Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Good afternoon. My name is Margo Sheppard and I'm the volunteer chair of the board of the Canadian Land Trust Alliance. I'm an environmental planner with experience in the public sector, and for the last 14 years I've been the executive director of a land trust in New Brunswick called the Nature Trust of New Brunswick.
I thank you very much for the opportunity to address the committee on something that is fundamental to the identity of our country, which is our natural heritage. The Canadian Land Trust Alliance, or CLTA, as I'll call it, is Canada's national land trust alliance and represents a membership of over 55 land trusts from coast to coast to coast.
For those of you who may not be aware, a land trust is a grassroots, non-profit, charitable organization whose principal objectives include the long-term protection and management of ecologically sensitive lands for nature and the public good. CLTA member land trusts are supported by a network of over 200,000 individual members and donors and over 20,000 volunteers. Collectively, our land trusts have protected over 6.3 million acres of land, which contribute to Canada's network of diverse natural protected landscapes.
CLTA member land trusts have done much over the years to gain the support of the citizens and landowners in Canada through the development and subsequent adoption of the Canadian Land Trust Alliance standards and practices. The land trusts of Canada have shown their commitment to high standards for technical and ethical operation, as well as continuous improvement. Land donors appreciate this commitment.
In the past century Canadian governments have created an impressive array of a system of national and provincial parks and wildlife refuges. Despite such advances, these public lands, which comprise less than 10% of Canada's land mass, are inadequate to safeguard our water, wildlife, and fragile ecosystems from human and industrial impacts, particularly in and around the settled and working landscapes of southern Canada and particularly in this era of climate-induced stressors.
We're faced with having to rely on more than public lands to meet our country's international commitments for conservation. This means that privately held property—conserved via the work of land trusts, but that ultimately is managed for the public good—takes on increased significance. People need natural areas and open spaces close to where they live. Canada loses 150,000 acres of wetlands, woodlands, and agricultural land every year to development, and as our population grows, predominantly in southern Canada in areas of high biological diversity, so does the need to conserve our watersheds and natural places to ensure our communities' resilience.
The pace of protection must also dramatically increase or many significant land and water resources will be lost or degraded by development and urban sprawl. Increasingly, many land-rich, cash-poor Canadians want to voluntarily donate their land to organizations for the purposes of conservation. This transfer of property gives the conservation community a unique opportunity to add to and possibly complete the necessary network of parks and wildlife areas in our lifetime. We're ready and willing to do this in partnership with government.
We applaud the federal government for the efforts to develop a forward-thinking national conservation plan and to become even more involved in protecting Canada's natural landscape. The CLTA would like to offer the committee the following three recommendations for consideration:
First, we would encourage the establishment of a cost-shared stewardship endowment fund that could be accessed by the conservation community to ensure protected lands are managed and maintained in perpetuity. This fund would operate as a public-private partnership that involves shared funding for the wise and long-term management of these conserved areas by their community stewards--i.e., land trusts and their partners.
Second, we recommend that the national conservation plan build on the work already done by community-based volunteer groups and enhance these efforts by supporting strategic conservation plans reflecting the needs of towns and rural areas where they operate.
The CLTA and its partners have recognized that by encouraging land trusts to be more strategic they will help them become better positioned to prioritize and direct resources towards conserving the most sensitive natural areas, to connect people with the land and the water that sustain them, and to advance an understanding of the relationship between land use and water quality and quantity.
To this end, we have worked with provincial partners on a Canada-wide watershed planning initiative directed at local and regional land trusts, to address four key goals: conserving more and the best land in the most effective manner; connecting people with the land and conserved land to other conserved land, such as wildlife nodes and corridors; sustaining the conservation movement by making it more financially stable, inclusive, and networked; and collaborating with landowners, local communities, and other allies to align land objectives with individual and community needs.
Should the committee choose to adopt a national conservation plan with a private land conservation component, the CLTA would be an excellent intermediary, for example, in a program to re-grant land to grassroots land trusts in order to achieve government and community goals.
Third, we encourage the government to recognize that in addition to conserving and protecting natural areas in the working landscape, the conservation community creates employment opportunities primarily in rural and more remote areas of Canada.
A 2010 report commissioned by Environment Canada compares the jobs impact of stimulus funding for grey infrastructure—for example, pipes and arenas and roads—with the impact of ecological restoration and stewardship, or what we call in the land trust community “green infrastructure”, which are key functions of land trusts. The study found that for every million dollars spent on grey infrastructure, three jobs were created. By contrast, for every million dollars of spending on ecological restoration and stewardship, 22 jobs were created.
In summary, then, the need for conservation is growing as the concern of Canadians deepens over our nation's finite water resources and land base. A national conservation plan should aim to protect private lands through strategic partnerships, planning, and the acquisition of ecologically sensitive property. A focus should be on lands that are critical for water quality protection—flood plains, wetlands, and headwater areas—in order to build resilience in our ecosystems. The national conservation plan should strengthen this capacity, reconnect people to the land, and ultimately help build sustainable communities.
CLTA's member land trusts have done much over the last few years to gain the support of the citizens and landowners of Canada. The collective achievements are all the more remarkable when one considers that every acre conserved has been through voluntary actions of private citizens.
The CLTA appreciates the opportunity to put forward these recommendations for consideration. If implemented, they will enable land trusts and owners of Canada's significant natural areas to increase the amount of ecologically sensitive land brought under long-term protection.
We are committed to working with the Government of Canada and all parliamentarians to ensure the swift and successful implementation of the measures proposed.
Thank you very much.