Environment Committee on March 25th, 2010

[Virginia Poter]

That's correct.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Okay.

Could you take us through the process by which a species is listed? You've touched on it, but maybe you could give us an example of how a species is being listed, how the habitat or the recovery planning would happen, and then how you would let the public know. It could be the provincial, territorial, or federal government that would be managing it, but let's assume for our discussion that it is federal, that it is a species that has been listed, and that there's a recovery. How do you notify the public that this is now a critical habitat so that the public knows?

The reason I ask this is that I had a photographer come into my office who had set up a blind and was taking pictures. He damaged some of the habitat—he took down a rosebush—and got into big trouble. He was not aware that it was critical habitat for a species. That is why my question is relevant.

The government has seen that if you have legislation you must have an enforcement component of it, too, if it is to be successfully used to protect the habitat and protect the species. The government made a commitment a couple of years ago and, as of about a year ago, we have a lot of new environmental officers out there.

So again, I think the question that is very important is this one. We want to make SARA practical and effective to protect species that need protection, but how does that process happen and how do we notify the general public that this is an area that is off limits for certain activities?

[Virginia Poter]

I can start, but certainly my colleagues should jump in.

Critical habitat identification is not easy. It starts, first and foremost, with the COSEWIC assessment. The COSEWIC assessment lays out the biology of the species, the type of habitat it needs, and the threats that are leading to the species being at risk. Then the job is done; they make their decision based on these quantitative criteria and indicate if it's threatened, endangered, or extirpated. It's only for those three categories that you would have critical habitat requirements.

They also provide a general notion of where you would find the species, such as in southern B.C. or up in the north, but it's pretty much at a jurisdiction level. We then receive that information, and that's what starts the recovery planning process.

For a federal species, as opposed to a species within the jurisdiction of a province or territory, we would look at who the right people would be to put on a recovery team. The Wildlife Service that I lead has staff across the country in five regions. If it's a species that's primarily in the Atlantic region, obviously folks in the Atlantic region would lead with this. Is it a species found only in parks? If that's the case, then Parks Canada would lead. If it's broader than what's found in parks, typically the Wildlife Service would lead if it's a federal species. If it's a federal species--for example, a migratory bird--we typically have the expertise that we need, but we like to involve the province and territory to the extent that they can participate.

We form a team. Then we take the information from the COSEWIC assessment and start to look at the key threats and the critical habitat. They've given us a sense of the biological needs and the features of the habitat; now we have to put the marker on the land, if you will. You have to be able to actually identify it. It's not enough to say that it's generally over here; it has to be these coordinates, or at the edge of this lake. It has to be something that would easily tell somebody who is not a biologist whether they were in critical habitat or not.

We also have to identify the features of that particular landscape that make it so important to the species. That work takes some time. It requires fieldwork, with biologists going out and looking at the field, and it requires pulling out information that exists in literature, information beyond what was provided to us from COSEWIC. That definitely takes some time. Quite often. two or three field seasons are needed before you can start to understand whether it is critical habitat or whether the bird laid an egg there once and never came back and it's not really critical to the bird. That takes some time to work through.

Once we have that piece, the other parts of the recovery strategy can be developed in parallel. You need to look at what can cause destruction of the critical habitat. That's what the biologists spend many hours and many weeks on. Quite often, they have to go out onto landscapes, and if that landscape is owned by a private individual or is aboriginal land, there are some challenges around that. We need to work with people, we need to build awareness, and we need to build understanding.

We eventually get to the point of having a recovery strategy. We have 119 recovery strategies, some of which have critical habitat identified.

Then we need to do what's called compliance promotion. We need to develop materials that speak to the landowner or the aboriginal band or whomever, explaining that they have critical habitat on their land. It doesn't mean it's a no-go zone, but we indicate the kinds of activities that they should not do on the land because they would destroy this critical habitat, which is prohibited under SARA. We work on compliance promotion materials; then we get the enforcement boots on the ground to follow up and ensure that the compliance is happening.

It does take time. It's a bit complicated, because biology is never easy.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Monsieur Trudeau, could you kick us off on the five-minute round?

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Papineau, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

To follow up right away and to understand the process, first COSEWIC does the evaluation, but that does not include any socio-economic impacts. Then it's referred to the minister for a recommendation. That takes three months, ideally, but more realistically, it takes a year or even two years for the socio-economic evaluation at that point...?

[Virginia Poter]

Also, there's a requirement under the act to consult, so--

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Papineau, QC]

To consult...?

[Virginia Poter]

--at every step of the way we must consult with aboriginal people, because that's a requirement in the act. Also, to the extent that we can, we need to consult with the provinces, the territories, and private landowners.

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Papineau, QC]

But the evaluation of critical habitat only happens once the Governor in Council has received a recommendation to have the specific species listed. The way you detailed it, obviously the critical habitat evaluation is the key to SARA to a certain extent.

I'm wondering about the consultation during the time that it's on the minister's desk. This is something we saw in the caribou case and in many other cases; it seems to drag on, perhaps for political reasons as much as anything else. Is there a possibility of streamlining that ministerial step because there's still so much left to work through on the habitat end of things?

[Virginia Poter]

Perhaps I wasn't clear, so I'll try to make sure that I am. The listing process requires the minister's recommendation to Governor in Council. It's a decision of the Governor in Council to put the species on the list, but the development of recovery strategies is done by officials, often with academics who will provide insight--and so will other team members.

We write the document and we inform the minister in most cases. The approval within Environment Canada sits with me for publication.

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Papineau, QC]

Why does it take so long on the minister's desk, then? Why is there that perception, perhaps?

[Virginia Poter]

Do you mean the listing?

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Papineau, QC]

Why does it take so long to get listed? If it's just an almost administrative step, how has it become such a stumbling block?

[Virginia Poter]

Quite often, I think, if you're outside the bureaucracy trying to feed the processes... There's quite a strict process involved in putting in place new regulations. I've briefly mentioned the cabinet directive on streamlining regulation. I think the government wants to assure itself, or the Governor in Council wants to assure itself, that only regulations that are required are put into law.

To ensure that the Governor in Council has all of the required information they need to make a decision, officials like me and my colleagues have to collect that information and package it in a way that speaks not to a biologist but to somebody who does many other things besides read biology reports. That takes some time.

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Papineau, QC]

Okay.

I have a question for Mr. Ahluwalia.

One of the issues that has come back a number of times is the difference between protecting individuals of the species at risk and the desire to protect the entire species at risk. There's a concern that some of the conservation efforts—for example, restocking with fish a river around a hydro plant—are actually creating more risk for them, because there's more of an opportunity to have a fish turn up in one of the turbines even though it was fish that they were trying to reintroduce through stewardship.

There were some questions around that the last time we looked at SARA. I wonder whether we have come up with some tweaks or improvements to SARA that might speak to this or recognize conservation efforts and allow room for them.

[Pardeep Ahluwalia, Director General, Species at Risk Directorate, Department of Fisheries and Oceans]

I'm not sure I'd call them tweaks to SARA. The legislation is what the legislation is. Working with our regional colleagues who actually implement on the ground for us and with people who are engaged, involved, and affected by the decisions made under SARA, we are trying to find ways of achieving species conservation and recovery while respecting the strictures of the legislation.

What this means, in many cases, is trying to do new things so that we don't have a legal risk either for the government or for, as in the example used, hydro operators, but at the same time, we want to achieve the end objective, which is recovery. I would love to be able to sit here and say we've found the answer. We haven't yet.

We do, however, have a number of ideas that we are trying to work through with some of the hydro operators to see whether we can achieve the end objective of SARA while at the same time respecting the requirements of the legislation.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Your time has expired, Mr. Trudeau.

Mr. Trudeau raises a point that I have been concerned about as well: the unintended consequences of good corporate responsibility by some of these hydro operators and other resource developers that want to enhance wildlife and habitat. Down the road, reintroduction of species into those areas in part of the recovery plan could actually cause their operations to be shut down. Essentially, how do we meet them and encourage them to continue doing this without that having negative impacts on their business?

[Pardeep Ahluwalia]

You're absolutely correct; there is the potential for perverse results that were obviously not intended when the drafters put the legislation together. But as we're working our way through—as Virginia has already commented, this is still a fairly new piece of legislation—in many cases what we're finding as we try to do something is that it is the first time it has been tried within the construct of this legislation, and that brings a number of challenges with it. Part of that is legal interpretation of what the legislation actually means and the intent of Parliament when the legislation was promulgated.

The example you have raised is one that is very real for us. We understand it. What we are trying to do is work with folks, with organizations, and with companies that are potentially implicated and affected by the implementation of SARA while at the same time they are undertaking conservation measures.

The last thing I think any of us wants, either government or the companies involved, is a situation in which people stop undertaking conservation measures because of the potential unintended consequences. So we're working with such organizations as the Canadian Hydropower Association and others to see whether we can find ways of working within the legislation as it currently exists and avoid some of the unintended consequences, and also to try to find ways to ensure that there are no disincentives to stewardship and conservation activities on the part of concerned Canadians.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

I think this is one of the concerns the committee is going to have to address when we finish our report.

Mr. Armstrong, you have the floor.

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

Thank you very much for coming. I enjoyed your presentation today.

I know that SARA was implemented in 2002, and I think it came into force in 2004, so it has been around for almost six years now. As a new member of this committee, I'm wondering what types of things that are produced by humans, from your experience, put species in the most danger. What are the top three things that humans are doing in Canada that are putting species in the most danger?

[Virginia Poter]

As I perhaps mentioned earlier, the leading cause of species at risk, by far, is habitat destruction and fragmentation. Human activities that lead to destruction of habitat or its fragmentation, whether it's extending a city, or roads, or whatever, are what leads to species at risk. How we minimize the impact of our actions on the landscape is what the whole goal of recovery planning is about.

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

Hearing that, have you ever in your departmental experience seen any quantifiable evidence produced for you that climate change has placed an endangered species at risk in Canada? If most species are being threatened by road expansion, city expansion, and urban crawl, can you relate anything that has happened to species in Canada directly to some sort of quantifiable evidence that climate change has caused it?

[Virginia Poter]

If we're talking about SARA, and then one of the factors that is leading to the listing of the species, SARA is very much focused on the here and the now, as Gilles pointed out. But that doesn't say that climate change doesn't have an impact; it does. It will have an impact over the longer term. So certainly COSEWIC, when they do an assessment, will focus on the short-term implications, but for some species will point to climate change as something that in the long term we need to think about.

I would just add one other thing. Climate change isn't only negative for species; it will also favour other species. Biology is amazing, you know. As one type of habitat becomes less appealing for one type of species, other species move in. As warming occurs, I think more species actually will come north. So it's not, I don't think, very straightforward to understand that climate change is all negative for species or all positive. It's a mix. It really does depend on the particular species at hand.

[Dr. Gilles Seutin]

I can add one specific example. A particular plant is susceptible to a newly introduced beetle. That beetle eats up the plant and puts it at risk. That insect survives because in certain parts of Canada we have slightly warmer winters. It would have died a century ago because the mid-winter average night temperature was lower. It would have been killed.

Now, is it climate change that has put that plant species at risk, or is it the person who accidentally introduced that bug to North America from Asia? The change of climate leading to vegetation change, change in water regime--rain, snow, and all of that--is an important factor, but it's the consequences of that change that lead to the species being threatened. It's not exactly the change in the water regime; it's the consequences of that.

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

So really, to make a list for most species, there are going to be factors other than climate change that are more immediately threatening to that species in that particular area, which you would deal with more from the perspective of SARA.