Evidence of meeting #16 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 42nd Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was land.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Senior Program Director, Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada
They had to roam quite large surface areas before they could find what they were looking for.
Liberal
NDP
Wayne Stetski NDP Kootenay—Columbia, BC
Thank you.
First of all, for Eric of the Western Canada Wilderness Committee, I have a request. Could you send to the committee copies of “Keep it Wild! A Conservation Vision for Manitoba”, your new publication?
Madam Chair, how many would we like?
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte
Yes, we need that. Could we get it electronically? That would be great.
Manitoba Campaign Director, Western Canada Wilderness Committee
Yes, that's fine. It might be emailed out to you at 3 p.m. Manitoba time. You're on the list.
NDP
Wayne Stetski NDP Kootenay—Columbia, BC
Mr. Woodley, I want to give the last opportunity to you. I'm already picturing the “sustainability means nature first” T-shirts, which I'm sure are coming shortly.
NDP
Wayne Stetski NDP Kootenay—Columbia, BC
When we look at other countries around the world, where does Canada rank currently in terms of its conservation efforts? If we're not at the top, how do we move up the scale?
Co-Chair, WCPA-SSC Joint Task Force on Biodiversity and Protected Areas, International Union for the Conservation of Nature
There is something called the state of Canada's environment report, which was done by Environment Canada in collaboration with the provincial and territorial governments. It basically shows that all of the major ecosystem types in Canada have significant problems. We have a level of species at risk in Canada that is equal to anywhere else in the world. It's as bad as the global average, and it's as bad as Australia or the United States, so although we have the idea here that we're clean and green, we have significant problems.
There are great examples—and we've heard many of them today—of real sustainable actions, such as ranching. I'm a huge fan of conservation ranching, which is done really well, but overall, the state of grasslands in Canada is going down.
There are many solutions. One of them is to look at all the Aichi targets. Target 1 is to look at subsidies, for example, but when Canada reinterpreted the Aichi targets, we left that one out, which I think is unfortunate and maybe should be revisited.
I think the bottom line is that systematic conservation planning is a discipline. It's not well used here. I think that with federal leadership we can use it to generate a real bringing together of all interests so that we can move to sustainability—and I'd like to order a T-shirt.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte
I want to thank all our witnesses today. It's excellent to hear the diverse positions. You've all had very unique and diverse positions that were presented to us today, and to have the chance to ask these questions with everyone in these different contexts was really nice.
Also, your patience was great while we were trying to get all the video conferences up and going. Thank you for hanging in there with us. We really appreciate it.
We have done really well with a very packed agenda. We've landed right on time, so I will end the meeting. Thank you so much, everybody.
The meeting is adjourned.
