Environment committee  I will add one thing. Certainly along the Lachine Canal, which is a Parks Canada site, we have had to work on remediating a number of brownfield sites with the City of Montreal and others. Certainly, there is a series of best practices used by different cities in other areas in c

Environment committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members, for this opportunity to speak with the standing committee today regarding the study of urban conservation practices in Canada. My remarks today will focus on Parks Canada's contribution to and role in urban conservation. This contribution ex

Canadian Heritage committee  That's an excellent question. It's an approach that we're actually very proud of, and certainly, again, a very large focus of Minister Kent is on this youth connection. Really, part of our vision as Parks Canada as well has been to carry that youth vision through. Through meeti

Canadian Heritage committee  I think for an event such as Canada's 150th anniversary, that could be a part of it.

Canadian Heritage committee  In Montreal, currently, part of our objective is to hold more activities in the Lachine Canal sector, in order to foster a greater sense of belonging to Canada among Montrealers. We have a lot of land close to the Lachine Canal, and of course there are a lot of people who use it

Canadian Heritage committee  Those are both great questions and excellent comments about the Rouge. I'd like to say a word about the Rouge and the agricultural community. We've met with many of the families now, and with the York Federation of Agriculture, the Durham Federation of Agriculture, and the Ontar

Canadian Heritage committee  That's an excellent question, Mr. Young. Thank you very much. We hire about 1,200 students a year at Parks Canada. The student workforce is an important piece of our workforce across the country, but on top of that, we've done a few things. We've been working on a program calle

Canadian Heritage committee  My Parks Canada Pass.

Canadian Heritage committee  It's a program called My Parks Pass.

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes. It isn't that easy to offer free admission because of various factors. It is not specifically because of the federal government. Let me give you the example of a school very close to here, attended by students from the Vanier neighbourhood. It is not really a very rich neig

Canadian Heritage committee  To look at both of those questions, I'll take the second one first. We did have a passport program in the seventies and eighties. It was quite successful. This Xplorers program we developed gives you a guidebook to each of our parks and sites and, as a youth, you can explore. T

Canadian Heritage committee  It's quite difficult to say. If the place in question is already a historical site it should normally be the object of a certain protection. In other cases it is longer because we have to wait for the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada to confer the status of historical

Canadian Heritage committee  Fortunately, just last month Minister Kent was in Toronto to kick off the consultation process on the Rouge Valley urban national park. We certainly received a lot of ideas. We started with a small group of people who had been highly dedicated to the Rouge Valley over the past 20

Canadian Heritage committee  I forgot to mention that point, but consulting Canadians is indeed very important when it comes to creating new parks or new historical sites. Parks Canada considers it crucial to communicate with urban populations. However it is difficult to do so because there is a lot of noise

Canadian Heritage committee  All Canadians may request that the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada confer the status of national historic site upon a given place. In addition to the 150th anniversary, there is another very important event in the history of Parks Canada; I am referring here to the