Natural Resources committee  I think 149,000 total is the extent of the oil sands deposits. I just don't know what the percentage of that is when you compare it to the total size of the boreal region.

Natural Resources committee  I apologize, but I don't know the exact percentage of the oil sands development in comparison to the boreal region. It is a large region. The oil sands area will disturb a large area, but thankfully other areas could remain intact if we plan ahead. That's really the opportunity presented by the boreal forest, because much of the area is not yet developed.

Natural Resources committee  I'm going to sound like a broken record here, but I'll again emphasize that due to the uncertainty.... I do hope Mr. Friesen is correct and that the reclamation is successful, but I think that at this current time it does have to be seen as an experiment. When it comes to tinkering with things, the first rule is don't tinker with all the parts.

Natural Resources committee  I'd reiterate Mr. Friesen's comment that oil sands mining is expected to affect 3,000 square kilometres, whereas the SAGD, the steam-assisted gravity drainages, could affect almost 140,000 square kilometres. There is a large area that could be affected by this type of development.

Natural Resources committee  You commented about the poison ivy. I hadn't heard that, but in some ways it doesn't surprise me. These bizarre results always appear out of ecological science. We just don't understand ecosystems well enough to know how they're going to respond to human activities, especially human activities that are as dramatic as oil sands development.

Natural Resources committee  All I'd add is that I don't have the numbers right at hand here, but we have the national capital report that Mark Anielski completed for us. He did estimate the total carbon stored in the boreal forest at 67 million tonnes, so there is enormous carbon storage. It would account for multiple years of Canada's GHG emissions.

Natural Resources committee  There are two elements. One is the amount that the forest is sequestering currently, and there's also the amount that the ecosystem is storing. These boreal ecosystems have accumulated carbon over thousands of years, especially the peatland systems. A big part of what carbon trading will hopefully achieve is ensuring that these natural ecosystems, these sinks, aren't lost; if we can have carbon trading to provide incentive to conserve these areas, it will maintain this carbon.

Natural Resources committee  I would just add that an advantage of having a regional perspective when looking at applications together is that it can identify a solution such as opportunities for implementing conservation offsets. Right now, because of the uncertainty involved with whether we're going to be able to replace or reclaim these ecosystems in the full natural capital that was there, we need to hedge against that uncertainty and ensure that we have maintained intact ecosystems in other places in the region.