Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee.
My notes are before you. I appreciate the opportunity to offer some observations based on our experience with North American conservation programs over the past 70 years. Delta Waterfowl is an international charity. We're dedicated to the conservation and sustainable use of waterfowl.
What can we learn from ducks as we design the national conservation program? As it turns out, a great deal. Ducks are one of the best-studied animals in the world, and habitat programs aimed at their conservation and management have been the best-funded conservation programs of any within wildlife conservation, mainly because of the contributions of hunters through their licence fees and significant philanthropic support.
The waterfowl community has spent a lot of money and tried a lot of approaches to enhance waterfowl populations, so in combination with the well-developed understanding of duck biology, there are some important lessons to learn.
Ducks need both wetlands and upland cover within which to nest. Their success nesting and brood-rearing on the prairies accounts for the vast majority, about 80%, of the fluctuations in their population. The vast majority of their important nesting grounds are privately owned and dedicated to agricultural use. As such, they provide a superb metric for the health of the working landscape in Canada.
Broadly stated, as you consider the national conservation program, there are three policy tools available to governments: land use regulation, habitat purchase, and incentives. These are not mutually exclusive, but let's have a look at them in turn.
With regard to land use regulation, it's a common first reaction for governments to try to achieve conservation objectives through land use regulation prohibiting habitat destruction. Statutory prohibitions create the appearance of both political action and, since the costs of enforcement are poorly defined, a low-cost solution. That is why prohibitions have been a common feature of such legislation as the Migratory Birds Convention Act, the Fisheries Act, and provincial water legislation.
Land use regulations to address waterfowl population declines during the drought of the 1930s were introduced at both the federal and provincial level. The federal prohibitions were introduced after the Migratory Birds Convention was entered into by Canada with the United States, and then Mexico. The provincial prohibitions and permitting provisions relating to wetland drainage were introduced shortly thereafter.
None of these prohibitions, which have been in place for decades, have had any perceptible effect on wetland drainage or on waterfowl populations. Why is that? It's mostly because enforcing regulatory prohibitions on private land without any compensation amounts to a regulatory taking—a form of expropriation. They are morally unenforceable, so they have had little effect on species conservation, whether it be fisheries, species at risk, or waterfowl.
Perhaps that's why the recent debates over reforms to legislation governing fisheries and navigable waters have been heavy on process and devoid of any evidence of substantive ecological effect. This type of regulation simply doesn't work.
Another factor is resources and expertise. Over the past 30 years, there's been a transfer of biological expertise from government to the resource development industry and consulting sector. The regulators now, at many levels, lack the resources for enforcement and efficient administration of the myriad approvals required to avoid the punitive prohibitions in regulatory legislation.
On the federal front, this is exacerbated by a narrow constitutional position, which of necessity has to tread lightly given the broad reach of provincial powers over property rights.
Habitat purchase is the second tool we wanted to review. The main intervention we've tried more recently is to buy land to set aside for conservation. It has been used by governments and has been a central mission of our friends at the table this morning.
Habitat purchase has been a primary focus of waterfowl management efforts in Canada since 1986. We've spent about $2 billion, and we've purchased something in the neighbourhood of 400,000 acres within a prairie landscape of tens of millions of acres—less than 1% of the land base, and too small to have any effect on the rate of wetland loss or on waterfowl populations.
Waterfowl hatch rates have not improved significantly. In fact, the most recent comprehensive data we have shows a 5% loss of wetlands during the first 15 years of this program. Even the more focused target areas showed no significant difference in loss rates.
Despite the small footprint we have effected, we have consistently generated a negative reaction to these purchases from local communities. It is evident from this experience that there is neither enough money nor political support for habitat acquisition on an ecologically significant scale.
Finally, in our view, the best chance to achieve significant conservation benefits is through incentives, leaving the land in the hands of the landowner and paying them to produce the public goods we want, such as wildlife and clean water. The most successful conservation program in memory has been the conservation chapter within the U.S. Farm Bill south of the border, which paid landowners to set aside habitat areas.
The next question is, who is in the best position to deliver them? The Canadian approach thus far has been largely limited to delivery by government agencies and NGOs. I believe the administrative capacity to deliver broad-scale conservation incentive programs already exists in local governments and crop insurance agencies, for example. Given the provincial dominance in this field, they vary province by province. In Canada we have not yet fully explored the potential to engage these organizations in this new role of delivering conservation incentives.
Seeing the disappointing results of land use regulations and habitat purchase, Delta sat down at the table with farm organizations several years ago to design a conservation program for the working landscape. The result was our alternative land use services concept, ALUS, which is incentive-based and delivered with the help of local governments, crop insurance agencies and, of course, landowners. In testimony to your committee from our farm organizations, you have heard reference to this concept since they contributed significantly to its development.
ALUS requires a co-payment by the producers and provides an annual payment to retain land in conservation use. More importantly, it engages the farmer in a conversation about where best to grow crops and where best to grow wildlife on their lands. Our evaluations have been very positive. We've seen 70% rates of participation, with large numbers of participants who have never participated in a conservation program before. Administrative costs have been low because of participation by organizations with existing administrative capacity, such as local governments and crop insurance corporations. ALUS has even attracted cash contributions from local municipalities, a first for conservation in Canada.
The opportunity with ALUS is that it's a politically sustainable, private-public partnership to deliver conservation incentives analogous to, and every bit as important as, the new generation of infrastructure programs that attract support from all three levels of government and the private sector.
Where will the money come from during this time of global fiscal restraint? The beauty of the ALUS model is that it aggregates incentives from a variety of private and public sources. Contributions have come from federal and provincial departments of environment and agriculture, from local governments, from resource developers, and duck hunters.
An example is the legislation passed by the Province of Alberta to address greenhouse gas emissions. Since 2007, $105 million has been paid to Alberta farmers for conservation tillage practices alone, and more practices are being approved with direct habitat benefits, such as wetland conservation and perennial cover. These will have large benefits for wildlife, while sequestering carbon. There are similar mitigation funds available for wetlands and fisheries.
Some of our ALUS communities are raising funds from local residents to support local conservation efforts and we are developing a structure for ecological credits to support these conservation incentives. ALUS creates the opportunity for a direct connection between resource developers and the private landowner community. There is an opportunity to bring together hunters, farmers, and rural communities to integrate conservation into mainstream delivery mechanisms and make wildlife habitat an asset instead of a liability.
Mr. Chairman, my specific responses to the five questions of your committee are in my brief at page 4. I would focus on one, and that's question (e): “When it comes to recovering a species, how do best management practices and stewardship initiatives compare to prescriptive, government-mandated measures?” There's no question in our minds that based on the experience with waterfowl conservation, incentive-based approaches have created measurable results and land use regulations have not.
Thank you very much. I'd be pleased to answer any questions.