Thank you.
Good afternoon, committee members.
I am Andrew de Vries from the Forest Products Association of Canada. We represent member companies from coast to coast, working in all the provinces.
We are very pleased to be here today to discuss the five-year review of SARA. We strongly supported the development of SARA and lobbied with a variety of diverse groups to ensure its eventual passage. Our member companies have been working with SARA on the ground, in recovery meetings, and in meetings with federal and provincial officials for the last six years to discuss its implementation and see how it's working on the ground. Through that experience, we believe that there are a few areas of SARA--on both the legislative and the policy sides--that can be improved while maintaining a workable framework for maintaining species at risk.
We've identified seven areas of concern: first, implementation; second, consideration of socio-economic interests; third, definitions around terms such as “residence” and “critical habitat”; fourth, permitting for incidental effects; fifth, exemptions, as my colleagues have indicated; and sixth, conservation agreements. For the sake of brevity today, when I deal with points four, five, and six, I'll be lumping them in a generic fashion because we see these as tools that we can use on the ground. Finally, and seventh, we see the need for additional parliamentary review after this review is complete.
In regard to implementation, FPAC has found the implementation of SARA to be very slow, as have several other presenters you have heard from. For us, the essence of SARA is in the recovery and action planning stages of the act, to ensure the survival and recovery of the species while allowing the planning and conduct of activities such as forestry through appropriate permitting and conservation agreements.
The federal departments, working with provinces and territories, have been making strong efforts on recovery planning, and recovery plans are beginning to be published. But we're all aware that many of these plans are late. In addition, there is still only one published action plan to date, and that is for the Banff springs snail in Banff National Park in Alberta.
Also, as you've heard from other presenters, there are no published or effective mechanisms regarding permitting, exemption, or conservation agreements for large industries such as our own.
We believe this slow implementation has led to frustration for some groups, and we are beginning to see the implementation of SARA through litigation rather than cooperative and voluntary measures. We encourage the federal government to continue to seek ways to speed the implementation of SARA, and we believe that our recommendations may assist you in this.
In regard to socio-economics, Parliament was clearly aware of the balancing act of ensuring species survival and recovery with socio-economics when SARA was enacted. As we start to implement SARA, we believe that the role of socio-economics in this balancing act requires greater clarity. The minister has considered socio-economics when listing species. We suggest that this practice be codified in the act.
We find that there is confusion in the application of socio-economics at the recovery planning stage. SARA is very explicit that socio-economics be considered at the action planning stage, but is not explicit about what to do at the recovery stage, and we believe there is some confusion resulting from this.
For many species, the balancing act between habitat conservation and socio-economics will begin at the recovery planning stage. We suggest that subsection 41(1) of the act be revised to consider socio-economics, especially as it can take some time to develop action plans, as we are seeing.
Briefly, on definitions such as “residence“ and “critical habitat,” ultimately, as you guys know, any legislation comes down to the definitions of words within the act as we work to implement them on the ground. With SARA, we have the added complexity of trying to make nature fit our words, with species under consideration as diverse as snails, whales, and cottontails.
Some of these creatures do not have residences, such as nests or dens. Others clearly have distinct spaces that can be defined as critical habitat, while still others, such as caribou or salmon, roam or swim daily through large parts of Canada that are not critical to their survival but are areas where industries such as ours operate.
In addition, we find that SARA places an inordinate amount of weight on critical habitat when in fact for many species there are other environmental limiting factors to be considered, such as predation, disease and parasites, weather, and, for birds, wintering grounds in other countries.
So we'll come forward with some changes to policy and amendments to subsection 41(4) of SARA for your consideration to assist with those definitions.
For permitting, exemptions, and conservation agreements, as I noted earlier, we find the essence of SARA to be in recovery and action planning, while allowing the planning and conduct of other activities through appropriate permitting and conservation agreements. Although each of those are distinct areas of the act, for the sake of brevity I'll share with you some of our overall concerns in these areas in a somewhat generic fashion, as ultimately they are each tools that allow us to conduct our forest management activities while conserving species.
We have no evidence that there are published and effective mechanisms to ensure that permits, exemptions, or conservation agreements can be applied for, negotiated, and put into place in a timely fashion for large industries such as ours. The forestry industry operates throughout Canada on a daily basis. There will be examples whereby our industry could use one of these mechanisms to ensure the appropriate conservation of species.
For example, in the permitting sections of SARA, there's no allowance for permits for more than five years in length. This can be problematic. We have existing industrial facilities in place and our forest management planning works on the scale of decades. We could find ourselves in the position of having completed significant planning for provincial processes only to have to redo our work to come into compliance with the federal permit a year or two later.
On the role of conservation agreements, we strongly support the role of conservation agreements in cooperation with others, and voluntary stewardship measures to achieve SARA's goals. Indeed, our companies are already engaged in such activities, having conserved over three million hectares of boreal caribou habitat in the last 10 years.
We believe the provisions for conservation agreements should be expanded to provide for the authorization of activities. In addition, the exemption provisions should be clarified, as my colleague has suggested, to ensure that they apply when there is compliance with the conservation agreement.
Specifically with regard to permitting, we have suggestions for subsections 73(3), 73(9), and 73(10). With regard to exemptions, we would like to look at subsections 83(1) and 83(4). Finally, with regard to section 11, we would like to make some suggestions there.
Just prior to closing, I'll note that it appears to us that there is much work to be done on SARA, both legislatively and from a policy perspective. We've had six years of significant progress, but I don't think we fully understand the act or its nuances. We respectfully suggest that Parliament consider another review seven years after the first review is completed in accordance with section 129. We'll be able to submit our detailed proposals to the clerk early next week, in both official languages.
Thank you.