If we take a look at lobster fishing area 34, with the refugia for the lobster fishery there, we can see the clear benefits at the south end of Cape Breton and Nova Scotia.
So from my perspective, and as you come here and you bring these recommendations, I would suggest to you, Ms. Gelfand, that you could hire every university graduate who has walked within 50 yards of a biological sciences building, whether they've even gone in or not, and you would not have enough people hired in Environment Canada to do a biophysical inventory across Canada that would let us know whether there's any realistic chance that we have how many species, subspecies, or whatever it is we have.
I conducted something for the City of Edmonton's parks and recreation department 20 years ago, where we identified 80 new species that had never even been seen in the park system in Edmonton, and I just took 10 little plots out of one--one--little area inside the city of Edmonton in Whitemud Park. So we don't even know where half of our stuff is, much less whether it's an independent species.
I'm going to leave that comment with you. But I want to stress and make the point that instead of actually talking about whether this act as it exists is of any use at all, if wildlife management, which was transferred to the provinces, with the exception of fisheries and with the exception of migratory birds, for which we have an international convention, and we have a convention on the international trade of endangered species to deal with any illegal trade of endangered species.... Why aren't we suggesting or why aren't suggestions coming forward to say that management should fall within the purview of the provinces?
Habitat creation, such as our 30% expansion of our national park system, and through provincial parks, looks after the habitat. If we identify the right critical habitat, the species that we're talking about here today wouldn't even come into these kinds of equations.