Environment committee  That can be used as Canada's input and presentation to the CITES, but the CITES has their classification, and that's what COSEWIC was trying to harmonize with.

Environment committee  If I can, Mr. Chair, many of these actually haven't gone all the way through the court process. For the piping plover, the mistake Environment Canada made was not being clear about what we were up to. We spoke to the NGOs that raised the challenge afterwards, and we made a mistake.

Environment committee  The good news is that effectively, schedules 2 and 3 are empty now. COSEWIC has existed for a long time, and they were operating under a certain kind of assessment procedure. They reformulated their procedures to harmonize with the International Union for Conservation. They had species that had been assessed under an old protocol, but they had to be reassessed under the new protocol.

Environment committee  Most of them do, yes.

Environment committee  The nine-month clock for listing—that's the time from when the minister provides the COSEWIC assessment to the Governor in Council—starts a nine-month clock to finish the listing process, which requires consultation. We have found that where consultation involves extensive consultation with aboriginals, particularly where there are land claims and where there are economic issues—and my colleague from Fisheries and Oceans could probably speak to that more—this nine-month clock is extremely difficult.

Environment committee  It's not in the assessment phase. So COSEWIC does not concern itself with critical habitat. And oftentimes, COSEWIC has very limited information about where the species are and what the requirements are for recovery. It's in the recovery planning phase, which under the act is a two-step process.

Environment committee  The cost for the prosecutors does not come out of it, but the cost for the department to prepare for the case and provide the documentation will come out of the budget. It comes from our staff.

Environment committee  Yes, it does have an impact on our workload and our ability to manage our priorities.

Environment committee  I'll raise a few that I hear regularly from stakeholders, particularly from the Species at Risk Advisory Committee and the National Aboriginal Council on Species at Risk, starting with the latter. One of the challenges you'll hear, I'm sure, concerns consultation with aboriginal peoples.

Environment committee  There are three bilateral agreements in place with provinces: British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and Quebec. Most of the rest of them are in the final stages of review before approval.

Environment committee  It's not years that pass, even in the case of caribou, because there is work that's done through the habitat stewardship program by provinces. Caribou is an example of a species that's primarily managed by provincial jurisdiction. While things are still working through the species at risk process, action is still being taken by the primary managers.

Environment committee  On the policy, we have a number of practices and procedures, but our experience of the national framework that I referred to in my presentation has assisted us in speaking the same language with the provinces on complementing different pieces of legislation. Environment Canada, with Fisheries and Oceans and Parks Canada, have been working on a set of policies for decision-making under the act.

Environment committee  I would remind people that COSEWIC is the independent body that does the assessment. For a small budget from the government, they actually lever out a lot of capacity, because many of those people are academics, provincial scientists, and government scientists. We don't pay for their salaries.

Environment committee  There have been court cases, and we, as well as others, learn from those court cases. And I did speak to the fact that we've had to develop a number of procedures and practices to work under the legislation. Moving from the non-statutory programs to the statutory programs has been a challenge.

Environment committee  Yes, habitat protection comes in a number of different ways. And I'm sure the member, Mr. Chair, is thinking of the critical habitat, a designation under the act. Critical habitat has been identified for only 22 of the species so far under the act. Again, the pace of that is increasing.