Environment committee  Those are important questions. I'm pleased to hear about and in fact have been following the integrated pest management approaches, which I think are very important. There certainly is a more holistic sense these days than there was in the era in which DDT was used indiscriminate

Environment committee  Yes, I agree with you on all these points. There are circumstances where pesticides are important and in fact indispensable. In many circumstances they are not a panacea, and they create many unintended and problematic consequences, in some cases worse than the problems they had

Environment committee  There are. When one looks across the whole press of society, there have been declines at all levels—at provincial levels and federal levels—in terms of funding for some of these taxonomic initiatives. In part, I understand that as a museum worker, because, for example, museums do

Environment committee  I think it would be very much an improvement. This symposium that happened in November 2008 and included many different participants from regulatory agencies, Agriculture Canada, and forestry concerns clearly identified the importance of doing so—in fact, the indispensability of

Environment committee  Yes, absolutely. I'm involved in that.

Environment committee  Yes, indeed.

Environment committee  The main objective of Project Democracy is that we're very strongly directed at electoral and political reform, and we are particularly interested in the introduction of proportional representation. That's our first and foremost focus. How does that relate to science, however?

Environment committee  I would say that the first and foremost objective of Project Democracy is to look at the equitable distribution of political power according to an understanding of proportional representation. It certainly takes a partisan position.

Environment committee  Yes, it's a very interesting subject. The brown spruce longhorn beetle is a species I'm particularly familiar with, both of us—as it were—being located here in Nova Scotia. It affords a particularly good opportunity to examine several important points that arise from my opening r

Environment committee  It should say “unaddressed”, yes.

Environment committee  I look forward to it.

Environment committee  Correct.

Environment committee  Yes, it's important that policy be developed from science and that science not be an arm of policy.

Environment committee  Yes, absolutely.

Environment committee  Yes. I'm not paid by any forestry, agricultural, or other interest. As I mentioned, my background is as an ecologist and as a research associate of a museum. So my interests are really ecological--