Environment Committee on May 4th, 2010

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

Terrific. That clears a lot of that up for me.

The last question I have is again for you, Dr. Pearson. You've stated that you can stand on the bridge and look across the border and see what the United States has done for compensation.

What process did they use to establish compensation? Is it similar in that it's the value of the property, or the agricultural value of the property? Do you have any knowledge of how they do this?

[Dr. Michael Pearson]

My understanding is that it's based on exactly that: on the agricultural value of the property. We have a system, at least in British Columbia, of class 1 farmland and so on, so it would be based on that.

Was there a first part to your question?

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

It was just about the fact that you looked across at the United States and you established that. How do they dole out the grants? Is it done by the federal government of the United States or by state?

[Dr. Michael Pearson]

It's done by the State of Washington.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

So it's done on a state-wide basis.

[Dr. Michael Pearson]

I'm not sure it's on a state-wide basis, but it's—

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

A state-by-state basis.

[Dr. Michael Pearson]

Yes, it's a state-by-state basis. What's been driving it there is their Endangered Species Act. They have listed salmon stocks and they were sued by a native band at the estuary because there were too many nutrients coming down and fouling the shellfish beds.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

From your knowledge, because I have no knowledge of the process in the United States, has this been an effective way to do that, to have the states administer it?

[Dr. Michael Pearson]

I can only speak to what I've seen in Whatcom County. There, it has been highly effective. A very high percentage of dairy farms, which is the primary land use there, are signed on to it.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Your time has expired.

Dr. Pearson, I just want to follow up on Mr. Armstrong's question. Do you think that may have been part of the federal CRP, that program? They run a conservation range program down in the U.S., which is done through—

[Dr. Michael Pearson]

Is that CREP? Is that the program?

Yes, it is--

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

So it is a federal program. It pays landowners to actually take land out of production.

[Dr. Michael Pearson]

That could be.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Mr. Trudeau, you have the floor.

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Papineau, QC]

Thank you very much.

Like my colleagues, I want to congratulate all of you for the quality of the briefs you've brought in. I think you've really managed to highlight some of the challenges we have and that have made our hearings on SARA so complex. You've managed to make it--for me, anyway--much simpler and much clearer.

One of the big reasons that SARA hasn't been as effective over the past while as we would like it to be is that the science and the socio-economic and democratic policy decisions are interfering with each other a little bit.

All four of you made varying degrees of calls to separate the science from the decision-making and to highlight as well the need for clarity, transparency, and consistency, which are all hallmarks of successful science but should also stand as hallmarks of successful policy and successful decision-making.

I particularly liked, Dr. Findlay, your framing of the entire thing as: “Yes, we're using science in SARA, but we're using it because there is a political decision to value species at risk and to say that this is something we need to do”. I'd therefore like very much to try to combine a little of the essence of some of the different recommendations.

I think it was Dr. Barrett-Lennard who brought forward the idea--and Dr. Pearson supported it--that we look at the scientific aspects of it only in the recovery plan aspect and that as soon as we get into the action plan we then involve consultations. My concern, which I think was brought up by Mr. Mooers, is that this might be a little late in the process to bring in socio-economic concerns. One of the really important things we want to do around SARA is get it right.

I'd like to hear from Dr. Mooers and Dr. Findlay where we should be drawing the line between science and politics, or where we should interlace in a clear manner throughout the process.

I'll leave it up to you to respond in the remaining time.

[Dr. Arne Mooers]

Our deliberations were done in a background where we knew that regulatory impact assessment statements were going to be made any time a regulation, such as a listing or a regulation under critical habitat identification off a federal land, etc., was going to be made. So we didn't feel that we should make any strong statements about how those should be done, except that they should be clear. The science in them should be clear, and they should be peer reviewed, etc., so that people can see how those decisions were made. We remained agnostic as to what the ideal might be.

When the law was being drafted, some of us who were also involved in reading those drafts and commenting on them in the early 1990s thought the action plan was the time when those hard decisions would be made, and that the recovery strategy would be, in a sense, blind to how it was actually going to be done on the ground. But when we realized, even at the listing stage, that a RIAS was going to be performed and that socio-economics was simply there, we realized that at the very least we wanted that to be as transparent and as clear and consistent as possible.

[Dr. C. Scott Findlay]

Thank you for the question.

This is a very problematic issue and there is no easy answer. The problem with leaving all of that to the action plan stage is that it is fairly late in the process and there's a lot of investment that has gone in, a lot of resources that have been allocated, and so on and so forth. Given that there is a RIAS that is required for any kind of regulatory decision all along, right from, as Dr. Mooers pointed out, the listing stage, it would seem reasonable to have what we're notionally calling a socio-economic analysis as part of that through the entire process.

A little redundancy never hurt anybody, but I would echo Dr. Mooers that we need to make sure that those analyses are done appropriately and comprehensively, because one of the problems we've had collectively is that we've looked at these analyses that have been done early on in the process, and we were not sure those analyses were done as comprehensively as they perhaps ought to have been. That's the basis for the recommendation that if you decide not to list because of other values, then that should be very carefully scrutinized indeed.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you.

Time has expired. It goes by fast when you're having fun.

Mr. Watson, you're up.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses.

I would like to echo our colleagues. We've had some quality submissions today, with a lot of food for thought for the committee as we review the Species at Risk Act and whether there should be potential changes.

Time is of the essence when it comes to protecting species at risk, obviously, and there are a lot of implementation bumps along the way. We're trying to look at how we get faster action on the ground, so to speak. Of course, that brings with it I think what we've heard at this committee an awful lot: some of the conflicts come into play.

I think Mr. Woodworth was heading in a pretty important direction. Science has a role to play,and at the end of the day, the government of course has a balance of interests beyond that. There are obligations that the crown has, treaty obligations, and if you're looking at compensation issues for a farmer, we could be looking at WTO obligations, for example, because presumably that would be a yearly compensation that farmer. There are also constitutional considerations in our relationships with other levels of government.

So how do we balance the socio-economics and those types of things with getting faster action on the ground? How do we make it more efficient?

One of the other things we're facing is the request from a number of stakeholders for more input, which it seems would add more time to the process, theoretically.

Mr. Mooers, I'm going to ask you a question, because you were talking about what you affectionately called “COREWIC”, where there would be a scientific panel or input with respect to the draft recovery strategies and action plans. Is there a concern? Can you talk me through how that would lead to faster action on the ground, if that's possible? Or is there concern that it could add time to a process that already seems slow? Is there any concern there or should we have some concern about that?

[Dr. Arne Mooers]

Could I call on my colleague, Dr. Whitton, to answer that?

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Yes, that would be fine.

[Dr. Arne Mooers]

Thanks.

She has some experience on COSEWIC.

[Dr. Jeannette Whitton, Associate Professor, Botany, University of British Columbia, Scientific Committee on Species at Risk (SCOSAR)]

I am a member of COSEWIC and I think COSEWIC works pretty efficiently.

What we envisioned when we came up with this concept and nicknamed it COREWIC is a fairly parallel organization, though of course it doesn't have to be exactly parallel. An independent oversight body has the ability to draw on the broad scientific expertise that exists within the country, not just from academic scientists but from government scientists.

As we said, the independent part is the independence that they have when they're at the table to make things happen, to develop policies and procedures to streamline the process, to help develop norms, to help support recovery teams in getting their documents through, to help in reviewing them, to help provide independent advice on how to get those documents polished up, and to put them out there for public scrutiny and for peer review. That's sort of the process we envisioned.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

So you're not concerned that you're adding another step in process. Are you suggesting that this would simplify the process and speed it up? I'm trying to get a sense of this, because everybody is asking how we can do this more quickly.

I want to be sure, when I'm looking at your proposal: are we simply adding another step in the process that would add more time or are you arguing here that this would actually make it quicker?