Thank you, Chair.
I've had plenty of opportunity to discuss this in the past, but I will just ask one quick question as I go through the schedules, and then I'll hand my time over to Mr. Sopuck.
You mention in your opening comments, Ms Poter, the intrinsic value of nature and so on. I don't think anybody comes to Canada to look at the Nooksack dace. I'm pretty sure they don't come over to look at the brook lamprey. I'm not so sure the three-spined stickleback is one of those economic driving forces in our country, given the fact that you can find a nine-spined stickleback in virtually every lake and river in the western basin.
I'm being a bit facetious here, but I do believe that when Canadians look at a species at risk act, they're asking themselves, is my government stepping in when we're down to the last 30, or the last 50, or the last whatever? This act, in my opinion, steps in way too soon. That might be nice from a preventative perspective, but I'll make the case, and I've made it before, that if we had looked at just the population of the Fraser River sockeye salmon prior to last year or for the previous two or three years, COSEWIC could have easily made an assessment that the Fraser River sockeye salmon population could have been classified as endangered, and yet last year we had one of the best returns in, I think, a century.
Given what we know, given the various life cycles.... Certain organisms reproduce in a matter of hours; other organisms, such as bears, reach the age of eight to ten years before they're sexually mature. The act has a prescription to do things in a certain timeline that simply doesn't make sense with the way nature operates at all.
I'm very frustrated with the way the act is being used. I think your people's hands are tied. I think you have a really tough job. I want you to be open and frank and honest with us here at this committee. I know sometimes you want to be careful about what you say, but just give it to us; just hit us over the head with it. I think everybody around this table wants to do the right thing with this legislation to make sure that it's usable and functional and serves the needs of not only the environment but of the Canadian taxpayers at all.
Mr. Sopuck asked you a question. Are there any examples you can give us of areas in which the department has spent money on a strategy or on an assessment of a particular species whose geographical range is outside or beyond Canada's borders as well as within Canada's borders and in which the bulk of the population or the natural habitat or the natural range is not within Canada's boundaries, and in which we may have spent any money on an assessment or strategy to recover a species of which a subset or—notwithstanding migratory species—a smaller segment of that population lives within the Canadian jurisdiction? Are there any examples?