Environment Committee on March 27th, 2012

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

I will call the meeting back to order. I want to welcome witnesses to the 27th meeting of the Standing Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development. This is a continuing study, hearing from witnesses on creating a national conservation plan.

Welcome to each of you. We appreciate you taking your valuable time to help us in this study.

We will begin with Ducks Unlimited. You have ten minutes, and as you're approaching 30 seconds left, I will start giving you the wind-up signal. If all three witnesses take about 10 minutes, that will take about half an hour, and then we'll have enough time for about 45 minutes of questions.

So, Ducks Unlimited, Ms. Barnett, please go ahead. Thank you.

[Andrea Barnett, National Policy Analyst, National Operations, Ducks Unlimited Canada]

Good afternoon, and thank you, Mr. Chairman.

My name is Andrea Barnett, and I am the national policy analyst for Ducks Unlimited Canada, located here in Ottawa. l'd like to introduce you to my colleague, Karla Guyn, our director of conservation planning, who is based out of Winnipeg.

On behalf of Ducks Unlimited Canada and the 144,000 Canadians who support our work, it's our pleasure to present you with our vision for Canada's national conservation plan.

Before we get into that vision, l'd like to familiarize you with Ducks Unlimited, or DU. After almost 75 years on our mission, DU is the leader in wetland conservation. And why do we feel so passionately about our work? Because wetlands are incredibly valuable forms of natural capital that are being lost at an alarming rate. Up to 70% of wetlands have been lost in many settled areas of Canada, and we continue to lose an average of 80 acres, or 32 hectares, every day. To give you a sense of the magnitude of this loss, if you were to lump together all of the wetlands lost on a daily basis, it would be equal to 45 football fields. If you consider doubling the next day, and tripling the next, you get a sense the urgency of what drives us.

DU is committed to stopping wetland loss, retaining the wetlands that have not been lost, restoring those that have been lost, and managing those that require it. As a registered not-for-profit charity and a science-based organization, DU delivers on-the-ground habitat conservation projects, and conducts research, education programs, and public policy work to conserve wetlands.

This work not only benefits waterfowl and other wildlife, it also provides Canadians with valuable goods and services because wetlands purify our drinking water, moderate the effects of climate change, reduce risks of flooding and drought, and generally support our well-being.

DU works in all provinces and territories, and we have many conservation partners including other conservation groups, such as our sister organizations in the U.S. and Mexico, all levels of government in Canada, federal and state governments in the U.S., hundreds of individual landowners, universities, First Nations, and industry partners from a variety of sectors.

In all of our conservation efforts, we have proven to be results-driven, science-based, targeted, collaborative, innovative, and adaptive. In our last fiscal year alone, DU realized many significant achievements.

We celebrated the successful conclusion of wetlands for tomorrow, a six-year campaign that raised and invested $600 million in wetland conservation throughout Canada. We held over 500 fundraising events in communities across Canada, hosting over 68,000 people. We reached over 100,000 students, teachers, and others through our education programs. Finally, through partnerships, we secured almost 160,000 acres of habitat, and positively influenced over 34 million through extension, land-use planning, and stewardship. This brings our cumulative totals, since our inception in 1938, to roughly 6.2 million acres secured, and an additional 95 million influenced.

As a principal delivery agency for a successful continental conservation plan, the North American waterfowl management plan—or NAWMP, as it is commonly referred to—DU would like to offer a number of suggestions regarding the national conservation plan.

We strongly support the development of this plan, and we applaud the environment committee for undertaking this study. A countrywide plan will help position Canada as a world leader in habitat conservation, and pave the way for Canada to demonstrate international leadership on environmental issues. By taking a landscape- and habitat-based approach to conservation, this plan would ensure that future generations of Canadians continue to benefit from healthy ecosystems.

Canada's most important habitat should be conserved using a variety of tools, including land designations like protected areas, as well as conservation easements where private landowners still retain title of the land. In addition, restoration measures should be used to rehabilitate ecosystems that have already been lost or degraded, with emphasis placed on the most threatened and valuable, such as wetlands.

The plan should also connect people and habitat through a mosaic of working lands. This means we must engage all Canadians, particularly landowners, the agriculture community, and industry with a plan that makes it easier to conserve and steward Canadian landscapes, in addition to rewarding conservation actions that many of these sectors already undertake.

I'd like to pass it on to Karla.

[Dr. Karla Guyn, Director of Conservation Planning, Ducks Unlimited Canada]

DU believes that a national conservation plan should drive 10 key outcomes. First of all, a culture of conservation is created, instilling a sense of value, pride, engagement, and responsibility in all Canadians, including the traditional conservation community as well as new conservation agents such as young, new, and urban Canadians.

Second, negative habitat trends are stopped and reversed by directing impacts away from sensitive areas, mitigating impacts that are unavoidable, and restoring areas that have been lost or degraded.

Third, Canada meets and exceeds existing domestic commitments such as the Species at Risk Act, and the Fisheries Act, as well as international agreements such as the migratory birds acts and multilateral agreements, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Aichi targets.

Fourth, the Canadian economy benefits directly from conservation efforts. Jobs are created by restoration and stewardship programs. Tourism and outdoor recreation sectors thrive. Businesses increase their market share through green branding and eco-certification, and farmers are compensated for conserving natural capital.

Fifth, goals, plans, and targets are effective at all levels. A science-based approach is used to plan, implement, and monitor conservation efforts and resources to ensure fiscal efficacy.

Sixth, an effective tracking, monitoring, and reporting system is developed. This national system tracks habitat outcomes on both public and private lands, and reports progress on national conservation plan implementation.

Seventh, conservation actions are better coordinated. Economies of scale are realized through partnerships and shared resources, better coordination between different levels of government, and more collaboration within the conservation community.

Eighth, existing tools are evaluated and new tools are developed. In some cases, this means continuing to do what we are already doing well. Programs such as the North American waterfowl management plan or NAWMP, the natural areas conservation program, the ecological gifts program, and the environmental farm plan are all highly effective, well-established conservation tools that should be maintained and expanded. In other cases, we will require new tools, particularly on private land and on working landscapes.

Ninth, effective funding models sustain long-term activities and programs. This means continued support for existing programs that are effective, including those mentioned above. This also means designing new funding models, particularly ones that use private sector capacity. New approaches should target innovative cost-share models and new incentives to encourage conservation on private lands.

Tenth, strong long-term partnerships are forged. By drawing ideas from successful models such as NAWMP, new conservation partnerships for planning, implementation, funding, and monitoring can be developed between all conservation agents in Canada.

It's clear that we cannot manage what we cannot measure. Monitoring and evaluation metrics that are aligned with plan goals will be critical to this plan's success. From a conservation standpoint, two types of metrics are crucial. Number one is habitat metrics, including habitat inventories such as wetland inventories that can be used to calculate a baseline, and then monitor habitat change and conservation impacts over time. Number two is fish and wildlife metrics, including surveys of populations in need of conservation as well as factors that threaten them, such as invasive species and climate change.

These two metrics will provide the clearest indication of progress toward the plan's overarching goals. We can suggest other metrics when we have more time for detailed discussion.

In closing, DU hopes the national conservation plan gains the full support of all conservation partners in Canada and serves to drive real, profound, targeted, and measurable actions and results. We challenge the Government of Canada to continue showing strong leadership and support, including funding, for the creation and implementation of this plan. As the old adage from one of our founding DU leaders goes, conservation without action and funding is just conversation.

With that, Mr. Chairman, DU looks forward to a continued role in this process and sincerely thanks the committee for the opportunity to appear before you today. We are drafting a short report and supporting materials that expand on some of our thoughts, and we will provide that report to the clerk of the committee for distribution to committee members. We would be happy to follow up with individual members if they have any questions on the material provided.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Thank you so much.

Next we will hear from CPAWS.

Ms. Woodley.

[Alison Woodley, National Conservation Director, Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society]

Good afternoon, and thank you for this opportunity to share with the committee our recommendations for a national conservation plan.

My name is Alison Woodley. I'm the national conservation director at CPAWS.

My presentation today will focus primarily on the fundamental elements that we believe are essential for a national conservation plan to effectively advance conservation in Canada. We will also present a more detailed brief in the coming weeks that will elaborate more on our detailed recommendations.

CPAWS is Canada's voice for public wilderness protection. Since our creation in 1963, we've played a key role in the establishment of over two-thirds of Canada's protected areas. We have 13 regional chapters in nearly every province and territory, as well as a national office here in Ottawa. We have over 50,000 active supporters across the country.

Our vision is that Canada will protect at least half of our public lands and waters.

Over the past few years, CPAWS has welcomed significant steps forward, including the sixfold expansion of Nahanni National Park Reserve in 2009 and the creation of Gwaii Haanas National Marine Conservation Area in B.C. in 2010.

CPAWS worked hand in hand for many years with first nations communities, other partners, and governments to support these protected areas. For our Nahanni work, we were honoured last fall—with Dehcho First Nations and Parks Canada—with the Royal Canadian Geographical Society's prestigious gold medal for our collaborative efforts to expand the park.

Establishing large protected areas like these is critical, but we now know that to safeguard healthy ecosystems, we need to do more. We need to integrate our protected areas into sustainably managed land and seascapes so that wildlife can move between them. It's particularly important in the context of climate change. We need to allow plants and animals the space they need to shift and adapt to changing conditions.

Nature conversation enjoys broad support in Canada. Wildlife and wilderness are part of our national identity. Polling consistently shows that Canadians strongly support conservation action. Canada stewards about 20% of the world's remaining intact wild spaces and we have the world's longest coastline.

Clearly, we have an unique opportunity to embrace an ambitious conservation agenda. A full 90% of lands are publicly owned in Canada, as well as all of our waters, so Canadians have an important role in determining their future. But to date, only 10% of our lands and 1% of our oceans have been protected.

This is less than the global average and much less than what's needed to secure our natural heritage for the future. We still have a lot of work to do.

Let me next share our recommendations for the basic elements of the national conservation plan. First, we believe the plan should focus on large land and seascape scale conservation. We support framing a plan with the basic elements of protect, connect, restore, and engage.

The “protect” component should focus on ensuring that large core areas of wildlife habitat are protected in each region of Canada, as a cornerstone of the plan. This requires completing networks of protected areas on land and in the marine environment.

The “connect” component should focus on ensuring protected areas are integrated within sustainably managed land and seascapes, with the goal of allowing wildlife to move between protected areas, and to support the healthy ecosystems we need to sustain our own human communities.

Strong environmental legislation, best industrial practices and certification, stewardship programs, and conservation-focused land and marine planning processes are among the key tools.

The “restore” component is about restoring degraded ecosystems and recovering species at risk. These two require collaborative stewardship tools and strong environmental laws.

Finally, the “engage” component reflects the importance of connecting Canadians with nature. We need to build a community of stewards who will support nature conservation in the future. There are lots of opportunities for partnerships here, including with conservation groups such as CPAWS, Ducks Unlimited, and the David Suzuki Foundation.

Different approaches will be needed in different regions of Canada, and the plan needs to reflect this. For example, in settled southern areas there is more focus on restoration and private stewardship. In the far north, conservation-first land-use planning, led by indigenous communities, offers a major opportunity for progress.

To drive progress, the national conservation plan needs to set clear and ambitious goals and science-based targets, and then measure and report progress toward these.

We recommend that Canada demonstrate international leadership by committing to exceeding the conversation targets under the Convention on Biological Diversity.

These so-called Aichi targets include a commitment to protect 17% of our lands and 10% of our waters by 2020. We suggest that Canada commit to more than that—that we commit to protecting 20% of our lands and 10% of our oceans in protected areas by 2020. We believe this is an ambitious and achievable next step.

To be successful, the national conservation plan needs to build on innovative, large landscape scale conservation initiatives that are already under way across the country. These are led by governments, citizens, indigenous communities, conservation groups, industry, and in many cases, broad partnerships between these various groups.

A great example is the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement. CPAWS and eight other environmental organizations signed this agreement with 21 members of the Forest Products Association of Canada nearly two years ago.

The agreement is an example of a large landscape scale initiative in action. It applies to over 76 million hectares of forest from Newfoundland to British Columbia, and it commits the parties to work together towards six strategic goals, including maintaining protected areas, having world-leading sustainable practices, recovering species at risk—in particular woodland caribou—addressing climate change as it relates to forest conservation, improving forest-sector prosperity, and encouraging marketplace recognition for environmental performance.

It's an innovative approach that has significant potential to help deliver a national conservation plan across a vast area of Canada's boreal forest. It's also important to recognize the enormous co-benefits that are derived from conservation, including significant economic benefits.

We will elaborate on that in our more detailed brief, but just as one example, in 2009, Canada's national provincial and territorial parks contributed $4.6 billion to Canada's GDP. They supported 64,000 jobs and provided $337 million in tax revenues for governments.

CPAWS welcomes the opportunity to continue to participate in the ongoing discussions about the development of a national conservation plan. We appreciate the ability to present some of our initial high-level thoughts today, and we will be submitting a more detailed brief, as I mentioned, and would be pleased to meet with committee members at any time to continue this discussion.

Thank you once again for the opportunity to share our thoughts. I look forward to our discussion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Thank you, Ms. Woodley.

Next we'll hear from the David Suzuki Foundation, and Mr. Wareham.

Can you hear us okay?

[Bill Wareham, Senior Marine Conservation Specialist, David Suzuki Foundation]

Yes, can you hear me all right?

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Perfect. Please proceed.

[Bill Wareham]

Okay, wonderful, thank you.

And thank you for accommodating me online here.

My name is Bill Wareham. I'm a marine conservation specialist with the David Suzuki Foundation, where I've worked for 10 years. I've worked for the past 25 years for non-governmental organizations in Canada, working on a variety of conservation issues—terrestrial, wetlands, national and provincial parks, fisheries management, forest management—and have a broad range of experience, which I bring to this discussion here today.

In regard to the David Suzuki Foundation, we have a broad suite of goals that we operate under in trying to protect Canada's environment. One of our core goals is to really look at the systems that support us as a society in Canada—the agricultural land, the fisheries, the forests—and to have those systems not only exist in the future in a way that continues to support the economies that we count on, but also that supports the biological diversity and the wildlife that is representative of Canada, and that I think Canadians associate with.

In regard to the national conservation plan, three of our goals are specific to this. One is protecting nature, both from a diversity perspective and the health of these ecosystems, protecting our climate; transforming the economy to operate within the limits of these natural systems; and getting people to reconnect with nature at a level where we have stewards across the country, in communities, in municipalities, and in provincial governments, who take it upon themselves as a role to take care of and steward the land.

Our perspectives on the national conservation plan are that we think this is a very important initiative, but we also put a caveat on that. We think it has to be bold. To be branded and framed as a national conservation plan, it has to have substantive enough elements to warrant that framing, which is quite significant, I think, in the eyes of Canadians when they hear that.

Some of the key principles we think are important in the plan that I'd like to outline are: to establish and promote a clear vision and a goal; to identify achievable conservation targets; to focus on larger scale conservation initiatives; to facilitate engagement by provincial and municipal governments, where the jurisdiction overlaps with federal authority; to engage first nations governments at every step of the process; to ensure that the best available science is brought to the discussion and the decision-making around these issues; and also to develop a plan that's flexible enough to respond to changes in the environment over time.

Some of the recommended outcomes that we have as targets are—as CPAWS has mentioned, and we agree with this—to adopt the biodiversity convention targets, but also to go beyond those and to look at how we can be a global leader in biodiversity conservation. Another is to use the National Parks and Wildlife Act and the National Marine Conservation Areas Act to establish a network of large protected areas, and we agree with going beyond the targets, similar to what CPAWS has mentioned. Others are to provide incentives for collaborative capacity between provincial and territorial governments, and really encouraging them to get to work and designating more of their land; to provide economic incentives for provincial and territorial governments to restore at least 15% of the degraded ecosystems; and to provide funding to municipalities and non-government organizations to enable the analysis and planning required for protected areas and land stewardship.

We'd also recommend enhancing regulations related to toxics; establishing a national energy strategy that provides mechanisms and incentives for aggressive reductions to greenhouse gas emissions—we believe that clean water, clean air, and protecting the land and wildlife are all part of a valid national conservation plan—and investing in additional capacity and funding in our national fisheries so that we can have a fisheries recovery strategy and support rebuilding these fisheries, which really provide a lot of economic benefit to Canada.

In regard to process, I'd just like to mention a few things that we'd suggest in putting this together.

One is to provide opportunities for online support and feedback informing the national conservation plan targets and outcomes, and providing an ongoing web network, where people can see what's happening, they can track what's going on, they can contribute and participate, and they can have links to provincial governments or other initiatives that are helping fill out the plan.

The second one is establishing regional and national coordinating committees that include federal, provincial, and first nations representatives to facilitate the necessary dialogue and decision-making on some of these larger issues.

Our third recommendation is to establish federal inter-agency coordinating committees. In many of the conservation initiatives we pursue, we found a lack of coordination and alignment between the federal agencies, which can really slow down progress on the initiatives. We've recently seen some committees come together effectively, particularly in regard to oceans. We'd like to support that in the broader sense of the plan.

Our fourth recommendation is to enable accountability by monitoring and annually reporting progress towards these objectives, so people can see how we stand against the major outcomes.

Our fifth recommendation is encouraging individual Canadians to get involved in these initiatives and participate not only in the planning and design, but also in bringing information to the decision-makers and establishing a non-government national conservation plan advisory council. The council would consist of leading NGOs, academics, and industry leaders, who would review the plan and discuss challenges along the way.

In conclusion, I'd like to say that we're very supportive of the plan. We'd like to be part of the ongoing design development. We are also happy to provide additional information on specific concepts as you refine your approach and determine your key objectives.

We want to emphasize that it really has to be a bold plan. We can do that. If Canada, in our developed country with the wealth that we have, cannot develop something that serves as a global model on how to engage our human societies with their environment, I can't imagine how it could be done in other places in the world. We'd like to help make this a bold plan with bold outcomes. We're happy to engage our staff to help along the way.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Thank you so much.

Ms. Rempel.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Centre-North, AB]

I want to thank all of the witnesses for coming out today. We're all very excited to be embarking on this study. To echo your concerns, this study is very important for Canadians and for conservation in this country.

One of the themes I picked up on from all three witnesses was the concept of ownership and connecting people into the conservation model. I wanted to direct my questions along that line. First of all, for each of the witnesses, and I'll start with Ducks Unlimited, we've heard some back-and-forth about how best to get urban Canadians involved in the conservation dialogue.

Could all three witnesses discuss that concept very briefly? How are some of your programs and offerings are doing that?

[Dr. Karla Guyn]

That's something we also struggle with—trying to connect with the urban audiences. There are a couple of things that we've undertaken in the past few years. One is our education programs. We've been targeting grade 4 students, educating them about conservation. We've also put together materials in various languages for new Canadians, so as to better educate them about the values of wetlands. To target older students, we've put forward wetland centres of excellence, which are associated with high schools that have wetlands nearby. Those are a few of the things we've done to engage urban audiences.

[Alison Woodley]

CPAWS shares the challenges we're all facing in terms of the nature deficit disorder, as it's often called, and people being less connected with nature. CPAWS has a number of programs to try to deal with the challenge. We have education programs. For example, in our southern Alberta chapter where the mountain parks are not too far away from the city, we have in-classroom programs and take kids out into the parks. That's a traditional model, but it's still an important one to get kids out into nature.

We are also working with new technology. Two years ago we ran a video contest that targeted a younger audience. We asked people to make two-minute videos of their favourite parks. The winner won a trip down the South Nahanni River, and did an amazing rap video about Gros Morne National Park. It was quite phenomenal. We were really pleased. We had hundreds of applications. We've been doing social media contests.

We're also supportive of the government's initiatives around national urban parks. We're very supportive of the Rouge national urban park, for example, and are engaged in those discussions. We think it's going to be a really important opportunity because it's so close to so many Canadians.

It's really hard to find a replacement for people actually going out and having contact with nature, so this is a really important opportunity. We see it as a gateway to nature—a gateway to our national park system and our wilderness areas overall. People can start to have a bit of a nature experience there, and then hopefully gain enough interest that they will be brave and interested in going out beyond that into more remote areas. So those are some of the things we've been doing.

Thank you.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Centre-North, AB]

Mr. Wareham.

[Bill Wareham]

We have a large focus on public engagement at the David Suzuki Foundation, with the intent of trying to lift awareness across a variety of issues. It's a process where we try to escalate the learning up the scale, because it's hard to get communities, individuals, children, or people who haven't been engaged in any kind of conservation planning or conservation concepts to just to jump into them.

We have programs like David Suzuki at work, where we get people in the workplace engaged in learning some of the basics about conservation of energy, water, and paper. Then we get those people engaged in some of the broader issues so they start to look at the footprint of their community, our cities, our economies, and our industries, and start connecting them to certain issues in their region. That might be fisheries, a wild-land park, or endangered species. We try to escalate these people. We call it the ladder of engagement of knowledge.

In our sustainable seafood initiative, we try to get people engaged at a basic level in buying seafood products that they think are more sustainable than not. We try to educate people and provide them with information on our websites, exciting recipes, and different things to engage them. But in that process they also learn about the need to maintain fisheries, that the fisheries are the very source of the food they're eating, and that there's an opportunity to recover these fisheries. We try to engage at that point source.

We also do education programs with the schools. We do national video conferencing. We have a CISCO TelePresence system, and can speak to schools and large numbers of people from our offices in Vancouver, Ottawa, or Toronto. We can engage them in lectures and learning videos about various topics.

Those are the main things we're doing right now. There's a whole social media presence as well that we're building on in trying to get people interested at various scales. Some of the primary themes are our interconnectedness with nature and the systems, whether it's freshwater, healthy oceans, or forested landscapes that provide many services.

We also promote the concept of natural capital and ecosystem services, trying to educate people about the value of their resources. In specific areas, like our green space corridor program around Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, we're trying to profile those green space conservation concepts closer to home.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Your time has expired.

Monsieur Pilon, you have seven minutes.

[François Pilon, NDP, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Thank you very much.

I also wish to thank the witnesses for accepting our invitation. Congratulations to you on your fine presentations.

My first question is for the representative of Ducks Unlimited Canada. I represent a riding in which the wetlands are in danger from urban development.

Do you think that the government is currently doing enough to preserve our wetlands? If not, what do you think it should be doing?

[Andrea Barnett]

Thank you very much for that question. It's a fantastic question, and it leads into something that I think is a very important part of this plan, which is interjurisdictional coordination, because when you're looking at wetland protection, depending on the impact and the location, we're often dealing with different levels of government. Specifically, when we look at what the major threats to wetlands are throughout Canada, a lot of it is urban and rural development, and so it's often about engaging local and regional governments.

We have a couple of examples of programs in Ontario and also in British Columbia—that's the one I'm most familiar with—which essentially provided a tool kit to local governments to try to, within the regulatory and planning provisions that exist, figure out a way to direct development away from the most sensitive areas. It isn't about no development, but it is about reimagining how development can happen in the context of wetland protection. That needs to happen at a local government level.

So my concluding message would be that I feel that to address situations like the one you've brought up, it's important that this plan takes into consideration the interconnectiveness of jurisdiction.

[François Pilon, NDP, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Yes, let us talk about the plan. My question is for all three witnesses. From your own experience, what direction should the national conservation plan be taking and what should its goals be?

The question is for all three witnesses, but Ms. Woodley can answer first.

[Alison Woodley]

Thank you.

I think the goal of the national conservation plan should be about protecting wildlife or biodiversity and healthy ecosystems to sustain the values we all share and our human communities.

[Andrea Barnett]

From what I've seen so far in terms of what's already been put together, I think that as overarching themes, the goals of protect or conserve—however you want to conceive that—connect, restore and engage the Canadian public are fundamental. From a conservation perspective, as Karla indicated in our discussion of measures and metrics, we're interested in habitat change on the landscape and the impacts that has in terms of wildlife population. So I think that's an ultimate goal, but a whole bunch of other things are required to meet those goals, including the engagement of all Canadians, particularly on working landscape.

[François Pilon, NDP, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Mr. Wareham.

[Bill Wareham]

Yes, thanks.

We believe that the large systems, as I talked about earlier—our ocean systems, the forest systems, the prairie wetlands, large river systems—that provide that core network of environmental function need to be protected on a much larger scale. We believe that in Canada we already have momentum on some of these things. We have a national marine protected area strategy. We have a national park strategy. We have momentum on these things, but progress has been very slow over the last 25 years.

I think the opportunity is there to escalate the work against some of our existing policies. We would like to see an outcome at the end of the day where we're not just maintaining remnant levels of species to say that we still have them, we're looking to a system that provides a robust opportunity to have viable populations, and particularly fisheries, which as we all know are very important to Canadians.

We have a choice. We have a choice to either recover and rebuild and maintain those fish stocks at larger levels, and marine protected areas are a big part of helping accommodate that. I think these strategies would reduce the risk going forward, knowing that we're seeing changes in precipitation and forest cover and all kinds of things. So accommodating these things is our core interest.

[François Pilon, NDP, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

My next question is for Ms. Woodley. You suggest that a significant reserve of carbon sinks be kept. How do you suggest doing that?

[Alison Woodley]

There is growing scientific evidence that there is a great deal of biological carbon that's actually stored in intact ecosystems. For example, the boreal forest is one of the largest storehouses of biological carbon in the world.

The wonderful thing is that when you conserve these ecosystems in their healthy state, you are also helping to ensure that biological carbon stays stored and is maintained in that state. It's a great co-benefit of conserving biodiversity or habitat. Wetlands and boreal forest are incredibly carbon-rich environments. By conserving them, you're also avoiding some significant emissions of carbon.