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?