Environment Committee on April 23rd, 2013

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank everyone for being here today.

My first questions are for Ms. Woodley, regarding parks.

You said that one of the cornerstone actions would consist in creating an effective network of protected areas, in places like national parks, marine areas and so on.

I asked the Library of Parliament to look into this for me. According to the document I received, in the latest Conservative budget, the funding for a number of species protection programs will decline over the next few years, thus putting habitat conservation at risk.

For instance, according to the table, the funding for the biodiversity program for wildlife and habitat was $139.4 million in 2011-12, while the forecast spending for 2015-16 is $84.6 million. So we are talking about a reduction of $50 million in funding for biodiversity and wildlife initiatives.

I can give you another example. The expenditures for heritage resource conservation—which is directly related to Parks Canada—were $172 million, but they will be $154 million in 2015-16.

How do you think this could jeopardize habitats?

[Alison Woodley]

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.

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

Thank you very much.

I have another question for you, concerning a report published in 2009.

Earlier, you talked about the Species at Risk Act, which was heavily criticized by environmental groups. You said that there was no problem with the act itself, but rather with its enforcement.

Do you have any explanations or specific examples of what is not used or enforced to adequately protect species at risk?

[Alison Woodley]

I mentioned one of them a few minutes ago, which was that the kinds of policy frameworks and regulatory frameworks that were envisioned, that are needed to implement some of the tools in the act, like conservation agreements, are not fully there. The other example, which was mentioned by my colleague here, is the compensation mechanisms. The act actually does include the ability to develop a compensation mechanism, but that hasn't been developed, so it's not happening.

Clearly, regulatory measures should include programs that enable people to meet those requirements, that incent people to meet those requirements and help them to do that. One of the weaknesses in the implementation is that those tools that were envisioned in the act have not been adequately taken advantage of and really elaborated on and applied so that people are able to meet the requirements.

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

Okay.

In your presentation, you talked about models that can be used to protect lands—including private and indigenous lands. You mentioned Australia. Could you elaborate on what we could apply here, in Canada?

[Alison Woodley]

Australia has recognized that parks and protected areas are not just the venue of governments. In many countries, the protected areas are considered government protected areas, federal state and provincial government protected areas. What Australia has done is they've built a framework that brings all of the efforts to protect lands together under one common framework, with clear goals and targets. Then they've set up a funding mechanism at the national level, so that if you meet the requirements under the plan, basically you can apply for resources. There's a kind of round table mechanism where all the interests are brought together and guide this work.

They have included in their protected area system, for example, private lands that are under long-term protection measures, which could be land trusts, those kinds of mechanisms. They've also brought in indigenous conservation areas under the same framework. That I think has a great deal of potential in Canada. I've heard presentations by several first nations who are entrusted to protect lands, to have that as part of this network of protected lands, and to be counted as such.

I think if we can start to explore what that might look like and how we might incorporate it into our accounting mechanisms.... Right now we count how much protected area and land we have under the IUCN categories through a mechanism called CARTS, which is the conservation areas reporting and tracking system. It's run by Environment Canada and the Canadian Council on Ecological Areas. There's been some work done. That's quite new.

We've done better at that accounting, but we could do better. We could broaden the scope of what we bring in under that umbrella. I think it would help to encourage more land conservation in ways that work for those who want to conserve their lands and also help us get to our targets.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

Thank you, Ms. Woodley, and Madame Quach, merci beaucoup.

We're now moving to Ms. Rempel.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Centre-North, AB]

Thank you. I'm going to give Mr. Sopuck one minute of my time to follow up.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB]

Ms. Woodley, you made the point that there are no incentive programs under SARA. I'm pretty sure that's what you said. Just to correct the record, under SARA there is the habitat stewardship program. It's about $15 million a year. It's been going for about a decade now. That has generated, you would agree, real conservation results. I have a number of landowners in my own area who are beneficiaries of that. So to say that there is no incentive program in place is really not accurate, is it?

[Alison Woodley]

If I said that, I certainly didn't mean there are no incentive programs in place. I think there are tools within the act that have not been fully elaborated and could help to better support work under the act. So, absolutely, the habitat stewardship fund and other incentive programs do exist, but we can also do more under the act.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

Thank you, Ms. Woodley.

Ms. Rempel.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Centre-North, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My question is to the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation representatives. Thank you for coming here today. We're interested in looking at habitat conservation programs and methodologies that first nations are carrying out.

Are there any examples of programming within your area that you carry out, and how do you partner with other local agencies?

[Lisa King]

We've recently developed one. It's led by one of our elders, Mr. Pat Marcel. We call it our bison and caribou stewardship plan. I would say it was ACFN-led. We've been sharing it with Alberta, with Canadian representatives, and with industry partners in our area. It's to map out the areas we see as critical habitat for those two species, the bison and the caribou.

We'd be pleased to share these with anyone interested. It'll show you some of the tools, the areas.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Centre-North, AB]

Great.

What methodology do you employ in gathering...? We've heard from other witnesses of the challenge in actually looking at species' ranges and gathering the data needed to come up with conservation plans, mapping out their migratory pathways, and all these sorts of things. There's a wide variety of ways to achieve this result. We've heard from other witnesses that we should also be including indigenous first nations knowledge in these. Perhaps you could speak a little to the methodology you used within that.

[Lisa King]

Most of it was based on harvesting and where our nation members have traditionally used those resources, so where there have been known herds of the caribou and the bison. There's an area called Ronald Lake. It's not far from our reserve land, called Poplar Point, which is along the Athabasca River.

Members tell us where they are out on the land. It's intensive interviewing of what they're doing on the land, what species they're harvesting. They also tell us what the habitat looks like. The Ronald Lake herd.... It's a beautiful, rich habitat for a large herd of bison, about 150 species in there, 150 members of the bison. Right now, the area is under proposed development. There is a company that is proposing to mine out huge areas of their habitat. We create these stewardship plans to inform members such as you to take a break and really look at protecting this species. These are species that are important to ACFN—and surrounding communities, not just ACFN.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Centre-North, AB]

Thank you very much,

I'm going to go down to Mr. Bonnett. In your brief you spoke a bit about the terms “protection” and “effective protection” of critical habitat, that they need to be defined. You talked about the lack of definition.

Could you speak to why you think there's a gap, how you or your organization would define this, and why?

[Ron Bonnett]

It boils down to looking at things for the long term. When you have a term like “protection”, that almost creates the impression that it's an outright ban on any damage to habitat. If you look at something like effective protection, that, in our mind, would mean that you're taking steps over the long run to protect habitat.

I'll give you an example that's sort of related. The government took action on it about a year ago with respect to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. One of the things we do in agriculture is put drainage systems in to drain excess water off agricultural land. Those drains are installed over a period of time, but they have to be maintained about every 15 years. If you take the term “protected”, when you go in to do drain maintenance, you're actually destroying habitat, and you're going to destroy some of the fish that are in that small stream in the short term. But if you look at the broad term, the fact is that you're maintaining that; you're creating ongoing habitat. The fact that you have a management plan, that you do maintenance and construction over a period of time at any one time, again, means you have habitat protected.

Getting definitions around those terms gives confidence that the things you're doing are looking at the long-term goal as opposed to one short-term event.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Centre-North, AB]

We have heard other witnesses talk about the need to look at a whole ecosystem approach to managing species rather than just a single species. That might be a gap in some of our current policies. It's been a constant theme, regardless of the witness group.

If we were looking at that approach as a best practice, could you talk about how you could, or if you could, incorporate the concept of a working landscape within the whole ecosystem management for species approach?

[Ron Bonnett]

I think it would be fairly simple to incorporate. As I mentioned we have had great success in developing environmental farm plans on farms, where we step back and take a look at all the environmental issues. If habitat protection were included as part of that, you could put a long-range plan together.

One of the things I should mention that needs to be addressed is making sure that when we enter into long-term agreements...they have to be long term. These aren't three-year or five-year things. These are 20-year things we're moving into, and I think there has to be confidence of programming support and a regulatory framework that incents people to enter into those types of agreements.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

Thank you, Ms. Rempel.

We'll now move to Ms. Duncan for seven minutes.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to all the witnesses. It's been very interesting, and we appreciate your time and effort.

Ms. Woodley, one of the questions we've been asked to address is best management practices and stewardship initiatives, compared to prescriptive government-mandated measures.

You mentioned SARA, and that we need a strong SARA, so I'm going to focus on SARA.

When we compare stewardship initiatives with government-mandated measures, what are the most relevant end points, performance measures, we should be comparing, given that the objective is species recovery?

[Alison Woodley]

I think the relevant end point is species recovery, as the status is the state of the species and the recovery progress in recovering that species.

I think to look at which is best is perhaps not the right way. In our view, we need both. We need both the regulatory framework to set the bar on what's needed and to set the standard in a consistent standard. Then you do absolutely need those incentives and those mechanisms in place to facilitate getting there and to make sure those who are affected are able to do what's required.

Our sense is that there are good examples of how SARA is working in that way. Just to give you one example, the recovery strategy for boreal woodland caribou, which was released last October, is a real example of progress. This strategy tackles the needs of one of Canada's most wide-ranging and sensitive species. It was developed in collaboration with eight other jurisdictions, affected aboriginal communities, a broad range of stakeholders, and thousands of Canadians. It's not perfect, but it's already making a difference.

There are provinces across the country who proactively began to develop action plans for caribou in anticipation of that recovery strategy coming out, which was required under the regulatory framework. The forest industry and environmental groups under the CBFA are using the science that was developed by the federal government to inform that recovery strategy. We're using it on the ground to plan.

I think that's an example where that regulatory framework has incented progress across the country. We've managed to get out this very complex recovery strategy, and now we're starting to work on implementing it.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Thanks, Ms. Woodley. That would be a good case study for the report.

With respect to these performance measures, could you tell me the best possible study design that would allow us to infer the comparative effectiveness of the two types of instruments?

[Alison Woodley]

I think you need a scientist to design your study, so I don't really have an answer to that question.

Obviously a scientific approach would be good and a rigorous model of looking at the various options. Again, I think there is lots of evidence that we need both of those, at least case-study-type evidence. I don't think the data has been collated on the other, but I may be wrong. I don't know. I can't answer the question.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

That's what I wanted to ask. Has any such study been conducted? If not, how far away from this ideal design are the studies that have been conducted?