Thanks, Chair.
Can I go back to some questions I asked earlier, which deal with the thinking that underpins this act? I think Mr. Warawa rightly pointed out that it was a difficult piece of legislation to craft and that it does have a bearing on people's interests--private interests and public interests.
It hearkens back to what I was alluding to earlier, which is that as long as we keep pretending that eco-services and the species that reside in this country are free, that they have no value, that they're not costed, and that they're not part of the national accounts, then it will be business as usual. We will continue to draw down that capital with impunity and, every so often, because of SARA, we'll catch a species that is in trouble and we'll go through a detailed scientific process to say, “Houston, we have a problem”, and we'll send a flare up into the sky.
But the reality on the 2008 report that was just tabled here, if I understand it, is that the second report in the wild species series, “Wild Species 2005”, says we have “general status assessments” for a total of 7,732 species. That's 7,732, but then it goes on to say that the total number of species in Canada is estimated at more than 70,000--and we don't even know if that number is accurate. So we're being told that 10% of the estimated species in this country has had some kind of application of scientific analysis; that's nowhere, so I want to ask you a question.
You may not be able to answer this question. I'm just thinking out loud. But how are we expected to believe that SARA as presently constituted is going to be anything more than a band-aid solution at the back end, frankly, when we see that there are stressors on particular species, we deploy scientific capacity, and we report back to the state that we have a problem? This seems to be absolutely a losing battle.
If we don't overhaul the approach to species, and I would go further... I asked questions about this before, in the last round, Mr. Chair, to witnesses that came here about SARA. I asked a series of questions about compensation. If I'm a landowner and I have several hundred acres, or a thousand acres, or fifty acres, and there are species of plants and animals on that land, and I'm expected to be a steward of those species, is society not expected to compensate me for that good stewardship, whether it's through a tax credit, compensation in cash, or as part of revenue?
How do you ask this of private landowners? I mean, this whole system was a beginning. The best way to start is to start; we had nothing before. Now we have something to work off. You're on the front lines as practitioners. You deal with this act every day. I'm just trying to get a sense of what we have to do here to deal with a shortfall. What are the next steps you would propose as practitioners on the front lines who are in the business of applying this act?
What do we have to do to improve the situation, given what I've just put out on the compensation angle and the fact that it's a losing battle? We don't even have the science. For example, we have a Geological Survey of Canada, but we don't have a biological survey of Canada. What would you say are the next two or three steps that as legislators we can recommend to the government in order to be able to say that this is how we can improve this act on the front lines?