Thank you, Chair.
Thank you, witnesses, for being here. It's very nice to see that three of our scientists here are from British Columbia, including one from my beautiful riding of Langley. Thank you so much for being here and making these efforts.
I have more questions than I have time for, so I'm going to ask that your answers be somewhat short.
I want to focus on consultation. Is there enough time being given, particularly for aboriginal traditional knowledge? It seems as if that is being excluded from your recommendations. You've touched on socio-economic factors being considered, particularly when identifying critical habitat. It sounds to me like you're not in support of that.
I'd like to start with Mr. Pearson. You did work on the Salish sucker and the Nooksack dace. On page 4 of your brief, you indicated that you've done work on:
...about 15 watersheds in the Fraser Valley and have spoken with scores of landowners about habitat and species at risk over the years. Most have been farmers who perceive that they may have to give up land or some agricultural practices on land adjacent to waterways...Not surprisingly they are hostile to the notion...because they fear that the costs of such protection will be borne entirely by them.
Then you shared a recommendation, or something to think about, wherein property tax relief in the form of a grant could be given in return for the land that was dedicated.
To this point, we've been looking at critical habitat that has not primarily been in urban or suburban areas; it has been in boreal forests and federal lands. So we haven't really gone into the area of compensation, but you brought that up and I'm going to ask you to elaborate a little on that.
If a farm has a stream that's going through it, or there's a ditch going around it, or even if local government is wanting to maintain its ditching systems, these are all issues that local government has to deal with in dealing with DFO in British Columbia, both provincially and federally. So where would these grants come from to pay compensation? There's also the question of how big the setbacks should be. It depends on the topography, the historical watercourses.
Again, I have too many questions to ask for the short period of time I have available, but could you focus on where the grants will come from and how you see this being worked out? Have you talked to local government, too? Because it sounds like this will be downloaded onto local government?