That's fine. That information can be given back to the committee. It's just in the sense that it gives us a sense of what's possible. I think a great part of what we've heard—and I think you still hear it—is genuine inquiry on the part of members as to whether this can be made to work. If the application of resources or if the knowledge or so on does that, I think we would be very interested to know that, because that might bear some guidance for us.
I wonder if I can turn to another question here—and this is not meant to separate these things. I hope that members will all bear with me. Essentially, the act is meant to give us a biological basis to be concerned, and then a process to translate that concern into some reasonable actions. Obviously we don't want to ideologically, politically, or with our relatively limited knowledge bases be debating politically whether or not a species has patterns and so on that could lead to extirpation or to damaged success.
I think that is clear. The way I want to ask this is if you think there needs to be political judgment. In other words, there is a mediation here between economic and environmental goals. Ideally we would reconcile and we'd say that economic stuff has to bend this way and bend that way, and so on. There would be a conservation strategy here and so forth. Instead, as soon as we hear it's an either/or, then we're lost.
It was mentioned that socio-economic stuff is taken into account in the listing decision. Has there not been any sort of summary of what those things are? Because the minister I guess has that ability to take those things into account to list or not list. You have to put those things in front of the minister and say what the trade-offs could be when it comes to these other realms. By now, there should be some kind of pattern. The word is “competent ministers”, and I'm sure that's a generally applicable and deserved term for folks. The rate of listing from COSEWIC is fairly high. I think that's the case. So those factors haven't necessarily got in the way entirely, but I guess the question is we didn't need to figure out what to do with that trade-off. I'm wondering if there has been any quantification of the kinds of trade-offs that have been taken into account here.
I know that's kind of a rephrasing of my earlier question, and the answer was that there wasn't a study, but clearly that information is being collected. Every time there is a decision, the socio-economic impacts are being taken into account; the departments are coming up with them. Has no one brought together all the impacts that we have to deal with? And almost more important is the way to reconcile, the way to try to seek trade-offs and so on. Is that not part of the decision that you as the relevant staff bring before a minister?