Substitution (Species at risk)

Improve the Species at Risk Act

Integrate biodiversity protection and co-governance with Indigenous Peoples

Improve coverage on provincial land

More changes to Wildlife Compensation

Improve Environmental Farm Planning and CAP Stewardship programming

Facilitate conservation easements and property tax reductions on private lands

Targeted protected areas (PAs) in agricultural ecozones

 

Improve the Species at Risk Act

Turcotte et al. (2021) have extensively documented the problems with the Act and propose solutions in 7 areas that extend beyond food system themes but address the deficiencies highlighted in earlier sections:

  1. Fixing inconsistencies in the framework, listing biases, and political discretion at the expense of evidence, including an automatic listing framework
  2. Applying powers to protect species on provincial lands (see below)
  3. Better integration with and support for indigenous conservation
  4. Improving critical habitat identification
  5. Better research on data deficient species
  6. Prioritizing endemic and globally at risk  species for conservation action
  7. Removing discretionary language

Their proposals require extensive overhaul of the Act, including bringing trigger thresholds to section 34, integration of sections 37 through 55 on recovery and action plans to create a unified approach, expansion of section 43 on public comment to include creation of a web-based open data platform, removal of discretionary language in multiple sections, and creation of a specialized tribunal to hear disputes (as has been done in many other jurisdictions, including Ontario, although its Environmental Review tribunal does not have jurisdiction over the Ontario Endangered Species Act).

As highlighted earlier, a significant part of the current dilemmas flow from federal failure to use the Act properly and effectively, especially failures around meeting deadlines for action and taking a comprehensive and integrated approach to improvements. In the current environment, at worst officials receive a harsh critique from the Auditor General or are taken to court by an NGO. The changes proposed by Turcotte et al. remove some of that discretion.

Ray et al. {2021) help frame such changes with the requirement to implement a

"prescribed sequence of measures—a “mitigation hierarchy”—that places clear priority on avoiding impacts, then minimizing, and then, as a final resort, offsetting residual impacts. Although the mitigation hierarchy is widely recognized in offset guidelines and policies around the world ....., and there are examples in Canadian policies and practices ...., the only statutes where we found mention of aspects of the mitigation hierarchy (including explicit mention of avoided loss), is in the federal Fisheries Act (1985) and Ontario Endangered Species Act (2008)".

Buxton et al. (2021) identify a key feature of recovery/action plan integration. In their analysis of existing Canadian plans, they found an overemphasis on research, monitoring and education, apparently at the expense of concrete measures to protect species and biodiversity. There is some indication that these elements of action plans are prioritized when decision makers are uncertain what actions to take or are unwilling to address the roots of the problem because of the socio-economic implications for extractive industries. In other words, they have been devoting limited resources to research, and not necessarily because there isn't enough information to act. When a species faces extinction, such actions do not make for an effective action plan.  These deficiencies need correcting through guidance in a revised Act.

Integrate biodiversity protection and co-governance with Indigenous Peoples

Although the SARA requires consultation with affected Indigenous peoples and use to Traditional Indigenous Knowledge, implementation has not lived up to the intent of the Act, in part because of discretionary language (Turcotte et al., 2021). Turcotte et al. (2021) suggest using existing Conservation Agreements (section 13(1)) and funding arrangements specified in the Act, and very underutilized to date, as mechanisms to work more collaboratively with Indigenous peoples. An Indigenous Accord on Species at Risk, that flowed from SARA provisions, would also give strength to the development and maintenance of conservation agreements. See also Goal 1 Self-provisioning and Goal 5 Sustainable Fisheries Management.

Improve coverage on provincial land

There is a fundamental problem of failing to apply SARA to vulnerable landscapes, especially when combined with limited provincial / territorial species at risk legislation and the very limited programming to address vulnerable privately held landscapes. The problem partly results from the limited language of SARA and partly from the federal government's failure to use tools that the Act actually provides.

Section 34 of SARA only directly mandates protection or management action on federally protected lands, which according to Bollinger et al. (2020) amounts to an average of < 9% of listed species ranges. They go on to conclude that

"63.1% of 252 terrestrial SAR are protected within less than 5% of their range. The addition of provincial and territorial protected areas increases this average to 14.6% and reduces the percent with less than 5% protection to 34.9% of species. Eighteen species receive 0% protection within their Canadian ranges. We found no significant difference in average protection among taxonomic groups."

However, sections 32, 33, and 51 of SARA do not guarantee that management actions will be taken on federal land, beyond provision of some basic protections. But sections 34 and 35 of SARA permit the Minister to order a federal “basic prohibition safety net” that extends sections 32 and 33 prohibitions on harming species and their residences to provincial and territorial lands (Turcotte et al., 2021). Bollinger et al. (2020) however conclude that this provision has never been employed. Additionally, Turcotte et al. (2021) draw attention to section 80 of SARA, whereby,

"an emergency order can be applied on any land (public or private) when the Minister feels that the species “faces imminent threats to its survival or recovery” and will provide protection for the species and its habitat on public and private provincial or territorial lands (SARA) ....." Emergency orders have only been applied to two species, the greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) and the western chorus frog (Pseudacris triseriata) ...."

and

"'Critical habitat safety orders' are also available under section 61 of SARA, whereby the Minister may prohibit destruction of critical habitat on provincial or territorial lands where they believe that laws of the province or territory do not effectively protect critical habitats".

Given all this, Bollinger et al. (2020) concluded that

"Canada’s capacity to protect SAR via SARA could be improved by greater coordination among national, provincial and Indigenous governments, the creation of a more effective protected area network, exercising SARA’s provision for emergency protection orders where applicable, and facilitating greater SAR protection on public and private lands".

Turcotte et al. (2021) build on this by proposing a mandatory threshold trigger for action,

"that if a species is listed under SARA for two years, but it is not listed or legally protected (i.e., prohibitions on killing/harming species or destruction of residence and protection of critical habitat) on provincial/territorial lands, this would trigger an investigation by the specialized tribunal ...... If the tribunal determines that there are no justifiable reasons explaining why provincial/territorial jurisdictions have not listed or protected this species or its critical habitat, then a basic prohibition or critical habitat safety net order should normally be issued, unless there is a clear legal reason (e.g., impinging on Indigenous Treaty Rights, public safety, or conflict with additional legislation) that prevents this ....."

Such a process would like limit the need for expensive litigation of the state by ENGOs and other parties.

Not all provinces have statutes and those with them do not necessarily have complementary authorities to the federal legislation, despite the reality of extensive areas of critical provincially managed habitat. SK, for example, has 1.3 million acres of critical habitat on agricultural crown land, mostly in the SW. In part because of deficiencies in provincial legislation and programming, they're using federal SARPAL funding to develop a multi-species assessment tool and plan for the grazing lands. But the province has yet to commit to the assessment tool (Briere, 2022). Ray et al. {2021) identified significant deficiencies in provincial biodiversity legislation, strategies and programming. On balance, Ontario's legislation and programming prior to their dilution by the Ford Government in 2019 to favour developers represented the strongest provincial approach (amended by the More Homes, More Choices Act, 2019). At this stage, all provinces should develop legislation equivalent to the Ontario pre-2019 Endangered Species Act, and create and implement associated biodiversity strategies that are coherent with the federal biodiversity strategy. All provinces should also design and implement an equivalent to Ontario's Species at Risk Farm Incentive program.

More changes to Wildlife Compensation

At this stage the focus of programming should shift to “proactive coexistence rather than reactive compensation”, using ecology concepts to help identify co-existence strategies (Jordan et al., 2020; Wilkinson et al., 2020). Compensation regimes need to reward predator-friendly farming systems that encourage non-lethal measures, particularly husbandry that has been underutilized as a prevention strategy (Wilkinson et al., 2020; Boronyak et al., 2022):

  • Guarding livestock (herders, range riders and guardian animals)
  • Practices that increase predator perceptions of risk - fences, noise, lights
  • Husbandry practices that reduce encounter rates between predators and livestock (e.g., range riding, tighter herding of livestock especially at night using night pens, reducing isolation of young calves and lambs from their mothers, and avoidance of heavily forested areas, riparian areas or sites of known carnivore activity)
  • Optimising herd health (e.g., sound vaccination, handling and nutrition protocols)
  • Removing attractants such as livestock carcasses and boneyards
  • Planned grazing (e.g., more intensive yet short term grazing, use of permanent and temporary enclosures or installation of additional watering points, unpredictable locations which affects predator behaviour).

In addition, compensation related to lethal options would only be approvable if the applicant demonstrated that prevention measures failed.

Increased biodiversity associated with multiple measures is likely to result in increased populations of wild prey which can help reduce predation on domestic animals (Wilkinson et al., 2020).

Improve Environmental Farm Planning and CAP Stewardship programming

As has been discussed in numerous areas of this site, Canadian agri-environmental programming is generally weak, relying excessively on voluntary, untargeted, best management practices approaches, with farmer cost-share provisions and limited financial investments by governments (see Instruments for more on the limitations).  As the main programmatic instrument, these limitations are expressed particularly in the limited environmental stewardship programs of the Canadian Agricultural Partnerships (CAP). The only truly national undertaking is Environmental Farm Planning (EFPs) but program adoption is highly uneven across the country because of its voluntary nature. Statistics Canada reports only 40% of Canadian farms had an EFP in 2017. The EFP workbook and workshops do look at biodiversity and habitat themes, but farmers don't necessarily act on the information accumulated during the process because supports for making changes are so limited. P/Ts can determine what supportive programmatic options they wish to use, so environmental program coverage is highly uneven across the country and in no commensurate with the problems existing in most provinces. The cost-share nature of the programs means many farmers will not apply.

BC has some pertinent supports for biodiversity related BMPs. Alberta has almost no environmental programming under CAP beyond EFPs. Saskatchewan programs primarily address grazing lands and invasive plant control. Manitoba has a few pertinent BMP programs. Ontario has the Species at Risk Farm Incentive Program (SARFIP), a riparian buffer strip program, and a limited fragile land retirement BMP. Quebec supports many BMPs through their Prime Vert program and usually at a higher government contribution level than other provinces. It can reach 90% government contribution if on the path to organic certification or in a targeted region. They also provide regional agro-environmental programming to priority target regions involving multi-actor collaborations, which no other province/ territory undertakes. New Brunswick includes riparian management and restoration as eligible BMPs, the hiring of planning consultants, and does support agri-environment clubs. Similarly, NS has some programming to support riparian area management and protection. PEI has an organic industry development program, an Alternative Land Use Services Program that supports wildlife habitat, and uses co-funded BMPs to support winter cover cropping, crop rotation development, and stream protection. NL support riparian and other wildlife habitat protections, related particularly to hay.

Ray et al. {2021) identified the pressing need to improve federal deployment of fiscal levers. CAP programming represents the most likely structural opportunity to do so with individual farms, although the Quebec Prime Vert design supports both individual actions and regional collaborations. Most of this programming, with the exception of Quebec and PEI, is quite limited and only a first-stage transition. To advance work in this area, all provinces should revamp their CAP offerings to at least be at the levels of Quebec and PEI offerings. Although few program details are available, there appears to be some movement in this direction with the new Resilient Agricultural Landscapes Program (RALP),  to be cost-shared and administered by provinces and territories as part of the 23-28 Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnerships. Prince Edward Island’s Alternate Land Use Services program, Quebec's Programme de Rétribution des pratiques agroenvironnementales, and Manitoba's Growing Outcomes in Watersheds (GROW) will apparently be able to receive funding from this new programme when available, and other jurisdictions will be encouraged to establish programs with similar objectives.

Facilitate conservation easements and property tax reductions on private lands

For sensitive lands dominated by private landowners, interventions are more challenging given Canada's commitment to private property rights. The SARA does provide some possibilities of federal intervention on private lands (discussed with provincial and territorial provisions above). However, incentives are more likely to be effective than legislated interventions across a range of landscapes, which primarily means in the Canadian context tax related incentives.

Some relevant proposals appear under Goal 3 Reducing Corporate Concentration, Substitution, Land, including changing the federal Ecological Gifts Program.  Ontario has a Conservation Land Tax Incentive program that provides 100% property tax exemption on eligible properties, including vulnerable habitat and provincially significant ecological sites. BC has a limited program in the Gulf Islands, the Natural Area Protection Tax Exemption Program that offers a 65% property tax reduction properties with important natural area features, a residential designation, and is covered by a covenant. The Union of BC Municipalities and the Ministry of the Environment have expressed support for a wider program. However, as with the Ecological Gifts Program, both these programs would have to alter their designation of eligible properties to include many farmed areas. Since farmland is taxed at a lower rate in most provinces, and is fully exempt in a few (see OECD Table 7.1), this would only represent a modest additional reduction in some provinces, likely with limited impact on overall municipal revenue. However, some municipalities with many sensitive agricultural landscapes could suffer significant revenue declines which, given current dependence on property tax revenue, would be problematic unless provincial governments covered  tax revenue losses above a specified threshold. Schuster et al. (2017) concluded that tax shifting is one possible option to maintain overall revenue neutrality, by decreasing rates on high biodiversity lands and very modestly increasing them on low biodiversity lands in the tax region. Modelling these scenarios would be valuable.

With limited evaluation conducted, it's not clear that further tax reductions on farmland will result in significant conservation among recalcitrant producers. Those already at least partially committed will likely deepen their commitment on marginal farmland (Schuster et al., 2017). Tax incentives are, however, unlikely to accelerate adoption of sustainable systems on working landscapes except rangelands (see Goal 5 Sustainable Food for more likely effective approaches).

It will also be important to educate both banks and real estate agents. Conservation easements are currently viewed as decreasing the land value, which makes the landowners less likely to consider an easement on the property, or if they have one, it is harder to sell their land should they want to. Getting banks to see conservation and the ecological services/benefits as having value and being evaluated fairly should be a priority. Real estate agents are also pretty ill-informed on conservation easements and what a potential landowner would be allowed to do, which results in new landowners disgruntled and sometimes non-compliant when they suddenly have restrictions they weren't aware or properly informed of. Such educational programs could be conducted through the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) which already extensively interacts with banks and realtors regarding federal government housing priorities.

The potential for non-compliance among subsequent landowners is a significant challenge that needs to be addressed. Since conservation easements can only be removed if ECCC, the land trust that facilitates the agreement like NCC, and the landowner all agree, they are very unlikely to ever be removed. While this is a net bonus for reaching conservation goals, as this land is essentially protected now for time immemorial, it can become troublesome if the original landowners who sign on to the easement take one lump sum payment instead of annual payments. The new owner must then abide by the conservation easement agreement without any sort of compensation and if they fail to do so they could be fined.  The possibility exists that some would pay the fine and be non-compliant with the easement.  This suggests the need for a reconsideration among ECCC and conservation organizations about the relationship between payments, owners and easements.  It could be, for example, that annual payments rather than lump sums, have to be the norm unless an easement condition is that the property will not be sold, only transferred to other family members with comparable commitments to conservation.

Targeted protected areas (PAs) in agricultural ecozones

Although NGOs attempt to target sensitive zones for their conservation work, their success is often very dependent on interested and willing landowners. Given how many farm owners are not particularly interested in habitat protection and wildlife conservation, governments will have to play a stronger role in creating protected areas in particularly ecological significant areas. This may require expropriation of farm properties, always keeping in mind though Demand-supply Co-ordination needs.  Unfortunately, few PAs in NA have been well assessed for effectiveness and impacts (Leverington et al., 2010; Oldekop et al., 2016), and given the limited number of PAs in agricultural regions, the elements that lead to success are even less clear.