Canada's Species at Risk Act listings averaged nearly two and a half years of waiting since 2017
Under Canada's Species at Risk Act, a listed species' critical habitat must also be protected, at least on federal land. The Conversation Canada reports that such protections are routinely delayed for years, and that the article's authors' recent research found species needing SARA protection have waited nearly two and a half years on average since 2017 to formally receive legal protections — well beyond the timelines the federal government set for itself.
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The notable part isn't that a regulatory process is slow — it's that the average runs past the deadlines the government set for itself. A missed self-imposed timeline is a harder thing to explain away than general bureaucratic drift.
And the average has a denominator: it counts only species the government decided to protect. Species still awaiting protected status have been waiting longer than that.