I don't think the timelines are particularly difficult. I think the issue with species at risk and not getting to recovery, not getting to action planning, and not getting all our policies in place is really a function of a lack of staff—a lack of staff within Environment Canada.
I think they've had a very difficult last few years. In the Government of Canada, it can take you one year to hire a biologist. Think about it: one year to hire somebody. In industry, that would never happen. They need many more people in order to help them get over that backlog of the 300 species that were first given to them. They didn't have that. That, to me, is the timeline issue.
On the socio-economic consideration, I think it is reasonable to have socio-economics come into the recovery planning and the action planning stage.
On the listing issue, if you were to forget about the Species at Risk Act—if there were no Species at Risk Act—then listing should be based purely on science. Is this species endangered or not? Do we have enough of them? Are they reproducing properly? Is it going to go off the table or not? Where I think the issue comes in is that some industrial folks feel that it becomes difficult to support that, because it becomes an automatic prohibition with SARA when listed, and that can have economic implications.
If you're thinking about sustainability and sustainable development, you want to have a functioning ecosystem in order to have a functioning economy. Species at risk are like canaries in the coal mine telling us whether the ecosystem is functioning. You sure don't want to have a lot of them going over the edge, because in essence that means the ecosystem is in trouble and your economy can be in trouble. So it's a little more difficult to deal with that issue of when to bring socio-economic considerations into listing.