Debates of Nov. 2nd, 1998

Marine Conservation Areas Act

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

We all need to be apprised from time to time of the necessity of courtesy to each other. The hon. member for Rimouski—Mitis is quite correct in bringing this to our attention.

[Mike Scott, Reform, Skeena, BC]

Mr. Speaker, hopefully it will be a little quieter in here for the next few minutes.

The people of South Moresby were promised at the inception of South Moresby park that there was going to be an alternative economy for them. It would not be logging any more; it would be tourism. This was going to be the way of the future for South Moresby and the community of Sandspit. For several decades it had been a logging community employing several hundred people on a full time basis who made very good wages.

South Moresby is one of the richest, most productive forests anywhere in the world. It was taken out of forest land and turned into a park. Parks Canada runs that little park like a fiefdom. It limits the number of Canadians who can go into that park every year. For these bull hards down here who do not want to listen, the number of people who can go into the park is limited to under 2,000 every year.

You would have to be somebody special to get into the park, if you can afford it. It is only wealthy lawyers from Toronto and New York who can get in there. As northerners who live there, we cannot afford to go into the park because it costs so much. It is cost prohibitive.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

I mentioned earlier that we should be tempered in our language. I remind and ask all hon. members to be temperate in their language. As we all know, there are certain words that raise the temper of the debate to a point that it does not remain civil.

[Mike Scott, Reform, Skeena, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I apologize. I too have heard words that raised my level of anger. I feel very passionate about this issue because it directly affects constituents of mine. People I know, people I feel for and people I care for have been displaced as a result of this. The same kind of thinking that went into the creation of South Moresby park has gone into the creation of this nonsense.

We who live in regional parts of Canada, we who live in the north depend on access to resources for our livelihoods. We have to have it. People do not go up to northern British Columbia to go shopping. They do not go to northern British Columbia to bask in the sun. They go there primarily to work in a resource industry or in some other commercial venture that is most likely there to support a resource industry or the commercial industries that support the resource industry. Everything feeds on each other; it is a domino effect.

If we are going to have an economy in northern B.C., if we are going to have an economy in regional Canada, we have to have reasonable access to resources. We have to have reasonable access to water. We have to have reasonable access to the land base. This bill is specifically designed to prevent this from happening. This bill is cobbled together by a bunch of misguided politically correct soft heads on the other side who are listening to the environmental agenda and the radical preservationists. They are not considering what the impact is going to be on ordinary Canadians.

In the case of South Moresby we are not talking about hundreds of thousands of people. We are not talking about a political voice that is going to be loud and vociferous and heard in Ottawa on a regular basis. We are talking about a community of 500 or 600 people, but that community is dying on the vine. That community has been blindsided by government. How do they feel about mother Ottawa forcing on them something they had no involvement in? They are not in agreement with it. This has been forced down their throats.

Frankly, I am tired of seeing the people of the north who have put everything they own, their life, their property, their future and their children's future on the line only to have the rug pulled out from under them by this kind of nonsense.

In the last parliament the government was asked to basically rubber stamp a decision that was made by the province of British Columbia. The Tatshenshini River is in the northern part of British Columbia. It is on the Yukon border. There is a copper-cobalt deposit in the Tatshenshini which is probably one of the top two or three copper-cobalt deposits ever found in the world.

I talked to one of the senior geologists at the Geological Survey of Canada who told me that they do not even know the whole extent of that deposit. Conservatively it was estimated that the deposit contained, at a minimum, $10 billion worth of copper-cobalt ore. It was estimated that, at a minimum, it could provide 1,600 permanent, full time, year-round jobs for approximately 40 years.

The geologist I talked with said that in his experience, based on some of the further testing that was being done and some of the samples they were starting to see, this deposit could actually be anywhere up to four times as large as they had actually proven. Just consider that for a minute.

When we go to a manufacturing facility that closes down and people are put out of work, it is easy to see the sadness, the pain and the hurt because these people have been displaced. We can put a name and a face to that. However, we cannot go around and interview the 1,600 people who never got jobs up in the Tatshenshini region because of this ridiculous decision.

This government rubber stamped the NDP government's ridiculous decision to create a park by having this nominated as a world heritage site at the United Nations. I cannot fathom what was in their minds when they agreed to this.

Let me give the House more examples. In British Columbia the Fisheries Act, which is an act of this parliament, is a very powerful piece of legislation. That act states that there shall be no development of any kind on the coast of Canada that would involve any net loss of fish habitat.

If we carry that to the extreme it means we cannot walk down to the beach and kick a stone over because somebody could come along and argue that was fish habitat. If anyone thinks I am being ridiculous, let me assure them I am not. I have had meeting after meeting with constituents in Prince Rupert who cannot get access to the waterfront because every time somebody comes along and proposes to develop the foreshore, to build a dock, a berthing facility or a log dump, or proposes any kind of access to the waterfront, the first person on the scene is the local DFO biologist who shuts it down and says that it poses a danger and a threat to fish habitat.

Prince Rupert right now, because of the downturn in the fishery and problems in the forest industry, is looking at very serious unemployment and economic situations. Prince Rupert is not alone. The people in the larger communities in the riding that I represent are suffering and they are suffering a great deal. They are looking for alternatives. They are looking for ways to offset some of the downturns that have taken place. They cannot get access to the waterfront to do anything because DFO will shut them down.

I am not making this up. I am telling members that DFO will not allow a pile to be driven in the water, will not allow a dock to be constructed, will not allow somebody to build the most rudimentary access of any kind from the foreshore to the water because it might interrupt fish habitat.

Let me tell members that British Columbia is a province which has literally thousands and thousands of miles of waterfront. Let me say as well that British Columbia is a province which, outside of the lower mainland, does not have much of a population base and has not experienced much development. Really there is no threat to the integrity of the environment in British Columbia, but that is contrary to what most of the preservationists and radical environmentalists would have us believe. That is the truth.

This legislation is one more chink in the armour. It is one more step down the road.

The radical environmental agenda is becoming clearer as time goes on. These people are profoundly anti-human. These people think we are nothing better than pestilence. Some of these people have even voiced that thought.

David Suzuki, who is the founder of the Suzuki Foundation, has opined that what should take place is a mass die-off of human beings in order to preserve the environment. Can we believe that? I am not making that up.

I should point out that this environmental movement is a very well-funded movement, controlled predominately by large estates in the United States. Most of their money does not come from Canada. Most of their money comes from the United States.

Their agenda is becoming clearer as time goes on. Some of them have publicly said: “Would it not be great if human beings were all living in rural communes with rudimentary housing and no hydro-electric power?” Some of them have said that all the dams that have been created in British Columbia should be dismantled. Can we imagine that? There would be no power. There would be no means for people to generate electrical power for industrial or commercial use. But that is what these people see. That is their vision for the future.

I say that this legislation is driven by that kind of mentality. The goal is to further limit human activity of almost any kind and this is one more step in that direction. These people want to limit economic activity with the eventual goal of eradicating it altogether.

As I have already said, the environmentalists and the preservationists have been saying a lot about the environment in British Columbia and across Canada. Let me tell members that there is very little truth to any of it.

They have been saying, for example, that we need to stop logging in order to preserve habitat for wildlife. I know a little about wildlife, since I have spent most of my life hunting and fishing in the backwoods. Do members know what the aboriginal people did in this country when wildlife was becoming scarce? They went on a controlled burn. They burned the forest because they knew that a heavy forest canopy did not allow for the growth of small deciduous plants and berry bushes, the plant life that is important for wildlife to live on.

If we go into the so-called old growth areas of British Columbia, I assure members they will find very little wildlife. I can take a boat down the Douglas Channel, which is down from my home town of Kitimat, and see every place where some logger has a-frame logged old growth. There is regeneration and the berry bushes are reappearing. That is where we would find the wildlife, the bears and the deer and the moose, because something is available for them to eat. If we went to where the old growth was, there would be nothing available for them to eat.

The wildlife population in British Columbia is extraordinarily strong at the present time. As much as the people who run the bear watch campaign would have us believe otherwise, I can say from living in the Kitimat Valley all of my life that the bear population in that region is as high as I have ever seen it.

When I was a kid, prior to logging in the Kitimat Valley, it would be a very rare occasion that a moose would be seen. Now that the valley has been logged and we have a nice regeneration taking place, the moose population has probably quadrupled.

When the radical environmentalists and the preservationists talk about old growth logging and how it hurts wildlife, I can say that nothing could be further from the truth. Their agenda with this bill is to further limit human activity on Canadian soil. Their eventual agenda, if this bill is adopted, is to make sure that we do not have access to the waterfront at all any more. There will be no chance to revise the Fisheries Act to bring some sense to the development of the Canadian waterfront.

I am a British Columbian. I am a Canadian and I love Canada. I would not be in this parliament if I did not feel strongly about the federation, but I have to agree with my friend in the Bloc Quebecois. This is provincial jurisdiction. Why in the name of God is the federal government getting involved? Does it not think that when it gets involved it puts up big red flags, not only for members in the Bloc but for members in other parts of Canada as well?

I say this bill should be defeated on its face for those very reasons.

[John Bryden, Liberal, Wentworth—Burlington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his remarks. I have great sympathy for his objection to environmental groups. They often have agendas that have nothing to do with preserving the environment but have a lot to do with getting donations and publicity.

I know that he is a proud Canadian and that he is concerned with national values. However, I have to say to the member, as a Canadian, that there are too many examples across the country where major problems have been created in the environment because provincial governments have not acted.

In Ontario the provincial government is retreating from environmental issues in every way. In Newfoundland, for example, there are environmental problems occurring in the logging industry. If we fly over Corner Brook we can look down to see that the trees are gone. While perhaps what is growing back may be good for some types of wildlife, there still is the disruption of the natural landscape. I could cite examples right across Canada.

My problem with the member's remarks is that in siding with the Bloc Quebecois he simply asserted that the federal government has no role in the environment. I fundamentally disagree with that.

If he sets aside that criticism, upon which the Reform Party and the Bloc Quebecois are constantly together, that is, provincial power at the expense of federal power, can he tell us something about what his genuine concerns are about this legislation as it pertains to the marine environment, and not the logging industry, the mountains and the forests?

[Mike Scott, Reform, Skeena, BC]

Mr. Speaker, my first concern is that we have this legislation at all. If the member says that provincial governments are retreating, so be it. That is their right. It is not the right of the federal government to override that and say that it will step in and do it.

The provincial governments in this country have jurisdiction over the environment. The Liberal government's philosophy has been for 30 years, and it is what has led us to the brink of breakup in this is country, that we have to have a strong central government, mother Ottawa, dictating to the rest of the country how it will live. I say, frankly, that is not on.

Does the federal government have a role to play within the environment? Absolutely. When it comes to matters of international negotiation, the federal government has a role in concert with the provinces. It also has a role in consultation and agreement with the provinces. Beyond that there is not. The provincial governments have jurisdiction. If the federal government would just butt out and leave matters to the provinces, we would all be a lot better off and the tensions in this country would start to decrease rather than increase.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Canadian Heritage]

Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the hon. member who said that the government is going too far in its efforts to preserve marines areas.

Yet the critic for his party, in his remarks at the beginning of second reading, stated that he could not support this bill because it did not go far enough, because it did not include conservation measures.

Perhaps he should check with his colleague, the critic for his party, to find out whether the bill goes too far or not far enough or whether the Reform Party opposes it as a matter of form and not reform.

[Mike Scott, Reform, Skeena, BC]

Mr. Speaker, that question is easy to answer. My colleague from Saanich—Gulf Islands said this is a hollow bill. By hollow he meant that it gives the minister a great deal of discretionary power without specifying what that power is going to be used for and without specifying where the marine conservation areas will be, et cetera.

[An hon. member]

Do you want us to consult?

[Mike Scott, Reform, Skeena, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the member across asked me something. I want him to butt out. Do not tell us in northern British Columbia from Ottawa what we can and cannot do with our marine areas. We do not need somebody from the other side of Canada telling us what we can do in our own backyard. If the member would only get that message and understand that it applies to Newfoundland, Quebec and the rest of the country, the country would be a lot better off.

[Suzanne Tremblay, Bloc, Rimouski—Mitis, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have a question for our colleague from the Reform Party.

If I heard correctly, British Columbia asked the Canadian government to establish a park and the government agreed, without holding consultations. I am not sure I heard correctly on account of the noise.

If so, I would like him to tell me, because this is indicative of something about this government that I find extremely dangerous. As members know, once bitten, twice shy, and what goes around comes around.

We know how the Liberal government operates, saying it is holding consultations but not taking them into account. We saw it when the issue of the changes to the boundaries of Tuktut Nogait Park was brought up. The government never agreed to recognize the rights that were being claimed.

So, could the hon. member tell me exactly what he said about the park in British Columbia that was authorized by the Government of Canada?

[Mike Scott, Reform, Skeena, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for her question. I will try to explain what happened. The federal government decided it wanted to create a national park. It asked the province for permission to do that and the province agreed to do so provided there was consultation.

There was a small degree of consultation. It was not widespread by any means. As a result of that consultation a number of very serious promises were made on the part of the federal government. There was a $38 million fund to be established to assist in the transition to a different economy. Promises were made with regard to assisting the community in transforming from a resource based economy to a tourist based economy.

The federal government has not kept its word on any of that. It has not kept the bargain. The people hanging out to dry are the people who live on South Moresby and Sandspit on the Queen Charlotte Islands—

[An hon. member]

Like the Bloc.

[Mike Scott, Reform, Skeena, BC]

I see that blowhard from Vancouver—

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

Let us not get into that again. The hon. member for Wentworth—Burlington.

[John Bryden, Liberal, Wentworth—Burlington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member should know that I have two brothers, a sister and a mother who live in Victoria, B.C. I go back and forth and have done that for the last 20 years.

I admire the province. I love the province. I love the island and I feel it is very much a part of me. When he says butt out, what he is basically saying is if you do not live in the province, you have no say over the environment.

As a Canadian I care about this country from sea to sea. It is of interest to me. I know the provincial government in B.C. now is probably the most venal government in Canada. It is inept. It would do anything in order to get votes, including raping the landscape and raping the ocean.

As far as I am concerned the federal government is doing the right thing because if we are Canadians we should care about B.C., about Quebec, about Newfoundland. We on this side do care.

[Mike Scott, Reform, Skeena, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am genuine when I say butt out and I am genuine when I say I do not think as a British Columbian that I should be involved in dictating to Ontario, Quebec or Nova Scotia how they should handle their environmental concerns and problems.

The member is quite right. There is a very venal government in British Columbia. If it makes mistakes, it is up to the people of British Columbia to rein it in and correct it. I am confident they will do that.

In the meantime, we do not need mother Ottawa complicating the situation, intruding, intervening and dictating what should happen to B.C.'s environment.

[Benoît Sauvageau, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Mr. Speaker, first of all, before I forget, I would like to inform you that I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Témiscamingue. We will each speak for ten minutes. My colleague will speak last.

I am pleased to rise in this House to speak to Bill C-48, an act respecting marine conservation areas. As members have seen from our previous speeches, we have several reasons to oppose this bill which, once again, interferes in areas of provincial jurisdiction.

I was flabbergasted, a few moments ago, when I heard the Liberal members automatically make a connection between the Reform Party and the Bloc Quebecois because we were talking about respecting areas of provincial jurisdiction.

I would like them to be honest. From the beginning, they have been talking even louder than us—they are always very grouchy when we speak—but I would like them to tell us frankly and honestly that they have absolutely no respect for areas of provincial jurisdiction and that they think the simple solution to Canada's problems would be to eliminate the provinces.

In the Canadian Constitution of 1867, there are areas of shared jurisdiction, including the environment. The federal government says it must interfere in areas such as the environment because there is a problem in Newfoundland or there is a problem in British Columbia, but let us look at what it has done on its own turf. Let us look at what it has done on northern native reserves.

The environment committee visited these reserves. What has the government done? It can all be found in the committee's proceedings. What has it done to protect the environment at airports and on Canadian forces bases? The Liberals, when and if they check in the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, will see what the government's obligations are. They can read evidence given by federal employees and by other witnesses who have seen the federal government renege on its obligations on its own property.

It is easy to blame others and say “We must have the upper hand because we are better, more intelligent, more clever, more who knows what else, we must have the upper hand over the Government of Quebec and every other province. There are crooked trees in the provinces”.

If only the government looked at its own areas of jurisdiction, it might see it has problems too. It is a lot easier to shrug off its own problems and point to the problems of other governments, claiming it will take care of them.

Unfortunately they have not stopped to think about how they could improve things. What we see today is the result of this approach. The government and the bureaucrats, who are trying to justify their positions, come up with countless new ideas

Contrary to what the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage suggested, we are not opposed to this kind of environmental protection. We are in favour of measures aimed at protecting the environment.

More specifically, the Bloc Quebecois would remind the government it supported legislation establishing Saguenay—St. Lawrence marine park. Moreover the Bloc Quebecois knows the Quebec government is embarking on initiatives aimed at protecting the environment, particularly the sea floor.

Why did we support the establishment of Saguenay—St. Lawrence marine park when we now object to this bill? It is very simple, really. On one hand, there was joint action and perhaps the parliamentary secretary—I read it in his speeches—did not understand this aspect or did not want to understand it. We agreed to determine a procedure for the Saguenay—St. Lawrence marine park, and if we were had been offered the same procedure, the same joint action and the same harmonization, perhaps we would be talking differently.

But no, today, Liberals say “The federal government, even to establish these marine parks, will have to be the owner of the seabed”. The Constitution does not allow the government to take such a direction, to own the seabed to establish a marine park. If the parliamentary secretary read his bill once again, he would probably find this clause.

Also, the problem is not only one of overlap between the federal and the provincial governments. Let us look within the federal government alone. There is a small problem. If only the federal and the provincial governments were involved, the bad separatists could be there to throw a monkey's wrench into the works.

We will find ourselves with three designations, three categories, namely who will take precedence, where and when. I will name them: the Department of Canadian Heritage, which was once again short on visibility, has decided, by forgetting or by intentionally omitting, to establish marine conservation areas.

At the same time, Fisheries and Oceans Canada had marine protection areas. At the same time, there were protected marine areas within a same department. We could ask this question. If there were a problem, would it be environment, heritage or fisheries and oceans that would deal with it? So, there will be discussions, task forces and probably consultations to determine who will deal with this problem.

First, leaving the provinces aside, they create a federal body to examine this problem so things can move forward once again. We are not alone in deploring this situation. I would like to quote a report from a group of officials from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans who wrote the following: “There is still a great deal of confusion among stakeholders regarding the various federal programs on protected marine areas, marine protection zones, national marine conservation areas, wildlife marine preserves — The departments concerned should harmonize their actions and co-operate to create protected marine areas.”

These comments were not made by the Bloc Quebecois or the member for Rimouski—Mitis, but rather by DFO officials who were asked by a committee to write a report commenting on the creation of marine conservation areas across the country, including eight in Quebec.

We have heard time and time again that different groups had been asked to share their concerns or their views on the establishment of marine conservation areas in Canada. Actually, what happened is that Heritage Canada, very proud to be able to show that they were consulting Canadians, had 3,000 copies made of the document. They decided to go ahead and consult all the environmental groups, all the groups who were in any way concerned with the establishment of marine conservation areas. It was quite a consultation.

They apparently received 300 answers, which represent 10% of all the people who were consulted. Yet, when those answers are requested through access to information, one does not get 300 answers, but 73. Of these 73, one comes from Quebec and they want to create eight marine conservation areas in Quebec after telling us that there were extensive consultations.

At the same time, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans was holding consultations in Quebec. They also—duplicating the efforts of Canadian Heritage—sent 650 documents to different groups about the creation of protected areas. Of 650 requests, they received 30 answers. This is less than 5% for Fisheries and Oceans Canada et 0.1% for Canadian Heritage.

How can we trust them when they say “We have consulted Canadians. We want to protect the environment. We know what is good for the country and we know that the provinces cannot honour their commitments under the Canadian Constitution.”

Those are other reasons why the Bloc Québécois must oppose this bill and prevent it from going any further. This bill should be withdrawn.

[Steve Mahoney, Liberal, Mississauga West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, when we listen to members of the Bloc on an issue that should be of national significance It should come as no surprise to anyone in this place that they would oppose it.

Their very existence or their very being is one of opposing anything that might in some way unite all of Canada over an issue as vital as the environment. I am not at all surprised. In fact I am prepared to acknowledge at least their honesty in saying that they want to break the country apart.

I ask the member—

[Pierre De Savoye, Bloc, Portneuf, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. We are doing our duty as any other member.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

That is a point of debate and the hon. member for Mississauga West has the right to make assertions which may or may not find accommodation on the opposite benches.

[Steve Mahoney, Liberal, Mississauga West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is astounding. I said I respected the fact that Bloc members were being honest. We know what their agenda is.

I ask the member who just spoke from the Bloc whether or not he feels a slight twinge of discomfort when he hears members from the Reform Party support regionalism, provincialism and anything that would allow them to oppose the government, even though the Reform Party is saying that it agrees with the Bloc.

They are in bed with the Bloc and think the environment should be left in the hands of provincial governments that have parochial interests of their own and, as my colleague pointed out, may be driven by a need to gather votes. They would hand over the environment of the country to provincial parochial politicians. I would suggest the Bloc at least has an agenda.

Does the member who just spoke not feel slightly uncomfortable finding himself in bed with the Reform Party on this issue?

[Benoît Sauvageau, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to respond to such demagogic and terrible remarks. First, I will say to the hon. member making these ridiculous comments that the Bloc Quebecois supported the establishment of the Saguenay—St. Lawrence marine park. So we are not so bad after all.

Second, he is comparing provincial jurisdictions with municipal jurisdictions. Perhaps he too neglected to read the Canadian Constitution. Even though we did not sign it, we can read it to him. His culture is lacking, so we will improve it a bit. I will quote for him some parts of section 91.

Section 91 states that:

—the exclusive Legislative Authority of the Parliament of Canada extends to all Matters coming within the Classes of Subjects next herein-after enumerated; that is to say,

1. Navigation and Shipping;

2. Quarantine and the Establishment and Maintenance of Marine Hospitals;

3. Sea Coast and Inland Fisheries;

4. Ferries—

—between a Province and any British or Foreign Country or between Two Provinces.

In addition, the jurisdiction of Quebec is further recognized in the British North America Act of 1867 under sections 92 and 92A.

When a member, whether from the Liberal Party, the Reform Party, the Bloc Quebecois or any other party, objects to the fact that we want to respect this Constitution, at least as long as we live within Canada, and says that a province, whether it is Quebec or any other province, only has jurisdiction to deal with municipal problems, it is a shame for Parliament, a shame for this party and a shame for Canadians.

[Mike Scott, Reform, Skeena, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to ask my colleague from the Bloc about the inference in the Liberal member's intervention.

Is it that the provinces are not to be trusted, that the people in those provinces are not to be trusted with their own environmental concerns, and that the only way we can have proper environmental legislation is for it to come from Ottawa? Does the hon. member agree that this is one of the areas that starts to build walls between people in Canada rather than unite Canada?

[Benoît Sauvageau, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the Reform member is absolutely right. The members opposite are telling us that if a bill is good it must come from the federal government.

Well, they will have to go back to the drawing board. They should look at the Rio agreement to see if they have fulfilled their environmental commitments. If they bother to do their homework, they will realize that they cannot even manage their own jurisdictions.