Environment committee  I think most of you know, without even visiting our website, what kinds of things need to be done to actually build the future that we can, to look after our great nation.

Environment committee  As Jean Charest said at the end of that session yesterday evening, if there's one thing you want to achieve, it's for people to be motivated to do something. The characteristic of those programs that work is that the people who have the power to make a change in the interest of long-term conservation want to do it.

Environment committee  Yes, always.

Environment committee  Yes.

Environment committee  I don't claim to know all of the details of those two bills, but in general I think they add significant further challenges to what already has been a pretty lacklustre implementation of past commitments. They would make it even harder to achieve what we are after, which is greater certainty.

Environment committee  Yes.

Environment committee  Incentives framed within a conservation agreement would be things like money to help somebody who can't otherwise pay for it to change their regime; reduce the headage, the number of cattle per hectare; change the timing.... Because they have a mortgage and a bank account, someone has to help this person out with their annual budget in order to modify their practices.

Environment committee  I'll just stay focused.

Environment committee  The simple version to me is an agreed plan for the management of human activities, which, collectively, is monitored and reviewed regularly and adjustments are made in light of the information you're gathering. Essentially, you hold hands and sign in blood, and say, okay, that's how we're going to manage things in that area.

Environment committee  In the 1990s, Canada was committed to having a representative network of terrestrial and freshwater areas across the country for all the reasons laid out. Canada got about one third of the way there. My wish would be that the network of representative high-conservation-value areas—well planned, with greater certainty for economic development in between—be completed for the other two thirds of the land and freshwater, and for our enormous marine shelf.

Environment committee  Because that's a reality, the strategic environmental assessment tool—there's a cabinet directive refreshed in 2010 here. It's used in Europe extensively and there are equivalent things in the U.S.A. That needs to be done to incorporate projected cumulative impacts beyond the present.

Environment committee  Within the frame of strategic environmental assessment, yes.

Environment committee  Yes. There are different layers and values that people can put on, and you categorize things as alien, exotic, introduced. There are also translocations, which involve people actually moving species to get ahead of climate change. In the forestry sector, of course, they have to do this.

Environment committee  Sure. Your management target might be to remove that thing from a given place. Had they not been all removed with careful, expensive programs, rats on Langara Island in British Columbia essentially would have wiped out, removed all of the nesting sea birds. That's a value-based thing that humans do on top of what nature....

Environment committee  In essence I disagree with that, because some of the critical provisions in the Species at Risk Act, certainly the ones regarding agreements and permits, sections 11, 12, 13, 73, etc., have not been used. For some baffling reason, the Government of Canada has chosen not to use them.