Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen of the committee. Thank you for inviting me to join you here today and for the opportunity to share some thoughts on behalf of Ducks Unlimited Canada about the significance of Canada's hunting, trapping, and fishing traditions.

Environment committee  No.

Environment committee  Well, certainly, wetlands are critically important for many of the species found on the threatened or endangered species list. Again, I would come back to the point I made earlier, which is that we know so much more about wetlands now that goes beyond species management. It has to do with clean drinking water; it has to do with impacts on agricultural practices.

Environment committee  You may need to cut some new ground here.

Environment committee  The Atlantic provinces have fully mapped their wetlands. There's a revision process that has to take place to keep them current. But certainly the Atlantic provinces have the most comprehensive inventory. Ontario has done a reasonable job. We've worked in partnership with the province.

Environment committee  That's my understanding, yes.

Environment committee  It certainly is starting to.

Environment committee  This is really a question that might be better put to some of the provincial governments. They tend to deal with them more on issues such as this than we do. Our work with farmers is very much focused on the program delivery side of things—our winter wheat program, for example, and some of our habitat retention and upland retention efforts.

Environment committee  Well, the 1917 act was built around addressing the specific problem of rapid species decline, the millinery trade acquiring feathers from migratory birds. It really focuses on addressing that particular circumstance. We've learned in the 100 or so years since that time how biologically diverse and valuable these habitats are for a multitude of species, and that's just on the plant and animal side.

Environment committee  Certainly we're looking for a round table discussion along the lines of what was recommended in the 1991 plan and trying to harmonize approaches to wetland conservation on the landscape. The federal government has, and will continue to have, a very important role to play, given that migratory birds use the wetlands and those habitats are critical to migratory bird species.

Environment committee  Yes. We've had some preliminary discussions with them. Some of our volunteer leadership are working in that sector, so certainly there have been some preliminary discussions about this issue.

Environment committee  In our presentation, one of the things we tried to draw attention to is that there's some shared responsibility. The full implementation of some of the federal wetland policy is certainly a start. We think the federal government can play a leadership role vis-à-vis the work done by the various provinces.

Environment committee  From the slides you can see that in the Atlantic provinces there's a much higher level of regulatory safeguards, and where loss occurs, there are mechanisms in place to compensate for that loss. On the regulatory side, we think that's a good model that all provinces should look at.

Environment committee  Last year, we held an advocacy day in Ottawa. One of the things we talked about at that time was a $250 million investment, about $50 million a year just for wetlands, matched by privately raised funds. We believe that something on that scale is required to address the level of loss, particularly on the restoration side of the equation.

Environment committee  Before I came into this role, I was responsible for the habitat program in Ontario, so I can speak to the southern Ontario development program investment. Certainly we learned a lot from that undertaking because it was a source of funds that drew attention to what we've been doing all along, for 75 years in Canada, which is hiring local contractors, sourcing supplies for habitat construction, hiring people to monitor and oversee the work—right across Ontario, in the case of this program, but also in the Prairies, where we've done a great deal of work, and in the Atlantic provinces and so on.