Evidence of meeting #14 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was scientific.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
Francis Scarpaleggia Liberal Lac-Saint-Louis, QC
Oh, I understand. Thank you.
Someone said that we need to give recovery plans statutory status under SARA. Could you just elaborate on that a bit?
4:40 p.m.
Registered Professional Biologist, Pearson Ecological, As an Individual
At present, recovery teams don't exist in SARA, in the legislation. It just talks about preparing recovery strategies.
4:40 p.m.
Registered Professional Biologist, Pearson Ecological, As an Individual
Right. It's the way it's done now, but I believe Dr. Mooers said that there is nothing in the legislation that means a recovery team with independent members has to be the way to go. We think it should be, so the point is that getting it enshrined in the act would ensure that happens.
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
Francis Scarpaleggia Liberal Lac-Saint-Louis, QC
It's a process as opposed to an actual plan. Is it the process you mean?
4:40 p.m.
Registered Professional Biologist, Pearson Ecological, As an Individual
It's the existence of recovery teams with independent scientists on them.
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
Francis Scarpaleggia Liberal Lac-Saint-Louis, QC
Someone was talking about wetlands and the importance of wetlands for protecting species. Have you heard of the Canadian wetland inventory initiative? It was a process that was begun with Ducks Unlimited, the Canadian Space Agency, Environment Canada, and some other groups, and the idea was to map wetlands using satellite technology. The second stage of the initiative never got off the ground.
Is that something useful from the perspective of making SARA effective? Do you already have the information you need?
4:40 p.m.
Registered Professional Biologist, Pearson Ecological, As an Individual
I'm sure it would be very useful for some recovery teams and some species. I don't know if any of us talked specifically about wetlands. I spoke about streamside and riparian buffer strips, which are a bit different, but certainly any inventory on habitat, particularly broad-based things like that, would be very useful to some groups.
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
Francis Scarpaleggia Liberal Lac-Saint-Louis, QC
Then you weren't referring to wetlands. I thought you might have been in an indirect way, but you weren't.
4:40 p.m.
Registered Professional Biologist, Pearson Ecological, As an Individual
4:40 p.m.
Liberal
Francis Scarpaleggia Liberal Lac-Saint-Louis, QC
Okay. I understand.
I think it was Dr. Pearson who was saying that it's really very, very hard to pinpoint the source of pollution when you're applying the Fisheries Act, and that really is a discouraging remark, because how can we apply the Fisheries Act if, as you say, you can't point a finger at one particular farmer or one particular industrial source? Is this an intractable problem?
For example, we've been studying the oil sands and the impact the oil sands may be having on fish habitat. It sounds as if you're telling us to give up because we're talking about cumulative impacts and you can't find a point source of pollution.
4:40 p.m.
Registered Professional Biologist, Pearson Ecological, As an Individual
The Fisheries Act is very useful in some circumstances, and those circumstances might even include some farms where you have, say, a pipe coming from a dairy, with milk waste going into the stream. You can say “that pipe and that farmer, that's a problem”, but many of the pollution issues that freshwater fish face are non-point source pollution. It's too much fertilizer applied over large areas of farmland, it's large numbers of farms, or it's erosion from multiple places. So yes, the Fisheries Act is nearly useless for those kinds of problems.
4:45 p.m.
Registered Professional Biologist, Pearson Ecological, As an Individual
They are big problems, but--
4:45 p.m.
Liberal
4:45 p.m.
Registered Professional Biologist, Pearson Ecological, As an Individual
So the way to address those is through legislation and policy that, rather than trying to find an individual source, takes a broader view. So how we can limit the amount of nutrients being applied across the Fraser Valley? How can we encourage farmers to...?
4:45 p.m.
Liberal
4:45 p.m.
Conservative
May 4th, 2010 / 4:45 p.m.
Conservative
Stephen Woodworth Conservative Kitchener Centre, ON
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses who have come to speak with us today. You have certainly provoked some thought on my part about some of the fundamental issues before us. I regret that I have only five minutes, so there isn't much time to have a conversation of any subtlety with you.
But I will, if I may, address some remarks to Dr. Mooers, because I was intrigued by the very clear comments you made, Dr. Mooers, about the necessity of distinguishing science from policy. In fact, I agree with you in theory that we shouldn't use confusing language and tell people that we're doing one thing when we're not, or when we're doing another thing. That separation between science and what I would call democratic decision-making, rather than “policy“, is sound in theory, but you may have heard the old saw about the fact that in theory, there's no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is.
I'm coming at this from the point of view that pure science, if we could ever achieve it, has nothing to do with democracy. It's observational, it is descriptive and predictive, but it is not prescriptive; that is to say, science doesn't tell people what to do.
The difficulty I'm having is with matching that point with what needs to happen with species at risk. I'll give you two examples, the first regarding the listing process.
In theory, it is quite true to say that listing should be observational only, in the sense that if we're going to say that a species is threatened or endangered, that statement has a strictly observational quality to it. But in practice, under the act, listing carries with it prescriptive demands that are inevitably going to involve democratic decision-making, or what you might refer to as policy.
So, Dr. Mooers, can you give me your take on that dilemma? Because I'm having trouble understanding how we can tell people that they can't do this or they can't do that without democratic decision-making being involved at that stage.
4:45 p.m.
Associate Professor, Biological Sciences, Simon Fraser University, Scientific Committee on Species at Risk (SCOSAR)
I'd like to answer quickly and then let Professor Findlay have a word.
4:45 p.m.
Conservative
Stephen Woodworth Conservative Kitchener Centre, ON
With your permission, I'd like to stick with you for the moment, because I also have another question for you.
If there's time, we'll go back to Professor Findlay.
4:45 p.m.
Associate Professor, Biological Sciences, Simon Fraser University, Scientific Committee on Species at Risk (SCOSAR)
That's fine.
I don't think SCOSAR has suggested that listing be scientific, so I'm not quite sure where you're coming from. The assessment is made by COSEWIC. That is the predictive or observational side of it. That's the white box at the top that it then goes into.
What we're suggesting is that the regulatory impact assessment statement—which the Treasury Board makes the government do every time it makes a regulation like a listing—should be open to peer review and be transparent. Then, after that peer review, the government can respond to that peer-reviewed document. So the actual listing is still done within the democratic process.
4:45 p.m.
Conservative
Stephen Woodworth Conservative Kitchener Centre, ON
I guess I am somewhat confused by the reference to peer review, because I usually think of that as a scientific process, not a policy process as such—although I agree with you that policy determination should be transparent and that there may be more that could be done in that respect.
The point at which this comes into play is at the recovery stage. I am having difficulty with the concept that even a strategy can be done simply on a scientific level without democratic decision-making being involved which takes account of what people need to do from a democratic point of view. So can you help me out with what you envision for the recovery process?
4:50 p.m.
Associate Professor, Biological Sciences, Simon Fraser University, Scientific Committee on Species at Risk (SCOSAR)
I think our brief suggests that recovery strategies have scientific oversight, so that the scientific components of that strategy meet the criteria of science. That would be peer-reviewed. The recovery team would sign off on that recovery strategy, and then the government would have a response section at the bottom, wherein they respond and include those aspects of the democratic process that they think are important for making the decision.
4:50 p.m.
Conservative
