Evidence of meeting #5 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 sara.
A recording is available from Parliament.
5:05 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative James Bezan
We do have time for a third round.
Mr. McGuinty, do you want to take the next five minutes?
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
David McGuinty Liberal Ottawa South, ON
I'm just going to pick up on this very quickly. Then, I think, Mr. Trudeau wanted to ask you about parks and connectivity.
Does SARA address the question of compensation now in any way?
5:05 p.m.
Director General, Canadian Wildlife Service, Department of the Environment
There is a provision in the act for regulatory authority. Regulations have not yet been developed.
5:05 p.m.
Director General, Canadian Wildlife Service, Department of the Environment
Let me just dig it out. Section 64 of the act states: “The Minister may, in accordance with the regulations, provide fair and reasonable compensation to any person for losses suffered as a result of any extraordinary impact of the application of...”. Then it goes through a fairly detailed list of provisions.
5:05 p.m.
Director General, Canadian Wildlife Service, Department of the Environment
Yes.
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
David McGuinty Liberal Ottawa South, ON
Were any deals struck for compensation between the federal and provincial governments?
5:05 p.m.
Director General, Canadian Wildlife Service, Department of the Environment
I am unaware of any compensation related to SARA having been afforded any party.
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
Justin Trudeau Liberal Papineau, QC
Thank you.
Monsieur Seutin, j'ai une question pour vous.
In regard to national parks, the minister has made much hay about his expansion of the national parks system. There's a question I always ask about parks. As nice as it is to protect 3% of our land mass, we know what we're saying when we say that we protect 3%, which is, “Are we leaving the 97% unprotected?”
I think there's a question around habitat that is relevant to this when we talk about ranges of large mammals. Whether we're talking about caribou or about grizzly bears, for example, the amount of ground covered becomes essential. What is Parks Canada doing to continue to look at a stewardship model that will go beyond Parks Canada boundaries to help with some of the issues around protecting critical habitat specifically for large mammals?
5:05 p.m.
Ecological Integrity Branch, Parks Canada Agency
Specifically for large mammals...?
5:05 p.m.
Ecological Integrity Branch, Parks Canada Agency
In general, Parks Canada is involved where there are opportunities. It's very active in creating the linkages with provincial parks or other parks managed or protected by other authorities. For the Mountain Parks block, if you take it as a block, the world heritage designation is actually not just for the Parks Canada holdings; it includes Alberta and British Columbia holdings. All together, they form a much larger contiguous group of protected areas.
Those types of opportunities are exploited. There's a very clear relationship with a good number of model forests off Jasper, off Fundy, and off Terra Nova, to name some of them, so the model forest system has great value in terms of management of land for multiple purposes. It's not a protected area model, but it provides a good buffering.
I have to say that there is a clear international agenda in the protected area world for the promotion of the connectivity. It's all about habitat fragmentation. We know that 3% is not going to work, and that even if this 3% is made up of little bits here and there, they need to be connected. There is a very clear international agenda. Do the protected-area communities...? From the leaders, the practitioners, the promoters, and the science, is it all there for us to really have a good set of tools to create this connectivity? No. It's not from failure of interest, but because it's the infancy of this.
We still have not figured out all of the science of it and all of the policy of it. This will have major implications into land ownership and all sorts of other areas of regulated parts of our world. That will need to be explored before we really can have a good model.
5:10 p.m.
Director General, Canadian Wildlife Service, Department of the Environment
If I may, I'll just add a couple of small points to Gilles' answer.
We think of parks as the federal contribution to our protected areas network, but within my group, we also have national wildlife areas and migratory bird sanctuaries. Together, we have a land mass twice the size of Nova Scotia, so it's quite significant what is managed.
In addition, there are other programs inside the federal government, such as the ecological gifts program, for which people can receive a tax credit when they donate land to approved organizations. Similarly, the government--I believe it was a year ago or two years ago--launched the natural areas conservation program, with almost a quarter of a billion dollars for the Nature Conservancy of Canada and Ducks Unlimited. So again, trying to acquire those lands...
The final point I would make is that within SARA we have the habitat stewardship program, as well as a couple of other funding programs that also seek to promote stewardship of the landscape, even if it is not acquisition of landscapes. I just wanted to put that out there as well.
5:10 p.m.
Bloc
Bernard Bigras Bloc Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC
Mr. Chair, I would like to come back to the status of woodland caribou because it is a very important species. Half its roaming territory has disappeared, which is significant. The boreal forest represents about a third of the territory of Quebec and one can therefore easily appreciate its significance.
If I am not mistaken, a report prepared by scientists had been tabled in April 2009. Was it a COSEWIC report?
5:10 p.m.
Some hon. member
No.
5:10 p.m.
Director General, Canadian Wildlife Service, Department of the Environment
No. This was a report that was produced by Environment Canada staff, our researchers, and they also engaged with academics and scientists from provinces and territories to develop a first cut at the scientific review for the habitat requirements for the boreal caribou.
5:10 p.m.
Bloc
Bernard Bigras Bloc Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC
I believe that one of the recommendations was to protect half the boreal forests of Canada. Was that one of the recommendations?
5:10 p.m.
Director General, Canadian Wildlife Service, Department of the Environment
I don't recall that conclusion. I don't believe that was there, but I would have to read it again. I think what was acknowledged was that when you look at the habitat needs of the boreal caribou, you see that they need large tracts of land, and it's not enough to think about, for example, the calving islands that you want to protect. You have to think about the range of the caribou, but that does not equate to “you can't do anything inside that range”.
They did quite a bit of work on demonstrating the relationship between the level of disturbance and the recruitment rates for the boreal caribou, i.e., the survival rates, to demonstrate that the higher the disturbance inside a range, the less likely the caribou would persist into the future.
5:10 p.m.
Bloc
Bernard Bigras Bloc Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC
You stated earlier that the deadline would be the summer of 2011. Was that relating to a recovery plan? Do you wish that there would be a recovery plan?
5:10 p.m.
Director General, Canadian Wildlife Service, Department of the Environment
Yes.
5:10 p.m.
Bloc
Bernard Bigras Bloc Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC
So, this means that you are consulting stakeholders, one of them being the forestry industry, I suppose.