WWF-Canada

He was the principal secretary to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau from 2015 to early 2019, and he also advised Prime Minister Mark Carney during the 2025 Canadian election.

He's also the former CEO of the World Wildlife Fund Canada, and he has a BA and an MA from McGill.

That's how I got here, yeah.

Dietland Stolle is a James McGill Professor of Political Science here at McGill and the former director of the Center for the Study of Democratic Citizenship.

This is Emily Giles.

She's part of WWF-Canada's Science, Knowledge and Innovation team.

COSEWIC meets twice a year, and they review a list of candidate species that might be at risk of extinction.

And they follow a really specific list of criteria to review the best information that they have on hand about that species and see if it fits the criteria to designate that species or population as extinct, extirpated, which means locally extinct, endangered, threatened, special concern, or not at risk.

Thanks for joining us today on This Is Wild.

I'm your host, Aliyah Jasmine.

To learn more about WWF-Canada's initiatives to protect Southern Resident killer whales and what you can do to help, head to wwf.ca/thisiswild.

And to learn more about everything going on at WWF-Canada, you can sign up for our newsletter, Living Planet News.