Mr. Speaker, it is truly an honour and a privilege for me to speak in support of the bill to establish Rouge national urban park in the Greater Toronto Area. This park celebrates and protects, for current and future generations, a diverse landscape in Canada's largest metropolitan area. It offers engaging and varied experiences. It inspires personal connections to its natural beauty and rich history and promotes a vibrant farming community. In close proximity to 20% of Canada's population, the park includes more than 10,000 years of rich human history.
The national park would increase the size of the regional park by 25%, making it more than 13 times the size of Stanley Park in Vancouver and 16 times the size of Central Park in New York.
As Canada's first ever national urban park, the Rouge offers an unprecedented opportunity to support all three priorities of our government's national conservation plan: to connect Canadians to nature and to restore and conserve the parks' ecosystems and cultural resources.
We can all be proud that this legislation would create a remarkable new entity, one located within Canada's largest and most culturally diverse metropolis. This vast area would be an extraordinary mix of natural, cultural, and agricultural lands. Given its close proximity to one-fifth of Canada's population, the park would be easily accessible for people in the Greater Toronto Area.
This legislation would establish the Rouge national urban park as a new model of protected area in Canada. The park owes its very existence to local visionaries and stewards, citizens, organizations, governments, and countless volunteers. Our government is proud to pay tribute to the nearly 30 years of hard work and determination in building one of the largest urban parks in the world. We also want to acknowledge the over 100 provincial, municipal, aboriginal, and community stakeholders, and thousands of members of the public, who contributed to the vision and plans for Canada's first urban national park.
As hon. members will observe, the bill provides a new framework that would enable Parks Canada to manage the park's natural, cultural, and agricultural resources and to recognize the opportunities and challenges that its urban context brings. Home to nearly 1,700 species of plants and animals, several of which are rare or threatened, Parks Canada would apply its world-leading expertise in conservation and restoration and work with partners to ensure Rouge's ecosystems, plants, and animals are cared for, maintained, and restored for present and future generations.
The Rouge national urban park act would provide broad regulatory powers to address all aspects of park management. A flexible management approach is needed to meet future infrastructure. The minister of the environment, through Parks Canada, would be able to protect and present this unique place that encompasses deep river valleys and glacial features, thousands of species of plants and animals, farmlands, archeological resources, built heritage, and cultural landscapes.
I want to emphasize that the park's tradition of agriculture is a unique feature among Canadian protected heritage areas. The presence of working farms would be integral to the future success of this park. People would continue to live and work on the park's agricultural landscape, as many families have done since the late 1700s. The national urban park status would also bring a new sense of security to the park farming community. Parks Canada would become the landlord of all existing leases on transferred lands and is working closely with the farming community to develop a lease structure that supports long-term farming. There is a real potential for visitors to connect with farming as it exists now, as well as opportunities for new types of farming to serve the growing and increasingly diverse population of the Greater Toronto Area.
The legislation would ensure that all these natural, cultural, and agricultural landscapes are protected and managed in an integrated way to the benefit of Canadians, now and for generations to come. In fact, the bill would give the Rouge the highest level of ecological protection it has ever had. The management plan would permit the minister to present a comprehensive conservation approach. This would be based on the most up-to-date science expertise and experience, drawn from the entire system of national protected areas.
The approach to management planning would strive to maximize the ecosystem health of the park by maintaining and restoring its native Carolinian and Mixedwood Plains forests, and wetland meadow and aquatic ecosystems. The approach to the ecosystem health envisioned in the bill for the Rouge would take into account the park's increasingly urban surroundings and the working farms, roads, rail lines, and hydro corridors. The bill recognizes that this dynamic urban and agricultural context has long driven change, both within and around the park, and it would continue to do so.
The agency would therefore manage the park, but in an adaptive way, maximizing ecosystem health in these ever-changing conditions. Working with people living next to and in the park would be an essential component of the management approach. The park lessee community and the park stewardship volunteers would play an important role in maintaining ecosystem health, visitor experience, and cultural heritage.
Our government's long-standing commitment to first nations involvement in protected heritage places would also play an important role in this park. The new status for the Rouge would facilitate first nations celebrations of their historical roots in this park. The bill contains a provision that would respect traditional renewable resource harvesting activities by aboriginal people. The bill would also respect the rights of aboriginal people in the event of any future agreement for the settlement of land claims.
As the House knows, our government made a commitment in the 2012 budget to invest more than $143 million over 10 years and $7.6 million annually thereafter to make Rouge national urban park a reality. This is a commitment we reasserted in the 2014 budget.
Among other things, this investment would make possible a protected area that is both larger and more strategically situated than the existing park. Increasing the park's size would also help advance the goal of connecting Lake Ontario and the Oak Ridges Moraine.
Moreover, with the creation of the Rouge national urban park we would expand the level of experiences that visitors have in the park. Residents of the greater Toronto area and all Canadians would be able to explore more areas of the larger park. This might inspire them to visit more of Canada's heritage places.
As I mentioned earlier, the creation of the Rouge national urban park supports Canada's national conservation plan. I would like to take a few minutes to explain how this plan will work.
The plan responds to a clear message from Canadians that they care deeply about the natural environment and want to enjoy and conserve it for future generations. The plan aligns and bolsters conservation efforts across this country. It protects the environment while supporting a growing economy and makes concrete and tangible progress to conserve and restore Canada's lands and waters and connect Canadians to nature.
The launch of the plan is an opportunity to continue to work together to conserve Canada's rich natural heritage. Many Canadians are already working to conserve and restore Canada's lands and waters. This includes all levels of government, aboriginal groups, environmental organizations, and the private sector, as well as many Canadians at the local level including landowners, land managers, community groups, and individuals across our great country.
The national conservation plan celebrates collective efforts to conserve the environment. It also invests $252 million toward concrete and targeted actions on conservation. This investment over five years will support and expand successful initiatives, and also broaden work through new activities.
The plan built on the announcement on the 2014 budget including measures to invest in national parks, conserve recreational fisheries, encourage donations of ecologically sensitive land, and expand recreational trails. The national conservation plan's vision is to contribute to a stronger Canada, a country that cares about the conservation of its national heritage and where citizens can enjoy the beauty of Canada's environment from coast to coast to coast.
The plan focuses on action across three priority areas: conserving Canada's lands and waters, restoring Canada's ecosystems, and connecting Canadians to nature.
The first priority, conserving Canada's lands and waters, aims to safeguard and enhance biodiversity and ecosystems through conservation and stewardship actions.
The second priority is about restoring degraded ecosystems. Once restored, these ecosystems provide clean water and habitat for wildlife and are essential for the protection and recovery of species at risk. The plan also includes $50 million in funding to expand support for landowners, aboriginal communities, agricultural producers, conservation and community groups, and other partners to voluntarily implement measures to restore and conserve essential habitat and vulnerable species.
Stakeholders have reiterated that voluntary conservation and stewardship efforts are critical to achieving Canada's conservation objectives. These restoration actions complement existing efforts by the federal government such as the cleanup of contaminated sites.
With this in mind, the national conservation plan's third priority is to connect Canadians to nature. This work will leverage existing successful initiatives to help foster an appreciation for nature and build a community of stewards among Canadians of all ages.
Investments of $9.2 million will be made to improve public access to protected areas and green spaces, focusing on those areas located in and near cities.
To conclude my remarks, the creation of this unique park, the Rouge park, will be another milestone in our government's renowned history of heritage protection. Since we formed government, we have created two national marine conservation areas, three marine protected areas, three national wildlife areas, one national historic site, and two national parks. This does not include the Rouge national urban park.
It also does not include the bill we tabled last week in the House to create the Nááts’ihch’oh national park reserve in the Northwest Territories.
We have done more than any other government. In fact, the total area of lands we have protected in this area is more than twice the size of Vancouver Island.
The Rouge park's urban setting would offer exciting unprecedented opportunities and would connect Canadians to nature, culture, and agriculture. Nowhere is there greater opportunity to showcase and share our natural and cultural heritage than the greater Toronto area, which is home to millions of urban, new, and young Canadians.
