Environment committee  Yes, there are. I think it's fair to say that on almost all Canadian recovery teams, if not all, there are U.S. representatives. This is another advantage of having teams; I like the opportunity to hark back to that point. There's nothing to stop them from inviting U.S. governm

Environment committee  I wonder if you could just clarify. Are you speaking of the recovery planning stage, the listing stage, or the action planning stage, or...?

Environment committee  I certainly agree. I didn't detect a common thread amongst this group suggesting that we thought anything other than that, and certainly when I refer to species experts and the scientific information that we use to inform recovery strategies, or for that matter, COSEWIC listings,

Environment committee  I'll respond to the part of the question where you asked about whether there had been any improvement that we could see. First, we've now been discussing for some time the considerable apparent reluctance to identify critical habitat and recovery strategies. Whether this is grow

Environment committee  I think I'd take the question a little bit more at face value. Particularly as far as section 41 is concerned, dealing with recovery strategies, it would be very helpful for somebody with experience on the ground, working on recovery strategies, to have explicit language in there

Environment committee  Sorry, in the killer whale case...?

Environment committee  I don't know if it was interference or not. All we know is that our initial document was amended to remove critical habitat. My understanding--and this is what the team was told at the time--was that it was in adherence with this draft policy that we were unable to see, and that

Environment committee  I don't know the origin of that policy.

Environment committee  Sorry. Like Dr. Pearson, I don't remember.

Environment committee  No. Really, in the killer whale case, litigation didn't come about until the minister issued a critical habitat protection statement. At that point, NGOs litigated, feeling that there was very good evidence that an order in fact should have been issued.

Environment committee  Thank you very much, and good afternoon. I'm a research scientist specializing in the ecology and genetics of marine mammals. I head the Vancouver Aquarium's cetacean research program. The aquarium's mission is to effect the conservation of aquatic life through display and int