Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Actually, Mr. Ward and I will share the presentation. Thank you to the committee for allowing us to make known our views.
The Western Stock Growers' Association was founded in 1896 under an enactment of the Northwest Territories some nine years before Alberta and Saskatchewan even became provinces. Our originating members were graziers primarily from the southern prairie grassland who, as we look back, were mostly concerned with ensuring a sustainable livestock industry in that natural ecosystem.
Today, our members are ranchers predominantly from that same geographic area, whose operations encompass a significant portion of western Canada's remaining native grasslands. Those grasslands are either directly owned by those ranchers or, in many cases, under long-term lease arrangements with the province or other private entities. In most instances, it's a combination of the two.
While the wolves and the mange that concerned our predecessors are somewhat less worrisome now—mange is pretty well taken care of, at least—the competing land uses faced by our founding members continue to threaten the sustainability of our industry. As we look around, there has been a tremendous amount of development of the original grasslands operated by the founders of the Western Stock Growers' Association. The land this hotel sits on was, at that time, probably a grassland. Virtually all of that development occurred because resource managers and the owners of those lands sought increased financial or marketplace returns, and growth of the population and the economy was desirable to government as well.
When considering a national conservation plan, it is critical to realize that conservation is not the result of a plan. Rather, conservation is the result of the decisions and actions of resource owners and managers who must operate their businesses in a market environment. Problems arise, however, when certain ecosystem services, such as food, are freely traded in a relatively functional marketplace, while other ecosystem services lack a functioning marketplace to drive their production and distribution.
Since the production of some ecological services, for example, corn or wheat, occurs at the expense of the production of others, for example, biodiversity, this tilted marketplace eventually drives resource managers to decisions favouring profitable environmental service products.
Additionally, as the supply of ES products shifts over time with the favouring of the profitable ones, and as demand for certain ecosystem service products changes with increasing population and increasing standards of living, some of those products that were once abundant become scarce. This situation in fact likely provides some of the impetus for a national conservation plan.
What the Western Stock Growers' Association wants to emphasize, and what I think we all must acknowledge, is how effective the marketplace can be in allocating scare resources and balancing supply with demand. Too often, in our opinion, governments interfere in what could be a functioning marketplace for ecosystem services.
Throughout our history the Stock Growers have been strong advocates of contractual and property rights and sustainable, market-driven production practices. In the 1890s we lobbied on the federal grazing lease issues and somewhat illegitimate trade barriers that at the time mainly Britain had, as well as on predator control and disease issues.
When Eugene Whelan was the Minister of Agriculture, we were successful in lobbying against his proposed supply-managed system for beef cattle. More recently we've been heavily engaged in the beef industry recovery post-BSE and the Alberta land-use framework process. All of this is in accordance with our motto “The Voice of Free Market Environmentalists Since 1896”.
Interestingly, as we look back, the Canadian federal decision to assign grazing leases back in the 1880s—leases with certain property and contractual rights as a mechanism to settle and hold claim to the west—resulted in a far more positive outcome for those grasslands than was the case just across the 49th parallel in the United States where a free-range policy was adopted. Theirs, in many ways, was the classic tragedy of the commons.
Norm.