Endangered species in Canada face extensive delays receiving protection

For more than 20 years, Canada’s Species at Risk Act (SARA) has protected wildlife that are at risk of being lost from Canadian lands and waters. Once a species is listed as extirpated, endangered or threatened under the act, it becomes illegal to kill, harm or capture it or damage its residences. Its critical habitat must also be protected, at least on federal land.

Nevertheless, these protections are routinely delayed for years. Our recently published research has found that since 2017, species that need SARA protections have waited nearly two and a half years on average to formally receive legal protections, well beyond the timelines the federal government set for itself.

And that only includes species the government has decided to protect. Others are still awaiting protected status and have been waiting for much longer than that. This is a systemic problem that has persisted for nearly two decades.

As climate change and human disturbance accelerate, delays in implementing protections can have irreversible consequences for wildlife.

A step with no deadline

Listing a species requires two stages. First, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) independently assesses a species’ status and the threats it faces, and recommends whether it should be listed. The committee’s assessment then goes to the federal minister of environment and climate change.

Second, the federal government consults with Indigenous rights holders, provincial and territorial governments, scientific experts, industry and the public to assess broader social and economic consequences of listing.

The minister then forwards the assessment to the federal cabinet, which has nine months under SARA to make a final decision. However, SARA sets no deadline for the consultation step. Every delay we found occurred at this stage, before the assessment reached cabinet.

In 2017, the federal government introduced a non-binding policy recommending that consultations take no more than 12 months, or 24 months for species requiring extended consultation. But that hasn’t reduced delays. For the species forwarded to the cabinet since 2017, this middle stage ran an average of 477 days (about 16 months) past the recommended timeline. Before the policy, the average was 484 days.

These figures only include species that were eventually forwarded. Of the 288 species assessed since 2017, 153 are still awaiting and already overdue. Only six per cent were forwarded on time, down from 16 per cent in the eight years before the policy.

Some species have been stuck in limbo for more than 20 years. COSEWIC assessed limber pine as endangered in 2014, and the minister responded in 2015. Consultations were completed in 2021, yet the species has still not been forwarded to cabinet. Although the science clearly supports its endangered status, there are no federal protections for individual limber pine trees or their habitat.

Aquatic species fare worst. Not one of the 49 marine fish, including many Pacific salmon populations, or the 15 marine mammals assessed since 2017 has been forwarded to cabinet.

The status of many of these species continues to decline while waiting for listing. The Bay of Fundy striped bass, a freshwater fish that was first assessed by COSEWIC as threatened in 2004, is now endangered, but it remains unlisted without any legal protections under SARA.

Why the holdup?

The answer is not consultation itself. For more than 40 per cent of the delayed species described in the 2023 SARA annual report, consultations were already complete, yet the process had stalled with no explanation of what came next.

These reports are meant to explain why species have missed their recommended timelines. Yet of the 173 species overdue as of January 2023, 63 were left out of that year’s report entirely, and 57 of those were fish.

For the species that were included, the most common reason given was that information collection was ongoing. In the 2023 report, 31 Pacific salmon populations, all assessed as endangered or threatened, received the identical explanation: “The collection of information required to inform a listing decision for the species is extensive and underway.”

That leaves the public with no clear sense of why these decisions have stalled — and leaves vulnerable species without protection.

Fixing the process

With threats to Canada’s ecosystems mounting, the federal government needs to fix this protection process now by amending either the 2017 policy or SARA itself. We recommend three changes.

First, set binding timelines for every stage of the listing process.

Second, complete consultations in a responsible and timely manner by strengthening existing bodies such as the National Aboriginal Council on Species at Risk, a step recommended as early as 2012 but never implemented.

Third, the federal government should publicly disclose clear, species-specific reasons for every delay, including where the process has stalled, what information or consultations are outstanding and an expected timeline for resolution. This would not limit ministerial discretion, but it would increase transparency, call attention to prolonged inaction and open the process to review.

Canadians care about protecting biodiversity, and at-risk species are central to that goal. For limber pine, dozens of salmon populations and the more than 150 species assessed since 2017 that are now overdue, faster and more transparent listing decisions could determine whether they survive in Canada.