Environment committee  In the forest sector, companies now are planning over long time horizons—100 or 200 years—so they're managing for a diversity of habitat or forest stages. Those will change over time. Those areas might be natural and not cut. There might be other areas that are coming back online

Environment committee  For me it would include both. I think about the outcome people want from the habitat. So whether it's natural and untouched or it has been through a process of development, perhaps, with permanent cover put back on the land, what is that land producing? Is it sustaining the speci

Environment committee  Habitat doesn't provide for only one species. For example, if I take the pronghorn antelope, it might be the species one would speak about with a rancher with respect to conservation activity on the land. If that rancher conserves the native prairie, there are many outcomes from

Environment committee  They're very successful. At the largest scale, we have the Eastern Habitat Joint Venture, with individual habitat joint ventures within that umbrella. The largest habitat joint venture we have is the Prairie Habitat Joint Venture in the three prairie provinces. We have the Canadi

Environment committee  The habitat stewardship program is a federal one. It's implemented jointly with the Parks Canada agency and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. Regionally, we also bring in our provincial colleagues. It's very closely coordinated with provincial programming. As to your previ

Environment committee  With respect to your first question around the non-government organizations that are involved, I've mentioned a couple of the national ones. There are many. There are dozens and hundreds at that community scale that really make a difference in terms of delivering habitat conserva

Environment committee  Yes, very quickly, just on habitat, groups don't come to us and speak specifically about climate change. I think people working locally recognize that habitat conservation is one of the key strategies to adapt. The federal government has other programs, which I'm not familiar wit

Environment committee  With respect to the first part of your question, I can respond with an example. We at Environment Canada have been working with our colleagues in the province of Saskatchewan, as well as with industry sectors, cattlemen's associations, and so on, in southwestern Saskatchewan, to

Environment committee  I was going to integrate it more and use the North American waterfowl management plan as an example, because that human dimension is at its heart. That plan, incidentally, was updated last year to address the hugely important human dimension part of conservation. How does that hu

Environment committee  Yes. I will go back to the South of the Divide initiative. That's a multi-species approach, and I think as the habitat conservation plan is finalized and we see implementation, we'll see multiple species benefiting, because the plan is designed to maintain the full suite of habit

Environment committee  For the other important part of thinking about climate change and adapting to it, I would use the word “planning”. What information do people really need? I think they need access to a really good plan to help them understand how best to use land. Parks, national wildlife areas

Environment committee  That's a decision made in Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, so I'm very hesitant to speculate on the decision-making. Conservation organizations know that some of those lands are important for conservation, and I understand that actively looking at the lands would be valuable fro

Environment committee  The best definition from a protected areas perspective—and there's much more to habitat conservation than protected areas. There is an international classification system adopted by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. I'm not going to go into the details. Ther

Environment committee  It's the latter. There is definitely a desire to be involved in this work. There is a council called the Canadian Business and Biodiversity Council. This is a compendium of case studies, so it's not regulation-driven. It's companies wanting to do the right thing. I had a chance t

Environment committee  Yes, the council to which I referred maintains its own website, but then there are best management practices led by our federal government colleagues, as well as provincial-territorial ministries. They would have best management practices in their sectors. So the agriculture sect