Evidence of meeting #49 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was areas.
A recording is available from Parliament.
President, Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society
Yes, exactly. Fragmentation is a critical issue in urban areas.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Mark Warawa
Thank you. Time has expired.
You have the last five minutes, Ms. Rempel.
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Centre-North, AB
I want to continue on some of the line of questioning Mr. Choquette and Ms. Leslie had brought up.
As Ms. Leslie had mentioned, we had the City of Calgary out earlier this week, and they talked about some of the best practices that they had in place. It was great to hear from the City of Winnipeg today. Mr. Penner, is there any sort of national forum to link best practices with regard to urban conservation, or are there just bodies of knowledge that are fragmented and an unofficial or loose collection of knowledge?
City Naturalist, Naturalist Services, City of Winnipeg
I would say we're pretty fragmented at this point. I'm not really aware of one body that's bringing everything together right now.
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Centre-North, AB
Ms. Minshall, you were saying that your conservation group, even though it's a grouping of municipalities, is still based in a certain local watershed area, right?
Director, Water Management Plan, Grand River Conservation Authority
Yes, it is.
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Centre-North, AB
Is there a national body that you would plug in to, to share your best practices, discuss common challenges, or that sort of thing?
Director, Water Management Plan, Grand River Conservation Authority
Within the conservation authorities in Ontario, we have an umbrella body, so we do share information that way, and we have a big annual conference in Ontario. I think that maybe the concept of watershed-based partnerships or institutions like this is more recent in some of the other provinces, because I'm not aware that there is a link.
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Centre-North, AB
Okay, that's good to know.
Mr. Kent, you had a few—you mentioned them really quickly—very specific points on some of the things that are important that we could be doing with regard to urban conservation. Some of the things I jotted down were the restoration of wetlands within urban areas, control of invasive species, and restoration of tree canopy. I wanted to give you a bit more time, maybe a minute, to flesh those out. Do you have any other points to add to those?
President, Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society
I think those are the right general ones.
The real sense I got when I was in the Rouge last spring was that this is very much a work in process. In a sense, people within the community are learning as they go. I think that we need to ensure that we profit from that learning.
You talked about the need to share best practices and so forth. They have been working on things like the restoration of native grasses. They need to do it as a project, perhaps more explicitly than some of the developers I was hearing about in Winnipeg, because it's a more degraded landscape in parts of that area. Those are certainly important.
I come back to the question of wildlife, and this is one of the areas that is going to be more complex to deal with. What kinds of species might we seek to reintroduce or be comfortable seeing in urban conservation areas? There was a controversy in the city earlier this year about beavers and what should be done about beavers that were doing what beavers do, which was building dams. Apparently we're not as positive about beavers doing that as we are about humans doing it, and where they might have chosen to do it.
Those wildlife issues are going to be sensitive ones. It's one of the areas of a potential conflict, and I think we have to be sensitive to that and intelligent about how we manage it.
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Centre-North, AB
Great. We really appreciate your feedback on that. I think those are concrete recommendations.
I'll close by going back to Mr. Penner.
Within my riding, I have over 35 community associations. You mentioned the grant fatigue. These are local volunteer-based organizations that are trying to apply for funding. We've heard from all the witnesses today, and over the course of time, that funding for these initiatives....
The initiatives are local in and of themselves. They're run by local expertise. When you have volunteers who are doing that, they're having to go through different layers of bureaucracy to get the funding.
Are there specific recommendations and certain programs that exist right now that you think could be improved? I think you touched briefly on the EcoAction grant. I want to give you an opportunity to talk specifically about any lost opportunities. Are there ways we could streamline the process for application or management on the back end?
City Naturalist, Naturalist Services, City of Winnipeg
Yes. The types of funding that we're often involved with in the City of Winnipeg are often related to the youth employment grants, which generally are pretty user-friendly.
With regard to the EcoAction grant, I know that can be tough for community groups. It's been a good source of project funding, but we found that after a group does an EcoAction grant, they don't feel like doing another one the next year, or even within a couple of years. It takes some time to get their energy back before they're ready for another one. If there were ways to make the reporting and administration easier and to relax certain things about it, it would be easier for community groups to handle.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Mark Warawa
The time has expired. I want to thank the witnesses for the very interesting and informative information that they provided to the committee today.
Colleagues, we will suspend for two minutes so we can say thank you to the witnesses, and then we will reconvene.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Mark Warawa
I call the meeting back to order. We have two notices of motion.
We will begin with the Liberal motion. Ms. Duncan is not with us, but Mr. Eyking, I believe you're ready to deal with that motion. Is that correct?
October 29th, 2012 / 5:05 p.m.
Liberal
Mark Eyking Liberal Sydney—Victoria, NS
Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's great to be back with you. We had a great trip to Nova Scotia.
I'm filling in for Kirsty, and I have a motion. Of course, everybody in this committee must be well aware of the motion.
The motion states:That the Committee undertake a study on the subject matter of Part 4 Division 21 of Bill C-45, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 29, 2012 and other measures, and report its findings to the House no later than on Monday, November 5, 2012.
That's the motion.
Conservative
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Centre-North, AB
Mr. Chair, as we commonly practise in committee for future business meetings, I move that we proceed in camera.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Mark Warawa
It is the norm that we deal with scheduling in an in camera meeting. The motion is that we move in camera.
