There are lots of issues with respect to implementing the Species at Risk Act. Our view is that the act does not need to be rewritten. The act itself is working well. It's really a question of implementing it.
There have been challenges, and I certainly know that the Canadian Wildlife Service and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans have struggled to meet their requirements for developing recovery strategies. But I think that could have been predicted. When you bring an act into force and you have hundreds of species at risk, it's going to take a while to figure out how to manage each of them.
Ian mentioned just one of the many implementation problems: what do you have when you have foxes and chickens on the landscape? That's an issue.
Our view is that it is not really a good use of the government's time and Parliament's time to reopen the legislation. It's working reasonably well.
I think that Bill Wareham's comments with respect to providing incentives to landowners regarding species at risk on their property need to be considered. There are provisions in the act to develop a regulation on compensation. The government hasn't yet brought forward any regulation. That may be worth a look. This is all speculative, but I think it's perhaps worth a look.