Environment committee  Thank you. [Technical difficulties]

Environment committee  Hello, my name is Priscilla Gareau. I have a doctorate in environmental studies and I am the director of the environmental group Ambioterra. We are very grateful for this opportunity to contribute to the debate on the conservation and protection of biodiversity in Canada. Ambio

Environment committee  The two approaches are not necessarily contradictory. It's more in contrast with the traditional sectoral approach, with each department having its own regulations and no real communication among departments. That is the main thing with the ecosystem approach. You have to take i

Environment committee  Yes. The Habitat Stewardship Program for Species at Risk and the Partenaires pour la nature program are the two government programs for community groups to protect biodiversity. These programs are essential to the protection of regional and local biodiversity.

Environment committee  Clearly the programs are needed to insure good agri-environmental practices among farmers. If they benefit from incentive measures and regulations are applied, they will be motivated to change their behaviour for the sustainability of species and biodiversity.

Environment committee  We are in touch with the UPA and environment agri-environmental groups, among others. They are open, but it is clear that for farmers respecting regulations on the shoreline, for instance, whereby they are not to seed a one to three-metre-width strip along the waterline, represen

Environment committee  For instance, we could set a percentage for reducing degradation due to the fact that from year to year we lose part of our wetlands. There are also a number of species at risk every year. There needs to be an indicator established to reduce this number. The same principle could

Environment committee  To my knowledge, there are no environmental committees. However there are agri-environmental clubs, that are the environmental equivalent to them. However, I am not sure they take into consideration the opinions of other stakeholders, given the fact that they represent their unio

Environment committee  Assuredly, budget cutbacks with respect to field inspection will hamper the enforcement of laws and regulations. That will mean an increasing number of offenders who are breaking the law.

Environment committee  Certainly; if you do not have a picture of the situation, you cannot ensure scientific follow-up of the evolution of this situation, thanks to the indicators I referred to earlier on.

Environment committee  These changes will effectively be damaging to all the waterways. There are already very few stakeholders responsible for enforcing laws and regulations, and since citizens are not aware of the procedure to follow, they will not be able to lay complaints in that respect. There wil

Environment committee  Most certainly. The Fisheries Act was one of the most important statutes, at least for Quebec.

Environment committee  If there was habitat degradation, we could complain to Fisheries and Oceans Canada, since certain powers had been delegated to the Department of Natural Resources of Quebec. We could make a complaint so that the party having committed the offence could be sued.

Environment committee  Over the last year, we adapted our financial year to correspond with the government's, the government being our main source of funding. Our fiscal year and our biodiversity projects both begin in the spring in April, since that is when we must do our floristic inventory. Last ye

Environment committee  We cannot do that. To request a long-term subsidy, you need guaranteed funding from another funder. For example, if we were to ask the federal government for 50% funding, we would have to find the other 50% somewhere else. We do not have statutory funding such as the funding rec