Thank you. Thank you for inviting me, and thank you to the rest of our panel members.
I know that a lot of you learned a lot about the Ecology Action Centre yesterday. I'm sorry I missed that field trip, but I'm glad you had a chance to get outside.
You already have my statement. I'm just going to add a couple of things that came to mind as I was thinking about this presentation today.
On a personal note, I spent the last five days with my three-year-old, and I was thinking a lot about the national conservation plan at the same time as I was being a single parent. There were some parallels between parenting a toddler and what I think a national conservation plan should entail. I'll go into more detail on these four points later.
First, a strong framework is necessary. Second, there should be consequences for not following the rules, especially when you're stuck in the Toronto airport for four hours. Third, you need to have some threat of consequences. That's important. Fourth, there need to be incentives that follow that framework, and then you need to talk about and relate them to the successes.
I think that's where the analogy stops. It was something I was thinking about while I was sitting last night in the airport for a long time.
The other point is that the Ecology Action Centre has often talked about “action” being our middle name. I thought it might be a good idea for the national conservation plan to adopt “action” somewhere. Maybe it should be the national conservation action plan. I know that particularly with the EAC, we think a lot about what we do and how that drives us to action and what that means.
I'm not going to get into as much detail as I have in my written statement, but I'll go over who the EAC is briefly, and then I'll go into the recommendations I have.
The EAC is Nova Scotia's oldest and largest community-based environmental organization. It was founded in 1971, as part of a class at Dalhousie University. Today we have a staff of 35 people. We also have 600 volunteers and 800 members. Our mandate, in some ways, is unique for an environmental organization. It includes working towards a sustainable environment and a sustainable livelihood, so we think about the economy and the environment in almost everything we do.
We cover a very wide range of issues. We do our work in Nova Scotia, but we also do work outside of Nova Scotia. We look at wilderness protection, sustainable forestry, local food, urban gardens, food security, renewable energy, sustainable and active transportation, coastal protection, water conservation, climate change, sustainable fisheries and seafood, and policy at the provincial, national, and international levels. All of those are pieces of what we see as important in working towards a sustainable environment.