation. The Living Rivers trust fund took $20 million, and through collaboration with various private sector and community groups, tripled that investment in terms of dealing with watershed and fishery sustainability issues. That is a model for implementation on the ground, and there are many other models as well.
Our implementation priorities are to increase funding and tax incentives for conservation of critical habitats and conservation land purchases. Not everything can be done through regulation. I'm not saying that regulation is not an approach, but where there are critical habitats, particularly on private land, either purchasing that land for conservation purposes or having incentives for the use of the land is compatible with maintaining natural capital and other opportunities for conservation. It is a very powerful tool. It is being used in B.C., and I think it can be very effective nationally.
We need to collaboratively assess and regulate the development of landscapes and watersheds to maintain functioning ecosystems. What the code says is that there are limits to development. It has to be looked at on a landscape basis. Not all landscapes are created equal. Some are more sensitive than others. If you want to maintain the natural capital, sometimes sooner or later, you have to say that this is the limit for particular types of development.
The consultation process is very simple. I think you need a national consultation process for the plan and the elements in it. I think you need regional consultation for delivery, because you have different governments, different communities, different first nations, and different ecosystems. So the priorities are probably quite unique when you move from province to province.
In terms of action, I think action starts at the landscape level, with community and first nations consultation for developing those plans. You need to leverage financial, technical, and community support, because these are the landscapes that people live in, and they are the landscapes in which you will get action and support for the overall outcomes of your plan.
Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to you, Mark.
:
Thank you for having me.
My name is Devon Page. I'm the executive director of Ecojustice. Ecojustice's mission is to use the law to protect and restore the environment. We're unique to the extent that we employ both lawyers and scientists to develop our cases. The primary activity we undertake is providing free legal services, and we do that independent of a client.
We choose cases based on the issue and their ability to create a precedent that will serve to protect the environment in the future. We have an extensive history of litigation concerning species and habitat conservation and protection, and it's one of the core areas of Ecojustice's function. So naturally, my comments today on what the national conservation plan will look like will focus on issues of law.
In Ecojustice's experience, species and their nest area habitats are not meaningfully conserved unless they are protected by law. Whatever the national conservation plan becomes, repealing or weakening Canada's national environmental laws is incompatible with conservation and with the long-term goal of protecting species and natural systems that support our economy, our culture, and our health.
In particular, protecting Canada's threatened species and habitat through strong federal legislation must be a central part of the national conservation plan. An example of why this is necessary can be found in B.C., where you're currently hosting these meetings. We are currently in the midst of an extinction crisis internationally, and in Canada, British Columbia has the highest number of species of any province, but it also has the highest number of species at risk, and the fastest rate of decline. According to the B.C. Conservation Data Centre, at least 1,918 species or distinct populations of wildlife in British Columbia are now at risk, and significant portions of some ecosystems have already been lost.
Loss and degradation of habitat is the leading threat to species and ecosystems in Canada. Loss of habitat is the primary cause of endangerment of 84% of Canada's assessed species at risk. Protecting Canada's species and ecosystems requires strong national legal protection for species—and more importantly, the habitat species need to carry out their life processes—and for the habitat those threatened species need to survive and recover. This is true whether the habitat is inside a park or in the areas between parks.
It's not just a matter of losing a few species here and there. The loss of Canada's native plants and animals directly threatens our economy and our health. Species are the basic building blocks for natural systems we rely on to provide us with clean air, water, carbon storage, pollination, food, and raw materials for industry. The long-term health of these natural systems depends on maintaining the diversity of their species.
Weakening national environmental laws and the protections they provide for the habitat of fish or migratory birds or other species will aggravate Canada's extinction crisis by ignoring the primary cause of that crisis. It will also directly threaten our long-term economic health.
Again, I want to reiterate that it's our position that protecting Canada's threatened species through strong federal legislation must be a central part of a national conservation plan.
Currently, Canada is proposing to change national federal protective laws for the environment. One example of how that can have impacts on a national conservation plan is illustrated at home, regarding changes to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. Two years ago in British Columbia, the federal and provincial governments each completed a separate environmental assessment of the original proposed Prosperity gold-copper mine at Fish Lake, British Columbia, using their own provincial or federal regime. The B.C. environmental assessment approved the project. The federal panel's assessment found that the proposed mine would cause significant effects on the environment and on first nations. In July 2010, the then Minister of the Environment called the environmental assessment one of the most condemning he had ever read. As a result, the federal government rejected the project, and Fish Lake—a lake known for its abundant fish stock—was saved from being turned into a tailings pond. The loss of Fish Lake, as an example, would do no good to a national conservation plan.
Riparian areas are the areas where ecosystems are richest. Current changes to federal fisheries law will jeopardize riparian areas in Canada. As well, currently we understand there are plans to weaken the Species at Risk Act. The current budget implementation bill includes one change that allows SARA permits to be granted with no expiry date, which means an unlimited right to jeopardize critical habitat. This situation will directly influence the survival and recovery of species.
In Ecojustice's opinion, given species decline in Canada, weakening Canada's primary federal environmental protection laws will jeopardize national conservation planning.
We take the position that rather than weakening laws, strong national legislation to protect all species and their habitat before they become at risk is crucial to achieving any kind of meaningful conservation goal in Canada, and therefore must be an important part of the national conservation plan.
Creating more parks is important but is no replacement for maintaining the ecological integrity of the areas outside parks. Protecting habitat for species and ecosystems in the areas between parks is crucial, because parks cannot cover a large enough area, or often the right area, to adequately address the need for habitat protection. Currently there are studies—I've referenced them in my paper—showing that most of Canada's parks are not where species are or where they will be.
Protecting habitat outside of parks requires at least two things: environmental laws that enable strong, science-based, precautionary habitat protection; and creative conservation financing, including funding for compensation and incentives for stewardship on private land.
It's also important to note that whatever the national conservation plan becomes, it must be designed to both protect species, ecosystems, and habitat in the present and enable their adaptation to climate change. I'm sure there are other people who have more expertise than I, but we're already seeing in B.C. the migration of species north in the face of increasing temperatures.
A particular comment that we want to make is that it's our understanding, based on activities that have been undertaken by the federal government, that there may be an emphasis on endemic species as opposed to peripheral species—species that are at the end of their range in Canada. These are typically southern species that have their primary range in the U.S.
We take the position that peripheral species are crucial to a national conservation plan because they make up most of our southern ecosystems. Maintaining these species in the United State will not address our need for functional ecosystems in Canada's most populous areas. The best available science strongly supports maintaining these populations, particularly in light of climate change.
The linkage between the Species at Risk Act and the national conservation plan is currently unclear. Our recommendation is that a strong Species at Risk Act can be used as a key tool to meet the purposes of the national conservation plan around managing species habitat between parks. It is designed to hit the habitat that is already dropping below tolerance levels, as indicated by its species at risk. Our recommendation is that the federal government move immediately to enact the regulations related to stewardship agreements and private land compensation for activities that affect private landholders. The act has required those regulations to be in place since its inception, and they've yet to be introduced.
Finally, we hope and trust that the committee and the federal government want the national conservation plan to be something that actually conserves Canada's species and natural systems—something more than a branding exercise to fill the vacuum left behind following the evisceration of Canada's environmental laws.
We have three recommendations for this committee: a central purpose and guiding principle of the national conservation plan must be to protect Canada's species and their habitat for the benefit of all Canadians, present and future; maintaining and strengthening strong national laws to protect Canada's species and their habitat must be a goal of the national conservation plan; and in particular, maintaining and strengthening the federal Species at Risk Act should be a conservation priority set out in the national conservation plan.
Those are my comments. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you.
:
Thank you for the opportunity to present and provide input to the committee on the national conservation plan.
First, a little about Guide Outfitters Association so that you can understand our perspective and where we come from. The province of British Columbia is unique; it's divided into guide territories. Guide outfitters have the exclusive right to guide non-residents for big game. The division of the province into guide areas builds a sense of ownership, so guide outfitters are invested in what's going on and the dynamics in their guide territory. It's the beginning of wildlife stewardship, so they take a holistic approach to managing wildlife ecosystems and what's going on within their guide areas.
One thing that's critical as we go forward is that guide outfitting has been around since the late 1800s. We promote super, natural British Columbia. I think everyone thinks about what that is, and whether it's here in British Columbia or across Canada. We're obviously looking for a pristine environment and a sustainable and wise use of all Canada's resources.
So our vision is that we're advocating for a healthy guide outfitting industry, obviously, but it's critical that's based on healthy and long-term perspectives in wildlife management, ecosystems management, and what's going on in the landscape.
GOABC's a non-profit organization established in 1966 and represents 80% of the guide outfitters in British Columbia. The model we have here was adopted by the Yukon and the Northwest Territories. So I think as we go forward you can also see that we don't necessarily have to create all the models. There are already some processes in other jurisdictions that we can look to.
As a consumptive user, hunters have a proud story and when you look at the funds that range from surcharges on licences and tags, our community of anglers, trappers, and hunters have raised over $140 million for fish and wildlife enhancement around the province of British Columbia, which is put through the Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation.
What I tell people who don't understand the role hunters play in conservation is that hunting is a good thing, because it means there's a surplus and we're stewards of that. We take a very long-term perspective on how we do that with wise and sustainable use.
So if you look for the first hunter conservationist out there, you will see people like Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier or President Theodore Roosevelt, who understood the value of wildlife and the need for sustainable use. They're the founders of national parks throughout Canada and the U.S. and had a vision. So I would suggest we look to models that are already there, like the North American model for conservation. It's developed through efforts of hunters and anglers to stipulate law and science to manage wildlife for sustainability. Many species in our jurisdiction, in British Columbia specifically, have rebounded well with this long-term, sustainable use model.
We have a role to play as consumptive users in trying to inform our sector about how to care for wildlife rather than care about the hunt, and how to do good things with the natural resources out there. Part of that is we always have to balance the social, political, and economic pressures on wildlife, and I think that's something that can be done.
We take steps to hold symposiums and work on wildlife inventories and look at new models for doing DNA better and faster, so we know the population estimates and what the trends are, whether they're increasing or decreasing, and the cub or calf recruitment. All these things are very critical as we look to see what's going on.
Someone mentioned earlier that it's easier to know what's going on in the landscape than it is in the oceans. I'm not necessarily sure that's the case.
Specifically on your six questions. What should the purpose of the national conservation plan be? We're looking for long-term priorities for the next century, providing overarching guidance in conservation for the provinces and the territories and tangible goals for strategies for the future.
Goals for the national conservation plan.... Educate Canadians on sustainable use. We have an opportunity to put these types of things in the school curriculum, rather than just the odd tour or the odd field trip. Actually put it in the curriculum and talk about sustainable use, talk about the commitment to the resources, the management of ecosystems. Take a holistic approach, which I think you've heard before, not just piecemeal—one species or one part of the ecosystem—but a whole overarching plan for the landscape, and develop synergies among stakeholders and all levels of government and municipalities and first nations.
Regarding the guiding principles, again, it's wise use, it's sustainable use, based on science and laws, creating a surplus of the renewable resources, and collaborating with first nations and local communities.
As for implementation priorities, these include a holistic approach, regular assessment of landscapes and watersheds, some types of tax incentives for conservation and rehabilitation projects—similar to what we would do with the HCTF—and dedicated funds for fish and wildlife inventories.
What consultation process should the minister consider when developing a national conservation plan? It's local knowledge from those living and working on the land. Local knowledge is expert knowledge. You have a lot of traditional knowledge as well from first nations. You have a variety of stakeholders here. You can leverage their expertise.
Thank you.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
WWF Canada appreciates the invitation to appear before your committee.
Our mission is to stop the degradation of the planet's environment and to build a future in which humans live in harmony with nature.
As one of Canada's oldest and largest conservation organizations, with offices in all corners of the country, we're eager to do what we can to make this make this plan a leading example for the world.
Today, as I speak to you, WWF is releasing its eighth Living Planet Report in major capitals and business centres around the world. In fact, it is actually being delivered from space today as I talk to you. That was late-breaking news, not in my written remarks. This is our own state-of-the-world publication, a global accounting index that tracks the state of biodiversity and the human footprint on earth.
This report's clear message is that we are taking more from our planet than our planet is able to give. The findings are that biodiversity has declined by 30% since 1970, while our demand on the planet, our footprint, has more than doubled. If we imagined countries as businesses, Canada ranks as one of the worst-performing capital managers. We have the eighth largest per capita footprint of any country on earth. If every citizen of earth consumed as Canadians do, we'd need 3.5 earths to supply our needs. There is an urgent need for the plan we are discussing today.
In the short time we have, I will outline WWF's top three priorities for the national conservation plan, followed by some more specific recommendations on conservation and implementation priorities.
Our top three recommendations are, number one, to aim high. Our conservation goals should exceed our development goals. Number two is to celebrate Canadians' pride in nature with an innovative public engagement program. Number three is to challenge the private sector to match the government's conservation activities.
Before going into detail about these priorities, l'd just like to say a few words about why we are here and the opportunity we have to create something lasting and meaningful.
It won't come as a surprise to any of you, but we are the envy of the world for our wealth, especially our natural wealth. People around the globe are in awe of what Canadians have at our disposal and for our enjoyment, both out in the wilderness and in cities.
Across the bridge, Vancouver has pledged to be the greenest city in the world by 2020, and has taken major steps to reap the environmental and economic benefits from its greenest city action plan. Canada's national conservation plan should match the ambition in this goal.
Here in B.C. we have amazing natural wonders like the Great Bear Rainforest and Sea on the north coast, where one of the world's last intact temperate rainforests meets some of the planet's last large wild rivers and most productive cold water seas. It is an area of incredible abundance, which I was lucky enough to visit last fall. I was amazed at the experience of walking up streams so choked by salmon that it was hard to navigate. Where would B.C. be without salmon?
The Fraser River, right outside our window, is the greatest salmon-producing river on earth. More than two billion juvenile salmon spend weeks or months in the estuary before beginning their ocean migration.
How can our national conservation plan safeguard this incredible natural wealth? This brings me back to our top three priorities.
First, we need to aim high. We recommend that the federal government's plan for more than 500 development projects representing over $500 billion in new investments in the decade ahead should be matched with an even more ambitious conservation plan. The government is to be congratulated for the huge progress we've made with protected areas on land. We need similar progress in protecting our marine and freshwater environments.
We join with other witnesses you have heard from who have emphasized the need for Canada to meet the international legal commitments, in particular commitments under the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Aichi biodiversity targets. We suggest matching priority outcomes of the plan to the Aichi targets, as the U.K. biodiversity strategy has done.
Second, we recommend that the plan celebrate Canadians' pride in nature with an innovative public engagement program—this century's version of the excitement generated by our centennial celebrations in 1967.
WWF has an intensive focus on public engagement and participation, and we would be pleased to share our experiences. Earth Hour, the largest public involvement event in Canada, is organized by WWF, and is participated in by 10 million Canadians and 100 million people around the world.
It's a symbolic activity, to show a commitment to climate change action. Earth Hour asks you to turn off your lights, to switch off, for one hour each March.
We're now building on public recognition of Earth Hour to reach more substantive conservation goals. The committee members have noted the importance of reaching people who live in cities as part of the NCP. The WWF network will continue Earth Hour's positive momentum through the Earth Hour city challenge, a new initiative that highlights and rewards city governments that are prepared to make substantial long-term efforts to combat climate change—an integral part of any national conservation plan.
Third, we invite the government to challenge the private sector to be a full participant in the plan. One example we're proud to highlight is from one of our corporate partners. By the end of 2013, Loblaw, Canada's largest purchaser of seafood, has made a globally leading commitment to source 100% of all the wild and farmed fish sold in its stores across Canada from sustainable sources. We're collaborating on this with Loblaw, as well as with other scientists, science advisors, government agencies, and seafood vendors.
Those are our top three priorities for the plan. We've prepared a written brief that addresses the purpose, goals, and guiding principles for the NCP, which I will leave with you.
In the time remaining, I will talk about conservation and implementation priorities for the plan.
WWF recommends that the plan include bold steps on water, climate, and people, including actions to protect the Great Bear Sea, the marine counterpart to the Great Bear Rainforest. This region generates $104.3 million in revenue and provides 2,200 long-term jobs.
We recommend recovering the Grand Banks ecosystem, including Atlantic cod productivity.
We recommend maintaining natural flow regimes in selected large wild rivers in every basin across Canada. The federal government has the constitutional responsibility to protect fish and their habitat, and that includes the rivers, streams, and wetlands on which they depend. The Fisheries Act sets a vital national standard for protecting fish habitat. The proposed changes to this act, which would dilute this national standard, are of grave concern to us and many others. They are not compatible with a national conservation plan.
We also recommend priorities for establishing the last ice area in Canada's far north and a Canadian energy strategy.
Our implementation priorities are to complete Canada's protected area networks, both terrestrial and marine. We recommend establishing recovery programs for every species listed in the Species at Risk Act as soon as possible. This includes all the freshwater and marine fish that have lagged behind terrestrial species in being given the legal protection they need.
Species at risk need their critical habitat protected. As my colleague just explained in detail, if we want healthy salmon populations we need to protect salmon habitat. The Species at Risk Act is the tool we use to keep species healthy across the country. We urge you to strengthen this act as part of the national conservation plan.
Another implementation priority is to protect natural flow, and the federal Fisheries Act is a key tool to conserve, protect, and restore rivers across Canada.
Our final implementation priority is to support credible globally recognized marketplace certification systems, such as the Marine Stewardship Council for fishing, which helps to secure natural capital while maintaining Canadian business market share internationally.
In closing I'd like to tell you about the WWF gift to the earth program. A gift to the earth is a public celebration by WWF of a conservation action, which is both a demonstration of environmental leadership and a globally significant contribution to the protection of the living world.
We awarded WWF's gift to the earth to Parks Canada, in 2011—congratulations, Parks Canada—and in 2007, we made the gift to the earth award to the architects of the Great Bear Rainforest agreement. We were very happy to celebrate that event with leaders from the federal and provincial governments, first nations, and other stakeholders.
We'd like to be back before this committee in five years with a new WWF gift to the earth, for your contributions arising from this plan. We stand ready to work collaboratively with government and industry to put an ambitious national conservation plan into action.
Once again, I thank you for giving me the opportunity to share our views with you.
:
Yes, I think I could probably give you a few, but I'll try to limit myself.
WWF had a very successful endangered spaces campaign, and we worked together with governments from all levels to increase the amount of protected areas in Canada. I think the factors in that successful multi-year campaign were setting very ambitious goals, as I've already mentioned, working in cooperation, and inspiring the public. Those are three fundamentals for programs that I think you can incorporate.
The federal government can do a lot to support private sector conservation as well, as I mentioned. I think of supporting things like the Forest Stewardship Council in forest certification, the Marine Stewardship Council in marine certification, which are really positive examples of using the power of the marketplace. Consumers learn more about the products they buy, make those choices, and companies have an incentive to adopt more sustainable practices. So that would be another group of programs that I'd mention.
We run the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup each year, in cooperation here in B.C. with the Vancouver Aquarium, sponsored by Loblaws. That's another very successful program.
I'll just finish with, in 1967, during the centennial, the government really was trying to inspire people to take action. It was our 100th birthday. Everyone was very happy, and 5.5 million Canadian kids took part in the Canadian Centennial Medal program, where you got a medal for fitness award. So I would suggest something like that, some feel-good, fun, inspiring, youth-oriented, contest medal award would be a great part—a small part but a part—of your national conservation plan.
:
Right. So we take the position that the current laws we have, while not optimal, are being characterized as ineffective as laws when in fact bureaucracy and failure to implement effectively are what have jeopardized them. They're being weakened, not because they're ineffective on their own.
It's a cover for laws that actually are quite sound and that for years were quite effectively protecting the environment. I'm speaking specifically of the Fisheries Act and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. As they are written, if they were applied, they could be effective.
We were before the Supreme Court of Canada two years ago, and they commented that the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act has all the tools you need to ensure the harmonized, comprehensive implementation of environmental assessment in Canada. So one of my comments is that you have to preserve Canada's current laws.
Where I find the environment does best is when governments wrestle for jurisdiction, where they wrestle to take charge of the environment; it's the tragedy of the commons. When they're wrestling to avoid jurisdiction and obligation to take care of the environment and that tragedy of the commons, that's where the environment suffers. That's what we're seeing right now. We're seeing the federal government seeking to divest itself of responsibility as steward of the environment by characterizing the laws as constituting unnecessary red tape. In fact, however, they don't, and that's not what the courts have said, and that's certainly not what the laws say.
So in terms of strengthening the laws, the first thing we have to do is to continue on the trajectory we were on 10 years ago, which is to strengthen the current laws we have in both the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act and the Fisheries Act. We're on the trajectory to better incorporate sustainability principles. That's not the same as saying they don't need to be modernized—they do—but those acts were put in place—in 1977 for the Fisheries Act, for example—because people understood that there's a relationship between our well-being and the well-being of fish and fish habitat. That well-being is being jeopardized by the current changes.
So my first point is that you have to preserve our current laws and you have to strengthen them to incorporate current principles of sustainable development in law, which will take me to my second point, which is on the cost of using the environment.
In Canada, unlike most other progressive nations in the world, corporations don't pay for the cost of their activities. The tar sands is a classic example. There is no charge paid by a corporate actor to use four barrels of water for every barrel of oil they produce. How can that be? In other jurisdictions there'd be at least a carrying charge. You can talk about royalties, but the royalty structure in no way creates the fund that would enable reclaiming the lands after the extraction activity is undertaken.
As for the cost of using the environment, we just have to start charging the cost, and that's all there is to it. It's pay now or pay later. Alan made a comment that the principle behind sustainable development and the laws that enable it is that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. So you take that ounce of prevention now as opposed to having the cost later. Well, we don't apply that principle in any context to Canadian industrial development.
:
My name is David Bradbeer, from the Delta Farmland & Wildlife Trust. I'm here to bear witness before the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development with regard to the proposed national conservation plan.
The focus of my witness testimony today is to discuss specific examples of collaborative conservation efforts being conducted on the south coast of B.C. To frame the context of these examples, I will quantify the ecological significance of the lower Fraser River delta, and within this context, I will discuss the specific actions taken by our local non-profit organization, Delta Farmland & Wildlife Trust, to conserve wildlife species on a working landscape. I present these examples to you as a model for future collaborative conservation efforts and recommend that such models, in conjunction with habitat retention, be explicitly included within the national conservation plan.
B.C's largest river, the Fraser, travels 1,360 kilometres from its headwaters in the Rockies before reaching its outflow on the south coast of the province, where it forms the lower Fraser River delta. The lower Fraser River delta provides a mix of habitat for wildlife, including tidal marshes, sloughs, lowland shrub-tree communities, forested highlands, remnant grasslands, and intensively managed agricultural fields. These habitats are used by migratory birds, which travel from the Canadian Arctic, the interior of B.C., Central and South America, and Asia.
The diversity of migratory birds is represented by four species of loon, five species of grebe, five species of wading bird, eight species of owl, 25 species of waterfowl, 13 species of raptor, 29 species of shorebird, 15 species of gulls and terns, and over 70 species of songbirds. Of these wildlife species that rely on the lower Fraser River delta, several are listed under Canada's Species at Risk Act, including 12 that are listed as species of special concern, six that are listed as threatened, and seven that are listed as endangered.
The lower Fraser River delta is a critical migratory node for bird species. It supports the highest density of wintering raptors and the highest density of wintering water birds in all of Canada. For these attributes, it is recognized as a Ramsar site and a western hemisphere shorebird reserve, and is considered one of Canada's most significant, important bird areas. Without the lower Fraser River delta, the majority of birds using the area would not be able to complete their migration north and south.
Farmland on the lower Fraser River delta can support many of these migratory birds. The initial diking and drainage of the lower Fraser River delta, which began in 1868, would have impacted the capacity of the landscape to conserve wildlife. However, farmland has proven its capacity to retain some of the functional elements of wildlife habitat that existed beforehand.
Farmland can conserve wildlife species, because first, it is directly adjacent to other high-quality habitats, such as tidal marshes and mud flats. Second, the fertile soils are managed for high, primary production of cash crops, which in turn can be utilized by wildlife directly and indirectly. For instance, waterfowl feed on harvested vegetable crop residue. Third, agronomic grass crops can be managed to emulate historical grassland habitats and can thereby provide food, roosting, breeding, and nesting habitat for a myriad of grassland species. Fourth, field margins can be managed as shrub-tree habitat. Fifth, and most important, farmland can be managed to increase the capacity of the landscape to conserve wildlife, and this management can be actively incorporated into existing cash crop rotation.
The work conducted by the Farmland & Wildlife Trust is an example of farmland management that increases the capacity of the landscape to conserve wildlife, while economic activity within the region is maintained. The Delta Farmland & Wildlife Trust has been working within the farming communities of Delta and Richmond since 1993 to provide wildlife habitat and to steward agricultural soil resources. Our mission is to explicitly recognize that wildlife conservation can be supported by farmland habitat and that management can be carried out by farmers in a manner that also improves soil fertility.
The primary method of implementing wildlife conservation on local farms is through the six stewardship programs administered by DF&WT. Through these programs, farmers enter into formal stewardship agreements with DF&WT. Each agreement specifies management goals. Farmers carry out the management defined by the agreement on their farm, the result of which is the improvement and/or creation of wildlife habitat. The management practices also contribute to long-term soil management and crop productivity.
The Delta Farmland & Wildlife Trust raises funds to provide farmers with a cost-share payment through these stewardship agreements. The cost-share covers a portion of the cost incurred to manage farmland for wildlife.
There is an incentive for the farmer to share a portion of this cost because of the management benefits accrued to soil fertility. With this model, our non-profit bears a portion of the cost that would otherwise be too prohibitive for the farmer to incur. We get this funding from several sources, including endowment funds, other NGOs, private organizations, municipal governments, as well as federal sources such as Environment Canada.
I'll briefly discuss two stewardship programs that DF&WT uses to cooperate with wildlife conservation. They're the grassland set-aside and the winter cover crop programs, and both programs provide grass habitat for wildlife and improve soil fertility.
Through the set-aside program, farmers plant agronomic grasses and leave them to grow for up to four years, allowing the fields to quickly become tall grass habitat that emulates historical grassland ecosystems that were present prior to the diking and draining in 1868. This dense vegetation provides shelter for small mammals, which in turn are food for raptors, owls, and wading birds, and is also a good habitat for grassland songbirds. This kind of management is specifically targeted as well to conserve four species listed under Canada's Species at Risk Act.
Farmers can also use the set-aside program in their crop rotation because it breaks pest cycles and increases soil organic matter. It can be difficult for farmers to take land out of production like this, but the cost-share provided through the stewardship program helps cover the costs of seed, equipment, time, labour, and in some cases, rents on the field. After four years, the field is returned to cash crop production, and the grassland set-aside program affects over 500 acres of farmland annually on the lower Fraser River delta.
I'll talk briefly of the winter cover crop program, another one of our programs that's targeted at migratory waterfowl conservation. Cereal grasses and clovers are planted after cash crop harvests in the late summer and early fall. This vegetation protects the soils from heavy rains. In fall, as populations of migratory waterfowl build, the winter cover crop fields provide feeding habitat for ducks, geese, and swans. The waterfowl feed on the winter cover crop through the winter.
The benefit to the farmer occurs when he ploughs the winter cover crop into the soil in spring, just before planting a cash crop, thus improving soil tilth. An average of 3,000 acres are planted on an annual basis on the lower Fraser River delta. The ability of winter cover crops to provide feeding habitat has made them an important tool for conserving migratory waterfowl populations. They have also helped mitigate conflict between waterfowl and farming operations, because waterfowl can drastically impact the viability of hay production by overgrazing the crop. The cover crops lure the waterfowl away from the more economically important hay and pasture crops, and this reduces grazing damage to the hayfields.
Currently, it's important to note that farmers on the lower Fraser River delta are compensated through the federal safety net program for damage caused by waterfowl.
In closing up here, DF&WT has conducted research studies to validate the efficacy of these practices for conserving wildlife. Research has assessed the abundance of small mammal prey in grassland set-asides, and the extent to which different winter cover crops support migratory waterfowl. Assessments to date have confirmed that these stewardship programs are contributing to wildlife conservation by functioning as high-quality habitat.
The kind of landscape level management carried out by the Delta Farmland & Wildlife Trust must be considered in the context of challenges to conservation. Presently, industrial, commercial, and residential developments and the associated transportation corridors are being developed and expanded on the lower Fraser River delta farmland. The landscape changes associated with converting farmland to other uses diminishes its capacity to conserve wildlife and ecosystem function within one of Canada's most significant, important bird areas. To conserve populations of migratory birds and species at risk, farmland habitat must be retained.
The DF&WT model can be emulated in other regions of this country where landowners are equipped to enact conservation practices, but have been given no incentive to do so. When combined with habitat retention, this model can conserve wildlife. Providing cost-share funding can ensure farmers are not bearing the full cost of conservation management, and thereby have incentives to carry out management that conserves wildlife and ecosystem function.
The main point I must make here is that when there's a cost associated with managing a landscape for wildlife conservation, that cost cannot be placed solely on the landowner. The value of the environmental goods and services must be recognized and paid for by society so that those goods and services can be realized.
From this specific example of the Delta Farmland & Wildlife Trust, I will comment on the proposed national conservation plan. The purpose of the NCP should be to retain the existing ecological function of Canada's ecosystems, especially those that are critical to the conservation of a wide array of species.
Within this context, the NCP should explicitly recognize the ecological function of the lower Fraser River delta, including its critical importance as a node for wildlife migration. Furthermore, a specific objective of the NCP should be to retain the existing ecological function of this delta by preventing the further development of farmland.
Another specific objective should be to support conservation models that engage private landowners in the management of existing farmland habitat, similar to the work conducted by the Farmland & Wildlife Trust. This kind of collaborative model ensures that managed private lands can connect protected habitat, thereby increasing our capacity to conserve Canada's wildlife.
Thank you.
:
I was emphasizing the fact that the impacts of climate change on our land and water are extremely sobering. We have truly reached a point where the biological underpinnings of our natural capital, our natural heritage, which sustains Earth's life support systems are truly at risk. This includes threats to our clean water, food, ecosystem services—such as air and water purification, and waste treatment—and life-sustaining services, such as recreational opportunities.
Canadian communities are already grappling with water shortages, forest fires, and here in B.C. certainly the mountain pine beetle epidemic, underlining the need to evolve the way we manage our land and water to take climate change into account. This needs to be a central consideration in a national conservation plan.
This includes the imperative to complete our protected area system, particularly our representative system of national parks, and to design these in a way that takes into account the best available scientific information about climate change. This means augmenting the elevational and latitudinal breadth of protected areas, essentially allowing species the space to move north. It means simply protecting more and doing it smarter.
I recommend to you a recent editorial in the journal, Conservation Biology. It emphasized that scientific reviews and studies based on empirical evidence and rigorous analysis consistently indicate that somewhere in the range of 25% to 75% of a typical region must be managed with conservation of nature as a primary objective, if we wish to reach conservation goals and biodiversity protection goals. The realities of climate change militate towards being at the more conservative end of that spectrum.
There may be an additional economic silver lining for doing so. Massive amounts of greenhouse gas pollution are emitted when we degrade natural ecosystems, for example, through logging. Where areas are set aside from logging or from other ecosystem degradation, those avoided greenhouse gas emissions may have a new economic value in emerging carbon markets, as that avoided living carbon is not released into the atmosphere.
Second, I wish to speak to the need for sustainable land and water management outside of protected areas.
Clearly, large, interconnected, representative protected areas must be the cornerstone of any national conservation plan, yet any conservation plan that stops at the borders of protected areas will fail.
In many areas of Canada, habitats that once existed in large blocks have become fragmented by human activity. Outside of protected areas, small patches of older forests may be left, surrounded by clear-cuts, and seismic lines and roads may bisect the landscape. Perhaps most critically in an era of climate change and warming climate, fragmentation can limit the ability of organisms to move in response to changing climate conditions. And I'm quoting here from one of the articles cited in the notes you have: “Even with completely unfragmented landscapes, some species will not be able to move with the rapidity necessary” to avoid extirpation or extinction.
For the past two decades, maintaining or improving connectivity across landscapes has been the action most frequently recommended by scientists for enabling biodiversity adaptation to climate change, and again needs to be a central and forming principle of a national conservation plan.
I need to be clear that I'm not just talking about wildlife corridors. We need to be actively managing the matrix, the area outside of legally protected areas, to maintain functioning natural ecosystems. We need to be thinking about what needs to be left behind on the land to maintain habitat and ecosystem services to give species, and ultimately ourselves, a fighting chance in the face of climate change. Strong environmental laws and conservation-focused land and marine planning are key tools to improve the sustainability of natural resource management.
In particular, as was flagged previously in our submissions on the seven-year review of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, a more proactive spatial regional approach to cumulative effects management could go a long way to addressing existing gaps.
I wish also to speak to the honourable treatment of constitutionally protected aboriginal and treaty rights. For the past decade I've had the privilege of working with a number of first nations as they developed land-use plans within their territories and engaged in government-to-government negotiations to reconcile these plans with the plans and regulations of the crown.
I wish to point out that many of the most innovative recent land-use outcomes and conservation gains in British Columbia have emerged from such reconciliation negotiations. A national conservation plan needs to fully embrace the role of first nations governments in shaping land-use outcomes and the constitutional imperative of maintaining and restoring the ecological basis of first nations cultures.
Finally, I want to emphasize that a framework of strong federal and provincial environmental laws must provide the backbone of an effective national conservation plan. For decades, Canadians have depended on our federal government to safeguard our families and nature from pollution, toxic contamination, and other environmental problems through strong environmental law. Canadians hold dear our natural heritage and our ability to have a say about resource decisions that will affect our lives. A national conservation plan cannot hope to effectively achieve its vision and give effect to the principles and elements articulated by the many witnesses you have heard from without a backbone of strong environmental laws, many of which will be dramatically altered by Bill , the 2012 budget implementation bill currently before Parliament.
We are particularly concerned about changes to fish habitat protection and the new approach that limits which projects will be assessed under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act and the narrowing of environmental effects to be considered. We urge the standing committee to consider in its recommendations the central role that must be played by strong environmental laws in any national conservation plan.
Thank you.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman and committee members, for inviting us here today to speak before you and to discuss the development of a national conservation plan for Canada.
My name is Damien Joly. I'm a wildlife epidemiologist with Wildlife Conservation Society Canada.
WCS Canada was founded in 2004 as a Canadian non-governmental organization. Our mission is the conservation of wildlife and wild lands. We do this through science. Our focus is essentially “muddy boots” biology. Our scientists get out in the field. We do the necessary research on the ground to fill key information gaps on Canada's fish, wildlife, and ecosystems. We then use this information to work with aboriginal communities, government and regulatory agencies, conservation groups, and industry to resolve key conservation issues.
WCS Canada welcomes the opportunity to present our thoughts to the standing committee. We believe there's a strong role to be played by the federal government in conservation, and here we will outline what we see as the key elements of that role. We must first, however, express our profound uncertainty regarding the outcome of this process, given the number of recent actions by the federal government that are already undermining any potential for the success of a national conservation plan.
In the past few months, this government has proposed the repeal or revision of key conservation-related federal legislation, particularly the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act and the Fisheries Act as well as cutting federal scientists' positions and departments involved in environmental and conservation issues. These reduce the role of the federal government and seriously weaken the ability of any government or society at large to promote conservation with a robust scientific basis.
Regarding Canada's biodiversity, the natural systems that sustain us are at risk. Urbanization, agriculture, oil and gas production, mining, forestry, and then supporting infrastructure, such as roads, have resulted in a substantial human footprint across much of southern Canada. The Canadian government's own science confirms widespread deterioration in environmental values that includes losses in wetlands, grasslands, and old growth forests; decreasing river flows; declining populations of native species; increasing invasion by non-native species; and accumulation of contaminants that threaten wildlife and human health.
These are clear signals that ecological functions in terrestrial and aquatic systems are being impaired in significant ways. Meanwhile, in northern Canada, investment in natural resource development has been steadily rising over the past decade, and the Government of Canada has made it clear that this trend will continue. Much of this attention and activity are occurring in globally significant boreal and arctic ecosystems. Rather than increasing investments in monitoring and oversight of environmental values accordingly, Canadian governments have chosen the opposite strategy. Budgets for information-gathering systems focusing on biodiversity and ecosystem change have been cut back each year and government-led assessment processes are being modified to hasten decision-making on developments.
:
Of course. Fair enough, Mr. Chair.
WCS Canada presents three fundamental areas of focus for Canada's national conservation plan: conservation beyond protected areas, conservation in protected area establishment and management, and species conservation. In our opinion, a national conservation strategy must integrate all three elements, and each must be supported with investment in scientific and aboriginal traditional knowledge systems.
When we're talking about conservation beyond protected areas, really parks aren't enough to protect Canada's biodiversity. We need to be looking at conservation in the matrix that we see beyond protected areas.
The plan must foster a comprehensive approach with provinces and territories that addresses a wider set of environmental, social, and economic impacts than permitted by current land-use planning and environmental assessment processes. This means replacing piecemeal decision-making processes governing individual development projects with strategic land-use planning and environmental assessments performed at regional scales, and creating national standards for resource management and monitoring in landscapes and waterscapes beyond protected areas. A focus on the maintenance of ecological flows—the movements of organisms, water, and nutrients—across lands and waters will likewise be critical.
In sum, a proactive approach to addressing cumulative land-use change beyond protected areas will be fundamental to fostering both resilience and adaptation of Canada's natural heritage for future generations.
Here I'm going to shift topic a bit and talk about conservation in national parks and protected areas. Establishing and managing national parks has been a cornerstone of Canada's conservation strategy for over a century. While Canada's terrestrial protected areas network has increased since 1992, only about 10% of the land base and 1% of marine systems have been designated, well short of the CBD's 2020 Aichi biodiversity targets.
As opportunities for meaningful establishment of new areas are rapidly disappearing, a key priority under the national conservation plan must be to complete the national park system, filling important gaps in representation of freshwater, marine, and some terrestrial ecosystems. Gazetted areas must be large enough and designed with enough foresight to provide meaningful habitat quality for area-sensitive species, and be as resilient as possible to a changing climate and changing conditions beyond park boundaries.
Care must be taken to ensure that rigour in scientific monitoring of these ecological benchmarks is not undermined by economic drivers such as enhanced visitor use. In order to find solutions to these many challenges, the Government of Canada will find that working in tandem with provincial, territorial, and aboriginal governments can encourage innovative approaches to achieve land protection that address the unique environmental and social context comprising Canada's natural systems.
The third pillar I'll talk about is species conservation. Species are the most visible building blocks of biodiversity, the variety of life on earth, and the foundation of Canada's commitment under the Convention on Biological Diversity. The status and health of fish, wildlife, and plant populations serve as barometers for how our natural systems are faring. Warning signs in Canada are indeed evident, with species at risk lists increasing in size every year, while relatively few species are recovering sufficiently to be removed from such lists. Still more Canadian species are displaying concerning signs of decline in parts of their range where human impacts are at their most intense, while as yet intact areas serve for the time being as critical population and habitat strongholds.
An effective national conservation plan must place conservation of all species, particularly those of conservation concern, as a key pillar both to target its effort and as a means to monitor its success. Further, we caution that because of the strong evidence for the relationship between species diversity and ecosystem function, the value of the individual species cannot be underestimated. This means that any approach that places the highest value on those species that are of economic or even cultural importance to humans risks being dangerously short-sighted.
In conclusion, at a time when regulatory and information systems are increasingly hard pressed to keep pace with mounting threats to conservation from resource development, climate change, and growing human population, the imperative for a national conservation plan could not be more clear. We applaud the committee's efforts to develop such a plan.
WCS Canada recommends that this plan contain these three pillars: conservation beyond protected areas, protected area establishment and management, and species conservation. A serious and useful plan would show commitment by the Government of Canada to Canada's obligations under international treaties and agreements, a renewed commitment to federal investment in science, and a reversal of legislative changes that weaken our ability to conserve Canadian biodiversity for future generations.
I just want to end with a little story. My grandfather spent six years overseas during World War II. He spent the final year in Holland dismantling land mines and other unexploded ordnance. It was his job to deal with these weapons.
One of the things he learned during that year, as you might imagine, was to not make decisions you can't come back from. When you make a decision, you really want it to be a decision that, if you figure you've made an error, you can come back from. When you're working with land mines, that's an important lesson. He taught me that lesson. What I worry about right now is that we are making decisions we can't come back from. Our grandchildren will not live in a world we want them to live in because of our decisions about our environment today.
Thank you for letting me speak.
Thank you for your presentations. They were very clear.
Today we heard about all of the things that one needs to do. Setting up protected parks is not the only thing. You need to have strong national laws, etc. You all pointed that out and you said you need to look at working with incentives for farmers.
I wanted to ask about what those incentives could be for people who own private land. Can you give me some idea of why we're not putting forward enough incentives? What are the ways in which we can create those incentives?
That's my first question and it is for the Delta Farmland & Wildlife Trust.
I also want to say we were talking about the need to strengthen rather than diminish the laws we have now. So what do you think we could do to strengthen our EPA and what can we do to strengthen SARA? That question is for Ms. Clogg.
Then, Mr. Joly, you made a very important point. You said that we should never do anything we can't undo. In medicine, which is my profession, we always say, “first, do no harm”. There always needs to be evidence that what you're doing, while it sounds good, down the road is not going to create harm that you can't reverse.
I wanted to ask the three of you to comment on those things. Perhaps you can comment on what incentives you think could be used for private lands, etc.
Mr. Bradbeer, in your presentation you mentioned land use in the delta going back to 1868, and bringing the fields back to be somewhat similar to what they might have been. I believe your comment was that they “quickly become tall grass habitat that emulates historical grassland ecosystems” present on the LFRD prior to 1868. You mentioned 1868 earlier as part of your presentation.
Curiously enough, 1868 was the year that the current Fisheries Act passed in Parliament. It's an immense problem. The definitions in the Fisheries Act are totally out of touch with modern realities, unfortunately.
There is this delicate status quo in all the user groups of fisheries: first nations' cultural, ceremonial, and other uses; as well as commercial and recreational fisheries. A very delicate balance has been worked out, the status quo, and there is paralysis about dealing with updating this law, which desperately needs to be done.
There's so much room for fearmongering. With the modest changes that are actually included in the current legislation, there's lots of room for fearmongering. I'd like to assure the witnesses that it is not the intention of this or any other government to destroy the environment.
A previous witness mentioned the economic opportunities we have in this country. She feels that we need a robust conservation plan to balance any development objectives the government may have. That's exactly what we're attempting to do. It is a balancing act. In case anyone around the table has lost track, if we lose our economy, we also lose our opportunity to make the environmental investments people are asking us to make and achieve those important goals.
I found it interesting that you mentioned 1868 in your presentation. There have been a lot of changes since 1868, and the legislation does need to keep up with them.
Bearing that in mind, I think it was Mr. Joly who mentioned an expansion of the Nahanni. That's something this government did. There was a lot of work that went before in analyzing it. There was a huge expansion of the Nahanni National Park, the Great Bear national park, the Ramparts River—I think that's 33,000 hectares—the eastern side of Great Slave Lake—10 million hectares. If you consider the land that was set aside for land claims up there, it's another 62,000 hectares. This is the largest conservation achievement in Canadian history.
This government is very interested in actually achieving some conservation objectives. That's the purpose of this study, actually. We're moving towards that and we appreciate your being here to help us recognize how we can get there.
Having said that, my colleague mentioned engaging and involving young people. Some of our witness groups have creative plans on how to get more people turning over rocks, catching critters in the pond, looking at pond life under a microscope to see what a hydra and aquatic organisms look like.
How can we engage more young people in interacting with the environment? There's a large segment of our population that is still not being reached. I think you answered a question from Mr. Toet about parks.
I'll just throw that open again. Do any of the witnesses have any suggestions on how we can further engage young people and new Canadians, for example, in the environment?
We have concluded hearing from the witnesses. I want to thank you for being with us.
As we've found, through the questions and the answers, there's a connectivity with all issues regarding the environment. We appreciate the passion you bring to this table. We, too, around here have this. My responsibility is to keep us within that very narrow scope. It is difficult.
If you would like to provide additional input to the committee on a broader venue, then please forward a letter to me, as the chair, or the clerk, and we'll distribute your comments to the members of the committee. The comments are welcome, but unfortunately the scope is narrow.
Thank you again for being here.
I want to also thank the people who have travelled with the committee and made this trip possible. Setting up a room like this to look like a committee room, it was our staff who are going along with us: the clerk, the analysts. The interpreters have been translating for four-and-a-half hours today, so I want to thank them. Thank you everybody for being part of this team.
We head to the airport and head to Calgary, where we will hear from some additional witnesses.
Again, thank you so much for being with us.
We're adjourned.