Thank you for the question.
I have been working on caribou for nine years now. I will give you an example of the work the provincial government has done. In 2011, it released an action plan for the most at-risk caribou in Manitoba, which are those on the Ontario border. It was put out as a draft in 2011; now it is 2016, and we have never seen the updated version of it. The federal Species at Risk Act said that caribou were supposed to have federal recovery strategies in place years ago. We had to bring legal action to the federal government, through the Wilderness Committee and Ecojustice. We got them to improve their recovery strategies from what was put in place, but a lot of what happened federally was that it was deferred to the province.
The simple timelines the province has put forward.... Even though we have an Endangered Species Act in the province, there is a caveat that says the minister can decide otherwise, so there are no real legal teeth to hold the province to account. What we find with the Species at Risk Act—and this goes across caribou and all species; on the west coast, orcas are a really important one that we are working on—is that the science coming from the provinces that the federal government accepts is often being assembled with industry, and the socio-economic decisions are getting mixed into that science before it even gets to the federal government.
Of course, we know that socio-economic considerations are going to drive development decisions and conservation decisions, but we need to see the science and the proper plans put forward, and then be able to say, publicly, as a society, “Can we afford to save this species?” When we have that conversation in public, more people understand the state we are in and the number of species that we are driving to this place.
The answer to your question is that the Province of Manitoba has not done enough to look after woodland caribou in Manitoba.