Environment Committee on March 10th, 2009

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Right.

I'd like to pursue a few questions around the enforcement side of things, and in particular, starting with the notion that the environmental enforcement act did not include upgrades to SARA. Was that simply as a matter of deference to the committee--that is, that the department didn't want to put a proposal in front of this committee about SARA until the committee spoke first? Is that the way I perceive it?

[Cynthia Wright]

That is very well stated.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Thank you.

To follow up on that, would it be correct for us to think that all three of the departments or agencies represented here today would not, indeed, have any objection, in principle, if the environmental enforcement provisions were applied to SARA? I guess I should say that I don't know for sure if DFO would have that position. So I'd like to hear specifically about DFO, but also generally from the three of you on the environmental enforcement legislation. Would it be a good fit for SARA?

[Pardeep Ahluwalia]

Mr. Chair, when we were looking at the enforcement act some time ago and the connection with SARA, from a DFO perspective, we didn't perceive any initial areas where, in principle, we wouldn't be able to work with the environmental enforcement bill.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Does that apply as well to Parks Canada, Environment Canada generally, as it relates to SARA?

[Mike Wong]

Mr. Chair, similarly to the officials from other departments, we participated in the discussions on the enforcement bill and ensured that it aligned with our current policies and approaches.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Thank you.

I'd like to see if there's any information. You may not have come prepared to speak to this, but there was mention of a conviction with respect to the Blanding's and spotted turtles that resulted in a $10,000 fine. Are you able to put that in context for me?

One of the concerns in the environmental enforcement legislation is to ensure that fines are adequate to prevent people from taking profit. I don't know whether you could enlighten me about what profit there is in Blanding's and spotted turtles and whether or not a $10,000 fine in fact is more than just the price of doing business in that particular illegal activity.

[Cynthia Wright]

With respect to the turtle--and I can get you the correct facts--my recollection is that the person was charged before he had an opportunity to profit from the turtle. So there was no profit in that case.

In terms of the enforcement bill--and again, I can double-check the facts--I believe this would have fallen under the summary conviction, which would have set a minimum of $5,000 under the enforcement bill. So the fine was higher than what the minimum to an individual would have been.

The maximum under the new enforcement bill would be $300,000 instead of $50,000. Those kinds of factors would be up to a court, and I couldn't speculate how a court would treat all of that.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

I just wondered if there was any economic evidence about the trade and such things, and whether the penalty provisions, as they currently exist, are adequate to overmatch. I guess that question applies generally to any number of animals, not just these turtles, but I don't know....

[Cynthia Wright]

The trade in turtles as a food source--I'm not sure about Blanding's specifically--is a fairly lucrative market, particularly within Asian cultures.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Okay. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Your time has expired.

As chair, I just want to get a couple of clarifications on some of the questioning that has taken place. There has been quite a bit of discussion about polar bears. I know that when we look at the western Hudson Bay polar bear population, there is significant concern about numbers dropping there. But within Canada, there are about a dozen different distinct populations of polar bears, and if you look at the global context and the rest of the Arctic region, there are well over 20 distinct polar bear populations.

So when COSEWIC and the department officials are working together looking at species of concern and species at risk, do you take into account the broader context of the overall population worldwide, or are we just talking about the isolated problems that we might experience with individual populations?

[Cynthia Wright]

Mr. Chair, I have two points on that.

Yes, the COSEWIC does consider the status of the species globally. They are restricted to assessing just the Canadian population, but they do consider, particularly more in their priority setting, the global population of that species.

On the issue of populations or subpopulations or subunits, that's actually one of the interesting things that came out of the COSEWIC polar bear assessment. Canada does consider that it has 13 subunits and had been considering those as subpopulations. However, given the additional work that was done in this recent COSEWIC assessment along with the traditional aboriginal knowledge, COSEWIC has assessed that as one population. So they looked at the status and the health of the population overall, as opposed to looking at those subunits, as the International Union for Conservation of Nature has done.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

There was also a discussion about species that are being farmed. The abalone is one they were talking about. Plains bison is another species of concern in the wild, but it is largely farmed across western Canada. So how do they take those situations in which you have a very large and healthy domestic population versus the population in the wild, and balance that off with how the department may invest its resources in studying and protecting them in the wild?

[Cynthia Wright]

COSEWIC could only assess the status in the wild.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

You would only look at them in the wild. But from a departmental standpoint, what would be the role of Environment Canada, Parks Canada, or DFO as you're dealing with these farmed species? If you look in a lot of the parks under Parks Canada, we find, for example, the wood bison. It's up in Wood Buffalo National Park or out in central Saskatchewan or even in Manitoba.There's actually a farmed bison herd in Riding Mountain, and not a wild herd.

[Mike Wong]

In fact the plains bison is another success story under the species at risk legislation. We do have a disease-free herd in Elk Island National Park, outside of Edmonton, and in fact this is one of the stocks that we use to help recover the plains bison across the country. Most recently, we returned the plains bison back into Grasslands National Park after a 100-year absence from that area of Saskatchewan. So with time, I believe we will be able to reach the recovery goals for the plains bison fairly easily.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

I have one final question. There has been a desire by Parks Canada to protect geographic areas that are unique. In the north part of my riding is a lowlands area that has been designated for some time. Hopefully it will turn into a national park. It's also home to the only area in Canada where you find the five major ungulates actually co-existing in the wild: bison, moose, elk, deer, and woodland caribou. But it seems to be a long, drawn-out process, and we're still at the point of having this as a protected area and not a national park.

[Mike Wong]

In our national park systems plan, our vision, if you will, is to establish a national park in each of these natural regions. Certainly the Manitoba lowland is one of the areas that we feel have a unique landscape and biodiversity. We would like to establish a protected area. We are in consultation with the first nations in these discussions, and as you pointed out, these discussions do take time. This is one of the priority areas that we have established over the last few years in our corporate plan.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you.

We have time for one more five-minute round.

Mr. McGuinty.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Thank, Mr. Chair.

I want to pick up on the chair's comments about the polar bear. My understanding of the listing in the United States is that the Republican administration was forced by the Federal Court to list the polar bear as endangered because of the prospective problems that the court adjudged would be forthcoming under climate change and loss of habitat. I don't expect an answer, but I want to get that on the record. At some point when COSEWIC appears, Mr. Chair, I'd like to ask them more about that. Why is there a distinction here? Also, I understand the court used the IUCN data that Mrs. Wright spoke about.

I want to go back to this act. It appears to me that the linchpin around all of this—the success of species at risk, processes, enforcement and management—is critical habitat. We've known now for a decade, which is why ecological integrity was brought to bear on Parks Canada under our previous government, that if we don't have our parks systems properly buffered and connected, then in large part, especially for the large predatory species, it's really all for naught. This is why we have the Yellowstone-to-Yukon Initiative. We've got a whole series of drivers at play because wildlife biology is telling us that it simply is not working. They become ecological dead zones. Parks, for example, in the outskirts of Boston don't have a single indigenous species left from the time they were set up a century and a half ago.

I want to go back to this question of critical habitat. My understanding is that one of the criticisms about the last five years in the administration of SARA has been that 84% of all the species at risk are declining primarily because of habitat loss and degradation. Can you help Canadians understand? And I don't mean this in any negative way, but it appears from testimony we've heard so far that everything is okay. But I need to hear more about what we're not doing on critical habitat. What are we not doing to identify critical habitat? What could we be doing better in that regard?

[Cynthia Wright]

Mr. Chair, I would like to make two points. On the first point, about what are we not doing, we are having a scientific challenge to understand what is critical habitat. We can understand what habitat is, but what is the habitat that's absolutely critical to the survival and recovery of the species? It sounds simple in legal terms, but it's often very difficult in complex biological terms. As I said, fundamentally we don't have a lot of knowledge about a lot of these species. Pardeep mentioned that we often have enough to assess the status but not how to go forward on recovery. That scientific challenge remains.

That being said, considering the precautionary principle and considering where we're at in habitat protection, not necessarily critical but habitat protection, there are a couple of points the committee might want to consider. This piece of legislation doesn't act in isolation. Collectively, governments in Canada have protected almost 11% of terrestrial habitat through parks, federally and provincially, etc.

The government's natural areas conservation program, which gave $225 million to NGOs to protect ecologically sensitive lands, is well on the way to its goal of over 2,000 square kilometres of ecologically sensitive land. They're almost at one-third of that already, and they only started in 2007.

The other program I mentioned, the habitat stewardship program for species at risk, is funding Canadians, particularly private landowners, to protect habitat for species at risk. It has already put over 200,000 hectares into private protection and done an improvement on roughly the same amount of habitat. So while we're struggling with the challenge of designating critical habitat under the act, we're not sitting idle in actually protecting habitat.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

So then one of the challenges you are facing is that you don't have enough science.

[Cynthia Wright]

It's fair to say that I don't think any country has enough science to understand the species and what habitat they need and how to protect it adequately. That's going to be an ongoing challenge for all countries.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

I'm sure it is, but here in Canada how much are you able to earmark and dedicate to science for critical habitat every year?