Evidence of meeting #50 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 critical.
A recording is available from Parliament.
9:30 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative James Bezan
Your time has expired.
The last of our seven-minute round goes to Mr. Sopuck.
9:30 a.m.
Conservative
Robert Sopuck Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I have a whole bunch of questions, but I'll try to be succinct.
Over the life of SARA, how much money has been spent by all departments to implement SARA, and how many species have been recovered? And please don't use up my seven minutes.
9:30 a.m.
Director General, Canadian Wildlife Service, Department of the Environment
I can start. Our records show that until the end of 2009-10, almost $312 million has been expended on species at risk. As you can appreciate, we're still in the current fiscal year, so I can't speak to this year.
9:30 a.m.
Conservative
Robert Sopuck Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB
And how many species have been recovered?
9:30 a.m.
Director General, Canadian Wildlife Service, Department of the Environment
Fully recovered?
9:30 a.m.
Conservative
9:30 a.m.
Director General, Canadian Wildlife Service, Department of the Environment
Directly related to SARA, I don't believe there are any.
9:30 a.m.
Conservative
Robert Sopuck Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB
And that's not a pejorative question. I appreciate, Ms. Poter, the difficulties you outlined.
Is habitat conservation the only way to recover and conserve endangered species?
9:30 a.m.
Director General, Canadian Wildlife Service, Department of the Environment
No. It depends on the threat that faces the species. However, I think, as many members of the committee may be aware, the most prevalent threat, shall we say, that faces most species that are in decline is loss or fragmentation of habitat. But it is not the only threat that faces a species. Disease, invasive alien species, and so on can also be a limiting factor in prevalence of species.
9:30 a.m.
Conservative
Robert Sopuck Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB
Are we short of critical sage grouse, woodland caribou, and burrowing owl habitat?
9:30 a.m.
John Moffet Director General, Legislative and Regulatory Affairs, Department of the Environment
Can we just elaborate a little bit on that question?
I appreciate you're trying to get through some questions, but the question was specifically focused on loss of habitat. Although I defer to your scientific expertise, I think it's inappropriate to characterize the issue as strictly a loss of habitat. I think it's a question of quality of habitat, because of course loss of habitat immediately raises the spectre of putting a fence around a piece of land and saying that nobody can do anything with it, as opposed to working with partners--which comes back to many of the questions we heard earlier--whether they be provincial, private, or aboriginal, and encouraging appropriate management of habitat in a way that enables species to recover and commercial or recreational activities to occur.
9:30 a.m.
Conservative
Robert Sopuck Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB
I certainly appreciate that comment, Mr. Moffet, and I agree with it 100%. Management is very important, but I don't think management is something that's emphasized under the act. I think it can be safely said that for species like sage grouse, woodland caribou, and burrowing owl, habitat is quite abundant. So there are other factors. I know we can quibble about that, and whether the vast rangelands and grasslands of Alberta and Saskatchewan are all managed correctly is open to discussion.
Suffice it to say, Ms. Poter, you talked about woodland caribou being in over one-third of the country. I think the expert opinion regarding woodland caribou is that there is a predator-and-prey imbalance. If you're going to do something about recovering endangered species, I would strongly recommend that you actually do those things that recover endangered species.
I'm very concerned as well about SARA's perceived effect on property rights. I represent an agricultural constituency and a forestry constituency in which land is mostly privately owned. Do you take into account whether a piece of land you've deemed to be critical habitat is either privately owned or publicly owned, and do you see different strategies for private land versus public land?
9:30 a.m.
Director General, Canadian Wildlife Service, Department of the Environment
When you're thinking about critical habitat and identifying critical habitat, sage grouse is a good example. It was found on both private land and public land. When it was found on public land, it wasn't land that--as John mentioned earlier--had a fence around it. This was actual active landscape, and agriculture in many cases. You have to stand back and think about the fact that the land use is quite consistent with the presence of the sage grouse. In many instances, what's currently happening on the landscape is very compatible with critical habitat identification and maintaining or improving the numbers of species at risk on those landscapes.
The challenge does come, though, when the current land use is going to change. For example, if it changed from grazing, perhaps, to a gravel pit, all of the sudden the land use would not be compatible with the critical habitat.
9:35 a.m.
Conservative
Robert Sopuck Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB
I agree. But again the difference is whether that land is privately owned or publicly owned. There is a world of difference in terms of the legal rights of landowners and so on.
Going on to the private land versus public land in an agricultural area--and maybe I'm going too far with this question--wouldn't you agree that on privately owned agricultural landscape the provision of incentives to private landowners to conserve species is much more effective than is the imposition of regulations on the private use of private land?
9:35 a.m.
Director General, Canadian Wildlife Service, Department of the Environment
I think it's fair to say that SARA is premised on stewardship actions. As a going-in position, that is what I think the act is founded on, and then there would be regulation and other tools in the act as necessary. I would agree that definitely stewardship is key to being able to recover species at risk.
To that end, the three departments share some funding programs to promote and support stewardship, such as the habitat stewardship program and the aboriginal funds for species at risk. Those are two examples that are part of the SARA program delivery, and they do promote various stewardship actions in the form of, for example, easements, and so on.
9:35 a.m.
Conservative
Robert Sopuck Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB
Again, let's not confuse words. Stewardship is one thing, cooperative work with groups and individuals and so on, but to me the provision of incentives is quite a well-defined thing, which is the provision of financial resources to private landowners, in my particular case in an agricultural constituency, so they will do the things that we all want to conserve endangered species.
Does the listing of a species take into account a species at the edge of its range, one that may be abundant elsewhere but rare in Canada? One in particular is the sharp-tailed grouse, which is considered endangered in Colorado but is very abundant in Montana, North Dakota, western Canada, and so on. If the situation were reversed and we had a species that was rare here but abundant in the United States, would that make a difference in whether that species is listed or not?
9:35 a.m.
Director General, Canadian Wildlife Service, Department of the Environment
The act is clear. It is the status of the species in Canada. So the global status is certainly a factor that is taken into account by COSEWIC when they're making their determination as to status in Canada, but, yes, there are situations where I wouldn't say a species is wildly abundant elsewhere but it could be perhaps not at risk in other parts of the world.
9:35 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative James Bezan
Thank you, Mr. Sopuck. Time has expired.
We're going to go to our five-minute round.
Ms. Murray, you're going to give your time to Mr. Kennedy?
9:35 a.m.
Liberal
Gerard Kennedy Liberal Parkdale—High Park, ON
Thank you, colleagues, for allowing me to follow up a bit on some of the things I had started to ask.
I want to come back to the progress versus no progress, the idea that progress is picking up. The very specific question is, 35 more species have critical habitats in the last ten months, but how many of the ones that have protection plans also have critical habitats and real protection for those habitats? I think that's what we want to understand. It's one thing to have a plan, but if the critical habitat isn't identified, where are we? As we watch the cascading delays or difficulties, we see that at the end of the day there's only a handful that have critical habitats. So out of these last 35, which are the most recent products of the act's implementation, what is their status? Do they have critical habitats identified?
9:35 a.m.
Director General, Canadian Wildlife Service, Department of the Environment
As of January of this year, 41 species had critical habitat partially or fully identified in posted recovery strategies.
9:40 a.m.
Liberal
Gerard Kennedy Liberal Parkdale—High Park, ON
You can guide me better, but I think, looking at the earlier data, we were looking at much smaller numbers. Has there been an increase both among the more recent...? Just to separate the questions, out of the 35 that were completed, did they get completed with critical habitat? And then those 41, that seems to be a catching up somewhere, with critical habitats getting identified.
9:40 a.m.
Director General, Canadian Wildlife Service, Department of the Environment
Unfortunately, I don't have the statistics with me. Although I thought I brought everything, I didn't bring this with me.
