Environment committee  I'll add to that by saying that they should be attached to the recovery strategy, not to the action plan, which is the way the act is currently written.

Environment committee  One of our colleagues in B.C. went through the CEAA process for a new plant, initiated the new plant and was testing it. During the course of the testing, a sturgeon found its way into the turbine blades and was killed. They were investigated and they immediately shut down all te

Environment committee  There were both enforcement consequences and better planning consequences. They have a process by which, whenever they shut down the units now, they monitor fish moving into the units. They actually have video cameras and pattern recognition software that's able to designate when

Environment committee  I don't know that I should speak to the losses, in terms of power, but they certainly have contracts to supply power, and for the duration of the time that they had to remain shut down, they couldn't meet those provisions.

Environment committee  I'm sorry to keep returning to the white sturgeon, but we went through a water use planning process with white sturgeon. It's under our Water Act in B.C. New facilities or facilities that meet a certain threshold are to go through a water use plan, which is a sharing of the water

Environment committee  I'll try to make it quick. With the white sturgeon, there was a process where a form was sent out to industry, local NGOs, and local communities. Then there were open houses. It was a very short-term thing, and my recollection is that there was about a two-week turnaround, whic

Environment committee  It's under section 73, and the three-year permits can be either for research for the benefit of the species or for incidental effects. It means that if there is incidental harm or mortality to the odd individual, it's allowed, provided a series of conditions are approved. Some o

Environment committee  That was the example I used, spawning grounds and early life stage habitat. We see critical habitat as those habitats that are absolutely essential for the maintenance of the species.

Environment committee  I would say that more recently it has dramatically improved, at least in British Columbia. When the recovery strategy for white sturgeon was first in draft form, which would have been around 2006 or 2007, there was no consultation with industry whatsoever in the drafting of that

Environment committee  The only permits we have currently are research permits, and they are renewed reasonably automatically. We have to have discussions about what we're going to deliver, etc., but they're generally renewed. I don't believe any of us has any of the incidental effects permits currentl

Environment committee  Yes, if I may. BC Hydro actually does everything it can to avoid the enforcement side of these things. Our plans for white sturgeon have annual reviews with the recovery team in which their results and methods are all reviewed. We have regular reviews at five-year intervals. We

Environment committee  In our case today, in B.C., we've been dealing primarily with single species. However, I do know that on the Columbia Basin work, for example, in the not-too-distant future there will be a couple of other species listed. They're under review currently by COSEWIC, and we fully exp

Environment committee  The main species that we've worked with is white sturgeon, Acipenser transmontanus, in the Columbia Basin. We've been working with this species really since the early 1990s. We actually discovered that there was a recruitment failure going on in the course of doing some studies f