Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Sir, madam, thank you for joining us today.
I would like to briefly talk about my riding of Drummond and the City of Drummondville.
We have to make a lot of effort in terms of urban conservation. Despite the goodwill of municipal officials, we are facing significant challenges in this area. Given that the city is growing at an exponential rate, residential, industrial and commercial areas are expanding. Of course, that comes with a lot of consequences, the first being the disappearance of our forests and wetlands. For instance, efforts are being made to turn a forest, specifically the Boisé de la Marconi, into an urban natural area that people can visit.
However, as I said earlier, there are still some problems. As the city is growing, natural environments are dying off. That is why we are creating more and more artificial parks. As you probably know, conservation strategies are not as effective there. The biodiversity of urban parks is not as rich as that of natural parks.
My question is quite simple and has to do with the habitat stewardship program, of course.
The regional environment council of central Quebec is a non-profit organization that works very hard. Concretely, it seeks to conserve urban biodiversity and to increase access to information about endangered species or species at risk, such as a type of turtle in our region.
Could you tell me whether the habitat stewardship program is very effective?