As an official, my job is to implement the act I have. When I look at the Species at Risk Act and realize that it's five or six years old now and there are approaches and flexibilities that we have yet to try within the existing act, it would be hard for me, as an official, to speculate on how the act might be or should be changed.
I take your point about what we know about the natural world around us. There's a lot we don't know, but I think it's not necessary to know everything to have a sense of what's happening. I very much take your point. We think there are about 70,000 species in Canada, and we know something about 7,000 of them. We've had COSEWIC particularly assess maybe about 800 of them now, so it's stepping down...
But on the other hand, if you have a handle on what's happening across the country in all of the main ecoregions, many of the species are interrelated, so one of the approaches that is certainly possible within SARA recovery planning is an ecosystem or multi-species approach. We've recently been working on one that deals with 20 or more plants in part of Nova Scotia. That allows you to look more holistically at what's happening in that part of the country. Maybe you're focused one species or a group of species, but I would imagine that in most instances you're also benefiting many other species in that same area.
I take your point. We don't know a lot. We know something about some of the species. I think we can take action that can benefit all, even without perfect knowledge. At some time, I have to make that trade-off between how much I need to know before I can take action.