Environment committee  I want to thank you all for the opportunity to speak today. I'm really excited to be here to speak about this topic of hunting. I'll tell you a little bit about myself. I'm a hunter, a trapper. I've dedicated my life to biology and conservation of living things and wild places.

Environment committee  Hello and thank you. Can you all hear me okay from Winnipeg? Is it working?

Environment committee  It is important because as a constituency these are people.... If that community is committed to actually doing things for the environment and making the environment better, then this is a constituency that you have to engage. To engage them, you have to know them. To know them,

Environment committee  We're not sure. In our becoming an outdoorswoman program we have spots for 75 ladies every year in May and it sells out immediately. I was there last year teaching the gals how to fillet fish and stuff like that. I asked them the question, “Why are you here?” These ladies are you

Environment committee  Yes, I think the sorts of divisions we have in our mind sometimes are that we have cities and then we have rural areas. Sometimes we think of them as divided. In fact, they often are. There are divisions there. Also, we'll think about the divisions where we have hunters and then

Environment committee  I agree with Mr. Scarth. If you think of where much of the habitat loss is occurring now, it's on agricultural lands. Commodity prices have been relatively high for quite a few years now, so it's the private landowners, the farmers, and the cattle producers we have to connect to,

Environment committee  Yes, I would love to speak to that. It's my passion. My passion personally is getting young people in the outdoors. It's a magical thing to do. You get them out there and it changes them. I remember the first youth hunt that we did, a young lad had got his first duck in the morni

Environment committee  I think it's entirely possible to engage the agricultural producers. I think the key is how. You're competing against grain prices, that's true, but even in that environment there are opportunities on farms. Often with the marginal land on a farm, even with high commodity prices,

Environment committee  We're starting in the inner-city schools. We're trying to connect with new Canadians there. We're trying to reconnect aboriginal children there with their outdoor heritage. We're also advertising our recruitment programming. We have several levels where they can tap in, based on

Environment committee  Okay. I guess I'll go next. I agree with Dr. Boyce. I think we rarely have enough information, or of enough quality, to make management decisions. We're always dealing with a lack of information, and I suspect that's not going to change. If you look in Manitoba, we have a moose

Environment committee  I think it's visceral because we as hunters and trappers are so passionate. Very much like Saskatchewan farmers who are passionate about their land, we are passionate about our culture, so we can be your greatest friends, and if you attack us, we can be your greatest enemy. We'd

Environment committee  It's a matter of education. Part of the national conservation plan has to be educating Canadians. Someone asked what a federal group, like you, can do to help the environment and deal with things like wetlands. You're going to pay, guys. You're paying. What was your tab for the

Environment committee  One of the great things about Canada, I think, is all the different cultures we have. There's no cultural group or cluster of humans in this country that doesn't think of themselves as something: Newfoundlanders, sealers; lobster fisherman from Nova Scotia; and British Columbia f

Environment committee  I think that having a panel like the one Dr. Boyce was talking about is important. Get great people to help direct that plan. That's important. Getting the input of locals, hunters, and farmers is really important. You need great research people like Dr. Boyce, but you need great

Environment committee  I'll keep my comments very short, because I think Mr. Scarth and Dr. Boyce should take that more than I should. I'm just going to speak to the local side. There are mechanisms out there. There's this program called ALUS. The magic of it is that it engages the local people at th