Environment committee  When COSEWIC made the assessment of those two subspecies, in making the submission to the Minister of the Environment they identified the fact that, in their opinion, the emergency action was required.

Environment committee  It does.

Environment committee  Exactly.

Environment committee  The other issue, of course, is...in terms of Pacific salmon, basically, the runs are coming back as a combination of sockeye, pink salmon, salmon from Cultus Lake, salmon from Sakinaw Lake, and all that sort of stuff. So what you have is a stream of fish coming from the open seas

Environment committee  I think one of the rationales behind that is simply resources--human resources. As you say, you have recovery teams in the fishing industry. Take the Cattlemen's Association or whatever; there are only so many people in that community who are really going to volunteer to be part

Environment committee  My understanding is it would be a COSEWIC issue, for them to look at the species, and if they believe it requires emergency-type actions, that's their recommendation. It goes in to the government for consideration. The Minister of the Environment makes a determination as to wheth

Environment committee  From our fishing industry's point of view, we feel it has been a responsible type of response. For the species that have been identified as listed, they are very responsible in terms of organizing consultations, getting the fishing fleets together, introducing mitigating measures

Environment committee  I'll just add that, for example, one of our fleets in Atlantic Canada had a very good stewardship arrangement with Environment Canada, in terms of funding, for developing a live release of bycatches of wolffish, which was identified as threatened. So there are opportunities of wo

Environment committee  I have a quick comment. In the fisheries, critical habitat is often extremely difficult.... As you well know, fish swim, and habitat is moving quite considerably because of migration and things of that nature. But there's no question that for fish such as salmon that go into a ri

Environment committee  I don't think there are a number of models that have worked well, but at least in the fisheries—and I think most of the recovery strategies that are ongoing right now are in the fisheries—we have had some good ones come forward in Atlantic Canada, wherein we've had good cooperati

Environment committee  Maybe I can comment. That is a critical issue primarily with respect to the fishing industry, and also to the aboriginal peoples, in terms of consultations, because both our sectors, aboriginal peoples and the fisheries, have a widely dispersed number of fishing communities. Ou

Environment committee  Could I just add to that?

Environment committee  One of the problems with recovery strategies is this fact that if we have, say, industry and environmental groups coming together and they can't agree, what then is recovery? That's why our brief also mentions that what we should be looking at are best practices. There are some r

Environment committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Bigras. Basically what happens in those situations is that you have to remember you have two acts out there, which are complementary. That is SARA and the Fisheries Act. With respect to fisheries, the federal government does have, if you will, a range o

Environment committee  Could I just add to that comment?