Environment committee  Sure. HAAP was created after the National Fish and Wildlife Conservation Congress to provide a sounding board for government policies, programs, and ideas dealing with natural resources, particularly fish and wildlife resources, in Canada. The panel meets on average twice a year.

Environment committee  Sure. One of the first recommendations we made was that there needs to be a proper and thorough economic study of hunting, trapping, and fishing in this country. If you look at the U.S., they have an enormous number of studies done by professionals and government that clearly def

Environment committee  In your particular riding there are 1,130 licensed hunters, and that's just in our organization. There are probably many more, but those are the ones who belong to our organization, who are licensed hunters, and who live in your riding. As I noted, in Scarborough the number is

Environment committee  For Ontario I don't have to guess. In Ontario right now 20% of the people taking hunter education courses are women. Another roughly 25% are youth. Last year we put 25,000 new hunters through the hunter education program. You can do the math—you're probably better at it than I am

Environment committee  There are a number of reasons that people are getting involved in hunting, women and youth in particular. Yes, you're quite right that part of it is because of family. Hunting and fishing are family activities in many areas, and certainly if the father or husband hunts, it's more

Environment committee  Thank you for the question. I appreciate it very much. You cited a couple of examples, so I'll refer to those first. On the deer on Manitoulin Island, you're quite correct. It was a bad winter last year, and our DeerSave program had to contribute $10,000 to cut trails and whatn

Environment committee  I'll try to respond really quickly. The figures we have seen show primarily that the tourism industry in particular, when it comes to outdoor activities, is predominantly American. Yes, there are European tourists that come here. There's no doubt about that. In terms of environm

Environment committee  Thank you, Mr. Sopuck, for the question. As I said earlier in my statement before the committee, wildlife is not an accident, and healthy and thriving fish and wildlife populations are not accidents. They have to be managed. They have to be managed to protect them and they have

Environment committee  Exactly. In a word, yes.

Environment committee  Indirectly, yes, because one begets the other begets the other. If it becomes too onerous, and this applies not only to the long-gun registry, but also to overly restrictive regulations, licencing issues, cost factors, and stuff like that, once there are too many of those in pla

Environment committee  Well, the first thing I want to point out is that it's very easy for groups who oppose these activities to be obstructive or to raise concerns on their part that they think are valid. But at the same time, we have seen things—and I'll give you a good example, going back to 1999 i

Environment committee  I think it's early days to determine how that decision by the Supreme Court is going to have impact in Ontario. I can tell you that we have two very large aboriginal files that are going on. There are 50 land claims going on in Ontario, but there are two in particular that have a

Environment committee  I think it's fair to say that it happens more through the government. We have sat down at the table many times with the Algonquin first nations and talked to them about the land claim. We have been to their band councils, and they have been to our head office in Peterborough. We

Environment committee  I'll speak briefly, because I know Mr. Crawford probably wants to get a word in here, and justifiably so. Speaking of my organization, the OFAH holds women's outdoor weekends every year. We also have our youth program, Get Outdoors, which holds month-long camps in the summer.

Environment committee  Okay. We hold a new Canadians day every year at OFAH head office. We have a large pond there that is stocked with fish. It's sponsored by Shimano. We bring busloads of people from the GTA out to Peterborough. They spend the day at our fish and wildlife heritage centre next door.