Environment committee  Good morning. Thank you, Mr. Chair and honourable members. It's a great opportunity to be here to speak to a subject important to me and to many Canadians, the subject of habitat conservation in Canada. The AWA has been working in this area since the late 1960s. We work with gov

Environment committee  I'm not sure that they are inadequate. They describe a certain part of the effort. I think that's more correct.

Environment committee  Where we have failed is on the side of large protected areas. There are area-dependent species, like caribou and sage grouse, that need areas free of industrial activity. Many species will benefit from better management practices, but we need to do a better job on actually protec

Environment committee  I think we have other measures—for example, species at risk—and I think those are telling us how well we're doing on the land. In the grasslands, for example, we have a high number of species at risk, because I don't think we've done the job of protecting enough areas. It doesn't

Environment committee  Certainly a go-slow approach. I don't think there was any investigation into the value of those lands and how they're going to be protected. But obviously the people of Saskatchewan are speaking up and I think this process may be slowing down. There are two pieces. There is some

Environment committee  Yes.

Environment committee  There have been a number of studies on this. They're both important, but as I think I mentioned earlier, there are area-sensitive species, such as woodland caribou and sage grouse, that absolutely need areas that are off limits to industrial development. These are large areas. It

Environment committee  In southeastern Alberta there's the Milk River canyon, the Milk River natural area, and the Kennedy Coulee ecological reserve. We co-manage that site with the local ranching community, the local county, and the fish and game association. We've done probably the longest-standing

Environment committee  That's the provincial government there, yes. Up in northwestern Alberta, in the Hay-Zama complex, it's an area we've worked on since the mid-1990s with the Dene Tha' First Nation, the oil and gas industry, the Alberta government, and groups like Ducks Unlimited. The very first

Environment committee  Well, I think the participation of all levels of government is important, but I think the most important thing for long-term success is getting the local community onside. That means putting our baggage at the door and trying to figure out what our end goal is. We often agree o

Environment committee  That's true, yes.

Environment committee  There are two parts to it. One is to respect their views, their traditions, on the land. The other is government providing a box in which to play. If the provincial government hadn't said, “We want to create protected areas in the grasslands. You guys go out and tell us how to

Environment committee  That's right. As we go forward in the neighbouring area on the sage grouse partnership, we are looking at incentives where we think that there's a hardship placed on the landowner because of the way we're trying to manage for species at risk. So it's something he normally wouldn'

Environment committee  I think it's just refocusing some of those same funds. If we're going to have support payments, let's tell the rural people what kinds of products, what goods and services, we want them to provide for us. I think in the polls going back a long time Canadians, rural and urban, say

Environment committee  No. Our organization would just rather there be no subsidies that lead to habitat degradation. I think the first thing is to redo all those subsidies and see whether there are ones that are pushing things negatively on the habitat side. Those should be absolutely removed. If we'r