Good afternoon. My name is Dr. Arne Mooers and I work at Simon Fraser University. I am accompanied by my colleague Dr. Jeannette Whitton, who is with the Faculty of the University of British Columbia.
I am speaking on behalf of the Scientific Committee on species at risk. This committee is composed of a dozen professors and scientists from across the country. We met for the first time in November 2008. Our purpose is to assess how science is used in the Species at Risk Act, and how science can be used more effectively.
Thank you for giving us the opportunity to speak to you today.
The data you heard about and the stories you heard just now informed our deliberations in the Scientific Committee on Species at Risk.
The main higher-level recommendation we make is that lawmakers--you--ensure a clear separation between scientific information delivery, which is what we make, and subsequent government action at all stages of the SARA process. Such a separation would clarify the tough decisions and trade-offs that Canadians, through you, have to make when managing their natural heritage.
We made a couple of figures. I hope you have them in front of you.
Figure 1 is a schematic of how we see SARA constructed in the law and where science feeds into the law. The top box represents the stage where the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada, COSEWIC, uses the best available information and internationally agreed-upon criteria to decide whether a wildlife species merits legal protection. Now that white box, you'll notice, is not embedded in any grey policy-plus-science box. It stands alone. The COSEWIC decision is made public, and the government--you--subsequently responds publicly to the scientific assessment by accepting it, rejecting it, or referring it back.
We, SCOSAR, are in favour of this clear delineation. We support COSEWIC's specific recommendation made to you about a year ago: that the separation between an independent, publicly available assessment and government decision-making be clarified and strengthened. We think this is a strength--perhaps the strength--of SARA as it's written now.
Now, as we move to the later stages in that flow chart, which involve the actual listing process, the recovery, and the planning, the separation between independent science and policy does not exist anymore. Here, science is embedded within a policy framework.
Dr. Findlay's presentation highlights the issue concerning which species get listed and which do not following assessment. We worry about institutional conflicts of interest, and we worry about perceptions of such conflicts of interest, whether they are there or not. We believe that clear best practices should be followed here, as anywhere else.
Here's our first recommendation, and it includes lots of important modifiers, so I apologize, because it's a long sentence. If a species may not be legally listed--if there's a chance--then a more formal, independent, transparent, consistent, and complete process should be followed. That is not the case at the moment, as Dr. Findlay pointed out. The scenarios used in the listing analyses should be clear and open to independent scrutiny. And both the long-term and short-term considerations and the costs and benefits of legal listing should be included. Those costs and benefits should be to all Canadians.
You heard, from Dr. Barrett-Lennard's experience, that the stages following listing--now we're moving on to what to do--do not always work smoothly either. While it is our view--and the law, I think, is clear--that independent science will be but one of the voices that contribute to the drafting of recovery strategies, in the current chorus that emerges, the input of independent science is unclear.
Recent lawsuits and threats of lawsuits related to the failure to, for example, identify the habitat necessary for survival and recovery, as you've heard, represent one costly negative outcome. Such legal action might have been avoided if independent scientific oversight had been part of the recovery planning process. Those draft strategies, the ones that were posted, would likely have included at least partial critical habitat.
Consequently, our second formal recommendation is that an independent scientific committee, which we have nicknamed COREWIC--Committee on the Recovery of Endangered Wildlife in Canada--be called upon to evaluate recovery strategies and action plans. Such a body would offer clear advice as to whether a set of policies on how to achieve the stated aims of the legislation could be met with a particular recovery strategy and a particular action plan.
You have sections 40 and 11 that can be used. The COREWIC reports would be made public in the same way COSEWIC reports are. Elected officials, speaking on behalf of Canadians everywhere, would then respond publicly, just as they do regarding listing. There may even be possible models for such a set-up already in existence at the federal level in Canada.
Given political realities, we do not think this step would slow draft recovery strategies and action plan production. In any case, as you know, a strategy or plan that does not meet its stated goals is a waste of tax money.
Overall, we believe that the general approach of separating scientific data collection and analysis from policy decisions, as outlined above--the separation--could be extended to all phases of the SARA process. We outline this in a second figure, which you have before you, that simply moves the science boxes out that feed in, so that Canadians can see what goes in and what comes out.
Such a separation of scientific input from government response mitigates against conflict of interest and allows Canadians to see how difficult decisions are made on their behalf. Canadians may well decide that a particular wildlife species is not worth protecting and recovering. However, it is unhelpful to suggest to Canadians that such a wildlife species will be protected and recovered if the data suggests otherwise.
We submitted a formal brief, where we outline our reasoning further. We also highlighted a few other issues, including some definitions of difficult terms that are not now defined in SARA but that could be.
We would be happy to discuss these matters with you if you are interested.
Thank you very much.