Bill C-5 (Historical)

Species at Risk Act

An Act respecting the protection of wildlife species at risk in Canada

Species at Risk Act

[Maurizio Bevilacqua, Liberal, for the Minister of the Environment]

moved:

Motion No. 130

That Bill C-5, in Clause 129, be amended by replacing lines 34 and 35 on page 70 with the following:

“force, a committee of the House of”

[Andy Burton, Canadian Alliance, Skeena, BC]

moved:

Motion No. 127

That Bill C-5, in Clause 124, be amended by replacing line 39 on page 68 with the following:

“SEWIC, may restrict the public release of any”

[Maurizio Bevilacqua, Liberal, for the Minister of the Environment]

moved:

Motion No. 6

That Bill C-5, in Clause 2, be amended by deleting lines 42 to 44 on page 5.

Motion No. 16

That Bill C-5, in Clause 7, be amended by replacing lines 26 to 33 on page 8 with the following:

“implementation of action plans; and

(b) coordinate the activities of the various governments represented on the Council relating to the protection of species at risk.”

Motion No. 17

That Bill C-5 be amended by deleting Clause 7.1.

Motion No. 20

That Bill C-5 be amended by adding after line 26 on page 9 the following:

“8.1 The Minister may establish a committee, to be known as the National Aboriginal Committee on Species at Risk, consisting of six representatives of the aboriginal peoples of Canada appointed by the Minister based on recommendations from aboriginal organizations that the Minister considers appropriate. The role of the committee is to advise the Minister on the administration of this Act.”

Recommendation

(Pursuant to Standing Order 76.1(3))

Her Excellency the Governor General recommends to the House of Commons the appropriation of public revenue under the circumstances, in the manner and for the purposes set out in a measure entitled “An Act respecting the protection of wildlife species at risk in Canada”. That Bill C-5 be amended by adding after line 26 on page 9 the following:

“8.1 The Minister may establish a committee, to be known as the National Aboriginal Committee on Species at Risk, consisting of six representatives of the aboriginal peoples of Canada appointed by the Minister based on recommendations from aboriginal organizations that the Minister considers appropriate. The role of the committee is to advise the Minister on the administration of this Act.”

Motion No. 24

That Bill C-5, in Clause 10.1, be amended by replacing line 10 on page 10 with the following:

“son. A copy of the stewardship action plan must be included in the public registry.”

Motion No. 25

That Bill C-5, in Clause 10.2, be amended by replacing lines 11 to 38 on page 10 with the following:

“10.2 The stewardship action plan must include, but is not limited to, commitments to

(a) regularly examine incentives and programs that support actions taken by persons to protect species at risk;

(b) provide information and increase public awareness about species at risk;

(c) share information about species at risk, including community and aboriginal traditional knowledge, with other governments and persons;

(d) create awards and recognition programs;

(e) provide information respecting programs related to stewardship agreements, land conservation easements and other such agreements; and

(f) provide information relating to the technical and scientific support available to persons engaged in stewardship activities.”

Motion No. 29

That Bill C-5, in Clause 13, be amended by deleting lines 14 to 22 on page 12.

Motion No. 72

That Bill C-5, in Clause 45, be amended by replacing lines 9 to 13 on page 27 with the following:

“(2) If the amendment relates to the time for completing an action plan, the competent minister must provide reasons for the amendment and include a copy of the reasons in the public registry.

(3) Sections 39 and 43 apply to amendments to a recovery strategy, with any modifications that the circumstances require.

(4) Subsection (3) does not apply if the”

Motion No. 76

That Bill C-5, in Clause 50, be amended by replacing lines 15 to 37 on page 29 with the following:

“50. (1) The competent minister must include a proposed action plan in the public registry.

(2) Within 60 days after the proposed action plan is included in the public registry, any person may file written comments with the competent minister.

(3) Within 30 days after the expiry of the period referred to in subsection (2), the competent minister must consider any comments received, make any changes to the proposed action plan that he or she considers appropriate and finalize the action plan by including a copy of it in the public registry.

(4) If an action plan is not finalized in the time set out in the recovery strategy, the competent minister must include in the public registry a summary of what has been prepared with respect to the plan.”

Motion No. 114

That Bill C-5, in Clause 69, be amended by

(a) replacing lines 15 to 19 on page 38 with the following:

“for the conservation of the species and the competent minister adopts the existing plan as the proposed management plan, he or she must include a copy of it in the public registry as the proposed management plan in relation to the”

“wildlife species into a proposed management plan for the species.”.

Motion No. 126

That Bill C-5, in Clause 123, be amended by replacing lines 33 to 37 on page 68 with the following:

“filed in court and are available to the public; and

(h) every report made under sections 126 and 128.”

[Loyola Hearn, Progressive Conservative, St. John's West, NL]

Madam Speaker, I am the member for St. John's West and I have not spoken to Group No. 3.

Let me first express my concern about the fact that we were hearing a tremendous debate by the member who just spoke. All of us could have learned from it. He had a few other key elements left in his speech which all of us could have benefited from hearing. It is unfortunate it was his own party that refused to give unanimous consent for him to finish. That is a complete and utter shame. There are few people in the House for whom I have more respect than the hon. gentleman. His contribution to the debate will enrich the knowledge of every member in the House.

Having said that, let me also express concerns about the bill. Bill C-5 is supposed to protect endangered species within our country. One concern is that this bill has been scrutinized by people who are extremely concerned with this topic and it has come up wanting. The members of the committee, the species at risk working groups and groups and individuals throughout the country who have major concerns with this legislation have all pointed out that if amendments from the committee had been accepted, we could have had a great piece of legislation with which we could all be satisfied.

What happened? Government in its almighty knowledge refused to accept the amendments. Consequently, if this bill as it is presently constituted is passed, we will have a very bad piece of legislation.

Species at risk by its name alone dictates to us that most of what we discuss relates to rural Canada rather than the large urban areas. It is provinces like Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Newfoundland and Labrador where most of these species will exist. It is ironic that the government concentrates very little on its own back yard, on the public domain in the country. It is wrong for the bill to have provisions allowing for federal interference on private and provincial lands without specifically containing mandatory protection of critical habitat on federal lands.

Many of the lands in rural Canada are privately owned. Many of the species that are considered to be endangered exist on those lands. What protection is there for the owners of the land, whether it is compensation for land that might be confiscated or whether it is a concern about charges for damages that might occur to endangered species by the owners of the land? In many cases the owners would have no knowledge that the species were endangered or would not know that the species existed on their land.

There are so many elements in the bill with which so many disagree. I read one statement recently which said that no one supports the bill. I suppose we have to say that is not true because apparently a number of government members support the bill or are being told to support the bill.

The Government of Canada has failed to do its homework. It has foolishly ignored the consensus of the species at risk working group. There is now further gutting to an already weak bill not supported by environmental groups, industry and the provinces. A broad coalition of major environmental groups together with the Mining Association of Canada and the Forest Products Association of Canada agrees that at the very least a scientific listing process and habitat protection in federal jurisdiction should be in the species at risk legislation.

We support the capacity to ensure there are complementary safety nets in place. We received statements indicating that while the provinces did not support Bill C-5 prior to it being tabled certain committee amendments do provide increased clarity. Amendments are made that would satisfy many of the concerns across the country but they are rejected. I sometimes wonder what the House is all about and why we have committees.

People who sit on committees are people who have a specific interest in a particular area. They are informed individuals who are in contact with agencies throughout the country concerned about any topic with which we might be dealing. Committee is a forum where these people can get into the nuts and bolts of legislation. It is a place where we hear the concerns, the feelings and recommendations of people from across the country. What happens when these recommendations are brought back to the government? They are rejected. It is hard to understand why something like that could happen.

Right in the middle of this discussion we saw one of the most experienced parliamentarians in the House, one of the most concerned individuals in the House with regard to our country and to species at risk, not get the courtesy he deserves from his own colleagues to finish his debate. I have never seen such a discourtesy given to an experienced individual in all my life.

When it comes to species at risk we should also pay a lot more attention to a number of other species. We should be concerned about Atlantic salmon which are close to being put on the species at risk list.

When I was a young individual, 5 or 10 years ago, I used to stand by the side of the road with many of my friends and count the number of salmon jumping in the harbour on their way up the river. We do not see them anymore. That is not just a story. It is a true fact in Renous and on the great southern shore of Newfoundland and Labrador. It is a true story in almost any part of Atlantic Canada. Atlantic salmon are going the way of the dodo bird.

One of the reasons is the same reason why our fish stocks are disappearing. It is because of the uncontrolled growth of another species, the seal. Some years ago Canada had a million seals and everybody became concerned about the size of the herd. We now realize that the seal herd has reached seven million. They are purported to eat 40 pounds of pollock a day. If they were to eat just one pound of pollock a day they would consume 2.55 billion pounds of pollock in the run of a year. As one of our former MPs from Newfoundland once said, they certainly do not eat turnips. They live on fish from the ocean. If we multiplied seven million by 40, 365 times, it would give us an idea of the magnitude of the volume of fish consumed by a growing seal herd that is out of control and which the government fails to regulate.

We have in our own hands in this honourable House the power to do something about species at risk, whether it be Atlantic salmon, birds, or whatever else throughout this country. We have the power to ensure that affected people such as landowners have protection in relation to species that might exist on their land.

We should have the power to develop legislation that all of us would say is good legislation and the only way people are affected is in a positive way. That is not the way we are headed. Unless the government wakes up we in the House will also become an endangered species because our contributions as politicians will become less and less effective.

[Clifford Lincoln, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I take a particular interest in this issue. In 1988, one of the last things I did as Quebec's minister of the environment was to introduce in the national assembly the first act protecting threatened species in Quebec.

Sure, this act is not perfect. It needs—as a Bloc Quebecois member pointed out—to be improved regarding habitat protection. At the same time—1988 was quite a number of years ago—the Quebec act, like the acts of other provinces, was implemented over 15 years ago. Today, at the federal level, we are still discussing an act on threatened species. All these years have gone by; three bills have been introduced, this one being the third one. Unfortunately, it is sad to see that this third bill may be the weakest of all, because it is so discretionary.

Let me give some examples taken from Group No. 3. In Quebec, we have the beluga whales that live in the St. Lawrence River. This is a most important species, because it is unique. There are belugas elsewhere. There are some in the north, but they are not as threatened as those in the St. Lawrence. There is clear evidence that, in the St. Lawrence River, because of the pollution generated by factories, the beluga whales have had to fight for their survival for years, even decades. At one point, it was mentioned that there were only some 600 belugas left and they could barely survive.

A friend of mine, Pierre Béland, who works for the Institut national du Saint-Laurent and who follows the evolution of the belugas, told me that the survival of these belugas is still in jeopardy, because they are so intoxicated by all the emissions that are unfortunately released into the St. Lawrence River.

An amendment that was proposed in committee would have enabled the federal government, which has clear jurisdiction over waters and is a direct partner of the Quebec government in the Saguenay--St. Lawrence marine park, to settle this issue. In this instance, Bloc Quebecois members cannot argue that the federal government does not have jurisdiction.

Therefore, the committee submitted, with good reason, an amendment to protect species that are threatened geographically or genetically. Separate geographical protection means that if, in a given geographical region, for example the St. Lawrence River, belugas are affected, but that they are not affected in another location, then, according to the act, those that are threatened must be protected.

It seems to me that this provision makes perfect sense. It makes so much sense that all the biologists to whom we talked said it is essential. Could someone give me just one reason as to why the government should withdraw this protection?

It seems to me if we want geographic protection for certain species in one area where they might be affected and not in another area where they may not be affected, surely this makes a tremendous amount of sense for a government that wants to protect a particular species.

I cannot conceive of one reason that this amendment is viewed to be superfluous, to be bad for the common good of the public, for the protection of species. I challenge the government to give me one good reason why this amendment is flawed, why it makes no sense. It is a part of a feeling that the committee has gone beyond its powers. Yet what the committee has done is it has made a feeble bill a little less feeble, a little stronger. Certainly the bill can be viewed as so drastic as to upset the people who are not strict environmentalists like myself.

There is another example of why the government has gone beyond the norms to set aside all the logical amendments that were brought forward by the committee. It has to do with interim measures, which make a lot of sense, if a long space of time occurs between the time a species is declared endangered and the time an action plan happens.

The committee rightly gave the minister discretionary powers to institute interim measures to protect the particular species between the time it was listed and the time an action plan happened. These powers would be discretionary. We did not put compulsory and mandatory powers on the shoulders of the minister. We gave the minister the discretion to use these powers. If the minister for a particular reason, jurisdictional or other, did not choose to use the interim powers, then they would not be used.

Even that was viewed to be going too far. Yet who will ensure that interim protection if this power is not given to the minister?

If I were the Minister of the Environment, I would love to have additional powers to protect species because that is the objective of the law. I would have asked for these powers if the committee had failed to suggest them itself. I would have put them in the original bill anyway. But had I not put them in the original bill, I would have welcomed the committee's idea to insert them in the bill so that these discretionary powers would be in my hands if I chose to use them at any time. But no, even a mild change such as this was viewed to be too outlandish and had to be reversed.

Then there is the question of permitting. In the original Bill C-5 the minister has the authority to enter into an agreement to issue a permit to people which authorizes them to affect the listed species, its residence or its critical habitat. The committee judiciously and logically amended the bill so that there would be consequences if this was not followed.

With the government amendment it means there is no penalty if a person does not get a permit and there is no penalty if it is not complied with. What is the incentive for enforcement? What compels somebody who wants to endanger a species if there is no compulsion at all under the bill, not the slightest desire to enforce it by the government or the minister?

There again it is totally illogical that the government should choose to refuse such limited powers under the bill which would give it far more space, far more latitude to comply with the objectives of the bill which are the protection of species. We wonder whether it was some wish by the minister or the government to--

[Keith Martin, Canadian Alliance, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure today to discuss Bill C-5 and the motions in Group No. 3. I would like give some background on the tragic history of Bill C-5 and how the government has utterly failed in its responsibility as a federal institution to move legislation forward to protect our endangered species, and on the environment file, it has failed miserably.

On the aspect of endangered species, the federal government had the responsibility to put forth strong legislation. It waffled and waited, despite the good work from members across party lines and the committee which proffered constructive solutions to save our endangered species.

When the bill was put forth in the last parliament, it was unworkable and despite that, it was pushed forward by the minister. Blessedly so, it did not go to a vote because of an election call.

Now the bill has been brought back. Despite an incredible amount of work on the part of the department and the good committee members, this bill is again unworkable. That is why the Canadian Alliance put forth amendments to strengthen the bill so it will protect endangered species.

Another aspect is the socioeconomic interests and public consultation. If we are going to protect endangered species, we need the buy-in by the individuals who will be the guardians of this. Take for example, private landowners. Our party has said that the government must negotiate not only with the provinces but with private landowners in the protection of critical habitat. If no agreement can be reached, then a financial remuneration for the loss of use of critical habitat must be obligatory and not optional. We cannot go and unilaterally take over land. We must provide fair and reasonable compensation for critical habitat.

The other aspect is the bill unfortunately only deals with a very small chunk of land for which the federal government is responsible. I would make a lot more sense for the federal government to work with the provinces and the municipalities and develop an agreement with private landowners at large. That would be a way to protect critical habitat across Canada. As we know, endangered species do not recognize boundaries. Birds, fish and mammals do not recognize provincial boundaries. The problem is really quite severe.

We have more than 300 species that are at significant risk of disappearing. Never in the history of our species have we ever seen the catastrophic decline in the biodiversity within the world today, and we are no different in Canada.

Canada is culpable in the decimation of species across the world. We are the second or third largest conduit for the products of endangered species in the entire world, animals from as far away as the Far East such as the big cats: the Siberian tiger, the Chinese tiger, the Amir tiger, the Sumatran tiger and the Bengal tiger. Then there are large mammal species such as the black rhino in Africa, the Javan rhino and the Sumatran rhino. Then we can move to snow leopards. We can talk about birds from all over the world. We can talk about plant species, which are disappearing at a rapid rate because of the hunger for the species for medicinal uses, for example, that do not work at all but are based on myth.

Sadly we have not seen action on this and it is tragic. Our ports individuals, the police, are grossly undermanned and underserviced and do not have the tools to do the job. As a result, international traffickers know full well that Canada basically has an open door to being a conduit to endangered species around the world. By doing so, Canada has become part of the problem. Knowing full well that this is happening, the federal government has failed to institute measures that would secure our borders in a more reasonable way.

The other aspect is the identification of species. We have asked that the identification of species at risk not be a political issue but be based on COSEWIC, which is as group of scientists who could identify species at risk based on scientific criteria, not on political expediency.

We are also asking that land be identified based on scientific criteria that is considered to be critical habit and that there be obligatory compensation for landowners in the absence of use of the land that is destined for critical habitat.

The government has an extraordinary opportunity. It needs to work with other countries around the world to stem the trade in endangered species products. This is the third largest contraband in the entire world behind small arms and drugs. Small arms, drugs and endangered species product sales form the three top contraband entities on which organized crime banks. The amount for endangered species products is in the billions of dollars which go primarily into the pockets of organized crime. Individuals from around the world pay the penalty and worse, species are disappearing at an astronomical rate.

I would ask that the Minister of the Environment work with the Minister of Foreign Affairs. There is a great opportunity this year. Three things are happening. First, the G-8 summit will be taking place in Canada. Second, there is the new plan for--

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Musquodoboit Valley—Eastern Shore, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today on behalf of the great people of Sackville--Musquodoboit Valley--Eastern Shore to address our serious concerns about the government's approach toward what should be one of the most important pieces of legislation the House ever sees.

Unfortunately the government decided to ignore its own parliamentary committee, the nine Liberals who sit on that committee. We appreciate that it will ignore us, but the fact is that it ignored its own people. The report of that committee was unanimous in its concurrence in terms of the proposed amendments.

The individual MPs did not do it on their own. They heard evidence from many learned people across the country who have serious and grave concerns about the condition of our environment and the species within that environment. They worked very hard.

I speak for my colleague from Windsor--St. Clair and for all other MPs from various parties who worked on that committee to hash it out. Anyone who works on committees, as I do on two full committees, knows it is very difficult to come to consensus or to put together a report that is unanimous in terms of its recommendations or the concerns it wants to move forward. This is what that committee did, only to have the government turn around and reintroduce its own amendments.

The government has made a grave mistake. The original bill came to the committee and the “deeming” section on page 7 read:

For the purposes of the definition “ wildlife species” in subsection (1), a species, subspecies or biologically distinct population is, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, presumed to have been present in Canada for at least 50 years.

The all party committee changed that to read that the definition of wildlife species now covers:

--a species, subspecies, variety or geographically or genetically distinct population of animals, plants or other organism.

That was not good enough for the government. It brought forward a motion in the name of the Minister of the Environment which reads:

That Bill C-5...be amended by replacing the following lines 11 and 12 on page 7 with the following:

“cies, variety or biologically distinct population of animal, plant or”.

Basically that means the government could say it will protect the Beluga whale in the St. Lawrence. However it will forget to tell us that there is a distinct population of Beluga whales in Hudson Bay. That population is genetically different and distinct from the one in the St. Lawrence. The Belugas in Hudson Bay are very seriously threatened by extinction. This amendment by the government will do nothing to protect them.

The government could say that it will do some protection in the St. Lawrence. It would be utter nonsense. All species in Canada should be treated with the greatest care. I just returned from a committee tour of the east coast. It was most unfortunate once again to hear very serious evidence of the raping and pillaging of our ocean resources in terms of fish stocks.

The government has not learned a thing from the cod crisis. Now the Atlantic salmon is in crisis. The turbot, the same fish Mr. Tobin bragged about in 1995, is clinging on by its fingernails. He is right now; it is hanging on. Another species, the redfish, is now in serious trouble.

What does the government do to protect those stocks? Absolutely nothing. It has learned nothing from the collapse of the cod stocks. Yet it calls itself fiscally responsible. After the collapse of the cod stocks $4.2 billion Canadian were spent readjusting the east coast fishery. It is still spending more. More and more species of fish are in serious decline. One of the greatest reasons for this is the serious overfishing within and outside the 200 mile limit of Canada's economic zone.

The other day we heard about a Russian trawler fishing within our waters and catching moratorium fish. We heard that Icelandic ships, which had a 67 tonne quota on shrimp and which should have taken no more than a couple of weeks to catch, were fishing for over 100 days on the Flemish cap. That can only result in a very serious decline in the shrimp stocks as well.

We found out the government knew in September that was happening. The former minister of fisheries, now the Minister of Natural Resources, and the former minister of industry, Mr. Tobin, knew very well that very serious infractions were happening on the east coast of Canada and they did absolutely nothing stop it. Thousands of people go unemployed, the biodiversity of the fish stocks is suffering as we speak and the government says nothing.

It pains me that the government ignores nine of its own members but it also pains me that it also ignores the scientific evidence of someone like David Schindler, a leading scientist and environmentalist in the country. He is not one for flippant remarks. When this man speaks he speaks wisely and cautiously. The government even ignores people of that stature.

It is unfortunate that we in the federal New Democratic Party cannot begin to even support the bill because of the serious flaws. We can only assume two things. Either the bureaucracy surrounding that department is completely inept and so out of touch that it is unbelievable, or the bureaucrats are giving clear information to their political masters and their political masters, because of their complete ignorance toward the protection of species within our environment, are overriding anything they are saying.

The tragedy of all this is that for every species we lose it brings us closer up the food chain to ourselves, and that is a tragedy and a legacy that we should not leave for our children's children.

It is unfortunate that the government continuously stalls, delays and thwarts any concentration of a consortium of effort of people working together to come up with long term solutions to protect the health of our country and the biodiversity of all the species within our country. I am simply beside myself as to why the government does that. Why is it so ignorant and arrogant when it comes to the aspect of this particular bill?

The people from that committee came forward with some wonderful amendments. They hashed out the bill and brought it back to the government only to have the government again thwart their very efforts. I have been on the environment committee many times and I can only imagine the frustration that those Liberals and the other opposition members who worked very hard on that must feel.

Why do we hear people from the Alliance constantly getting up and saying that committee work is a sham? In many ways they are right. I would like to disagree because I think committee work is a very valuable part of a parliamentarian's work.

[Scott Reid, Canadian Alliance, Lanark—Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to address my comments today to the amendments in Group No. 3. The amendments have been divided into several groups. Group No. 3 deals with amendments on the theme of socioeconomic interests and public consultation.

A great deal of the work I have done in putting forward amendments to the bill was based upon public consultations in which I engaged in my own constituency on the subject of Bill C-5. This is a bill which has a different kind of impact and a different kind of response in rural areas as compared to urban areas.

My constituency of Lanark--Carleton is divided almost 50:50 rural-urban, so it seemed appropriate to me to consult with people in my constituency and inquire on how they felt about the bill. I had a tremendous amount of feedback and many suggestions and ideas which I tried to incorporate as best I could into amendments to the legislation, including some amendments in Group No. 3 and in some of the other groups. I believe I have put forward more amendments to the bill than any other member of the House.

Rather than speaking directly to any one amendment I thought I might deal with the theme of this group of amendments as a whole and the government's general treatment of this theme. Then I will speak to how it could be improved as a general thematic discussion.

I will start by talking a bit about the government's approach and the minister's approach to the theme of the bill's impact on socioeconomic interests. To frame that discussion I will be quoting somewhat extensively from the hon. minister's commentary before the Standing Committee on the Environment on October 3 of the year past. On the issue of compensation he said the following:

We then got deeper and deeper into this and it became more and more of the proverbial swamp, more and more difficult to do partly because, of course, governments should not pass legislation which is open-ended in terms of funding.

Do we not wish that were true with some of the other things to which the government commits? He continued:

We have fiscal responsibilities which, as you can well imagine, are fairly strict on us. Forty-five million a year is what we've been given to run the process and that's what we can expect and that's it.

A few days ago in the House it took us about 10 minutes to pass $16 billion of expenditures, so one wonders why there is this tremendous concern about adding $45 million in potential compensation costs to the government's budget.

This is indicative of the whole attitude of the minister toward the bill. It is an attitude which clearly could be dealt with, by the minister's own admission, for the very modest cost of $45 million. That is modest for a government which measures its expenditures in the tens of billions of dollars and the liabilities it has imposed upon future generations of Canadians in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

Nonetheless, it is a matter that could be dealt with if we were to adopt some of the amendments that have come forward with regard to the bill. If that were done, the bill would transform from being something unpopular among farmers and rural landowners to something they could support.

We should not forget that no one is more naturally friendly to that environment than those who live in it. Those who live surrounded by our woodlands, our fields and our lakes are those who have the deepest and most profound attachment to woodlands, fields, lakes, plains and mountains. They more than anybody else want to enjoy the direct personal benefit of knowing they are husbanding and protecting endangered species.

The proposed solution can be found thematically described best in a piece of private member's legislation from a previous parliament. It was a piece of legislation proposed by Herb Grubel, former member of parliament for West Vancouver--Sunshine Coast. He was one of the most intelligent members of parliament to serve in the House in recent decades and one of four members of parliament when I was a researcher who I thought had the most profound grasp and intellect.

The other three included the current member for North Vancouver with whom I worked on issues relating to direct democracy; Preston Manning with whom I worked on issues relating to national unity; and our former national unity critic for the then Reform Party, Stephen Harper, who had an extraordinary intellect. He was a truly remarkable man and I am sure hon. members will appreciate having him in the House soon.

Herb Grubel and I worked together on a piece of legislation known as the balanced budget and spending limit act which in the 35th parliament was under the title of Bill C-213.

That piece of legislation contained a compensation provision which would serve as a thematic guide for the government in this piece of legislation or indeed in any similar piece of legislation where the government considers engaging in what the Americans refer to as a taking, that is to say, some kind of restriction upon property rights possibly in the form of actually taking that piece of property from the private owner and placing it in government hands, moving it to some agency or simply restricting the use of that piece of property.

In the case of environmental legislation the most difficult kind of taking is a restriction upon use. One cannot, for example, cultivate a field, clear a woodlot or develop a subdivision because it is perhaps a nesting site. These are not unreasonable restrictions if some form of compensation is provided. By the government's estimate around $45 million in compensation would be necessary to protect the various animal, bird, reptilian, plant, mollusk and fish species, et cetera.

Under the bill that Herb Grubel put forward this kind of obligation was referred to as a transferred burden, that is to say, a burden of expenditure which the government has taken and transferred to a private individual.

[Pauline Picard, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased today to speak to the proposed amendments to Bill C-5 that make up the third group. The House will recall that Bill C-5 replaces Bill C-33, an act respecting the protection of wildlife species at risk in Canada.

This leads me to comment more specifically on the amendment introduced by my colleague, the member for Rosemont--Petite-Patrie, who is the Bloc Quebecois critic for the environment. He proposes amending clause 56 of the bill, which reads as follows, “the competent minister may...establish...national...guidelines with respect to the protection of” species.

Yet the second statement of the accord signed in 1996 stated that the minister will establish “a Council of Ministers that will provide direction, report on progress and resolve disputes”.

It seems to me as though this government is obsessed with establishing national standards from one end of the country to the other, imposing them in areas that come under provincial jurisdiction. The species at risk act is yet another example.

Clause 56 would allow the government, as I said earlier, to establish codes of practice and impose national standards or guidelines, yet the federal government is not responsible for most of the lands involved and has no power over the resource management in these areas.

Therefore, this clause not only violates the division of powers set out in the constitution and interpreted as such over the years, but it also grants broad discretionary powers to the Minister of the Environment.

This bill interferes directly in provincial areas of responsibility and excludes the provinces from making real and direct contributions to the process. Existing laws are ignored. It is an outrage.

Of course, the protection of certain species is only effective if their habitat is also protected. But it is up the provinces to manage this in co-operation with the various stakeholders involved.

Despite the fact that the minister theoretically supports shared responsibility between the federal government and the provinces for the protection of species at risk, first, he is disregarding the division of powers and the provinces' responsibilities in managing habitat and protecting species; second, he is ignoring laws that already exist; and third, he is assuming extremely broad powers to protect species. The federal government is therefore going against real environmental harmonization between the different levels of government.

I would also like to mention the position of environmental groups and industry which are opposed to this bill. The bill scares them. The main problem, which seems to have been raised by all these environmental groups, is the fact that the decisions on the designation of species will be taken by the minister and his cabinet, and not by scientists themselves.

Will somebody tell me what sort of decision the minister, who does not have the qualifications and has not studied this area, will take? They will truly be informed. He is excluding the scientists who have been studying these endangered species for years. The minister will tell them what to do simply because he is the minister. It is scandalous too.

Quebec's position on this bill has been expressed by Quebec's minister of the environment. When his federal counterpart first introduced the bill he said that it was just another useless development for Quebec. Quebec's minister said that not only was the bill introduced by the federal government designed to put in place a safety net for endangered species and their habitats on sites under federal jurisdiction but also throughout the territory of Quebec.

While the federal government may be responsible for protecting migratory species, it has no Constitutional authority—this government interprets the constitution when it suits its purposes—with respect to the management of habitats located in provincially owned lands. There can obviously be no question of the government of Quebec sitting by while the federal government invades areas of jurisdiction that do not belong to it and tells Quebec how to go about protecting its ecosystems, when Quebec already has legislation to protect endangered species and their habitats.

Quebec's minister said:

Quebec has always behaved in a responsible and appropriate manner regarding the protection of the most threatened fauna and flora species and intends to keep on exercising its authority in this matter. We will never accept umbrella legislation covering all the initiatives in this area.

In fact, the government of Quebec believes that legislation such as that proposed in the bill could be acceptable if it excluded any species or habitat under provincial jurisdiction and if it were applied to provincial lands if, and only if, the province or territory specifically so requested.

The Quebec government would not need to use such a provision, since it passed its own act in the late eighties. Indeed, the Quebec government passed the act respecting threatened or vulnerable species in 1989. It also passed an act respecting the conservation and development of wildlife, and fishing regulations. These three legal supports provide Quebec with the tools required to identify species at risk, to legally designate them as threatened or at risk, to protect their habitat and to develop implementation plans that provide sufficient protection for species and habitat that are in a precarious situation.

The situation is clear. The province of Quebec and its government do not need a federal act to encroach on its jurisdictions.

With the increasing rate with which species are disappearing, the situation is serious. It is true that effective action is necessary, but does this bill really make a contribution to improving the protection of our ecosystems and of the endangered species in it? In our view, the answer to the two questions asked at the beginning is negative.

The Bloc Quebecois completely supports the principle of providing additional protection for species. However we do not think the bill would improve the protection of threatened species. In fact, we are opposed to it because it constitutes a direct intrusion into many jurisdictions of Quebec that I just listed.

This bill is liable to create more red tape, rather than to make it possible for the limited resources to be properly channeled where they can do the most good. The government of Quebec is already legislating in the areas addressed by the bill. While acknowledging the urgency of improving the implementation of these statutes, we do not believe the bill will make it possible to achieve results.

We will not let this bill intrude in our jurisdictions. We already have an excellent act and we want to keep it.

[Ken Epp, Canadian Alliance, Elk Island, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to stand in the House of Commons to represent not only the people of Elk Island and Alberta but the people of Canada.

As members know, I am mathematically oriented. I just did a calculation. Today is the 3,069th day since I was first elected. What we have accomplished here? I like to think we have had successes as the opposition. We have had some influence on government policy. However I am increasingly frustrated that the work of committees and parliamentarians is continually being stifled in this place. We see it again in Bill C-5.

When we look at Bill C-5, the species at risk act we are debating today, we see a number of amendments. It distresses me more than anything that the government has chosen to put forward amendments which would undo some of the work of the committee. It is regrettable.

How do we hold a government accountable when it has a majority as the Liberal government does? I think even the Prime Minister and members opposite want to do what is best for Canada. How can that happen if the government routinely ignores the sage advice of expert witnesses from the scientific world and members of parliament who report the concerns of the constituents they all serve? When members of parliament work hard in committee to come forward with amendments and the government reverses the amendments at report stage we must shrug our shoulders and ask what we are doing here. What is the point?

We have made the presentation. Why does the government not accept some of the amendments? Why does it not use common sense instead of the bull headed approach it insists on using?

We are addressing a number of the Group No. 3 amendments today. We need to listen carefully to what the witnesses and technical experts have said. One thing that concerns me is that information coming to the committee has been ignored, especially information from technical experts. I am concerned that the bill's definition of wildlife species would be amended by one of the government's motions. Bill C-5 currently defines a wildlife species as:

--a species, subspecies, variety or geographically or genetically distinct population of animal, plant or other organism, other than a bacterium or virus, that is wild by nature and

(a) is native to Canada; or

(b) has extended its range into Canada without human intervention and has been present in Canada for at least 50 years.

This is the definition accepted by scientists and most thinking people as acceptable and workable. This was the thinking of the witnesses and the recommendation of the committee.

Lo and behold, when the bill came back to the House the government put forward Motion No. 9 which would go back to the generic, mushy definition of “biologically distinct population”.

What does the government mean when it says biological? I do not know if hon. members remember the biology they studied at university when they were young or whether they did. I distinctly remember studying biology in both high school and university. One of my goals was to become a researcher in neurology. It was one of the things I thought might do although I subsequently changed my mind. As members know, I became a mathematics instructor.

When I was studying biology it was the big group. The term biology includes the animal kingdom and the plant kingdom. Biology means any life. That is what it is. It is about biological organisms. It is not a definition. It is a wide, sweeping scope that does not define anything.

I am going strictly from memory. I did not bother writing this down. I am reaching back 40 years or more since I graduated from university. I cannot believe the years have slipped by so quickly. I distinctly remember that after the term biology in terms of specifications we had a kingdom, then a phylum, a class, an order, a genus and a species. I hope I remember it correctly. My biology teacher would be downright proud of me for having the subclassification system correct after all these years.

When defining organisms we need to get right down to the species. We must be precise in our definition of endangered species and wildlife species. Otherwise we will swim around in a vast sea of the unknown and courts and lawyers will have a heyday trying to figure it out.

I am distressed about another element which would come about as a result of Bill C-5. Farmers, ranchers and other people with an interest in the habitat of endangered species would be harassed. If they went on fishing expeditions they could be charged with destroying the habitat of endangered species. They would have to defend themselves whether it was true or not.

Over and over in the House we from the west have tried to get it into the heads of Liberal members, those who control the government, that there is a major crisis in agriculture in western Canada. It used to be that farmers were struggling to make ends meet with margins of 3%, 4% or 5%. When that margin disappeared the profit level was gone. The ability of farmers to earn a living for their families disappeared. Today more farmers than not are struggling with negative numbers. Their input costs exceed their income due a whole bunch of factors.

Can members imagine the distress our farmers feel? They are being threatened by species at risk legislation which could put them in jail, fine them and cause them to incur huge legal costs to defend themselves. At the same time the legislation before the House lacks clear and precise definitions.

The fact that government bureaucrats came up with the wording four or five weeks ago does not mean it is automatically right the first time. When witnesses in committee advise us of better ways of doing things why do we not humbly accept their advice and make the changes? The committee tried to do so. The all party committee agreed. The bull headed government then said no. It said it would undo it even though it was not there to hear the arguments or listen to the expert witnesses. I find it distressing.

Mr. Speaker, you are signalling me that I have eight seconds left so I have to wind down. I have appreciated the time very much.

[Chuck Cadman, Canadian Alliance, Surrey North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, once again I am here in the House to talk about Bill C-5, the species at risk act. It is troubling to me that as usual the government is content to forge blindly ahead with legislation without any real idea of what the financial impact of the law would be on the country and the taxpayers.

I would like to spend some time discussing the socioeconomic implications of this proposed legislation. The protection of the environment is a very important priority to most if not all Canadians.

I come from British Columbia, arguably some of the most beautiful territory in the country. Last summer I spent two weeks driving around British Columbia. I put on about 4,300 kilometres just driving to different parts of the province to get a feel, as I often do, for what that province is really all about.

I recall driving up through Cariboo-Chilcotin, in semi-arid desert, Prince George, Prince Rupert, over to Terrace then to the Skeena River, a huge salmon river. I took a ferry across to the Queen Charlotte Islands and spent four or five days there. I recommend that anyone who wants to see what Haida Gwaii is all about should take a trip to the Queen Charlottes and spend some time there. I spent some time at Rennell Sound, at Bonanza Beach, where there are huge expanses of beach two miles long with no one around for miles, with eagles, bear and deer. This is what British Columbia is all about.

British Columbians, maybe more so than anywhere else in the country, understand what the environment is about and how important it is to protect these species. I went into the Kootenays, to the western slopes of the Rockies, to Blue River, and down into the Okanagan, beautiful territory and environmentally sensitive. We understand what that is all about.

However I believe that it is equally important to Canadians that our environment be protected in a way that is economically sustainable. To this end the Canadian Alliance has put forward Motion No. 3 which has been grouped in the third bundle of amendments to Bill C-5. It would require that the socioeconomic interests be considered in the legal listing of species.

The bill would already provide that economic considerations be considered when developing recovery measures. COSEWIC, the committee on the status of endangered wildlife in Canada, is charged with developing the list of endangered species and habitats from a purely scientific perspective. It is the cabinet which has the final say. This unfortunately opens the door for political considerations to dominate the process. We are saying the economic considerations should be part of the considerations as the list would have a definite impact on the Canadian taxpayer.

The Canadian Alliance has also proposed Motion No. 15. It says that:

The purposes of this Act, outlined in subsection (1), shall be pursued and accomplished in a manner consistent with the goals of sustainable development.

This is closely related to socioeconomic interests because it requires that a balance be struck between the environmental goals and the impact on taxpayers. Without considering sustainable development environmental laws could quickly kill the goose that lays the golden egg.

Consideration for endangered species is something that only prosperous economies can afford because someone must pay for it. As the previous speaker suggested, economic desperation will be no friend to species at risk. Someone must pay for this stuff and if we do not have an economy to support it, it will not be very friendly to the species at risk which it is trying to help in the first place.

Is it not essential that the cost to industry and property owners, not to mention the cost to governments in terms of enforcement resources, be known before the government introduces legislation with such vast implications? In particular, we must know what the bill would cost farmers, fisherman, loggers, ranchers, et cetera, and what the government's compensation provisions would be. Without this information, individuals cannot plan and governments cannot know what costs are being passed along.

One of my staff members in the constituency office of Surrey North is a member of a family that owns one of the oldest ranches in the Nicola Valley outside of Merritt. I had the pleasure to spend about a week on that ranch a couple of years ago. It was during calving season, but that is a whole other issue. It was quite an experience for someone who lives in the city to be on a cattle ranch during calving season.

I talked to my staff member's brother about the co-operation he shows with Ducks Unlimited to preserve habitat on his ranch, as do all ranchers. These folks understand what the environment means to their livelihood.

The government apparently has no idea of the socio-economic implications of the legislation. They could not be made any clearer than in the following statements from the ministry and the minister. The minister's information supplement from October 2001 says:

Environment Canada is aware that compensation for restrictions on the use of land is a complex issue that requires careful consideration and innovative thinking. We will need several years of practical experience in implementing the stewardship and recovery provisions of the Species at Risk Act (SARA) before we can be precise in prescribing eligibility and thresholds for compensation.

In explaining why he could not guarantee compensation under Bill C-5 the minister said at the standing committee on October 3, 2001:

We then got deeper and deeper into this and it became more and more of the proverbial swamp, more and more difficult to do partly because, of course, governments should not pass legislation which is open-ended in terms of funding. We have fiscal responsibilities which, as you can well imagine, are fairly strict on us. Forty-five million a year is what we've been given to run the process and that's what we can expect and that's it.

The environment minister was admitting he did not know the costs or the implications. He said he was pretty sure they would be more than $45 million a year. How much more? Has he produced studies? Can he give any idea? He says he does not want to undertake open ended spending commitments. That is fine for the government but Bill C-5 is open ended in terms of what it would cost Canadian property owners. The minister and the government would not pay for it but they would have no problem forcing others to absorb the costs.

The Species at Risk Working Group represents a broad range of environmental and industry groups including the Canadian Wildlife Federation, the Sierra Club of Canada, the Canadian Pulp and Paper Association and the Mining Association of Canada. In its presentation to the standing committee in September 2000 it recommended as an amendment that:

The purposes of this Act shall be pursued to the extent possible while taking into account the social and economic interests of Canadians.

With these facts in mind I hope the government and the opposition parties see the sense in the Canadian Alliance amendments and vote in favour of them. Otherwise we cannot support the legislation. As I said, we understand the implications of species at risk and the need to protect them, as do all Canadians. However we must consider the implications before we do so.

[Maurice Vellacott, Canadian Alliance, Saskatoon—Wanuskewin, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I will clarify where the Canadian Alliance stands in respect to Bill C-5, the species at risk bill. The Canadian Alliance is committed to protecting and preserving Canada's natural environment and endangered species, let there be no mistake on that.

Alliance members do not believe Bill C-5 would work without guaranteeing fair and reasonable compensation for property owners and resource users who suffer losses. We have farmers and ranchers in our constituencies. These individuals want to protect endangered species, but they should not be forced to do so at the expense of their own livelihood.

We have insisted along the way that criminal liability must require intent. The act in this case would make criminals out of good people who may inadvertently and unknowingly harm endangered species or their habitat. This is unnecessarily confrontational and makes endangered species a threat to property owners. We need of a co-operative approach, not the confrontation that seems to be a part of Bill C-5. We need co-operation with the provinces.

The 1996 national accord for the protection of species at risk was a step in the right direction. It needs to be developed co-operatively. Instead, Bill C-5 would give the federal government the power to impose its laws on provincial lands. Since it is left completely at the minister's discretion landowners do not know if and when the shoe would drop. Instead of working with the provinces and property owners the federal government seems to be producing uncertainty and a climate of resentment and distrust as well.

The government wants to amend along certain lines only. In effect it is reversing many of the positions taken by Liberal MPs on the environment committee. Unfortunately that is another example of some top down control of bureaucrats who wanted a particular way. It shows a contempt or a disregard for government members and members across the way in the opposition benches as well.

The government has no idea what the socioeconomic implications of the legislation are and what the costs would be over time. In the minister's information supplement of October 2001 the Minister of the Environment said:

Environment Canada is aware that compensation for restrictions on the use of land is a complex issue that requires careful consideration and innovative thinking. We will need several years of practical experience in implementing the stewardship and recovery provisions of the Species at Risk Act (SARA) before we can be precise in prescribing eligibility and thresholds for compensation.

In speaking to the standing committee on October 3, 2001, the minister explained why he could not guarantee compensation in Bill C-5. He said:

We then got deeper and deeper into this and it became more and more of the proverbial swamp, and more and more difficult to do partly because, of course, governments should not pass legislation which is open-ended in terms of funding. We have fiscal responsibilities which, as you can well imagine, are fairly strict on us. Forty-five million a year is what we've given to run the process and that's what we can expect and that's it.

Any fair minded person in hearing this today would understand that would be a red flag. Is it not essential that the costs on industry and property users, the cost on government in terms of enforcement resources, be known before the government introduces legislation with such far reaching implications?

In particular, we want to know and have a little more close approximation of what the bill would cost farmers, fishermen, loggers, ranchers and so on. We want to know what the government's compensation costs would be as well. Without that information individuals cannot plan and government does not know what costs are being passed on.

The Canadian Alliance proposes in Motion No. 15 that:

The purposes of this Act, outlined in subsection (1), shall be pursued and accomplished in a manner consistent with the goals of sustainable development.

That is very important. That is closely related to socioeconomic interest because it requires that a balance be struck between the environmental goals and the needs of the taxpayer. Without considering this important aspect of sustainable development environmental laws could quickly become the goose that lays the golden egg so to speak.

Worrying about endangered species is only something that prosperous economies can afford to do because someone must pay for it. Economic desperation will be no friend to species at risk so we must put that forward.

The species at risk working group was made up of representatives from a broad range of environmental and industry groups among them the Canadian Wildlife Federation, the Sierra Club, the Canadian Pulp and Paper Association and the Mining Association of Canada. When they appeared before the House standing committee in September 2000 they said the purpose of the act should be pursued to the extent possible while taking into account the social and economic interests of Canadians. That is a reasonable amendment that should be accepted by the House.

We put forward Motion No. 3 which would require socioeconomic interests to be considered in the legal listing of species. The bill would already provide that it be considered in developing recovery measures.

Another great concern is the minister's discretionary power, and that can be a scary thing. The minister can decide whether compensation would be given or not. He would have the power to decide how much compensation would be paid. The minister would decide whether provincial laws are effective or not and whether the federal government would step in to impose the law. That is the kind of wide powers the minister would have and that kind of discretion is the opposite of transparency.

The government has refused to provide any proper draft legislation about the process for compensation, who would qualify and how much one would receive. Those are pretty critical and essential points.

Where is the technical amendment which would provide a predictable process for property owners to seek compensation? The all party committee of the House said that the minister must draft regulations but the government wants to stay away from that obligation. Where is the technical amendment which would set out the criteria the minister would use to determine whether a province's laws would be effective or not? The committee put some criteria into the bill, but the government wants to take that out as well.

The process for action plans and recovery plans needs to be transparent and so must the process in other areas as well.

I find most distressing the fact that farmers and ranchers and those kind of people can be some of our best allies. Providing incentives for habitat protection by promoting good management practices is a good thing. The Canadian Alliance supports stewardship and incentives for protecting habitat. We strongly believe that farmers and ranchers are some of the best conservationists. Their stewardship initiatives must be acknowledged and encouraged.

I speak for farmers in my constituency of Saskatoon--Wanuskewin when I say that farmers understand the importance of maintaining a healthy environment. Farmers, ranchers and agricultural people are primary stakeholders and as such their rights need to be respected in the bill before us today.

There is no myth, confusion or misinformation about Canadian Alliance policy. We are committed to protecting and preserving Canada's national environment and endangered species as well as the sustainable development of our abundant natural resources for the use of current and future generations.

The Canadian Alliance maintains that for any endangered species legislation to be effective it must respect the fundamental rights of private property owners. We believe that co-operating with land owners and resource users, the environmental frontline soldiers, is critical to the success of protecting endangered species. Full co-operation means full compensation and that is only fair and just support. Full compensation provisions must be clearly spelled out in the bill and the regulations. Land owners and resource workers across this country are hurting and cannot take any more economic hardship from the federal government.

Politicians should have some say on the legal listing of species but the public needs to be able to review and comment on it. We have concerns about criminal liability and moving so quickly on people. We need to have that better defined. For these and a number of other reasons we unfortunately will not be able to support the bill.

Bill C-5 does not measure up, as we would say, and therefore the Canadian Alliance is vigorously opposed to Bill C-5 in its current form. We unfortunately cannot support it because we believe that some day we will rue the day because of the implications and the fallout from this particular bill.

Act to amend the Criminal Code (cruelty to animals and firearms) and the Firearms Act

[Scott Reid, Canadian Alliance, Lanark—Carleton, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am privileged to speak to Bill C-15B which contains unfortunately provisions that are continuations of some of the greatest flaws in the legislative drafting practices of the current government. It behooves us to look at what some of these themes are and to think about what could be done to avoid doing them both in this law and other laws in the future.

There are three themes. First, this is an omnibus bill, but not as bad as it started off being. However it is still an omnibus bill dealing with more than one topic. Second, it strips basic legal protections from individuals who are accused of making offences under the law. This is a current theme that is also quite strong in Liberal legislative drafting practices. Third, it contains vague regulatory guarantees and requires us to take it on faith that the government would undertake the protections that it has refused to place within the law. At the very same time we are finding these guarantees withheld we are told to trust the government. The guarantees would be placed in the regulations at a later point in time subject to the government's arbitrary will.

These are three themes that are strongly present in the general legislative practices of the government. For example, Bill C-36 was an extraordinary omnibus bill that contained provisions like rules relating to the Internet and appointment of judges as well as the enactment of provisions relating to preventative search and detention, and provisions that related to the enactment of United Nations conventions and so on.

This law follows the same general pattern. It contains unrelated provisions dealing with cruelty to animals and dealing with firearms. I cannot see any reason why these two subject matters are contained in the same bill. There is no logical connection between them whatsoever.

The bill was worse before. It contained measures relating to child pornography which fortunately were split away from the bill and are now contained in Bill C-15A.

It is difficult to deal intelligently and to vote rationally on a bill that is effectively a package deal, a part of which might or might not be acceptable to an individual member. How does one vote one's conscience when something good and bad is contained in the same bill?

To some degree we have divided the good from the bad in the bill, but the bill should have been subdivided into several sub-measures.

This is a trend that has existed in Canadian legislative practice for some length of time. It has been a disastrous practice that nearly split up the country on some occasions. I am thinking of the Meech Lake accord which contained five unrelated constitutional amendments as a single package. They all had to be passed. Most Canadians were quite comfortable with certain aspects of the Meech Lake accord. Other aspects were quite contentious, particularly the distinct society clause. However they all had to be done together.

The Charlottetown accord was even worse. It was a package that effectively would have gutted the entire Constitution and cobbled it back together in a vast document that was several times as long as the entire United States constitution. It was presented as a single package deal. Had it been broken into a series of smaller items not all of them could have be passed, but many could have been. Some of them were good; a lot of them were terrible.

This practice has continued on in Bill C-15B and it should be stopped. It should not be a practice that occurs at all in Canadian legislation.

I will turn to the stripping of basic legal protections. This is another thing that occurs frequently in current Liberal legislation. I recall Bill C-36 and the way in which basic legal protections of Canadians were stripped away under the preventive detention provisions of that bill. That bill made it possible to be prosecuted for one's religious beliefs. Amazing, but true.

Bill C-5 has provisions which I am attempting to amend. I have several amendments before the House that deal with the question of mens rea, whether one must have a guilty mind prior to being found guilty of destroying an animal habitat or destroying an endangered species. That law denies the requirement that one must have a guilty mind, a mens rea, in order to be found culpable.

This law does much the same thing. I will say it is not as bad in this respect as Bill C-5, but it is still problematic. It takes the aspects of the criminal code that deal with animal cruelty and removes them from the property offences section and moves them to a special new section.

I cannot determine what the legislative reason for this is, that is to say what is the need for this, but I can determine what the result would be. The result is we would remove the various protections that are built in under the property parts of the criminal code. There are certain basic protections that are not accompanying this section of the law as it moves from one part of the criminal code to the other.

The phrase legal justification or excuse and with colour of right in subsection 429(2) of the criminal code currently provides protection to those who commit any kind of property offence. That would cease to be available as a protection.

It is a funny thing that those on the government side of the House are always happy to attack members on this side of the House as somehow being out to strip those who are accused of offences against the law of their legal protections and legal rights. The fact is, and the record will show this, it has been entirely the other way during the course of the government.

This law would strip those who are accused of offences of basic protections. Protections, which are inherent to our traditional rule of law, to the common law, and to our entire legal structure, would once again be stripped out in Bill C-15B, Bill C-5, and Bill C-36. This is a consistent, unacceptable, inexcusable and entirely avoidable pattern.

The meritorious goals found in parts of each of these three pieces of legislation could all have been achieved without stripping Canadians of these basic legal protections. They are absolutely not needed. That should be corrected in this law. Or, potentially, if the government were unwilling to protect it, then the law in my opinion, on that basis alone, should be dropped from the order paper.

I want to turn to the offer of vague regulatory guarantees that protections which are not included in the law would be included later on. We are told by the minister that this would be taken care of. There would be protections for those who are accused or charged, but they would not be included in the law, they would be included elsewhere.

The record of governments, not this government in particular but of governments in general, of protecting individuals administratively when they are not protected by law is very poor. That is the whole reason why our system of government is based upon the rule of law.

I encourage the minister and all members of the government to look at the classic academic text written by Albert Venn Dicey which deals with the question of the rule of law. It is a book called An Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution published in the 1880s and republished in many editions prior to Dicey's death around the time of the first world war. He deals with the question of the rule of law at length.

[Carol Skelton, Canadian Alliance, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

Madam Speaker, Bill C-15B, the cruelty to animals bill, is a war on the agricultural industry and the fishing industry in Canada. Farmers, ranchers and fishers must be made aware that the bill will negatively affect their livelihood. This is not fearmongering. This is reality.

The justice minister said that the bill will not change things, that what was lawful before will still be lawful. If the bill has no effect, then what is its purpose to the agricultural industry and fishers?

We are told that the bill will not affect legitimate practices. What it does do is narrow the definition of what those legitimate practices are. This will have a huge effect on animal based businesses and practices.

I live in a rural area on a farm. The legislation causes huge problems for the surrounding farms and ranches in the area. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans has moved into our province. Under its mandate we cannot put a culvert in a road that goes between two sloughs on our farm because we might affect the fish population. There has not been a fish in our sloughs as long as I have lived there. In fact, it is hard for the frogs to live there.

That shows what happens when bureaucracy goes amok. The rules and regulations of the fisheries department make no sense whatsoever to prairie farmers. Fisheries people have been moved from the oceans to central Saskatchewan to make rules and regulations. That scares me because the same thing could happen in the bill.

Animal rights groups have said that in order to be proven effective, the legislation will have to be challenged in court. Agriculturalists and fishers could have their whole lifestyle as well as their livelihood taken away from them because of this legislation. We have to make sure that Canadian chicken farmers and the Canadian Cattlemen's Association understand what is in the bill and that they look at it closely.

My husband and I are environmentalists. My husband has farmed for over 36 years. He is one of the first no-till farmers in our area. He looks after the land. He has stopped the land from blowing away. He looks after the environment. We protect our animals.

Under this law if someone complained that a cow was fenced in, the cow would be allowed to roam free. That has not happened for a long time in the prairies and I hope it never happens again.

This is what lies ahead for our agricultural industry if we do not speak against the legislation and if we do not challenge the government to change the bill to help us. We look after our animals. We will not abuse animals. We do everything not to hurt them. We have to make sure that the bill does not go through.

Animal rights groups have said that the government will have to take agriculturalists and fishers to court. Court challenges lie ahead for fishers and the agricultural industry. Hardworking Canadians cannot afford to fight court battles against well-funded activist groups.

My colleague's motion which would seek wilful and reckless actions as being guidelines for prosecution would help to protect farmers, ranchers, researchers and others with legitimate animal based occupations from nuisance prosecutions. As we saw in Bill C-5, the government is content to categorize all actions as criminal. There must be protection in place for those with legitimate uses for animals.

How can we criminalize every young or old hunter who wants to shoot an animal for food? How can we penalize those people? They need those animals for food. They buy a licence to hunt. The animals are used for food. Many people only eat animals they harvest from the wild. We cannot make that against the law.

The agricultural industry in Canada has been abandoned by the government. Legislation such as Bill C-15B will do additional damage to an already struggling business, a business that is groping for anything that can help it. It does not need to be loaded down with any more rules and regulations by a government that wants to impose them on us.

Moving animals from property offences into the criminal code leads us away from animal welfare into the land of animal rights. This is a scary proposition for many Canadians who use animals for legitimate purposes.

The very definition of animal in the legislation needs to be changed. The current definition is far too broad. It is too inclusive and will lead to problems for law-abiding citizens.

A leisurely day of fishing can now be met with court challenges on animal cruelty. How many times have we sat in a boat and fished? How many times have we sat on the edge of a riverbank with our grandchildren to enjoy a wonderful afternoon of fishing? That could be challenged in court.

The Canadian government would like to assure Canadians that petty things like that will not happen. The legislation however opens the door for exactly that scenario. The government's blatant pandering to special interests is horrific. A letter from the Animal Alliance of Canada is a perfect example:

Bill C-15B, which makes changes to the animal cruelty section of the Criminal Code, recognizes for the first time that animals are not just 'property', but rather beings in their own right...I can't overstate the importance of this change...It started in the last federal election. Because of a commitment by the (previous) Minister of Justice in the House of Commons to pass Bill C-15B (we) campaigned for her re-election. Under attack by hunters and gun owners and a cabal of extremist right wing groups, (she) was in a losing campaign. (We) stepped in a championed her election...(she) won by 700 votes.

Instead of championing for the stability of law-abiding animal based industries and businesses, the government caters to a special interest group. That is totally unbelievable.

My colleagues and I in no way support cruelty to animals. However we do support law-abiding Canadians who are involved in animal based businesses and industry. We cannot support the bill as it stands since it seriously jeopardizes Canadians from engaging in legal, moral and ethical animal practices.

The government must look at the broader picture and the repercussions the bill will have on the industry instead of its blatantly pandering to lobby groups that have no idea of what they can do to the economy of the agricultural community and the fishing industry.

Business of the House

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, tomorrow, we will conclude the third reading stage of Bill C-49, the Budget Implementation Act, 2001.

Monday and Tuesday shall be allotted days.

Next Wednesday we will consider report stage of Bill C-15, certain amendments to the criminal code. On Thursday, March 21, I expect to return to report stage of Bill C-5, the species at risk legislation or perhaps other unfinished business. On Friday, March 23, we will again consider Bill C-50 respecting the WTO followed by Bill C-47, the excise tax amendments.

With respect to the specific legislation that the House leader for the official opposition has referred to I will pursue that matter with the solicitor general to determine what plans he may have.