Environment committee  Certainly. I think I referenced the Oak Ridges Moraine act, which actually has in it the promise of hydrological and ecological integrity. I can get the official language and forward it to the committee for your consideration, but that is one piece of legislation that actually in

Environment committee  One of the interesting things I'd like to comment on is the idea that it has to meet or exceed. If you look at the Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Act, it clearly already has in there that it's protecting the ecological and hydrological integrity of the moraine. Where you alrea

Environment committee  Back to Mike Whittamore's comments, I think that getting the park management plan right is going to be a delicate balance, and it's going to be a conversation. Frankly, we need everybody at the table to be moving this forward in a way that will help us achieve and move forward on

Environment committee  I think, as Jim indicated earlier, much of that has already been removed from the park, and then liberal allowances made for future infrastructure needs. I don't see that as a conflict.

Environment committee  Thanks, MP Anandasangaree. I think that one of the big wins in the amendments that we have today is the fact that the “ecological integrity” definition is as it is, and it is consistent between the National Parks Act and the Rouge National Urban Park. For me and for CPAWS, this

Environment committee  Good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to present to the committee. My name is Janet Sumner. I'm executive director for CPAWS' Wildlands League. The mission of CPAWS and of the Wildlands League is protecting large, connected areas of Canada's wilderness. We work on large

Environment committee  I do know that there are things you can avoid that would prevent them from going in the other direction, yes.

Environment committee  My understanding is that when they wrote this—Alison Woodley, and Alison is right over there—it was very specifically about the conservation staff at Parks Canada, that the investments in that had reduced the capacity of Parks Canada to do conservation work.

Environment committee  Yes, but that means there's less money for the science and less money for achieving goals on ecological integrity. It basically means that there's an imbalance between the tourism objectives and the science objectives in making sure that we maintain ecological integrity in parks.

Environment committee  Right, and there's also the overriding legislation, which says that we need to pass these parks down unimpaired to future generations. While there is a mandate letter that says we need to increase visitors and have this creative tension, it still is superseded by the legislation,

Environment committee  We haven't done any work on looking at them as sinks to capture carbon, but rather are looking at these areas as vast storehouses of carbon that we don't want to see released. If you almost reverse that.... I had to cut sections of my remarks, but some of those sections talked ab

Environment committee  They can under the right circumstances. They can also act as a source under the wrong circumstances.

Environment committee  Good afternoon. Thank you for the invitation to speak today. My name is Janet Sumner. I'm the executive director of the Wildlands League, a chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society. The CPAWS Wildlands League is a not-for-profit charity that has been working in the