Environment committee  Good morning, and thank you, Chair.

Environment committee  Thank you. Together my colleagues and I are going to speak to you about the implementation of the Species At Risk Act, or SARA, as we tend to call it. We'll give you a fairly high-level overview of the act and the progress to date. SARA is premised on the view that it is in ou

Environment committee  Let me conclude with a few final comments in light of the review. Experience has shown it takes time to achieve recovery. The sea otter, once extirpated from Canada, was reintroduced to the west coast in 1969. Initially assessed as endangered by COSEWIC in 1978, it was downgrad

Environment committee  Yes.

Environment committee  For ensuring that, but they do, actually, execution as well.

Environment committee  At Environment Canada for all activities, it's about $60 million—$59.9 million. That would include science, direct enforcement, our administrative responsibilities, including managing the listing process, the actions we take. It would also include the significant funds to fund ot

Environment committee  Yes, 98 wildlife-trained officers.

Environment committee  It has increased. It increased significantly with budget 2007.

Environment committee  Yes. Overall, in 2006 we were spending $40 million, and in 2007-2008, $51 million. That's exclusive of enforcement.

Environment committee  Mr. Chair, I believe you're inviting the chair of the COSEWIC committee, when you probably can get more into detail. I wouldn't call it necessarily a backlog. Governments provide a general status report on the status of species in Canada. That's the 7,000-plus that we're tracki

Environment committee  In Canada, yes.

Environment committee  I think we have about 70,000 species in Canada.

Environment committee  I don't know that anybody can say they know how many species they have in their country when, as I said in my opening remarks, only about 15% of the planet's biological diversity has been described in any meaningful way.

Environment committee  You could say that.

Environment committee  Well, there is activity happening. I guess first of all I should be clear that the tracking is happening at both provincial and territorial levels as well as at the federal government level. There is funding on nomenclature, taxonomy, etc., mostly in museums and academia. There a