Species are disappearing at 100 to 1000 times faster than normal. So what is Canada doing about its 15 per cent of the planet? To put it politely, not much.

But federal Environment Minister David Anderson has a plan. If his boss doesn't call an election this fall, and if Bill C-33 passes both houses of Parliament, we'll have something called the Species At Risk Act (SARA).

Will it do any good?

Probably not.

The green lobby had hoped for something better from Anderson, the fourth, and by all accounts the most committed, environment minister under the Chretien dynasty. But even the most cynical among them are disappointed with what is now making its way through Parliament.

The upside is, SARA will at least offer the possibility of legal protection for the last few hundred St. Lawrence belugas and B.C. killer whales, both of which are now classified as toxic waste, the beleagured weasel known as the Newfoundland marten and the 300-odd other species that Canadian scientists say are in danger of disappearing in our lifetime.

It will be crime to "kill, harm, harass, capture or take" anything considered endangered or a threatened. Violators will face fines of up $250,000 ($1 million for corporations) or even five years in jail.

Global shame
SARA would go a long way toward undoing the embarrassment faced by Canadians who have had the misfortune of representing their country at international conferences devoted to saving wildlife. The U.S. Endangered Species Act is 27 years old, after all, and it's about time it got with the program.

To be fair, it's not easy writing legislation that deals with habitat protection in Canada without stepping on the toes of the provinces, who all claim jurisdiction over their lands. Indeed, SARA will cover habitat only on that five per cent of the country that happens to be in federal hands.

Anderson warns he won't accept any amendments to his bill because his "compromise" is the best possible.

That may be. Or, as Angela Rickman, deputy director of the Sierra Club of Canada, sees it, that compromise may already be unconstitutional.

"It would be worse that no bill at all," is how she puts it.

Both sides are afraid of a legal challenge Rickman says the current bill would lose in court and Anderson says any other version would be tossed out. Either way, the chances of the government taking another run at endangered species legislation any time soon is, well, microscopic.

That might sound like abstract legal theory. But as any decent ecosystems biologist will tell you, preserving habitat is an absolute necessity if an endangered species law is to do any good at all.

This is more than constitutional nitpicking. Fortunately, we don't have to wait for the gavel to know what's in store should SARA become law. A comparison with the American law exposes her Achilles heel straight away.

Courts to the rescue
Under the U.S. law, the secretary of the interior decides what gets added to the endangered species list. But those decisions must be based "solely on the basis of the best scientific and commercial data."

The secretary is always free to let political or economic interests take precedence, but in that event, any American can sue the government for failing to abide by the act.

That is precisely what happened in a 1995 suit over the failure to list the Canada lynx, and again in a 1998 suit over the refusal to list the Atlantic salmon. In each case, and many others just like them, the American courts forced the government to give the species in question the protection required by law.

Now, it may be true that "it is rare that a species gets listed without the help of a federal judge." Keiran Suckling of the Arizona-based Centre for Biological Diversity, which has fought successfully 129 times to add species to the U.S. list, made that point last month at a killer whale symposium in Washington State.

But at least Americans can turn to courts to force their government into action. SARA offers no such option. It only requires Canada's designated scientists to propose a list of endangered and threatened species (along with a third category of "special concern" for those that are doing OK for the moment, but might go downhill in the event of something nasty, like an oil spill) and then lets the federal cabinet draw up the final, official list.

In other words, politicians with no expertise in the biological sciences, much less wildlife preservation, get the final say. And if we don't like their decision, there's nothing we can do about it. Except wait for the next election, and hope the critters at risk can do the same.

In theory, it would take an extraordinary situation to prompt cabinet to override the advice of their scientists. Ninety-nine per cent of the time, cabinet should simply rubber-stamp the scientists'list.

In practice, the Americans have learned they can't trust their politicians to do the right thing.

Why should we?

Do you have something to say on endangered species in Canada?

For more on SARA:
The Canadian Nature Federation
The Canadian Real Estate Association
The Canadian Endangered Species Campaign