Environment Committee on May 7th, 2015

[Lawrence Toet, Conservative, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Yes.

[Darin Brecht]

For example, we sponsor a local women in outdoors program with the Manitoba Wildlife Federation. I'll speak from a corporate perspective. Women in the outdoors and specifically in hunting, fishing, camping, etc., is a very promising demographic for us. It's another way of getting families together.

It used to be traditionally a grandpa, a father, a son, an uncle. Deer hunting in my family was a male pastime. It's a way of bringing the family back together and doing something outdoors. It's as simple as that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

Thank you.

We're going to move to Mrs. Ambler for five minutes and then we'll come back to Mr. Bevington.

Mrs. Ambler.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you again to our witnesses.

Mr. Tramburg, I'd like to ask you about Cabela's expansion into Canada. In particular, can you tell us why the company decided to expand into Canada? And what are some of the significant differences between the U.S. market and the Canadian market?

[John Tramburg]

They are very good questions, so thank you.

As we began to expand within our U.S. presence, we began building stores across the border. One that comes to mind is the one in Grand Forks, North Dakota, which is only a quick two hours from Winnipeg. We quickly began to realize that a variety of Canadians were crossing the border to shop in our U.S. locations.

Back in 2006 and 2007 we began to further understand this and we really tried to glean some knowledge about what they were shopping and looking for. We came to realize that traditionally a person in the outdoors has predominantly the same needs, wants, and desires, regardless of where they live, with some exceptions that I'll speak to shortly. That really was the spark that prompted the expansion into Canada, certainly with the opening of our locations in Winnipeg, then Edmonton and so on.

Specifically to the Canadian market, we segment our customer base into a number of profiles. One that we've actually added to those is based on the Canadian consumer, and Darin could speak to this as well. This is a customer profile that traditionally stems from everyone's heritage, which means that they're buying product, whether traps or hunting gear, that extends well beyond being for a pastime to fulfilling a physical need to sustain a lifestyle. We have a variety of customers who travel down from the Northwest Territories, as an example, to visit our locations a couple of times each year. They buy a significant amount of outdoor equipment simply because their needs extend beyond equipping them for recreation to physically maintaining their lifestyle and their heritage through this merchandise.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

I like to hear that. Thank you. I'm looking at your online web page right now, and you have a “family great outdoors days, our largest sale of the season”. We were talking about how families and youth and women are now taking up hunting and trapping.

So before I get on to my next serious question, I am curious: what's your best selling item today in Canada, and is it related to Mother's Day or turkey hunting season? I want a sneak preview of what I might be getting as a gift from my children on Sunday.

[Darin Brecht]

It's a pink camo vest.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

It's a pink camo vest? That's perfect. It's my colour.

It was a serious question. What is your top selling item in Canada?

[John Tramburg]

You'd be surprised, but of all things, water, propane, and some types of ammunition sell very well. Traditionally it's spread across product lines. I don't know if I could speak to any specifics.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

That's good to know. So you're talking about those necessities. So even though you sell fun, it's about quality of life as well. I appreciate that.

[John Tramburg]

Well said.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

In terms of selling, you mentioned selling a link to a different time. I like the fact that you were honest with us and said the reason you're appealing to youth is that they're your customers of tomorrow. In our previous studies in this committee, we looked at Canada's national conservation plan and the fact that we need to include urban Canadians. Mr. Toet focused part of his line of questioning on this as well. I think all of us here understand that children need links to nature and their quality of life is improved if they spend time outdoors and they appreciate the history and cultural importance of our outdoors.

What do you see as obstacles to urban Canadians getting involved and interested in hunting and trapping?

[Darin Brecht]

Once again I'll speak from a personal perspective. I have three young children.

Ms. Ambler, you said it better than I could. Right now when I get them out of bed on a Saturday, they go right to their electronics. The point is our youth have too many different preoccupations right now.

I'll go back to what I alluded to earlier. Our donation policy, from a corporate perspective, is first and foremost around youth in the outdoors. There's a young anglers association, for example, in my hometown here in Winnipeg that we donate to. We donate our time, products, and services. A lot of our outfitters, as we call our employees, donate their off-work time to these associations, as many of us do. We take it very seriously.

From a personal perspective, going back to urbanization, I firmly believe that if we can get kids off the electronics and off the couch and outdoors, we're probably going to solve some of the problems we have in our society.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

Thank you, Ms. Ambler.

Mr. Bevington, please, you have five minutes.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Northwest Territories, NT]

I just quickly want to give an infomercial for the family businesses in the Northwest Territories that sell camping and hunting gear. There are Kaeser's Stores in the Northwest Territories; Weaver & Devore, which has been in business for a hundred years in Yellowknife. We have Stanton's in Inuvik. I think in some ways these people provide products to those hunters and trappers who literally don't have credit cards and can't shop online. The local providers of hunting products are very important to us as well. Sometimes you wonder what's going to happen to those people when those stores can't afford to keep those products in because everything's being done online and the people who really are subsistence hunters and trappers don't have access to that.

So I hope that Cabela's recognizes the importance of that. You understand that hunting and trapping is a family business in the Northwest Territories. People do that. My favourite image of a person is somebody on a little bicycle on a back road in my hometown, with a .22 on their back and a packsack that they put the chickens in that they shoot. You can be sure that fellow there is actually going to eat those chickens that night, because that's what he does.

Many markets are perhaps not to be handled through online merchandising in the Northwest Territories, and I don't see how Cabela's is going to help those groups as much as they're going to take over the industry.

I'll get back to environmental issues now, because I'm tired of infomercials, and I'll speak to GNWT. When we talk about climate change, and we talk about greening up, Dr. Gunn identified the serious problems of changing weather conditions in the fall, freezing rain that prevents animals from getting hold of the feed that they require from the barren grounds. She talked about the changes in temperature creating situations where bugs are entering into the cycle earlier and upsetting the birthing, the calving of the caribou.

Could you talk to us about the whole variety of issues that come in when climate changes? Having lived in the north all my life, I know very well what's happened to the climate. So let's not start with the climate not changing, but let's talk about the actual impacts of changing climate on the animals.

[Lynda Yonge]

Thank you, Mr. Bevington.

We're certainly not in any way suggesting that climate change isn't a major factor here. It is. We are seeing changes. We don't know what the long-term effects of those changes will be. We're monitoring that, but we're not yet in a position to be able to say what they will be. There are lots of changes. You talked about the raining and freezing we're seeing in some years, and in the far north, that's a problem particularly for Peary caribou and Dolphin and Union caribou, because they're not able to get at their food. That's happened several times in the past. It looks as though it may happen more frequently, and that's an issue. Certainly bug harassment has always been an issue for barren-ground caribou and that's one of the reasons their behaviour is the way it is when they do their migrations.

It has been suggested that in some areas, bug harassment may increase and may cause problems. So it's something we're aware of and we're monitoring, but at this point it's not really clear-cut what those changes are going to be. I think some will be negative. Some will possibly be positive, but certainly there is change.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Northwest Territories, NT]

Thank you for that. I just wanted to clarify that for the record here. This committee has sometimes avoided the discussion of climate change, but I think it's a very relevant discussion for the environment committee, and I'm glad to have any opportunity to point to it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Harold Albrecht]

Mr. Bevington, your time is up. You are waxing very eloquent, but your time is up.

We'll move to Ms. Leslie.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

I would like to get back to the question about the federal role here. What will we end up with in the report from the committee? What will we as federal legislators report back?

Ms. Yonge, you started to get to somewhere I was hoping to go when you talked about habitat loss not being a big issue in the north. A lot of the federal funding, as you pointed out, has to do with habitat loss, so you are not able to tap into that. Then you started to touch on polar bears.

That's actually what I am looking for: what do you need? Is it access to funding for research? Is it research? Is it that we should stop talking about habitat loss in the north and start talking about other issues? That's exactly what I want to hear. I'll turn it back over to the three of you from the GNWT.

[Lynda Yonge]

It's assistance with funding for research, in some cases for baseline data. We are a really big territory. We do have a research program in place, but it's difficult. It is extremely expensive, because it is such a big territory. In some cases, we have a hard time getting funding even just to get baseline data so that we can monitor what's happening. Money for continuing to monitor would be really helpful.

It's not so much for research itself, because we do have researchers here, and we work with our comanagement partners here. We do have four settled land claim agreements. We have co-management boards set up in those areas that set our research priorities. They tend to be underfunded with respect to the work they can do with wildlife. Getting access to funding so that research could be done by the comanagement boards and the government here would be really helpful to us.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Thanks. This is helpful.

Tell me a bit more about baseline data. Are we talking about specific animals, or the condition of lakes and rivers? What are you talking about?

[Lynda Yonge]

One of the areas that are most expensive for us and one in which we certainly need data is polar bears. The federal government has worked closely with us on polar bears, but we need funding to continue that work. Caribou work is extremely expensive, so we need things like funding and assistance with information to see what's happening on the land with respect to development. We have only very recently, with devolution, taken over responsibility for land management. Assistance with being able to get good information on what has actually happened on the land with respect to habitat change would also be really helpful.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Thanks. Can you expand on monitoring?

[Lynda Yonge]

We do separate research, which is going out and getting new information and monitoring populations. Every three years we monitor the population of our caribou herds. This means doing aerial surveys, which are extremely expensive. For monitoring populations of polar bears, we go out and do mark-and-recapture studies to see how those populations are doing so we can see if there are trends there. That's what I mean by population monitoring.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

When it comes to that baseline data gathering and monitoring populations, can you describe for us the status of that right now when you are doing it?

What gaps are there? Is it just full-on that you can't cover the land, or that you are not doing it as often as you'd like to, or that it is not being done at all?