Environment committee  Once again, I'm going to ask Dr. Miller to respond. He's the one who's been doing the thinking on this on behalf of CPAWS. He has been doing a lot of thinking on this, so I'll ask Dr. Miller to respond.

Environment committee  We have not recommended any amendments at this point but we are flagging that the decisions to come will be critical ones. We'll be participating in that and looking to the Government of Canada and Parks Canada to make the decisions that are consistent with maintaining and restor

Environment committee  Again, is it okay if I defer to Dr. Miller?

Environment committee  Thank you for that question. I'm suggesting the environmental gain is not determined by the lines on the map, but by the development and the activities that will flow from that change in the leasehold areas. This act changes the lines on the map. The next decisions that will ha

Environment committee  Thank you, Ms. Duncan. Would it be possible to ask Chris Miller to respond? I'm happy to, but he's sitting there in Nova Scotia and well placed to respond as well.

Environment committee  Yes, we would.

Environment committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Good evening. My name is Alison Woodley and I am the national director of the parks program for the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, or CPAWS. As Mr. Chairman mentioned, also joining us this evening from Nova Scotia is Dr. Chris Miller

Environment committee  From an ecological perspective, an eco-regional approach would make a lot of sense. They need to be knitted together at various scales. A municipal plan needs to be nested within a regional plan, and it goes up from there. You can have various levels of connectivity too. At the m

Environment committee  That's where land use planning is really critical, I think. It's landscape-scale planning, whether it's formal land use planning or conservation planning, but at the landscape scale. I did talk about how most of our protected areas are isolated islands, and that's a problem. We n

Environment committee  Well, it depends where. For example, in the Northwest Territories, there are very impressive land use plans that have been developed by the Dehcho First Nations and the federal government. That's still in process and needs approval, but there has been a huge amount of work. In th

Environment committee  I would defer the comments on the impact of the oil sands to my colleagues who are living on the ground there. I think they're the ones who are understanding the significant impacts and have presented their concerns and their recommendations today.

Environment committee  Absolutely. There's a myriad of pressures on the boreal forest from multiple sectors. It's important that we look at all of these as we look at the impacts on the boreal forest and really put all efforts in play to protect our boreal forest. We have to look at all of those impact

Environment committee  I think it's important to have. The safety net is important because it acts as a backstop to the patchwork of endangered species legislation that exists in the provinces and the territories. It enables the federal government to step in where the species are not being adequately p

Environment committee  It needs to continue to be there as part of the framework of the federal Species at Risk Act, absolutely.

Environment committee  In the actual agreement itself...the agreement is signed between environmental groups and forest companies who are members of the Forest Products Association of Canada and the Forest Products Association. In the process of developing it, we certainly talked to governments about i