Environment committee  Fine. My next question is for Mr. Ewins. Your Web site lists climate change, water and humans as your top priorities. Do you think the government is doing enough to help you with those priorities?

Environment committee   and/or desertification, particularly those in Africa. On Tuesday, a conference that brought together numerous experts was held. The topics of discussion included climate change, the two-degree-Celsius increase in global temperature and its effects on food security. In your view, how does Canada's

Environment committee  Yes. There are different layers and values that people can put on, and you categorize things as alien, exotic, introduced. There are also translocations, which involve people actually moving species to get ahead of climate change. In the forestry sector, of course, they have

Environment committee  Mr. Ewins, there hasn't been much discussion around science or climate change, even though those are key concerns when you are trying to conserve terrestrial habitats. Could you comment on that?

Environment committee   the development of our fossil fuel industries, that we can continue to expand our cities, that we can do things as we have done them before. But from an ecological perspective, I think it's clear, given climate change science and the loss of biodiversity globally, that we can't keep on doing

Environment committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm going to sum up what I took from your remarks in one minute. You talked about the importance of continuing to fight climate change, of taking action based on sound science and of having legislation that governs habitat conservation effectively. I also

Environment committee   an impact on habitat conservation? If so, what can the government do to remedy the problem and to work towards meeting the targets agreed to under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity? All of you talked about it to some degree. Knowing that climate change is a very present concern

Environment committee   that climate change and the shift of climate regimes across habitat are going to change the composition of those areas and the species mix that perhaps use it. The base of habitat is the vegetation complex, the soil complexes, in these areas, and different species will use them over time

Environment committee   such as global climate change can be maximized. Implementation of these principles demands good ecological science capacity within the federal government. Canada has made significant commitments to conserving habitat, such as through the Conventions on Biological Diversity

Environment committee   resources industries upon which our society relies. We face a future of uncertainty. As alternate sources of energy are developed, there will be new challenges on the landscape related to land use and habitat conservation. Climate change and species adaptation will likely cause shifts

Environment committee  For the other important part of thinking about climate change and adapting to it, I would use the word “planning”. What information do people really need? I think they need access to a really good plan to help them understand how best to use land. Parks, national wildlife

Environment committee   knowledge and expertise on habitat conservation. What are the sources of this information? How is it disseminated? In seeking an answer to that question, I want to ask whether or not the department is making public the need to adapt and to mitigate climate change, specifically

Environment committee  I would probably turn to the work we're doing, both domestically and internationally, in working with the U.S. and Mexico, in using large protected areas as natural solutions for adaptation to climate change. It's a big part of our communications activities to let people know

Environment committee  Is there a flip side of this too, in terms of your communications? You're communicating how parks can help, but are you focusing on also getting out information about climate change generally and about the potential impact on existing conserved lands or existing ecosystems?

Environment committee  Probably the best example I could provide is that we have an ecological integrity monitoring program in Parks Canada. Although not specifically designed to target the effects of climate change, it is designed to give us a sense of the state of ecological integrity and the state