Thank you very much, all of you, for being here today. I have two comments and two questions.
First, I personally feel that many first nations communities are being set up for failure because they don't have the capacity to be able to do what they're asked to do. I'll share with you an innovative thing we're doing in my riding. We have a relationship with post-secondary institutions to use their senior post-graduate people and utilize those people to provide and build capacity in first nations communities--for example, if they need to have business plans, or if they need to find economic development. It's an inexpensive way of actually enabling them to have access to the types of capabilities they need. I share that with you as something that may be useful.
Second, I spent a fair bit of time with wildlife officers and anti-poaching patrols in KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. As you know, they were very innovative in actually marrying up and looking at their wild spaces as a way to utilize and develop resources and create jobs, particularly in rural areas. If you haven't, and I'm sure you have, I ask you to take a look at what they've done there in terms of being able to utilize these wild spaces, particularly in northern Zululand. They've created jobs and utilized those wild spaces in a very economically successful way and have essentially been able to generate the funds for the expansion of habitat as well as create the resources for jobs, primary health care, and education in rural areas.
My two questions are to Parks Canada. The division of labour issue is a very serious issue with our wildlife officers right now. I personally think it puts them in a very compromised situation. I would ask if you could share with us what has been done to actually decrease the siloing in duties, so that a wildlife officer can deal with situations where they need to deal with errant wildlife--they also deal with tourists--where they can actually have quick access to being armed, frankly, for their protection, and also the way they are identified. The removal of their slashes has caused a problem and in fact puts their lives in danger when RCMP officers see somebody carrying around a shotgun who is not identified as a wildlife officer. This compromises their lives. I implore you to take a look at that for the safety of our wildlife officers.
Last, has anything been done to decrease the speed of trains through our wildlife corridors, particularly in blind corners, to decrease the mortality of some of our large mammal species?