Thank you.
CPAWS has expressed our concerns about the impact of the cuts, particularly to Parks Canada, which is the one I'm most familiar with. In particular, this applies to the cuts to the ecological science and monitoring program. Parks Canada has built one of the best monitoring systems to monitor the health of ecosystems anywhere in the world. It's recognized around the world and has been adopted by other countries. But it does require resources. In this, the impact of the cutbacks was that about one-third of the scientists and the technical capacity were lost from that program. We are concerned that it will not be able to be implemented. We think it's unfortunate because it is such a world-leading program, and it's really an effective program. In fact, a year and a half ago The Globe and Mail talked about it as Canada's latest export, this ecosystem monitoring program that Parks Canada had built. Then a year later a significant amount of the funding was gone.
So it is a concern to us. We are concerned that without being able to measure in our national parks, specifically measure the state of the ecosystems and keep track of that over the long term, it's going to be very hard to have the early warning signals that are needed to be able to address the problem. It's much more difficult to address them the longer you wait. It's much more efficient to address the ecological challenges and take action if you catch the problem early. Yes, it is a concern.