Environment committee  That's an extremely good question. My perspective is that things have improved considerably. I feel that the quality of the status reports has improved considerably. I feel that the writing of them has improved. I feel that the assessments have improved as well, in large part be

Environment committee  There are 31 votes, but there are actually about 45 to 50 people sitting around the table. I believe there are currently 57 members of COSEWIC, but only 31 votes can actually be cast, at a maximum.

Environment committee  It's basically dependent on who is actually in attendance at the meeting. Some jurisdictions aren't always able to attend. Some members can't attend, for whatever reason, and there's no proxy voting. You can only vote if you have received a ministerial appointment to COSEWIC. At

Environment committee  That's an interesting question in many respects. Many people feel that the sole purpose of COSEWIC is simply to provide advice to the federal government for the purposes of including species on the national legal list, for which there might then be recovery strategies required if

Environment committee  This is slightly out of the purview of COSEWIC, but my understanding is that part of the process for determining whether a species is included on the legal list is an assessment of the potential impact of that decision from a positive and a negative perspective.

Environment committee  In essence, yes. It's basically to give our assessment of the current status of the species in question. The assessment is meant to reflect its likelihood of extinction in the relatively near future and also to identify threats to its persistence.

Environment committee  Yes.

Environment committee  Oh, in fact the report did.

Environment committee  It also included information that was available to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and all the relevant information in terms of population projections and projections of habitat loss for the polar bear. All that information was in there.

Environment committee  That's for marine fishes. There hasn't been an endangered or threatened marine fish accepted. The first marine fishes of special concern were accepted by the government earlier this year. There have been freshwater fishes that have been included on schedule 1.

Environment committee  There were two species, two groups of sockeye salmon. One was in Sakinaw Lake and the other was in Cultus Lake.

Environment committee  Yes, they were recommended to be listed as endangered.

Environment committee  No, they weren't.

Environment committee  Based on the responses that were posted in the Canada Gazette, it appears they were not listed because of the perceived economic consequences of reducing catches in a mixed-stock fishery off the coast of British Columbia.

Environment committee  In the short term it's a little difficult to determine. It will take us a while. We will have to initiate a new call from membership for this position, which we will probably do within the next month. Hopefully it will attract suitably qualified candidates for this particular pos