Environment committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman and committee members, for providing Canadian Business and Biodiversity Council the privilege to be here today and present to you some thoughts of the council members on habitat conservation in Canada. The council is relatively new. It started in 2009. It

Environment committee  All right. No problem, Mr. Chair. Xstrata has implemented Canada-wide biodiversity evaluations and management plans for their properties. It's very difficult to quantify the work that has been done by a wide range of stakeholders, including business, as much of it is not repor

Environment committee  I have two sentences left. —providing financial incentives through a wide variety of public-private partnerships; and taking measures to improve timely and comprehensive conservation data availability. Thank you very much.

Environment committee  For our company it means managing the various species, the diversity of species that are present within the boundaries of our site and also the variety within each of the species. It also goes beyond that and goes into the protection of different habitats that these species depen

Environment committee  For me it's the diversity of species and the diversity within species that are present.

Environment committee  I would like to start by putting the numbers in context. I provided two numbers: 79% of respondents felt that there was insufficient data and 84% of respondents felt that the quality of information was insufficient. I will use my company as an example because of course that is w

Environment committee  That's one of our sites. I'm very familiar with it. It's a facility that is about 400 hectares. Out of that we have already restored over 250 hectares of land. In my mind, it's a perfect laboratory of how the thinking has evolved on what quarry rehabilitation should be. In the pa

Environment committee  I'll let Reg answer the question on Ducks Unlimited because he has worked a lot with them.

Environment committee  I'm going to give you a business perspective, in particular that of the CBBC members. We are all experts in our own area but we're not necessarily biodiversity experts. It is difficult for us to find the best practices in the right areas and make appropriate efforts. The governm

Environment committee  We are just in the process of drawing up that declaration. I don't remember exactly how many points it contains. I believe there are about a dozen. In order to become full-fledged members of the CBBC, businesses have to sign that declaration. At first, we did not want that to pre

Environment committee  That is one of the issues we discussed with NGOs last week. Our sites often contain areas that have not been exploited yet. We would like to use those areas, that will eventually be used for extraction, as laboratories. We would like to do tests in order to determine whether or n

Environment committee  Streamline, you're talking about the biodiversity now or—

Environment committee  Well, obviously, we represent a wide variety of businesses. There are extractives. There are companies that are in the agricultural sector. There are companies like ours that do not have a direct impact on biodiversity, it's more through our land holdings—

Environment committee  Absolutely, because for us it's a critical part of our licence to operate. If we don't manage lands correctly, it will be very difficult for us to move forward either with our current operations or with our future operations. So it's a critical element for us to deal with biodive

Environment committee  Yes, I believe so.