Environment Committee on June 17th, 2019

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to our environment committee hearings today.

The idea for today was to have a couple of panels to talk about the recent report that we saw on the biodiversity loss we're facing worldwide.

Thank you to each of our panellists for joining us today. We are expecting votes some time during this period. We don't know exactly how the afternoon is going to unfold. The way the process works is that we will have opening statements from each of our three panellists. We're hoping for opening comments in the seven-minute range and then we can get into questions and answers.

I use a handy card system. The yellow card means there is one minute left in the time allocated, and the red card means it's time to move on to the next person, but don't stop mid-sentence: just wrap up whatever it is you're saying and finish the thought. We're a fairly amicable group.

On our first panel, we have Dr. Kai Chan, Professor and an author of the report we'll be talking about today. We also have Dr. Jeremy Kerr, Professor of Biology, Faculty of Science, from the University of Ottawa. By video conference, from the Nature Conservancy of Canada, we have Dan Kraus, Senior Conservation Biologist.

Thank you to the three of you for being here.

Dr. Chan, we'll start with you.

[Professor Kai Chan, Professor, Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, University of British Columbia, As an Individual]

Thank you very much for having me here. It's a great pleasure to have this opportunity to speak.

I've provided a presentation that has a lot more detail for your records. I'm not going to go through most of those slides today, but rather jump straight to the highlights that are not already featured quite clearly, but exhaustively, in the summary for policy-makers.

That presentation and the summary for policy-makers highlight the substantial declines in nature and nature's contributions to people, including cleaning our air, cleaning water, mitigating floods, helping to grow our food, etc., and how that's undermining our collective global ability to meet crucial societal goals for nature and sustainability.

That basically sums up the first half of the assessment, and I'm now going to move on to other aspects.

One key point that isn't well understood about this assessment is that the chapter that I had the pleasure to lead was actually the first of its kind, thanks to the scoping document, which I can't take any credit for. That scoping document laid out an exhaustive pathway and scenario analysis with linked literature reviews. The way that we implemented this was via pathways and scenarios. We examined all available literature about all pathways towards achieving future goals for sustainability and nature according to six different, linked global goals, including feeding humanity, resourcing cities, maintaining fresh water, protecting the oceans, maintaining biodiversity on land, and mitigating climate goals while still providing energy for humanity.

This kind of an analysis had never been done on this scale before. It was absolutely crucial in enabling us to make statements about what was likely needed to achieve the kind of world that was envisioned in the Rio+20 process. Never before have we had that kind of an analysis. In previous assessments, the solutions part of the assessment was really based on opinion that was based on an analysis of the problem rather than an analysis of the solution.

What that meant was that in Paris, when we negotiated the text for the best global assessment, when nations were requesting changes in our proposed solutions, in many cases we had to say, “Actually, that's not what we found. That is not consistent with the evidence about what would achieve this transformation towards sustainability.”

Now, that scenario analysis and the literature reviews of 13 different aspects we called.... There are five levers, including governance interventions. There are eight different leverage points, meaning in global systems where you would intervene, like total consumption and waste. I'm going to sum that up in terms of just five key points, without which, based on our analyses, we will almost certainly not achieve the kind of transformational change the report says we need to achieve our global goals for sustainability.

The first of these is about going carbon neutral, and incentivizing and enabling businesses and individuals to do the same. Leaders in businesses are already doing this. Some governments are committing to it. Most recently the U.K. has committed to doing this by 2050. It's possible to make this normal, and eventually, perhaps not in that distant a future, mandatory. In that way, we can reshape what is seen as good corporate citizenship or individual citizenship by committing to no longer being part of the climate problem. Clearly, that's not going to happen immediately. It is the kind of aspirational goal the U.K. has committed to achieve by 2050.

The second part is to make it easy, enjoyable, inexpensive and then eventually normal to be earth positive. What I mean by “earth positive” is having net positive effects on all biodiversity and ecosystem services—all of nature and what nature does for people. The global assessment is very clear that as far as environmental problems go, climate change is large, yet only the tip of the iceberg. What that means is that if we don't attend to climate change—and this came straight out of our analysis—along with other important environmental problems, like land-use change, over-harvesting, pollution, and invasive species, then we're likely to undermine those other problems and make life more difficult in many different ways and places.

Now, it is not yet possible for individuals and organizations to have net positive impacts on the planet, but this can follow the kinds of developments we've seen in climate change in terms of carbon offsets, learning from some of the mistakes that have happened. I have a lot more to say on that, but I'm going to save that for later.

The third point is to make all subsidies and incentives work for the transformation and not against it. One of the key things that was in the global assessment, including in the summary for policy-makers, which was extremely contentious, was about the need to overcome in this transformation opposition from vested interests, right? We did not beat around the bush in terms of what those vested interests were and what that opposition looks like.

It looks like folks are receiving a lot of funding through subsidies, which are understandably but perversely enhancing production at the expense of the environment. It's unavoidable this should happen unless we specifically tailor those subsidies to encouraging the kind of production that enhances stewardship. Unfortunately, currently in Canada, most subsidies are not structured that way, such that we have a lot of money being spent to enhance production on the one hand, and then a lot of money on the other hand going to counteract the negative effects of that production. We can streamline those two processes by dovetailing them.

In particular, in terms of fossil fuels, this means moving those subsidies away from production for fossil fuels and towards transition—towards clean energy. That should include, of course, retooling programs for workers.

The fourth is about decision-making itself in environmental management and resource management to make it precautionary, adaptive, inclusive and integrative across sectors and jurisdictions.

This means on the one hand, for example, restricting chemicals—this is a precautionary measure—until there is sufficient reason to believe that they are safe for people and the environment. This would follow from the REACH legislation in the European Union. A second point would be to govern through transparent and participatory processes that involve all major stakeholder groups—and also rights holders—without privileging special interests through special or secret access, as is currently quite normal in all jurisdictions in Canada. The third is to zone in an adaptive way, recognizing that the world is a changing place. We can no longer zone based on 100-year flood plains, for example, when we see 100-year floods occurring in many jurisdictions three times a decade. We have to plan as if surprises will come.

The fifth and final one, which is clearly within your mandate, is to strengthen environmental laws and policies and to ensure the consistent enforcement of all laws and policies—not only the environmental ones—at home and abroad. This is crucial for so many reasons.

It has become normal, in that our economy is founded upon a 19th century mentality, to expand our economies broadly. This was appropriate in the 19th century. It is less appropriate now, when we have quite a crowded world, where all of our productive and extractive activities have delayed and diffuse but large and crucial negative impacts on nature, and also on people as mediated by nature.

Now, a key part of this, as I pointed to, is the need to do this both at home and abroad, so it requires action in terms of diplomacy, because what we have currently is a kind of global race to the bottom. It is undermining our ability to protect the environment in place, because producers can rightly say that if they don't produce these products in these ways that have negative impacts on the environment, then that will happen elsewhere and Canadian jobs will be lost. There is a lot that we can do locally, but in the long term it's going to require that international diplomacy.

If we managed to succeed in that task, it would constitute the global sustainable economy, and all five of those changes together would help to realize that world envisioned in the Rio+20 process, which is also entrenched in the global assessment and the achievement of all of the nature-based goals for sustainability—albeit late—and a sustainable world more broadly.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

Thank you for those opening comments.

I'll move now to you, Mr. Kerr, if you'd like to take your time for seven minutes or so.

[Professor Jeremy Kerr, Professor of Biology, Faculty of Science, University of Ottawa, As an Individual]

Thank you very much.

I'd like to thank the chair, the vice-chair and all members for being here today, and for your continued work on conservation issues and sustainable development. I am really grateful to every one of you for the fact that you actually care enough to be doing this work. Thank you.

I will begin my comments today by using a guiding quote from Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac, and that is very simply, “To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.”

I think we are at the point now where the data demonstrate very clearly to us that we have not been very intelligent tinkers. We are losing species at a ferocious pace, and more than that, we are losing populations of species at an even greater pace.

In new data that emerged in 2018, we saw that, based on analyses of 4,005 vertebrate populations that have been monitored more or less continuously since 1970, those populations have declined by between 50% and 67%, over that time period. This dreadful conclusion comes from the Living Planet Index, and it tells us that our living planet is considerably less alive than it was when I was a child, when these measurements first began.

Trends of this kind figure prominently in the extraordinary global summary that IPBES has provided. That report rounds up trends from thousands of different primary research studies.

I'd like to comment on a few of those primary research studies, as we have an author of the report here, and I don't think I need to summarize it for you. He has already done that very ably.

The first point I'd like to make is that some have laboured under the mistaken belief that rates of biodiversity decline in other places, such as the tropics, are higher than they are here. This view is incorrect and indefensible, based on quantitative analysis. There are far more species in the tropics than here, but if we measure rates of species decline in Canada relative to numbers of species that actually live here, we find that those rates are pretty similar, and sometimes even higher than global averages of the pace at which things are disappearing in other parts of the world.

For example, 32% of amphibian species globally are at risk of extinction, but 44% of amphibian species in Canada are at risk; 19% of reptile species globally are at risk of extinction, but that number is 65% among Canadian reptile species. Numbers vary from group to group, but the general message is rather simple: We have nothing we can be sanguine about, in terms of the proximity and importance of these threats to the biodiversity we have inherited from our ancestors.

A major reason that such a large proportion of species here is at risk is that they, like most people, are pressed up against our southern border. It is in these southern areas of Canada that land-use changes are most intensive and extensive, largely for agriculture, but also for urban areas and resource extraction.

We have hollowed out habitat in many of Canada's biodiversity hot spots and introduced land-use practices that are incompatible with life for many of those species. The policy whiplash created by governments, immediately upon election, undoing their predecessors' work, is not helping either.

Yet there is cause for hope. Bright spots for habitat in Canada's growing protected areas network, and in traditional territories of indigenous peoples, provide vital habitat for many species, even when there are neighbouring intensive and competing land uses, as in southern Ontario.

I did my Ph.D. in some of those places, such as Pinery Provincial Park on the shores of Lake Huron. It is an area surrounded by extremely intensive agriculture, yet this very small park, which may be only seven or eight square kilometres in size, provides a home for many species at risk. It's a biodiversity hot spot here, at a national scale. It gives us an undeniable example that restoring habitat in even small areas can exert disproportionate benefits in landscapes where habitat loss and pesticide use are pervasive.

To be clear, bigger parks are better, but small parks can be beautiful and vital, too. Yet conservation strategies cannot be based on anecdotes, no matter how charming I find them.

If we examine the economic return from agricultural land uses, for instance, the Statistics Canada census of agriculture data has demonstrated that producers receive little return for their hard work in some areas.

If we then line up those areas with places where there is the most potential for recovering populations of Canadian species at risk, we can work out solutions for prioritizing areas where conservation might proceed relatively effectively and relatively inexpensively. We published a map showing an example of this in 2017 in Conservation Biology, an instance of systematic conservation planning that figures very prominently in the target 1 work that so many people are contributing to.

Another major conclusion of that paper is that, in terms of the economic costs of conservation action, it is better to proceed immediately than to refine the plan somewhat but delay it by several years while refining it. Waiting makes the costs much higher than doing it now, even if the immediate plan needs to be refined while it is in motion. Fast action is cheaper, as well as more effective.

In Canada, it's not just biodiversity that's being lost. We're also losing species that do things for us and that provide us with ecosystem services we cannot live without. Pollinators are one such group. We showed that pollinator assemblages, as exemplified by butterflies, are undergoing a process of biotic homogenization. Rare species are disappearing from many areas, and replacing them are common weedy species. The consequence is that, from place to place, groups of species look more and more like each other. The distinctiveness of biological regions is declining.

I have not yet discussed climate change. As you all know, and as the evidence unequivocally demonstrates, human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases from all sources today are the major cause of present-day climate change. We have the power to intervene to reduce those emissions and keep our climate from warming beyond dangerous thresholds—and I mean dangerous for the continued stability of human civilization—as well as the essential and allied problems we face around biodiversity conservation.

I must emphasize that we now have strong evidence that climate change is contributing to extinction risks among groups of species we are not able to do without. In particular, I'll talk about pollinators where we've shown—along with many other researchers around the world—that climate change is contributing to a loss of pollinator biodiversity that is now detectable at continental scales across Europe and North America. Indeed, many of these species are effectively trapped in a climate vise, and their ranges are being crushed by climate change—they're disappearing. That means their capacity to provide these ecosystem with services that determine whether we get to have things like crops—in 75% of cases—is disappearing as well. This is a most unhelpful development and something we should be very concerned about.

We do not have the luxury of time to vacillate about whether we act on climate change. We could have done that a little bit in the 1980s, given that scientific uncertainty could questionably have justified prolonged study rather than immediate action. At this point, however, failing to address climate change and its many impacts, including ecological impacts, is a game of roulette with a loaded pistol.

Achieving connectivity in landscapes to enable species to disperse elsewhere or find refuge from extreme weather is part of what we must address in Canada. This thinking was also clearly front of mind in testimony that you heard in this committee recently on a protected area strategy. Policies for addressing climate change exist and have been tried—they work. They can be refined as we learn new things. They don't impose impractical economic costs; there is no conflict between conservation and the economy.

Finally, I'm going to close on a few simple notes, paraphrasing an indigenous saying: We do not inherit the world from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children. As scientists, we know there are real impacts from failures to take effective conservation action. But, as parents and as citizens, we feel this need more acutely because we see what is coming; we measure it as part of our day jobs.

The basic information I've discussed here today, as published in the IPBES report, isn't new, but has many refinements and improvements. That science was available to all of us 30 years ago.

Ever since, the basic messages that have been conveyed from the scientific community to policy-makers have remained largely consistent—again, with important revisions and refinements. However, the time has now come for us to proceed with effective policy action to conserve biological diversity. The reasons to do so are easily found when we go home to our families at night and remember that we have borrowed the world from our children. We did not inherit it from our parents.

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

Great. Thank you.

Now by video conference, we'll going to Mr. Kraus for his opening statements.

[Dan Kraus, Senior Conservation Biologist, National Office, Nature Conservancy of Canada]

Good afternoon.

Mr. Chair, and members of the committee, thank you for having me here to address this important topic.

I'm senior conservation biologist for the Nature Conservancy of Canada. The Nature Conservancy of Canada is our country's leading not-for-profit land conservation organization. We work to protect the most important natural areas and the species they sustain. For over 60 years, we've worked with partners to protect almost three million acres across the country. We're a proud partner of the Government of Canada through the natural heritage conservation program, which I'll touch on later. Many of our conserved areas are within your ridings—over 90% of the Canadian population lives within 100 kilometres of a Nature Conservancy of Canada property.

Dr. Chan, congratulations on your report. Thank you for bringing attention to the loss of biodiversity, both around the world and here in Canada. As Dr. Kerr said, for scientists, this is not new information. We've known that life on earth is slipping away from us, and we've known this for many generations. The impact of our human activities on other species is so widespread and lasting that scientists have referred to our current period as the “sixth extinction”. Extinction rates are now 100 to 1,000 times greater than natural historic levels and future rates are predicted to be 10,000 times greater. This is because of what we're doing.

This is affecting Canada. Despite our massive geography and our large areas of remaining wilderness, Canada has not been immune to extinction and to species loss. The Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada has assessed almost 800 species of wildlife that are at risk of being lost from our country. There are well over 1,500 other species that have not been assessed and that are at risk of being lost.

There are well-known species that have been lost from Canada. Many of you have probably heard of the great auk, last seen in Canada in 1844. The last passenger pigeon was seen in Canada in 1902. The loss of species from Canada is not history; it's happening now, it's happening across Canada and it will continue to happen without action.

As you've heard, there are many threats to our environment and to wildlife, but the biggest threat in Canada today is habitat loss. Until we solve this, we are all destined to continue to witness the loss of Canadian wildlife. Today there is simply no frontier where wildlife lives without our influence. Wildlife has been pushed to the edge as we break their habitats into smaller and smaller fragments. By protecting habitats that still exist, and by restoring those that have been damaged, it is still possible to slow, and yes, even reverse, the decline in biodiversity.

Governments play a central leadership role in this initiative. The committee's report, “Taking Action Today: Establishing Protected Areas for Canada’s Future”, was an important piece of work. It achieved all-party agreement on the importance of our natural areas and laid the groundwork for a major investment in nature in the 2018 budget—the nature fund.

The nature fund is the scale of investment needed to help turn the tide on species loss in Canada, but governments cannot do this alone. This is why the natural heritage conservation program and programs like it are part of the solution. The natural heritage conservation program leverages funds from government, matching them with private individuals, corporations and foundations.

Since it was launched in 2007, the program has conserved more than 450,000 hectares in communities across Canada. These are not just any old 450,000 hectares; these are some of the most important places to conserve biodiversity and the benefits that nature provides to people. We've protected habitat for about a third of all terrestrial and freshwater species at risk in Canada, and it's inspired gifts of land worth over $250 million from Canadians who care about nature. The program has also brought together a broad spectrum of Canadians who are united in conservation and want to make meaningful contributions to nature. The natural heritage conservation program has become a pillar in Canada's conservation solutions playbook.

We need to do more. Many Canadians think about species extinction and the extinction crisis as something that's happening somewhere else. Few Canadians know that there are over 70 species here in Canada that are more threatened than the African elephant or the giant panda. If we want to stop global extinctions, we can start by saving species at home.

There is hope. Canada has a long, proud history of global leadership in species conservation. We are a nation of spectacular, but largely unknown, stories of saving species after they had been pushed to the edge of extinction. Plains bison, swift fox, peregrine falcon, trumpeter swan and many other species were once almost gone, but as a result of the conservation efforts of past generations, they are still parts of Canada today.

We have an opportunity to build on this success. We need to build on this success. The vast majority of Canada's most critically endangered species occur in the southern geography where habitat loss has pushed them to a few locations. We can work in these “hot spots”, as Dr. Kerr called them, to help stop the loss of species, but it needs focused conservation action.

The Nature Conservancy of Canada's mission was urgent when we were founded in 1962, and it's every bit as urgent today. Canada absolutely needs to meet our global commitments and protect our share of 17% of lands and waters, but it's critical that we bring the diversity of our Canadian wildlife along with us.

As the world begins to set the stage for new conservation targets, Canada has an opportunity to show leadership in more ambitious wildlife conservation targets for 2030 and beyond. We need to embrace the opportunity that we have right now to pass on a biologically richer world to our children.

Can we promise; can we commit to leave no species behind, a commitment to zero extinction that we can start in Canada? It's a simple, clear promise and a promise that could change the world.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

Excellent. Thank you for your opening comments as well.

We're going to get right into our questions and answers. We will use six minutes per side.

Before we do that, I welcome Mr. Shipley and Mr. Berthold back to our table as our guests for today.

First up, we have Mr. Amos for six minutes of questions and answers.

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to our distinguished witnesses. It's very appreciated that you're here. I'm also very appreciative of the fact that you share the same passion that we all do here at the table on conservation matters.

I want to go to each of you for short responses, please. What was your reaction to our government's decision in budget 2018 to invest $1.3 billion over five years in conservation?

Mr. Chan, perhaps we could start with you.

[Prof. Kai Chan]

I was impressed. It was a really important decision to make. It's unprecedented in terms of a commitment to conservation in this country's history. That's absolutely crucial.

In my remarks, as they got compressed, I didn't focus enough on the importance of what we're already doing and the importance of continuing that and expanding upon that, which is absolutely crucial. The investment we've seen committed to and as unfolding over the coming years is a crucial part of that. It's that foundation for the transformative change that allows us to achieve our goals.

However, it's crucial to note—and it's the reason I focused my remarks on those five extra bits that are the transformative change—that just doing more of what we have already been doing and continuing to do what we've already committed to do is not enough in the coming decades. The escalation of pressures as the human enterprise expands is too much to enable basically any amount of money to solve this problem if we don't also simultaneously address the root causes of species decline. That's the structure of our economy and it's the way that we govern the economy.

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Thank you.

Professor Kerr.

[Prof. Jeremy Kerr]

That's an excellent question.

I have been watching budgets very closely for quite a while now, and budget 2018 was one of those moments when I actually stood up and cheered. I was quite jubilant. The conservation commitments in budget 2018 are extraordinary and historic.

It's all in the follow-through. We have seen instances in the past where governments have committed a lot of money to something that sounded as though it was conservation related, and we have not seen that much conservation, in practice, flow from dedicating that money to task.

In that respect, I have been very impressed with the nature of the follow-up that I have seen so far. The target 1 initiative is a careful, but also dynamic, process that appears to be achieving important targets in rapidly expanding the protected areas networks and doing so in partnership with indigenous peoples and private landowners. I don't think we can possibly recommend a process to proceed that does not do both of those things.

The fact that we see rapid progress, more than the simple budgetary commitments and statements of policy principle, is the part of this equation that most impresses me. We all have to continuously evaluate and re-evaluate what we see governments and many allied groups trying to do. However, at this point, I continue to be very optimistic that this is making a tangible and important difference to rates of extinction, to the prospects of us passing on nature undiminished to the next generation.

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Mr. Kraus, over to you.

[Dan Kraus]

I still have a book on my shelf about the endangered spaces campaign from 1988. I remember that campaign. The goal was to raise $10 million for conservation. That just reminds me that we have come a far way in terms of our commitment to protecting nature. Do we need to do more? It seems that we do. I think that the nature fund in particular, by providing an opportunity for Canadians as individuals and as corporations to match those dollars and be involved in conservation, will be part of the transformation that Dr. Chan mentioned. We need everybody to understand that nature is important in their lives and that conserving nature is something that we need to all be involved in.

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Thank you.

With my last remaining minute, I'll ask Professor Kerr, who is a former colleague at U of O—I look back on those times fondly—a question.

If there were an extra half-billion dollars unlocked in the dream world that I inhabit, where would you suggest that extra and new monies ought to be directed?

[Prof. Jeremy Kerr]

This is the kind of incredibly unfair question that really vexes scientists, because we always want to know what it is that you really care about. If you care about one thing or the other, then we can much more easily recommend a particular course of action.

There are two main things that I would strongly suggest. The first is that we need to dedicate a great deal of our resources to improving connectivity at semi or continental extents to enable species to respond to changing environments so that they will always be able to move to a new place and find habitat ready and waiting for them. This is one part of the strategy.

Another part is not just to focus on protecting areas that continue to be important for biodiversity because they have not yet been destroyed, but to think about the other side of the coin: restoration in areas where we have disproportionate gains just waiting to be made. We can do an awful lot of good in places like southern Canada where we have seen—degradation is maybe not the word I would choose—land use changes that have altered nature in ways to make nature essentially inhospitable to species that traditionally lived there. Restoration work in these places offers enormous potential to pull back many of Canada's species at risk from the brink.

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, John Aldag]

We'll go over now to Mr. Fast for his six minutes of questions.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

I think that my questions will be directed mostly to Mr. Chan.

It's nice to hear that you're from my alma mater. I don't know if you studied there, but you're teaching there, I assume, and researching there.

On the issue of efficient versus inefficient subsidies, you touched on the issue of fossil fuel subsidies and making sure that, if there are going to be subsidies, they actually lead in a direction of improved sustainability. At one of our last meetings, we had the environment commissioner here, and the Department of Finance was questioned about whether we are actually delivering on the commitments we've made internationally at the G20, I believe—commitments to move away from inefficient fossil fuel subsidies.

I'd be interested to hear your take on whether the term “inefficient” has any meaning within that dialogue and whether there's a definition of efficient versus inefficient that you can provide us with.

[Prof. Kai Chan]

This is really crucial and a great way to follow-up the last question, because the next thing we should say, after we talk about how we can spend extra money, is how can we change the money that we're already spending, right? It doesn't necessarily need to cost a ton more money.

In terms of the language of efficient and inefficient subsidies, that's not terminology that we used in the assessment intentionally. Efficiency is in relation to what the goals of the subsidy are, right? We emphasized the goals in our analysis. Of course, there are designs of efficient and inefficient ways to achieve a given goal, but that was really dealt with in other parts of the assessment.

What we found crucial to identify was the difference between incentivizing production without explicit measures to enhance the stewardship or sustainability of that production to continually enhance—not just to set a low baseline—versus subsidies that either intentionally directly target those kinds of stewardship activities and a transformation towards, for example, a clean energy economy, or ones that require, as part of an enhancement of production, that stewardship be a part of the package.

That's my understanding of what Canada committed to previously, which was to phase out fossil fuel subsidies—not to phase out inefficient ones, but to phase out production-enhancing ones. But perhaps I have that wrong.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mostly you're right. The commissioner pointed out that how you define efficient and inefficient is going to determine the degree to which government defends the subsidies it continues to provide for the fossil fuel industry. She rightly pointed out that if you don't have a proper definition nailed down, you're likely not going to achieve the goals you had committed to at the G20.

[Prof. Kai Chan]

Yes. If I could add to that, part of my comments earlier was that if we recognize that the Government of Canada collectively has multiple interests and objectives and we recognize that environmental protection is one part of that, then it is inherently inefficient to subsidize production and then separately try to mitigate the negative environmental effects. It's more efficient to deal with those things in a coordinated fashion. I would agree completely with your point about specifying the objectives.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Thank you.

I believe it was Mr. Kraus who referred to a continental approach. Was that you or was it Mr. Kerr—

[Prof. Jeremy Kerr]

I keep using that word.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

—in one of the responses.

We can have a parochial approach here and assume that Canada is an island unto itself and try to address our species challenges here. We can look at a global approach and maybe escape some accountability for what we're doing at home. However, you had mentioned a continental approach.

It does make sense, because our species are migrating across our borders; they don't recognize borders. Have you found the United States in any way receptive to a continental approach?

[Prof. Jeremy Kerr]

There are many opportunities for cross-border co-operation. My experience really emphasizes much more the work with research rather than with other governments, so I can't really speak to that direct experience.

I've certainly witnessed an awful lot of transboundary co-operation that our colleague from the Nature Conservancy could certainly speak to in more specific detail regarding management of protected areas that essentially span the international border.

We also see many instances where states and cities that straddle the border remain aware and highly co-operative regarding transboundary issues. One of the ways in which we often see this happening out in eastern North America is through the work of the International Joint Commission that manages the Great Lakes Basin co-operatively and among many jurisdictions.