Evidence of meeting #75 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 sara.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Associate Professor, Department of Botany, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
Yes, he was.
Conservative
Associate Professor, Department of Botany, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
No, he's not. He's no longer a member of the committee. Dr. Marty Leonard is the chair.
Conservative
Stephen Woodworth Conservative Kitchener Centre, ON
Thank you.
At the time when he was the chair, Professor Hutchings came to the committee and made some recommendations for the amendment of SARA. Were you aware of those by chance?
Associate Professor, Department of Botany, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
I'm not aware of specific recommendations for amendments that he would have made.
Conservative
Stephen Woodworth Conservative Kitchener Centre, ON
Has COSEWIC, at any time since 2009, adopted any formal position to.... I want to use words like “recoil” or “recant” but I don't really mean it that negatively. Have they adopted any formal position to say that the amendments that Professor Hutchings proposed to SARA in 2009 should no longer be sought or found desirable?
Associate Professor, Department of Botany, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
I do recall COSEWIC having discussions about providing input about possible amendments to SARA, but I have to confess that I don't recall what it is that we concluded. However, from my conversations with scientists at that time and since then, I would say that most of us are of the view that SARA is so young that the implementation has not been fully achieved at this point, and therefore the success of SARA and the potential weaknesses of SARA remain to be understood.
I think I can speak for a majority of scientists involved with SARA in stating the opinion that we don't yet know whether or not SARA will be effective because it hasn't been fully implemented to date.
Conservative
Stephen Woodworth Conservative Kitchener Centre, ON
So are you disagreeing...well, of course, you're not familiar with what the chair of COSEWIC told us about the shortcomings of SARA in 2009. I just want to find out if COSEWIC has ever actually said that they were withdrawing those recommendations for amendments to SARA. Are you aware of any such withdrawal?
Associate Professor, Department of Botany, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
My answer is no.
Conservative
Stephen Woodworth Conservative Kitchener Centre, ON
Your answer is no? Good. Thank you. Somehow the audio cut out for a moment.
I must say that it certainly discloses a distinct scientific viewpoint to say that 10 years or more is still young. From the point of view of many in the environmental community who I heard from in 2009, it was urgent that there be amendments made to SARA in order to improve its efficacy.
I want to pass on to something else that I'm really quite interested in, in relation to Dr. Otto.
Dr. Otto, we are told that you co-wrote a report in 2010 for the Council of Canadian Academies identifying the problem of species information being “trapped in cabinets rather than ranging free and accessible on the web”. It reminded me of a recommendation, which I was quite excited by, from a fellow on the east coast, who suggested that perhaps we should consider setting up in Canada a kind of Wikipedia system of habitat conservation, so that those with habitat information all across the country, which is segmented and in cabinets, could input that.
I realize there are challenges in terms of ensuring that the information is accurate, but I'd be very interested in hearing your comments on that.
Director, Biodiversity Research Centre, Department of Zoology, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
Since we wrote that report, I'm pleased to say that a lot of our efforts at the Biodiversity Research Centre and the associated Beaty Biodiversity Museum have been exactly that—to make our data publicly accessible. We're in the midst of that databasing effort.
I think that if the resources were put forward to pool those efforts across Canada, that would be a fantastic way forward. But I also have to say that knowledge is only one missing element, and that we also need to act. I want to follow up a little bit about—
Conservative
Stephen Woodworth Conservative Kitchener Centre, ON
Could I just stop you there for a moment, please, because we have such limited time?
Director, Biodiversity Research Centre, Department of Zoology, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
Yes.
Conservative
Stephen Woodworth Conservative Kitchener Centre, ON
I understand that there are other things you want to talk about, but I have to kind of stick to the information I need, and I am interested in the knowledge aspect of this. I wonder if I could just ask you a little more about that.
Did you know that the Canadian government, including the environment department, is working on a system of categorizing information, including environmental information, with geospatial coordinates?
Director, Biodiversity Research Centre, Department of Zoology, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
Yes, and there are provincial efforts along the same direction as well.
Conservative
Stephen Woodworth Conservative Kitchener Centre, ON
Will that help this kind of project that I'm raising with you in terms of a kind of Wikipedia of habitat information?
Director, Biodiversity Research Centre, Department of Zoology, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
Yes, and some of that is already available. You can go online into global databases such as GBIF to find out exactly where species have been recorded.
Mind you, the efforts are very biased to where people are looking, and that tends to be in the highly populated areas, so we don't have very good coverage across Canada.
Conservative
Stephen Woodworth Conservative Kitchener Centre, ON
My hope is that this will change with the efforts that our government is making.
Thank you.
NDP
François Choquette NDP Drummond, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank the witnesses for their participation in today's meeting. It is really interesting and nice to meet industry people and scientists. We truly must focus on what the federal government can do to improve habitat conservation.
My question is for Dr. Otto.
The 2010 report by the Expert Panel on Biodiversity Science states that “biodiversity is being lost...at a rate unprecedented in human history”.
You talked about climate change, among other things. What are the consequences of global warming on the planet and biodiversity and, what should the federal government be doing to better fight climate change, which is disastrous for habitat conservation?
Director, Biodiversity Research Centre, Department of Zoology, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
We are certainly in the midst of one of the most major extinctions of life on this planet, and at the rate it's going now, we will soon become, I believe, the most important extinction event.
I have to say that I am not a climate scientist, but the experts who I have consulted on this issue are not very optimistic about us being easily able to reverse the effects on global climate. The CFC issue was relatively easy in terms of protecting the ozone layer and reversing the ozone hole. I hope that scientists will figure out a way to return temperatures to their pre-human activity levels. I don't see how it's going to happen. I think that even in the best-case scenarios we're looking at very large temperature increases, increasing variability in temperature, increasing storm activity, and increasing typhoons. These are going to devastate both the human populations and the natural communities that surround us. I wish I had that answer.
NDP
François Choquette NDP Drummond, QC
Dr. Whitton, do you have any recommendations for the committee with regard to possible federal policies on fighting climate change?
Associate Professor, Department of Botany, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
What I would add is that the devil is in the details. There's carbon output into the atmosphere, and there's carbon sequestration. So there are essentially two places in the process where we can have impact, and I'll go to an example that was previously mentioned in a question about, for example, switching an environment from a bog and through mitigation ending up with a forest.
One of the things we understand about bogs is that they're fantastic places for carbon sequestration, because once they capture carbon, they degrade very slowly. So even though they're a small area globally, they actually capture a disproportionate fraction of carbon. So those kinds of understandings about the process of sequestration and what kinds of habitat management strategies will favour enhanced sequestration or lower the rate of release are critically important. That's the sort of place where I would say the devil is in the details. There's a lot we can do on the sequestration side in addition to measures that would help limit release of carbon into the atmosphere.
NDP
François Choquette NDP Drummond, QC
Thank you very much.
With regard to the famous Species at Risk Act, a number of witnesses have told us—and it was Dr. Otto, I believe, who mentioned it earlier—that it is relatively new and still has not been properly applied. Many witnesses said it would be best to start by applying it properly before amending it.
Do you agree, Dr. Whitton?
Associate Professor, Department of Botany, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
I would. One of the steps in SARA is to finalize action plans that describe the specific activities that we need to take to recover species. So far, for the close to 400 species that will require action plans, we have seven. So we have relatively little experience with how these actions are going to improve the fate of species at risk.
It's for that reason, not because we have only had 10 years, but because some of the steps in implementation have had only a very small number of years—two or three years, in fact, for most of these species—in which to actually take SARA-determined actions on the ground. So it is very early.
