Thanks, Rachel.
I'd be happy to respond.
We do believe that federal leadership is critical for species at risk, but we also agree that a cooperative approach between the federal government and the provinces makes sense so long as the provinces are doing what they committed to under the national accord. That's the basis of the idea of the safety net: leave it to the provinces to begin with.
The provinces did commit back in the late 1990s to put forward new laws to protect species effectively. And some have. Unfortunately, others have not. Here in the west, in particular, we have very large holes in some of the provincial laws on species at risk. So we believe that the safety net does need to be given more teeth, yes. It must be a credible process under SARA such that the federal government really will step in if the province is not living up to its prior commitments.
In our brief last summer--that's our July 2009 brief--we laid out in great detail how we think that “safety net with more teeth” approach could work. It would basically consist of a number of criteria the federal government would use to evaluate provincial laws. It would involve a gap analysis to look at provincial laws. And then it would involve some cooperation. Only at the end of that, if the province still refused to put in sufficient protections, would the federal government have to step in with a safety net.