Bill C-7 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Department of Canadian Heritage Act and the Parks Canada Agency Act and to make related amendments to other Acts

The purpose of these amendments is to transfer responsibility for the Parks Canada Agency, and certain associated functions, from the Minister of Canadian Heritage to the Minister of the Environment.

Bank Act

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Mississauga South. I welcome this opportunity to rise in this House to speak on Bill C-57.

We are well aware of just how important the financial services sector is to the Canadian economy, and that of Toronto in particular, where my riding is located. The steps taken by our government in recent years attest to that fact. We have passed legislation ensuring that financial institutions have the modern regulatory framework they need in order to be competitive in today's global economy. Bill C-57 builds on these initiatives.

This bill builds on the financial services restructuring package that was introduced and passed by Parliament in 2000. I think it was the largest piece of legislation that was introduced and passed by Parliament dealing with the financial sector in Canada and how it was going to be structured or allowed to structure itself. Of course, a major piece of that legislation dealt with bank merger guidelines.

At the time there were governance issues affecting the major banks and financial institutions that were not dealt with, so this bill addresses some of those governance issues. For example, it brings the legislation up to date to recognize the fact that the major insurance companies were demutualized. It also deals with the issues around deposit insurance and aligns this act with some of the features of the Canada Business Corporations Act, for example, the question of the defence of due diligence by directors.

In fact, my first private member's bill in 1997 dealt with giving directors the defence of due diligence for corporations incorporated under the Canada Business Corporations Act. It was necessary I felt, and in fact it was incorporated later into the Canada Business Corporations Act, that directors would be given the defence of due diligence.

What that means is that if directors of companies asked all the right questions, demanded certain information in certain ways and did everything that was reasonable for directors to do, then they would not be held liable if something occurred subsequently which created problems for the corporation. I think it is fair for directors to have that defence because directors come together for board meetings maybe once a month. It is management that is primarily responsible for running the company.

For example, if a company was building a big plant and the director asked about the impact on the environment by the plant, and wanted an independent study conducted by environmental engineers, once the study was conducted and the environmental engineers said the plant would create no environmental difficulties, then at that point in time I think the director has discharged his or her responsibility. Subsequently, if the plant creates some environmental problems, then I do not think the director should be held liable. That is what the change to the Canada Business Corporations Act did and that is what the changes to Bill C-57 contemplate as one of the pieces with respect to the financial institutions legislation.

Corporate governance is one of those items that has received more attention in the last few years around the world, particularly with the advent of the Enron scandal in the United States and WorldCom. We have not been immune in Canada either. We have had some difficulties with corporate governance at Nortel. I cannot remember the company name, but there was the Drabinsky theatre group that got into some problems.

Corporate governance is a very topical matter and concerns, of course, a lot of citizens who own shares in companies, pension plans and mutual funds. In fact, many Canadians hold shares in companies in Canada through either mutual funds or pension plans or hold those shares directly. It is important to them that corporate governance is sound.

That is why, following the Enron and WorldCom situations in the United States, members on this side reacted. I do not know about members on the other side as I do not think they spend much time worrying about things like this. They are more interested in a $1.50 pack of gum that Mr. Dingwall bought. Nonetheless, corporate governance is a very important matter because it affects the investments that many Canadians have made. Following Enron and WorldCom, the United States, through its Congress, brought in legislation referred to as Sarbanes-Oxley that basically brought in tough corporate governance rules for companies.

The reality is that the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation, while well intentioned, has had some mixed reviews, but it did raise the question, certainly on this side of the House, of what we should be doing in Canada, so we struck a caucus committee, which I was honoured to chair, and we looked at corporate governance in Canada.

Canada has a complicated quilt of different jurisdictions and different organizations that get involved in corporate governance. We have the Ontario Securities Commission. We have organizations like the Canadian Public Accountability Board, which was set up just two years ago to give oversight over auditing firms, so that auditing firms are held accountable to the audit reports that they issue. Many investors rely on these audit reports because if they give companies a clean bill of health, then someone investing in those companies has a right to expect that they have a clean bill of health. The Canadian Public Accountability Board was set up to monitor the performance of auditing firms.

We also have the Canada Business Corporations Act. I forget the exact statistic but something like 30% to 40% of the public companies in Canada are incorporated under the Canada Business Corporations Act. It is a large number of companies. It does not represent all companies, but it is quite comprehensive.

Therefore, our view, coming out of that review, was that the Canada Business Corporations Act could be used and should be used as a benchmark, as a worldclass standard that should be implemented. This is an area that the Government of Canada can control very directly. Through Parliament, we can pass legislation that sets the corporate governance rules for corporations incorporated under the Canada Business Corporations Act.

What does corporate governance consider? It deals with a whole host of things. It deals with things such as the composition of a board of directors and whether there should be independent boards of directors. We saw problems, for example with Nabisco, which was a big fiasco years ago where the CEO hand-picked all the members of the board of directors and paid them $40,000 U.S. a year. They would go to fancy meetings and so on. When the executive made presentations to the board of directors, they were all hand-picked buddies of the CEO and chairman, and nothing really came under close scrutiny. There are issues around the independence of the members of the board.

There is the question, which particularly comes up in the context of financial institutions in Canada, of what the requirements or limitations are in terms of the participation of foreign directors on boards of directors. Should a bank such as the Bank of Montreal or an insurance company such as Sun Life be allowed to have unfettered access to members of their boards who are U.S. citizens, for example, as opposed to Canadian citizens?

There are issues whether the role of the chief executive officer should be split from the role of chairman of the corporation, so that the chair could be independent and provide more oversight over the CEO and his or her executive team.

There are issues around executive compensation, stock option plans and the transparency of those. One of the problems or challenges we had was public companies' quarterly profits being reported and those profits really determining the share price of a company to a large extent. The management of companies is under huge pressure to keep earnings per share on the rise. That sometimes puts officers of a company in a position where they might compromise their ethical standards, frankly.

We saw that in a big company in the United States, Xerox or one of those, that simply capitalized a whole range of expenses that should have been expensed. Of course, if those costs had been expensed, it would have had an impact on earnings per share. Its share price would have been affected, so they treated them as assets rather than expenses. Even the most cursory examination by an accountant would have or should have revealed that those were not assets, those were expenses.

With the pressures on management to perform in terms of earnings per share, we need to have complete transparency with respect to stock options, so that shareholders know that the executive of a company has certain incentives to see the share price increase. In this way shareholders know precisely what is going on.

There are issues about the handling of proxies for meetings, so that the executive and the management of a company do not dominate what happens at these meetings. There are a whole range of developments under corporate governance, but I am pleased to note that the Minister of Industry is conducting a review of the corporate governance under the Canada Business Corporations Act and I hope that he picks the best practices.

We have had some time now to learn from the experiences of other jurisdictions, looking at what the United States did and others, and consulting with the industry and other stakeholders to pick the best practices in terms of corporate governance and enshrine them in the Canada Business Corporations Act.

That would not impact every single company in Canada, but it will be the new benchmark. It will set the standard and the Government of Canada can take pride in that because it will protect investors, whether they are direct investors, big monied investors, or small investors through mutual funds, pension plans or the like.

There has been a great deal of press recently about the bank merger guidelines, whether the Minister of Finance will come out with the new bank merger guidelines. The financial sector legislation was enacted by this Parliament around 2000 set up a process for large bank mergers. It set up a role for the Standing Committee on Finance of the House of Commons and the Senate banking committee, so that those committees would be charged by Parliament to assess the public interest questions around major bank mergers. It was enshrined in Bill C-7.

The banks of course are looking for certain clarity around what a large bank merger would entail, what would be the appetite of the government to allow another bank merger. This is a vexing question because in Canada we know there is a large concentration of banks and further consolidation would raise some questions.

The bottom line is that if we were to allow another merger of two major banks, what would the benefit be to Canadian consumers and Canadian business? We know the benefit to the shareholders of major banks, to the boards of directors and all those with stock options. They would receive a benefit and that is fine. Profit is not a dirty word. However, we need to understand what the benefit would be to consumers in terms of choice, access to services, and would it enhance the ability of Canadians to do their banking? That is the question on the table.

Another issue that has been presented has to do with cross-pillar mergers. When the finance standing committee of the House of Commons dealt with large bank mergers and the public interest aspects of that, the committee did not really deal with the question of cross-pillar mergers. Cross-pillar mergers would entail the merger of a large bank with a major insurance company, for example, Sun Life merging with the Royal Bank of Canada.

There has been some discussion, pro and con, as to whether that would be a good thing or a bad thing. The empirical evidence would suggest that there is not a lot of synergy or appetite within those two different sectors. They have a different business culture, a different business model, but nonetheless, it is an important question because it allows a concentration of capital. It allows a company to have stronger capitalization.

This is one of the things that is important for banks because they are dealing in an international world. If their client is a Canadian company that is a multinational and wants to expand globally, the banks have to have the capital, the care and the capacity to do that kind of work. So, there is some interest there. That is a debate I am sure we will have maybe in the next Parliament, but it is an important question.

When the Minister of Finance comes out with his bank merger guidelines I hope he will ask the Standing Committee on Finance to examine the public interest aspects of cross-pillar mergers because that was not really dealt with in any detail by the finance committee. We focused mostly on large bank mergers.

As I said, this huge piece of the legislation did a number of things. It described the process under which large banks could come to government seeking a merger but it did much more than that. What it attempted to do was create more competition within the banking sector so it created greater opportunities for the credit union movement to grow and enlarge. It gave more opportunities for foreign banks to participate in the economy in Canada. It gave a lower threshold for start-ups of banks in Canada. It set up the consumer protection agency. It did a number of things, which is why it was such a large bill when it was presented to the House.

Not only does the House of Commons committee and the Senate banking committee look at the public interest aspects, but the Competition Bureau weighs in and makes a determination of whether a bank merger would create any anti-competitive types of situations. The Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions also makes a determination of whether a merger would create any issues around prudence and stability of the financial sector in Canada. Therefore it is quite a rigorous process.

One of the ironies is that if two major banks were to merge, the Competition Bureau would very likely say that there would have to be a divestiture of certain branches. Let us say, in the case of the Toronto-Dominion Bank and the Bank of Montreal, if they ended up with too many of their banks in a small town in Ontario and not enough of the other banks, the Royal Bank and CIBC for example and others, the Competition Bureau might say that now with this merger there is too much of a dominant position by that bank in that city or that region and it has to divest of certain branches.

This creates an interesting aspect. In the past this has always been seen as a negative in the sense that if they have to divest that means the people in that local community have less choice and they do not have the range of options that they might have had if the banks just stayed the way they were. There is clearly some truth to that.

In the last few years some of the smaller banks, Laurentian Bank, the National Bank and the credit union movement, have indicated very clearly that if the Competition Bureau indicates that a bank merger would require divestitures that they would be very interested in buying up those branches. The ironic twist is that we could end up with more competition in a regional market if we ended up with some of these smaller banks in those locations.

Therefore it is an important question and it is a vexing question and I am sure the next Parliament will deal with that.

However I am very happy to support this bill because it would bring the financial institutions legislation more in line with the Canada Business Corporations Act. It would provide the corporate governance requirements that we need. I hope down the road that there will be further enhancements to governance for banks that will be further aligned with the changes to the Canada Business Corporations Act that I certainly expect will be coming.

Civil Marriage Act

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is with mixed feelings that I rise today to speak to Bill C-38, the Liberal government's attempt to change the definition of marriage in Canada.

What pleases me is that I speak today at the end of a period of dialogue with the people of Essex on the bill. Not only have we received literally thousands of e-mails, letters and faxes but I have this past week completed a series of town hall meetings in Essex, the first of their kind in recent memory by an MP in this riding.

Twice before, in 1999 and 2003, the definition of marriage has come before the House on motions, and twice the previous Liberal member of Parliament for Essex toed her Liberal boss's line. I am pleased to state today that this tradition has been broken and will remain so for as long as I am privileged to serve the people of Essex.

What disappoints me, after the recent Supreme Court of Canada reference, is that we are here today by a policy decision of the Liberal government. Let us recall that the Supreme Court reference neither declared heterosexual marriage unconstitutional, nor did it direct Parliament that this institution be changed. Neither did the Liberal government campaign in the recent federal election that it would change the institution of marriage. Though this is a breathtaking volte-face by a Liberal government that has spent 12 years perfecting the art of dodging issues for which it was given a mandate and adopting those it concealed from voters, it comes as no real surprise.

I sit on Parliament's Standing Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development. Since October last year we have seen only two pieces of legislation: Bill C-7, a housekeeping bill to move Parks Canada from the Department of Heritage to the Department of the Environment, and Bill C-15, a bill on migratory birds. That is five months and only two pieces of legislation quickly dispensed with.

Bill C-38 is intended to distract from the fact that this Liberal emperor has in fact no legislative clothes. Canadians should forget what the Liberal government is telling them. While the Prime Minister wraps himself up in misguided Liberal notions of our charter and our maple leaf, the Conservative Party of Canada is instead doing the responsible job of a government from the opposition benches.

For 12 years, the best ideas of the Liberal government have been taken from the policy books of the two legacy Conservative parties and pathetically adopted in half measures. Sadly, the only idea that truly belongs to the Liberals is changing marriage. They should listen to the Conservative Party and to Canadians instead.

Canadians would do themselves a great favour by eliminating the Liberal middleman in the next election in favour of a Conservative government that has always stood clear and accountable on maintaining traditional marriage.

Last night I sat rocking my son, Elijah, to sleep. These are not only moments to treasure, as I continue on my journey to what I hope will be old age, but they are clarifying as well. Sarah and I are his mom and dad. He comes from the uniting of our flesh in the security of the lifelong covenant of marriage. The bonding of our life for life was intended from the foundations of the earth to bring forth life. It is rooted in the laws of nature. It is a defining characteristic of marriage that cannot be altered, even if all lower courts in all jurisdictions proclaim so from the rooftops.

Elijah developed in his mother's womb. He entered the world through her labour. She birthed him into her own waiting hands as I supported and encouraged her. Mom nourishes him from her body. He will get lifelong immunities from mother's milk. He also nurses for comfort. Such needs can only be met by his mom. As a man I cannot birth. I cannot nurse. Yet, Elijah is also part of me. While mom comforts him, I centre him. I am his anchor.

Heterosexual marriage has always benefited society, not just here in Canada, but all over the world and all across history. Scientific advances and legislative wordsmithing will never build a better family than that which has pre-existed both scientists and parliaments. The government has the power and duty to recognize this. It does not however have the power to change it.

Bill C-38 not only attempts to strike at society's stabilizing pillar of heterosexual marriage, it threatens to undermine the other stabilizing pillar, the rule of law. Law is stabilizing precisely because it has tradition, because it is rooted in natural law and because it is moral. Moses or Magna Carta, Hammurabi or Blackstone, the Supreme Court and its lower courts cannot look to the charter in 1982 as a break with the past. Nothing in the charter is revolutionary. Within its provisions, crafted by Canadians through their Parliament, there is no new jurisprudence. There is no kernel from which today's courts can produce tomorrow's new precedents.

In self-governments like Canada, the rule of law can only happen with popular backing or consensus. Parliaments and courts risk cleavage with the people if either or both break with history and tradition. Who will respect the law if the law does not reflect their values? Yet the Liberal government risks compounding the lower courts' mistakes by enacting a law which does not reflect the consensus of Canadians.

It is foolish to overlook 10,000 years of received wisdom known as jurisprudence. Lower courts in Canada, and nowhere else in history, threw out the common law recognition that marriage is the union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of any other. The jurisprudential principle of stare decisis, to let decisions stand, was cast aside. The courts have ignored their own rationale and in the process have undermined their own security and credibility.

Heterosexual marriage has been self-evident, that is, not needing proof or defence, for thousands of years of human existence. It took until 1866 before Britain's highest court formally recognized marriage as it always existed. The British North America Act never felt it had to clarify gender in marriage; only it divided powers over it because of the need to protect the rights of women and children in divorce. Parliament has never since considered it needed a federal marriage act to tell the courts that marriage is between one male and one female. The courts have until recently held this interpretation as their own tradition.

It pains me to think that the fanciful notions of a few unelected judges have forced the need for presenting evidence of the nature of marriage. Since the courts have thrown their own common law tradition out the window, it falls to this Parliament to enact statute law giving strong and clear direction to the courts.

The Liberal government's Bill C-38 gives the wrong direction. It is up to members of Parliament with courage and backed by popular consensus to amend the bill to enshrine marriage as between one man and one woman. The courts must and will respect such direction.

A house is only as good as its foundation. The Canadian house has stood well on the firm foundations of traditional marriage and respect for the rule of law for over 130 years.

As I rocked my two year old, Elijah, finally to sleep, I wondered what I would be leaving to him. As a father I need to provide him security. As an MP I need to uphold the security and stability of the traditional definition of marriage and the rule of law.

I thank the people of Essex for expressing their firm defence of marriage and the rule of law. On their behalf, I call on colleagues of the House to amend the bill so that the courts will hear and respect that marriage in Canada will be the union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of any other.

The Budget

[The Deputy Speaker]

Order, please. I have the honour to inform the House that a communication has been received which is as follows:

Rideau Hall

Ottawa

February 23, 2005

Mr. Speaker:

I have the honour to inform you that the Honourable Louis LeBel, Puisne Judge of the Supreme Court of Canada, in his capacity as Deputy of the Governor General, signified royal assent by written declaration to the bills listed in the Schedule to this letter on the 24th day of February, 2005, at 11:02 a.m.

Yours sincerely,

Curtis Barlow for Barbara Uteck

Secretary to the Governor General

The schedule indicates that royal assent was given to: Bill C-7, an act to amend the Department of Canadian Heritage Act and the Parks Canada Agency Act and to make related amendments to other Acts--Chapter No. 2; Bill C-4, an act to implement the Convention on International Interests in Mobile Equipment and the Protocol to the Convention on International Interests in Mobile Equipment on Matters Specific to Aircraft Equipment--Chapter No. 3; Bill C-302, an act to change the name of the electoral district of Kitchener--Wilmot--Wellesley--Woolwich--Chapter No. 4; Bill C-304, an act to change the name of the electoral district of Battle River--Chapter No. 5; and Bill C-36, an act to change the boundaries of the Acadie—Bathurst and Miramichi electoral districts--Chapter No. 6.

Department of Canadian Heritage Act

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise with a great desire to speak to the bill, not only because of my involvement in the previous Parliament but because our party has concerns with regard to where we go as a country with our natural areas, particularly those areas that are encompassed by the Parks Canada legislation.

Bill C-7, now at third reading, is being treated as a housekeeping bill in the sense that all we are doing is transferring responsibility for our parks, both on land and in water, to the Department of the Environment, from heritage. Our party has pressed for that transfer for a long time. I believe it is necessary for Canada to do this.

Having said that, we need to place in context where we are with our parks, again both on land and in water. One of the things that I want to address is a concern with the attitude of the government toward our parks.

As we have heard from the previous speaker in some detail, we have a proud history of developing and taking care of our parks. However, that is dated history. As we heard from the previous prime minister, the plan is to expand our parks, and we need to do that. There is an international standard that we need to meet.

As I travel both within the country and, more important, outside the country, it is interesting to see the attention paid to Canada in this area. Canada has large undeveloped areas. They are still in their natural state. There is an expectation across the globe that we will foster protection for those areas. The concern that I and my party have is we are not doing a good enough job.

The standard internationally is that 12% of all our land, and that includes both in the water and on land, is to be set aside and preserved in its natural state. If we do a superficial analysis, we are fairly close to that, especially when we take into account the lands that we expect will be moved over into our national parks. We have moved reasonably well at a theoretical level. However, the reality on the ground and in the water is different.

In the last Parliament, we moved to expand our facilities in the water, in the form of marine conservation areas. I would point out one of the other countries that has taken more of a leading role. Australia, is way ahead of us in this regard. It had marine conservation areas of a similar nature almost two decades ago. We only got to it about two years ago.

The concerns we have, with the role the federal government has played or this Liberal administration has since being elected in 1993, is that the parks have deteriorated. Any number of reports, which have come out in the last four to five years, show that not enough money has been spent to maintain the existing parks. Not only are the buildings within the parks themselves deteriorating quite noticeably, so are the natural areas. We need to address those reports and meet the requirements set out in the recommendations, and we are not.

For instance, it was quite interesting to see what happened when the previous prime minister announced that we would have these 10 new parks. That was about two years ago. The funding to go with that was woefully inadequate. It simply would not do it. This is perhaps the height of hypocrisy. Those parks took in areas that had substantial first nations land claims against them. I would suggest, without prejudging the outcome, that it will be established that the first nations claims are valid.

The prime minister of the day was in fact proposing to convey land into the public sphere that ultimately is not public land, it is first nations land. That is a real problem.

Similarly, in the last Parliament, as I said earlier, we passed the legislation dealing with marine conservation areas. However, there is no way near enough money to protect them. In fact, the legislation has some major flaws in the provisions about what would be permitted in those marine conservation areas, including dragging off the east coast that would destroy the coral that is there. This is one of the major reasons that we should be protecting that area.

On both the east and west coasts, it would allow for exploration for minerals, and oil and gas deposits which in most cases require the use of explosives. This would damage the biological integrity of those areas.

We have a situation where at the pronouncement level it looks good. However, when we get down to the reality of what is happening in our parks, whether on land or in the seas, we are not carrying through to meet that international standard that we are being expected to by the world.

I want to go back for a minute to the role that first nations have played in this area. The reason we are close to having the 12%, the international standard, is because the first nations claims, particularly in the northern territories, have provided us with a good deal of that percentage. It is one that I think we have to recognize as a society and as a government. We have to acknowledge that what they have done as a people is to protect the biological integrity of the areas that they control.

I want to deal a bit more with the threats that we are faced with in the parks and that we would like to have seen addressed in this bill. As opposed to this simply being a housekeeping bill to transfer responsibility, we would prefer to see more in the way of regulation and legislation that would protect our natural areas in our parks and marine conservation areas.

I want to talk about the attitude that we saw expressed by the government. We moved as a party, on behalf of our member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley, that the responsibility be directly attributed to the Minister of the Environment. The bill, as it originally came before the House before it was successfully amended, provided that any minister or other individuals within the Privy Council Office could be designated as responsible.

This goes to the essential attitude that this government has had since 1993 of seeing parks sort of off on the side and not having a champion, not having an advocate. When Parks Canada was with heritage, the heritage minister obviously had conflicting responsibilities: to protect the arts and culture, broadcasting, et cetera, and Parks Canada was an additional responsibility.

As a result of that, we saw a dramatic deterioration in the parks. It is appropriate that we put it back into an environment where we have the minister who, one would expect, and I do not say we always get that from these ministers, would play that championing role, that advocacy role within the government and within cabinet to see to it that the parks do not further deteriorate and in fact the remedial work is done. They should be brought back to the standard one would expect and new parks would be properly protected. Boundaries would be built around them so that we would not see any deterioration in those parks, or usages within those parks that would be inappropriate and incompatible with maintaining them in their natural state.

We need that person in the cabinet. We moved that amendment and want to acknowledge the support that we received from the opposition parties on that amendment. We got it through successfully earlier this week.

What it says to us as a party is that the Liberal government is really not serious. We would like to see other issues addressed. We are obviously not going to get it. We will support this bill because it is important to have the transfer made from heritage to environment.

However, we would have appreciated and expected that the government would have taken a more proactive role in seeing that other protections were built into the legislation so that our parks would meet the standards that the international community is expecting of us and more importantly, that Canadians from coast to coast to coast are expecting of us.

We talk about the national identity of Canadians and the angst that we sometimes go through. We know that our health care system is one of the programs that we point to that separates us from other countries and that makes us proud to be Canadians.

The national parks fit into that category as well, whether it is in the Maritimes, again offshore or onshore, whether it is in central Canada, in the Prairies, in the Rockies, in B.C., or up north in the territories. In every area there are national parks or natural areas that we are proud as Canadians to say we are protecting and we will protect.

That is the essence I believe of being Canadian. If we travel, especially in the developed world, we are looked at as having the best of both worlds. We have an economy that is strong, but we also have been able within that to protect our parks. It is very important that Canadians do that and it is very important that we continue to do that.

This legislation does not advance us much in that regard. Other than making the transfer and hoping that we end up with an advocate within the government and within cabinet, it does not advance us much in that regard, in spite of the expectations of both Canadians and the world as a whole.

I want to spend a couple of minutes on other threats that are applicable to the parks. Threats that I would ask the government to consider subsequently in regulation, because some of this could be done by regulation. Some of it will have to be done by legislation and some of it has to be done by way of cooperation with the provinces and our neighbour to the south, the United States.

We need to build corridors in order to preserve any number of species. Some of those corridors go down into the United States. A good number of them go east and west across provincial boundaries and cross into areas where there are provincial parks. We need to develop a much more efficient system of working with the provinces and the United States to assure that those corridors will be established and will be maintained so that we stop losing the habitat for so many of our species.

We can point as one example to the grizzly population in Banff which is under very severe threat because the gene pool is so limited. There is not enough diversity in that gene pool and we badly need to develop a corridor for the grizzlies within that park so that they would be able to move in and out in a much more natural and effective way to maintain that gene pool.

Similarly, there are a number of areas that we need to work on with the provinces because we need to protect the area adjacent to our national parks. We have, in a number of places, quite significant suburban types of development, large developments going in immediately adjacent to parks and putting significant pressure on the national parks. We need to be working with the provinces around land use control in order to ensure that there are buffer areas that are natural or semi-natural, that will act as a buffer for our national parks.

We have to be very clear that we will not allow incompatible usages in our parks, whether it is mining or forestry, and we can go down the list. I mentioned earlier the use of explosives in the exploration for mineral resources in marine conservation areas. It is extremely detrimental to the natural species that inhabit those areas and we need to put an end to the ability of the private sector to do that.

In a number of cases, that is work that can be done within the national government, but there are other times when assistance is required in cooperation with the provinces. Therefore, we need to be developing more extensively our relationships in that regard.

In conclusion, we recognize that this is a housekeeping bill. It is one that we as a party are going to support because we badly need to have that champion, that advocate for the parks that has been so sorely missed in the last 11 to 12 years under this Liberal administration. We need that person and we need that person to do the job, which is to fight hard to ensure that protections are there and that the funds to develop and protect the parks are in place.

We will support the bill, but we are also asking the government to give serious consideration to additional regulations, legislation and the diplomacy that we need to build with other jurisdictions.

[Alan Tonks, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted this morning to rise on Bill C-7. The bill is in fact a reaffirmation of the government's absolute desire and commitment not only to review the responsibilities associated with our natural heritage with respect to our parks and historic designations within our parks and natural environment, but also to make sure of the continuity required with respect to our built history, to make sure that there is a very clear delineation of responsibility with respect to maintaining what Canadians have a right to. Their natural and their built heritage should be protected, administered and managed in manner that is in keeping with the high degree of responsibility we all feel for our heritage.

As members will know, then, the bill is an act to amend the Department of Canadian Heritage Act and the Parks Canada Agency Act and to make related amendments to other acts. As I said, it will delineate responsibilities.

The thrust of my comments today will be about the action plan on establishing new national parks and national marine conservation areas within the context of the bill, two subjects which members have said from time to time are issues they really want to get into.

I will give members a little history. On December 12, the control and supervision of the Parks Canada Agency was transferred from the Minister of Canadian Heritage to the Minister of the Environment. This transfer was given effect through an order in council.

On July 20, 2004, another order in council came into effect relating to responsibilities for our built heritage. It was required in order to clarify the earlier order in council. First, control and supervision of the historic places policy group, that group and its responsibilities, was transferred from the Department of Canadian Heritage to Parks Canada. Second, the powers, duties and functions related to the design and implementation of the program that had built heritage as their primary subject matter were transferred from the Minister of Canadian Heritage to the Minister of the Environment.

Bill C-7, as I have indicated, will update the legislation to reflect these directions and these responsibilities.

The bill deals with the machinery of government and does not contain any substantive policy provisions. It simply gives legislative effect to the direction that the government reorganization was taking, as announced on December 2003, in particular as it affects Parks Canada.

In addition to amending the Department of Canadian Heritage Act and the Parks Canada Agency Act, Bill C-7 also amends statutes through which Parks Canada delivers its mandate: the Canada National Parks Act; the Historic Sites and Monuments Act; the Heritage Railway Stations Protection Act; the Canada National Marine Conservation Areas Act; the Saguenay--St. Lawrence Marine Park Act; the Species at Risk Act; and the Canada Shipping Act. All of these are associated statutes that are implicated by this transfer. But there are no additional funding requirements related to Bill C-7, as the jurisdictional responsibilities with respect to funding, works and associated initiatives obviously are within the budgets of the relevant departments.

Parks Canada's organizational integrity has been maintained. The Parks Canada agency remains committed to working with Canadians to protect and present nationally significant examples of Canada's natural and cultural heritage for present and future generations.

I think it would be an understatement to say that the examples of that unique heritage, which in fact is a reflection of the various cycles of immigration and our first nations and aboriginal peoples and so on, are top of mind with respect to our heritage.

I would like to take a few moments to talk about the Parks Canada story. I think it is a global best practice. It is a story that is worth repeating often in order for us to have a sense of just how absolutely spectacular this country is in terms of its natural heritage.

I am sure that from the House's perspective Canada's national parks, national historic sites and national marine conservation areas are somewhat akin to the soul of our country. They are a central part of who we are and what we are and in fact what we want to be. It is what we signal to the world that is so important with respect to the preservation and the stewardship of the natural heritage we enjoy.

These places are obviously places of wonder and awe for those Canadians who have travelled from coast to coast to coast. I happen to be one of them. I am never above and beyond being totally impressed with what God has given us as a natural environment. It is just so absolutely awesome, even in the global context.

Each of those places also tells its own story because the people who live in those areas have a special kinship with respect to their natural heritage and their built heritage. In fact, it is a reflection of a very regional kinship that people have with their own immediate environment. It is one that they wish to share with all Canadians and in fact with the world. It is unique. That natural environment, our built environment, is also a reflection of the mosaic that we refer to as Canada.

What we cherish as part of our national identity, we also recognize as part of our national responsibility. If we feel so strongly on the one hand how special our heritage is, then equally we have to rise to the challenge in terms of our accountability to nurture and preserve it.

All Canadians share the responsibility to preserve and protect Canada's unique cultural and natural heritage. Together, we hold our national parks, our national historic sites and our national marine conservation areas in trust for the benefit of this and future generations.

Canada has the distinction of having established the first national park service in the world. Over the decades, our system of national parks has grown to 41 national parks and reserves, preserving for future generations almost 265,000 square kilometres of lands and waters. There are plans to add an additional 100,000 square kilometres through the creation of eight more national parks. This legacy is possible in large part because provincial and territorial governments, aboriginal and first nations people and local communities have worked with us to create many of these new national parks.

The creation and management of national parks is a delicate balance between protection of ecologically significant areas of importance to wildlife and meeting economic and social needs of communities.

The Government of Canada is committed to working with aboriginal people, local communities and other Canadians and stakeholders to protect our precious national heritage through the creation of new national parks and national marine conservation areas. When I say the Government of Canada, I include that this particular issue is a non-partisan issue in which all members of the House on both sides, in all parties, feel the same with respect to the protection of our natural and built heritage.

In October 2002 the government announced an initiative to substantially complete Canada's system of national parks by creating 10 new parks over the next five years. This will expand the system by almost 50%, with the total area spanning nearly the size of Newfoundland and Labrador. We have already created two of these 10 new national parks with work continuing on eight other proposals. Five new national marine conservation areas will also be created.

Canada is blessed with exceptional natural treasures. We owe it to Canadians and to the world to protect these lands and waters. The action plan calls on Parks Canada to work with all of its partners, the provinces and territories, aboriginal and rural communities, industry, environmental groups, labour and all others, to complete this effort.

In March 2003 the government allocated $144 million over five years and $29 million annually thereafter toward this effort.

The action plan has already produced two national parks. The new Gulf Islands National Park Reserve of Canada protects 33 square kilometres of ecologically rare land in the southern Gulf Islands of British Columbia.

At over 20,000 square kilometres the new Ukkusiksalik National Park of Canada protects virtually an entire watershed close to the Arctic Circle in Nunavut.

As we speak, the whole issue of ecological balance is being discussed. We have had the recent Arctic report out of Iceland and a conference is going on with respect to countries that have responsibility for the Arctic. Our mandate is to be accountable to preserving the Arctic. We all know there are huge challenges with respect to global warming and the Arctic.

Other parallel concerns are being expressed through reports that will be coming to the House. As a matter of fact, there will be a report today with respect to water quality in some of our natural areas, one of which is the Great Lakes Basin, that will be a parallel effort in an attempt to make sure that these natural areas are protected, the latter being water quality.

The Ukkusiksalik Park is a product of an agreement between the Government of Canada and the Inuit of Nunavut forged over several decades of hard work, all focused on protecting land, water, caribou and polar bears for present and future generations.

Specific sites for more national parks will be selected in other natural regions across Canada, the southern Okanagan; the lower Similkameen in interior British Columbia; Labrador's Torngat Mountains and Mealy Mountains; Manitoba's lowland boreal forests; Bathurst Island in Nunavut; and the east arm of Great Slave Lake in the Northwest Territories. Just to speak about those potential inclusions geographically gives one the sense of the vastness of Canada. Sites for the two remaining national parks are being identified by Parks Canada.

Negotiations to establish the Torngat Mountains National Park Reserve in northern Labrador are nearing completion. Members will be pleased to know that this longstanding proposal will protect some of the highest mountains in North America east of the Canadian Rockies.

In March 2004 the Premier of Manitoba and the former minister of the environment signed a memorandum of agreement identifying the boundaries for public consultation for a national park in the Manitoba lowlands. They also committed to negotiating a national park establishment agreement by May 2005. Both parks will make significant additions to our worldclass national parks system.

The government is also working with partners to establish five new national marine conservation areas, adding an estimated 15,000 square kilometres to the system. This will be a major step for global conservation of marine habitat. Canada has the world's longest coastline and 7% of its fresh water.

This commitment to creating a new marine conservation area is consistent with recent Speeches from the Throne in which our government made a commitment to create new marine protected areas as part of the ocean action plan. These national marine conservation areas will be located in ecologically unrepresented marine regions. Four sites have been identified, including the Gwaii Haanas off British Columbia's Queen Charlotte Islands, western Lake Superior, British Columbia's southern Strait of Georgia and the waters off the Îles de la Madeleine in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

While a site for the remaining national marine conservation area has yet to be finalized, Parks Canada has received a number of proposals from local communities, a testament to the growing interest in the conservation of our marine heritage.

In addition, the government will accelerate its actions over the next five years to improve the ecological integrity of Canada's 41 existing national parks. This will implement the action plan arising from the report of the panel on the ecological integrity of Canada's national parks, which was endorsed by the government in April 2000.

These two initiatives, the action plan to establish our system and to expand our system of national parks and national marine conservation areas and the action plan on ecological integrity, are the most ambitious initiatives to expand and protect national parks and national marine conservation areas in over 100 years, indeed, since Banff National Park of Canada, Canada's first, was established in 1885.

Parks Canada needs to get on with the job and Parliament has assigned the job to it. I urge all members, for the reasons I have attempted to articulate in my comments, to support the bill as a major step forward in outlining and saying to Canadians that the House, the government and all parties understand the responsibilities with respect to the stewardship of our natural and built environment, and that the bill is a step toward maintaining that accountability with all Canadians.

Business of the House

[Tony Valeri, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, this afternoon we will continue with the opposition motion. Tomorrow we hope to complete third reading of Bill C-7, respecting parks second reading of Bill C-22, the social development legislation, and second reading of Bill C-9, the Quebec economic development bill.

Next week we will give priority to second reading of Bill C-24, the equalization legislation. We also will try to complete any business left over from this week.

When bills come back from the Senate or committee, as the case may be, we will add them to the list. Hopefully this will include Bill S-17 respecting tax treaties and Bill C-5, the learning bonds bill. By the end of the week, we hope to be able to proceed with Bills C-25, the radarsat bill, and Bill C-26, the border services bill.

Next Thursday shall be an allotted day.

Department of Canadian Heritage Act

[Russ Powers, Liberal, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Mr. Speaker, when we get into discussions about various legislation, we always find the opportunity to have dialogue on a number of issues that are concurrent to particular legislation. One of the wonderful things about Parliament is that we get the opportunity to not only bring forward ideas and issues that are consistent for our own ridings, but things in which we have a common interest.

Tonight, certainly, that has been apparent through the discussions. We have been able to convey issues that are important not only to our children and grandchildren but also to us.

Bill C-7, which is before us for consideration at third reading, can be perceived as an administrative shift; in other words, the appropriate realignment of the duties and responsibilities of these areas, whether it relates to historic sites or the designation of our parks. It is very appropriate that they be so delineated so they can get the resources they deserve.

The parliamentary secretary addressed the legislative components and, from an administrative standpoint, where it was best suited. I want to now delve into an issue that has been alluded to by a number of others, which is the ecological integrity and the realignment of our national parks as it relates to the realignment under Parks Canada.

It gives me great pleasure to address the third reading of Bill C-7, which is the act to amend the Department of Canadian Heritage Act and the Parks Canada Agency Act and to make related amendments to other acts. The bill would give legislative effect to the government reorganization that was announced on December 12, 2003, as it affects Parks Canada, the Minister of Canadian Heritage and the Minister of the Environment.

The bill would update existing legislation to reflect two orders in council that came into effect in December 2003 and also in July 2004, which transferred the control and supervision of the Parks Canada Agency from the Minister of Canadian Heritage to the Minister of the Environment. The bill also clarifies that Parks Canada is responsible for historic places in Canada and for the design and implementation of programs that relate to built heritage.

As we are aware, the battlefields, as they are known here in Canada, continue to be under Heritage Canada because of the commission that was established back in 1908 for that purpose.

Permit me to take members back a few years to introduce them to what I mean by ecological integrity in our national parks. In March 2000 the independent panel on ecological integrity of Canada's national parks tabled its report. The panel's report was quite comprehensive and contained more than 120 recommendations for action. As it was intended to be, the report was very frank in pointing out not only the deficiencies but the challenges that face our national parks.

One of the previous members referred to the fact that when we talk about identification, whether it is the Canadian flag, the maple leaf or the beaver, the recognition of our national parks ranks with those as being something that is truly Canadian.

The panel's report confirmed that most of Canada's national parks had been progressively losing precisely those important natural components that we as a government and all of us as members of Parliament were dedicated to protect.

Accordingly, the panel called for a fundamental reaffirmation of the legislative framework that protects the parks, together with policies to conserve these places and the appropriation of funds necessary to support these efforts.

Parks Canada committed itself to implementing the report and its recommendations insofar as it was legislatively and fiscally possible. It is now being done in full dialogue with all affected parties, and helped tremendously by the funding announced in budget 2003. I would anticipate further funding will be committed in budget 2005.

Parks Canada's first priority for national parks is to maintain or restore ecological integrity. This is prescribed by the government legislation, that is the Canada National Parks Act, proclaimed in 2001. Subsection 8(2) reads:

Maintenance or restoration of ecological integrity, through the protection of natural resources and natural processes, shall be the first priority of the Minister when considering all aspects of the management of parks.

Why is ecological integrity so important? It is important because the loss of natural features, natural features that are so identified within our national parks and processes, deprive Canadians of the opportunity to use and enjoy these places for the purposes for which they were intended. Loss of ecological integrity contradicts the very purposes for which our parks were set aside and constitute an irreversible loss of heritage to both current and future generations.

Achieving the maintenance or restoration of ecological integrity also means putting science first. This includes traditional ecological knowledge.

Our national parks and our national historic sites are very important symbols of Canada. Canadians, through personal visits and other learning mechanisms, can use these places to enhance their pride in, and knowledge of, Canada and of Canadians.

Parks Canada is committed to an expanded public education and outreach program to convey accurate, interesting and up to date information to Canadians and those who are not Canadians, and perhaps those who would like to be Canadians.

The provision of information via the Internet is a priority for Parks Canada. This type of interactive outreach continues to intensify and is aimed at our urban areas. The objective is, in effect, to bring our national parks and their values to people who may not otherwise have the opportunity to visit them or may visit them only infrequently.

Our marketing programs emphasize the primary conservation purposes of our national parks. Accordingly, visitors are encouraged to understand and respect these purposes and to plan their activities and visits to align with them.

Parks Canada, rightfully so, is committed to improving ecological integrity in a number of ways: first, improving our science, particularly research and monitoring the health of our parks; second, through communication, specifically enhanced interpretation and education activities; third, reducing impacts on facilities; and fourth, implementing up to date environmental management practices and technologies.

I would stress that one cannot sustain economic benefits without enhancing both the natural environment of the parks and visitors' enjoyment of them. I would equally stress that any changes must and will be implemented in full consultation with partners, including the provinces and territories, national and regional tourism, non-governmental bodies and, of course, aboriginal people. If indeed town sites and municipal authorities are so involved, they also will be involved in our dialogue.

A priority area of the panel's report concerned the impact of stressors that have their origin in places external to the park's boundaries. To deal with such factors, the panel called for renewed an expanded partnerships. The proposed transfer of lands is one such partnership. In this respect the panel was coming up from a place with which we are all familiar: the notion that what we do in our own backyard can have significant effects in our neighbour's backyard.

I will digress for a moment and talk about my experiences and understandings. I had the pleasure of serving as an elected individual in a municipal setting for close to 22 years. In that capacity I served as chairman of one of the 38 conservation authorities in the province of Ontario. These were set up in the late 1950s to recognize the major impact of hurricane Hazel which came through and devastated many town sites and certainly our water course system. The legislation that was brought in at the time identified the need for the creation of watersheds. It identified that there were no political or municipal boundaries because a water course begins at its source and ultimately finds itself to its mouth. As a result, it impacts everyone in its course.

We found that dealing with our deliberations in a watershed manner gave us the opportunity to consider all the impacts that would have on our neighbours either internally or externally. This is an approach that we will take with the intervention and involvement of Parks Canada in the program where not only what is within our parks is considered, but also the impacts that are felt from the outside.

It is difficult to overestimate the importance of these issues because our national parks have many concerns that are shared in common by partners, such as the provinces, the territories, aboriginal peoples, private landowners and various other interests. There are so many it is hard to name them.

In particular, I have never known nature to recognize or respect a human boundary. One day a grizzly bear may be in a national park and the next day it is in another jurisdiction. Those who are residents in Jasper or in Banff know of the migration or the impact of the flora and fauna on their lives and as a result adjust accordingly. Rivers, likewise, flow through jurisdictions. Acid rain from many kilometres away becomes a park problem when it impacts national park resources. The list goes on and on.

Fundamentally, renewed and extended cooperation among neighbours who share common concerns is the only option toward maintaining ecological integrity. It is in this spirit that the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation and Parks Canada intend to work together to ensure that the ecological integrity of the Pacific Rim continues to be the first priority.

The bottom line is that we must improve the ways we work together if we are to safeguard the future of our national parks. The nature of the programs we devise to do so will be established in cooperation and consultation with interested partners. Throughout this process the prerogatives of constitutionally defined jurisdictions, as well as the rights of private property owners, will be respected.

I have just sketched for the House a very broad overview of where Parks Canada is coming from and where it hopes to go. In summary, first, the panel report on ecological integrity was an important milestone for the future of the national parks of Canada. Parks Canada has taken it seriously and is moving forward in implementing the directions it recommended. Its implementation in a purposeful yet sensitive way is bringing benefits to us all. Its neglect would have meant untold costs to all Canadians forever.

The provinces, territories and aboriginal peoples are and will continue to be significant partners in achieving protection of our national parks. Viewed narrowly, in terms of jurisdiction alone, Canada's national parks and other federally protected areas fall under the stewardship of the federal government, but they really belong to all of us. They are the legacy of each and every Canadian. Let us enable future historians to say that on our watch we protected this precious legacy and even left it in better condition than we found it.

I urge all members to support the passage of Bill C-17.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a great privilege for me to rise today in the House to speak to Bill C-7. While it has been referred to in a number of different ways by various members in the House as a technical move and a piece of housekeeping, it also affords us the opportunity to refocus our attention on the importance that we place on national parks and heritage sites.

The importance that we have been placing on this in a lot of respects has been mere words and nice intentions. Some questions have been put to the government asking what its intentions are with respect to the budget, moneys, and the serious intent that will follow this so-called housekeeping procedure.

We support the move of Parks Canada to the Department of the Environment. This makes perfect sense with respect to protecting the ecological integrity and administration. That is where it started out and that is where it should go back.

I am a new member and the process that we went through in terms of addressing this bill, taking a look at it thoroughly in committee, making some changes to it, and how those changes came about, was very informative to me in terms of how the House could possibly function. There is a certain measure of cultural experience going on for certain political staffers within the government as to how the House may or may not function in the future.

In the past there may have been some tendency to steamroll things, to push things through committee, heaven forbid, or to use non-elected representatives to push a certain political agenda. We bumped into a bit of that in the process of this bill coming forward. It was very interesting to watch how the House functioned as a whole, how we were able to get support from the other opposition parties, talk to members within the government who also found some agreement toward the changes that we were looking for, and receive enough support to have proper and good amendments come forward.

We started with a good bill. It was potentially a housekeeping bill and we made it better. That is the idea of this place, not to simply accept what comes forward but to make changes that we feel represent the views of our constituents across this country. That is the work of the committee and the House.

Herein lies an opportunity for us in this minority government to address other more significant pieces of legislation. I am thinking of Kyoto, water and air quality across this country, and other aspects of the environment, which other members have spoken about today, that need addressing and need the influence of all members of the House in terms of drafting legislation. I am encouraging the government and its political machine to consider conferring with the other parties prior to tabling bills.

There was a suggestion put forward last night in a small committee about green papers, the reintroduction of discussion papers from the government, allowing them to approach other members to have discussion points rather than presenting take it or leave it bills, and going through the arduous process of making serious amendments. There seemed to be a great receptivity among those who were involved in the committee work last night toward a move where the government would come forward with a series of questions and proposals which members in the House could toss around back and forth, and then legislation could derive from that.

I believe this legislation is stronger for a number of the points that have been raised by other opposition members and by members of the government. This piece of legislation firmly affixes where the control and responsibility lies. Who, in a sense, holds the bag for parks in Canada? It is with the Minister of the Environment. The minister is in the best position to understand the importance of ecological integrity and is put in cabinet to protect those aspects that have been talked about so much in the House and in committee, namely, how important parks are to our national identity.

I believe the member for Red Deer was referring to how important parks are for people just to refer to places. There are certain parks that people can bring forward in their minds. Clearly, it is a part of our makeup in this country. Oftentimes Canadians fall back and forth trying to find some point of identity. How do we distinguish ourselves on the world stage? Clearly, we have some perception of ourselves as protectors of the environment. We have some perception of ourselves as having great open spaces that we take care of and manage on behalf of future generations and on behalf of the globe, quite frankly.

Are we properly funding these things? Absolutely not. We have been hearing this from former environment ministers. We are hearing it from the parliamentary secretary. While the words and the platitudes are nice, that these parks are important, that species are important, that we care about future generations and these historic sites, we seem to lose the will along the way, when we head to the budget process, to actually find the dollars identified by the Auditor General and the minister's own staff that are needed to protect both the ecological integrity and the historic sites within this country.

I want to ask a question of the parliamentary secretary in terms of the reconstruction, redesign and rebuilding of many of our monuments and sites. When I look around this particular site here with the asbestos in the walls, the terrible footprint that this place leaves in terms of its actual harmony with the environment, the buildings that we stand in and work in are not healthy buildings. They are not healthy for the people who work here. They are not healthy for the environment as a whole because they leak so much energy.

I would certainly encourage the government, as we are looking to make some real investments in the future, to think of the ecological footprint of all these buildings we are hoping to restore. I hear the Prime Minister is having some problems with some drafts in his residence. We would be more than open to the suggestion of actually fixing the environmental catastrophe that the Prime Minister's residence has become.

[Bernard Bigras, Bloc, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to have this opportunity today to speak to Bill C-7.

This is a bill we have had an opportunity to examine in committee. It is administrative in nature, in principle at least, but has also afforded us an opportunity to do some serious thinking about the role parks should play in Canada.

This bill was introduced on October 8 by the Minister of the Environment. Hon. members will recall that the hon. member for Victoria, who was with us this afternoon but has unfortunately has had to leave, was the one behind this bill, the purpose of which is to transfer responsibility, control and supervision of the parks agency to Canadian Heritage from Environment.

We need to keep in mind the reason we are examining this bill today. We are doing so because the government decided on December 12, 2003, to enact an order in council in order to transfer these responsibilities, as I have said, from Canadian Heritage to Environment. What is more, on July 20, 2004, a further order in council came into effect relating to the responsibilities for built heritage. It was required in order to clarify the earlier order in council. The basic purpose of the bill is to provide legislative support to the orders in council of December 12, 2003, and July 20, 2004.

What is more natural than to have our parks come under the responsibility of the Department of the Environment? What this bill reflects is the aspect of ecotourism. We cannot take steps to protect areas, to implement a policy intended to protect ecosystems and to apply notions of ecological integrity as is the mission of Parks Canada, in part, when the agency is connected to Canadian Heritage, with its totally different vocation.

It is somewhat natural, if I may use that expression, to see this responsibility being transferred to the Department of the Environment. To us it is obvious and significant. We must remember the whims of the previous Minister of Canadian Heritage; every time she touched a tourism product or opportunity, no matter what it was, all she saw was an opportunity to make political hay.

Despite the past whims of the former Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, now the Minister of the Environment, we hope that ecological integrity is at the heart of this administrative change we are now looking at in legislative form.

Of course, this is a technical change. On this side of the House we have determined that this change will not have administrative impacts that would damage or distort the working environment. That is important. In recent months we have seen the conflicts at Parks Canada and seen how the agency's employees have been treated. On this side of the House we saw this legislative change. We have, by talking to the unions, ascertained that this administrative change will not have an impact on the way the work is done. That is what the union leaders have told us and that is the guarantee the government has given us.

Therefore, there is nothing in this bill that could change the way work is organized and thus change the employee's job descriptions. What we hope is that the government has learned from the recent dispute at Parks Canada that it should provide the necessary conditions so employees can do their work properly.

When I met with representatives of the Public Service Alliance of Canada on this issue, they described the conditions in which some employees work every day. There are mitigation measures in Forillon Park, for example. With a choice between preventing or reducing the impact of erosion on a hill and constructing a wharf, the wharf was chosen. In a context where ecological integrity should have been protected, the choice was made to improve tourism infrastructure.

It is not incompatible, and I do understand that. Ecology and tourism can go together, except that management, and of course the employees who work on Parks Canada infrastructure, do not have enough resources. When ecological integrity—and those whose responsibility it is to protect it—is shortchanged in terms of resources, it is always the ecosystem that suffers in the end.

We cannot talk about ecosystems without talking about habitat, which, in turn, brings us back to the issue of species at risk and endangered species. These species will never be adequately protected, if there is no real protection of their habitat.

My concern is that the conditions facing those who manage our parks and the employees who devote their time to parks are less than ideal in terms of work organization as well as resource protection. In the coming years, we will have to not only implement administrative changes such as the ones we are considering today, but also to strengthen our network of parks in Canada.

Let us be clear however. I did not say extend the network of Parks Canada. We are basically facing choices. What are these choices that this Parliament might have to make? What decisions might Parliament, and the Minister of Finance in particular, have to make in the coming years? We have two choices. One choice would be to consolidate the network of parks in Canada. At present, everyone agrees that the current network is in an advanced state of deterioration. Even the Auditor General said so in 1996. The other choice would be to increase the number of parks in Canada.

Choices have to be made. We cannot have it both ways. Either we consolidate the existing network by providing quality services while ensuring proper environmental integrity, or we increase funding and dole out money here and there to develop protected areas all over the place, without necessarily ensuring habitat protection.

We have to think about these things. There are consequences for Quebec. I will remind the hon. members that one of the key elements in past negotiations between the federal government and the provinces was this transition from land belonging to the provinces, naturally, to land under federal jurisdiction. Increasing the number of parks and the area designated as protected increases at the same time the number of crown lands, which means that they will be under federal jurisdiction.

Very often, federal jurisdiction is difficult to enforce on these lands, whether we are talking about the Species at Risk Act or the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act.

Quite often, these acts, which were adopted here in Parliament, are not even implemented on lands that are under federal jurisdiction.

This is why I am asking today that our existing parks be consolidated, in cooperation with the provinces and park networks.

Let us not forget that we have wildlife preserves in Quebec. We have parks that are under the responsibility of Parcs Québec. It is possible to consolidate the existing federal network while also consolidating the existing provincial network. The idea is not to increase the number of parks in Quebec merely for the sake of it.

We must care about protecting and implementing the concept of ecological integrity, which is based on the protection of our ecosystems. There is a lot of work to do in this regard, because, as I said, resources are limited and needs are constantly growing.

The report tabled by the Auditor General in 1996 is a case in point. This report was released over eight years ago. However, it was mentioned that even though Canada adopted the concept of ecosystem-based management, even though Parks Canada defines ecological integrity as a condition where the structure and function of an ecosystem are unimpaired by stresses induced by human activity and are likely to persist, the planning process does not always provide a clear link between ecological integrity objectives and initiatives. That was the conclusion of the Auditor General of Canada.

That means there is a flaw in the Parks Canada mission, in the concepts it adheres to and also in its practice.

We can only hope that this administrative change will result in concrete changes in practice. We have to make sure that the Parks Canada goal to maintain ecological integrity is put into practice.

That is why we sincerely hope that these administrative changes, which will transfer this agency from Canadian Heritage to Environment Canada, will help us move in that direction and reach the mission objectives.

I congratulate my hon. colleague from the NDP opposite as well as his party for presenting this motion, which was adopted by this Parliament a few days ago. It leaves no room for prevarication by the government. My colleague opposite took measures that have been adopted by this Parliament to ensure this responsibility truly falls to the Minister of the Environment.

Of course there are administrative changes made by order in council and there is this bill. However, in this Parliament we made sure this responsibility will truly belong to the Minister of the Environment. I think this is another way to consolidate and to make sure that ecological integrity will be maintained.

I was saying earlier that the federal government is in no position to preach in its jurisdiction. I was saying that many parks in Canada are in poor shape and their ecological integrity is not being protected. There is also the example of Gatineau Park.

Believe it or not, but Gatineau Park, which is not far from here—a few kilometres or a few minutes from Parliament Hill—does not have legal status under Canadian law. This park is the responsibility of the National Capital Commission, whose primary interest is urban development such as developing Sparks Street here in Ottawa. It is quite incredible. This park is federal responsibility, it is not part of Parks Canada's network, but rather the National Capital Commission, which in the past, has often been lax when it came time to apply the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act.

This land, which is under federal jurisdiction, is not protected by the same guarantees as those confirmed by Parks Canada in its mission. The park comes under the responsibility of a commission that looks after such urban planning matters as certain streets in this city, Ottawa. There is something unacceptable about that.

This is why we have representations from members of a not-for-profit organization inquiring whether this jewel of biodiversity, which is there to protect the habitat, could come under Parks Canada. I have no problem with that, provided things are done correctly, that Parliament is duly informed, and that we can guarantee the ecological integrity of the area.

We are aware that, when it comes to parks, and without saying that the law of the jungle prevails at present, there is a lot to be done. There is legal protection in place, yes, but very often no resources available. What is more, in the past, the responsibility lay with Canadian Heritage.

I greet the hon. member for Victoria, who has just joined us. I have had many opportunities to join with him in battles for the preservation of ecological integrity. It is rare to see a member of a political party as courageous as he has been in recent weeks and months. He has dared to continue to defend the moratorium on oil exploration in his region. This does him proud, and I mean that.

The government needs to understand that what is fundamental to any decision making, if we want to end up with a true strategy for sustainable development, is to put strategic environmental assessment into application, that is to say make plans, programs and policies focus on sustainable development.

This administrative change we are considering today must therefore be not just that, but have an impact on actual Parks Canada practices as well.

[Bob Mills, Conservative, Red Deer, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is certainly my pleasure to speak to the bill again and to let the House know that we support the bill in terms of transfer of parks from the heritage department to the environment department. We think it makes a lot of sense and obviously it can be administered better.

Today we also need to make a commitment to parks and to heritage sites so that in fact they will not become the poor cousins of the environment department and will be considered an important part of this whole portfolio.

The parliamentary secretary has mentioned cooperation between municipalities and between provincial governments. That is something in which our party believes very strongly.

It is interesting, too, when we talk to the general public. I just had the pleasure, along with my colleague from the Bloc, of addressing a group of university students who are here visiting the House this week. When we listen to their questions and concerns, what we hear is that environment certainly plays a very large role in what they think is important for their future, their families' future and their concerns. It is very rewarding to speak to a group like that because of their comments, their questions and their encouragement.

As well, I think it is important to talk about the heritage of parks and what they mean to different Canadians, their importance from an economic and an ecological standpoint, and of course we can get into tourism, what it means, and the image it creates for our country. Many of us who travel a lot and have for many years are very concerned about what people think of our country. Many of them do think about the parks and the parks system. Any number of times when I tell people where I am from they ask if that is close to Banff, Lake Louise or whatever, so it is an international thing that people know about.

I am very concerned as well about the $500 million deficit in infrastructure. The fact is that through the 1950s and 1960s we committed to preserving these parks, to having proper signage, to having a proper system of parks, and we have let that decline for various reasons. I think that for many parks we have done a disservice to future Canadians by letting this happen.

As well, when I visited the parks, I met with chambers of commerce that are close to the parks. I think most specifically of Jasper Park. One of the major comments I heard was the fact that cleaning of snow and repair of highways in parks comes out of the parks' budget, yet many of these roads are through the park and are part of transportation. A great deal of the parks budget is being used up for maintenance of highways, which is a transportation issue and really has nothing at all to do with the park.

Those are the kinds of issues that I hope Environment Canada takes a look at. I hope this department will manage better than the heritage department has done. As the critic for this area, I hope to hold the government's feet to the fire to be sure it makes parks the priority that I think most Canadians want them to be.

As well, having a long term vision and knowing where we want to go in terms of environment and the parks system becomes critical. It does not matter whether we are talking about the Great Lakes or the salmon fishery on the Pacific or of course the serious problems with oil spills in Atlantic Canada. It does not matter where we are talking about. No matter where it is in this country, I believe that we have had a relatively short term vision for what we want to do environmentally.

If anything, ecosystems do not work in the short term and changes to the environment usually happen over much longer periods of time. Again, I would encourage the government to come up with a much longer term plan for parks and for heritage sites throughout this whole country, and it will be our job to make sure that it does.

On the bigger issue, I will comment about the government's performance in environment. It is interesting that we are now rated 24th out of 24 of the industrialized countries by the OECD. We have an analysis done by the Conference Board of Canada. We have the environment commissioner, who for the last number of years has reported on our environmental standing. We are not doing that well. We have a number of major and serious environmental problems. Most of the world thinks of us as being that pristine, clean, pure air and pure water place, yet when we actually pull off the cover we find something quite different.

Therefore, I am disappointed that we are dealing with very minor environment bills. Obviously I am waiting for some substance in terms of the government's plan for the environment. While Bill C-7 is important, it could really be called a housekeeping bill. It is something that we are going to support but basically it is little more than housekeeping.

As for Bill C-15, which is basically about oiled birds in the Atlantic and Pacific, I think I asked my first question about oiled birds in 1996. The number of dying birds was 300,000 a year minimum and was probably more like a million, and I was told that the government would have legislation very soon. That was in 1996. I did a private member's bill in 1997 and here we are in 2004, almost 2005, and we finally have a piece of legislation on the oiling of birds.

That is not very quick action. If we do the mathematics, we see that this is an awful lot of birds. Those populations cannot withstand that kind of loss year after year with a government that is moving so slowly on environmental issues. I would hope that Parks Canada will not undergo that same tedious performance that we have seen to this point on a bill like that.

I want to come back to the environmental issues of our country. To be rated 24th out of 24 by the OECD is quite a shock. To be rated anywhere from 23rd to 15th or so by the Conference Board of Canada and to be rated by a number of other notable boards and groups in the very low part of the industrialized world is not something that I am proud of. Certainly as the senior environment critic, I hope we will change this and dedicate ourselves to change.

Let me give some examples. The first is the issue of raw sewage being dumped into the ocean. It is not a first world, advanced and developed country that dumps raw sewage into the ocean, yet we have three cities dumping raw sewage into the ocean and we call that environmental integrity. We have to change that, if for no other reason than just the reputation of our country.

I worked on the Sumas 2 issue, testifying in the U.S. as an intervenor on the Sumas 2 project and then again in Abbotsford on the same project.

Mr. Speaker, I know you are very familiar with that issue.

When I went to see the governor of the State of Washington it was very interesting. I went there to tell him they were taking water from our aquifer, that they were going to pollute the second most polluted airshed in Canada, the Fraser Valley, and that they were going to dump sewage into the Sumas River, which drains into the Fraser River in Canada. The most important issue was the location, which was wrong because of those factors.

The governor listened and then he commented. His comment was that he was very glad I went to see him. He said that he understood the air quality issue in the Fraser Valley, but he said, “Why don't you and I get in my car and drive down to the Seattle Harbour and you let me show you your sewage coming from Victoria?” He said that when we did something about our sewage, he was ready to talk about our air.

That is a pretty tough argument to follow up on. It is pretty tough to say, “No. My air is more important than your water”. It is not an argument that one is going to win. As a result, we left it at a draw. I came back home and said that I was going to fight like heck to stop that from happening in my country.

We talk about the pure, clean water we have and yet we have over 300 boil water warnings at any given time. Who would have thought that in a country like Canada we would not be able to drink the water wherever we are in this country? I am embarrassed that this is the case. I believe we must dedicate ourselves to fixing that problem because it is a serious problem.

Why did we not get a bill on that issue instead of this one? We could have very quickly transferred our parks. That has been done anyway. It is not a major thing. It is a housekeeping item. Let us talk about sewage. Let us talk about water. Let us talk about those kinds of things.

We have over 50,000 contaminated sites. We have a minimum of 8,500 federal contaminated sites. Let us talk about identifying, prioritizing and going after them. That would be a piece of legislation that a lot of Canada would be very interested in.

Let us talk about the record of cleanups. I do not think the people of Sydney will tell us that they are all that impressed with the speed at which the Sydney tar ponds have been cleaned up. Yes, there have been plans, and yes, there have been failed plans, but really there has been little else.

Let us talk to the parents of young children in Toronto. Let us talk about the smog warning days when little Johnny should not go out and when grandma should not leave her home because of the air that is not clean enough and could in fact damage their health. Obviously this something we can deal with.

Let us talk about landfills. Last week I went to British Columbia. On my way, I picked up a paper. On the front page of the Ottawa Citizen last Thursday, I saw that the City of Ottawa is being sued for $45 million. What is it being sued for? It is being sued for the seepage out of its landfill site, which has contaminated neighbouring property.

What about those brownfields that no one will insure? They have full servicing past them, costing municipalities a lot of money, but they cannot be used because of potential contamination and future lawsuits. Those lawsuits are starting to come.

This is our Canada that we are talking about. This is our environment that we are talking about. This is in the top five issues of all Canadians.

Are there solutions? Yes, there are. There are many solutions. There are solutions to that water problem. We need to understand our aquifers. We need to understand the charge and recharge. We need to understand the quality and pollution issues. We need to look at all of that. We need legislation that will help the provinces and municipalities to do that.

I had an interesting time at the end of August. My wife enjoyed it. I promised her a nice holiday at the end of August and in early September. I said to her, “Guess where we're going? By the way, did I tell you I have a few appointments on our holiday?” Our first appointment was at an incinerator. She has been to many other incinerators, so she knew where we were going. We visit landfill sites. We have been doing that for only about 35 years.

One day, we were picked up about 7:30 in the morning and we went to the most modern incinerator there is in downtown Copenhagen. It is fascinating because it is an incineration plant that is using the most modern technology. It has recycling at the front end, with cement products, building materials, glass and that sort of thing. Then the rest is put into a huge hopper. That big hopper then feeds it into a big turning drum, of which there are six, and that garbage is then turned and rotated. It is brought up to 100° Celsius. In this case, gas was used.

I went on another holiday with my wife to Berlin. We found it was using the methane from the fermentation of sewage for fuel. These cities are recycling this. That garbage is incinerated and the combustion from that goes from 100° Celsius to 1,000° Celsius, which creates steam. Animal waste and sewage can also be burned. The steam then drives a turbine which then produces electricity, which is sold. It takes that steam, cools it down and distributes that hot water.

The particular system travels 104 kilometres. It has a 2% loss of energy in that 100 kilometres, and the heat is sold. Now there is income from the electricity and from the heat. Then that flue gas runs through a number of treatments. Various chemical processes are used in this. One involves using ammonia and the sulfur dioxide from the flue gas, which becomes 85% on the first pass, is turned into gypsum, which is used in making wallboard. That gypsum is then sold, another source of income.

The nitrous oxide is then broken down into its component parts and that nitrogen is then turned into fertilizer, which provides a new source of fertilizer, which is sold to the agricultural community. The CO

2

is captured is gasified and that gasified CO

2

is then put into titanium containers, which are then sold to the greenhouse industry. Remember that the best use of CO

2

is photo synthesis. By adding more CO

2

to greenhouses, production can be greatly increased. It can also be sold to Norway, where it is put into wells and improves the recovery of gas and oil by sequestering it under the ground. Now the CO

2

is gone.

Heavy metals now have been precipitated out and those heavy metals then can be sold to industry and recycled. The dioxins are separated out and further incinerated.

The point in this whole rant, if one wants to call it that, is that is the kind of vision and legislation we need in the House. It is environmentally sound and it will make a difference. It will deal with our air quality situation, our water pollution situation and provide income.

This is the final thing on garbage. I enjoy visiting these places. I am not sure my wife has the same joy. The neat part is the plant I visited is owned by 11 municipalities in 21 towns and cities. They took out a 25 year mortgage on it. That is how it was financed. Yes, it is more expensive than a landfill, but think about what they have done. The mortgage has been paid off, and they now have a resource from which they can make profit.

I could go on for a long time on the subject of the environment. I think I have demonstrated that in the past. I look forward to the opportunity of talking about the other kinds of bills that could come forward. Let us get the housekeeping done quickly and move on to some more substantial environmentally sound bills.

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of the Environment]

Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure today to rise on third reading of Bill C-7, an act to amend the Department of Canadian Heritage Act and the Parks Canada Agency Act and to make related amendments to other acts.

This bill would give legislative effect to the government's reorganization that was announced on December 12, 2003, as it affects Parks Canada, the Minister of Canadian Heritage and the Minister of the Environment.

The bill would update existing legislation to reflect two orders in council that came into effect in December 2003 and July 2004. They transferred control and supervision of the Parks Canada Agency from the Minister of Canadian Heritage to the Minister of the Environment.

The bill would also clarify that Parks Canada would be responsible for historic places in Canada, and for the design and implementation of programs that relate to built heritage.

The legislation would be primarily technical in nature. It would update the Department of Canadian Heritage Act and the Parks Canada Agency Act. It would also amend the statutes that enable Parks Canada to deliver its mandate; notably, the Canada National Parks Act, the Historic Sites and Monuments Act, the Canada National Marine Conservation Areas Act, the Species at Risk Act, the Canada Shipping Act, and the Heritage Railway Stations Protection Act.

Canada's national parks, national historic sites and national marine conservation areas represent the soul of Canada. They are a central part of who we are and what we are. They are places of magic, wonder and heritage. Each tells its own story. Together, they connect Canadians to our roots, to our future and to each other. Responsibilities for safeguarding and celebrating heritage would continue to be shared among departments and agencies across government.

The Minister of Canadian Heritage would retain a key leadership role and overall responsibility for cultural heritage and would continue to work closely with the Minister of the Environment and with other ministers to keep common objectives with heritage.

I would like to assure the House that Parks Canada's organizational integrity would be maintained. Parks Canada would remain committed to working with Canadians to protect and present nationally significant examples of Canada's natural and cultural heritage for present and future generations. This is fitting given the important linkages between the environment, heritage and sustainable development.

I would like to clarify again that the Prime Minister has the continuing ability to decide on which minister has the responsibility for departments and agencies, and to transfer organizations to another minister's responsibility in order to meet objectives.

Parliament has given government the ability to transfer portions of the public service and ministerial powers, duties and functions from one part of the public service or from one minister to another. This would not give the governor in council the power to expand and alter the powers of either ministers or departments. Parliaments plays an important role in this regard.

The power granted to the government gives us necessary flexibility to reorganize the institutions of government to address government priorities and public needs. It is in keeping with the Prime Minister's responsibility to assign ministers portfolios, establish their mandates in keeping with existing legislation, and identify priorities for their portfolios.

The Minister of the Environment has been responsible for the Parks Canada Agency since December 12, 2003.

While the amendments simply reflect the current reality, the government must defend the principle regarding the Prime Minister's ability to make organizational changes. Therefore, we do not support the amendments.

I would like to take a few moments to talk about the built heritage aspects of Parks Canada's mandate. Built heritage includes sites, buildings and monuments recognized for their historic value. These include battlefields, forts and citadels, shipwrecks, archeological sites, cultural landscapes, bridges, houses, cemeteries, railway stations, historic districts, ruins, engineering marvels, schools, canals, courthouses, theatres and markets.

Responsibility for built heritage is managed through a number of programs, including national historic sites, federal heritage buildings, heritage railway stations, and federal archeological heritage shipwrecks in the historic place initiative. These activities are of interest to all parliamentarians and to Canadians in general.

Through the Parks Canada Agency, the Minister of the Environment has responsibilities in three key areas: the management of Parks Canada's built heritage, federal government leadership in programs relating to built heritage, and a Canada-wide leadership role in built heritage.

Hon. members are probably most familiar with the first of these areas, Parks Canada's role in the stewardship of historic places. Parks Canada leads the national program of historic commemoration which identifies places, persons and events of national historic significance. The program aims to celebrate Canada's history and protect associated sites.

Parks Canada administers about one in six of the more than 900 national historic sites which speaks to the diverse and rich history of Canada. Parks Canada's stewardship role with respect to these places, and their historic values and resources is similar to a stewardship role with respect to national parks.

Federal government programs relating to built heritage is the minister's second key area of responsibility. Through its leadership in the federal heritage buildings program, Parks Canada works with departments to protect the heritage character of buildings, while the property is within federal jurisdiction.

The Auditor General has indicated that problems similar to those for national historic sites administered by Parks Canada exist for national historic sites and federal heritage buildings administered by other federal departments. The government is considering ways to respond to the Auditor General's concerns over weak conservation standards and accountability requirements, as well as the recommendation to strengthen the legal framework to protect built heritage. For many years Canada has lagged behind other G-8 nations and its own provincial and territorial governments in the protection of historic places.

The minister's third area of responsibility is to provide Canada-wide leadership in built heritage. Only a portion of the historic places in Canada are owned by the federal government. Cooperation with others is critical. This requires participation by individuals, corporations and other governments across Canada.

Year after year, decade after decade, more and more historic places are being lost. Remaining heritage buildings and structures, cultural landscapes and archeological sites continue to be threatened. Recognizing the need to deepen its resolve to protect built heritage, the Government of Canada has responded with the launch of the historic places initiative, the most significant conservation effort related to historic sites in our national history.

The historic places initiative is based on the acknowledgment that government alone cannot save all buildings and other historic places. The keystone of the initiative is a broad, national coalition with the provinces, territories, municipal governments, coupled with equally valuable cooperation involving aboriginal peoples, heritage experts and a comprehensive number of institutions, organizations, communities and individuals.

In the field of heritage, we are truly in an area of policy interdependence. The goals of the initiative are to create a culture of heritage conservation in this country by providing Canadians with basic tools to preserve and celebrate historic places, and by protecting historic places under federal jurisdiction. Strategies focus on helping Canadians build a culture of conservation.

The protection of Canada's built heritage is not only about saving what is meaningful from the past. It is also about sustaining strong communities for today and tomorrow. Rehabilitation of existing buildings capitalizes on the energy invested in the original structures and prevents unnecessary use of new materials and energy.

Less demolition means reduced pressure on landfill sites and the revitalization of historic downtown areas. It increases the need for new civic infrastructure, such as roads, sewers and public transit. By contributing to such sustainable communities, public policy truly makes a difference in people's lives.

Consensus has emerged on the role that Canada and Canadians want for historic places in our lives in our communities. One of the common goals is the need to provide all Canadians with the practical information and tools they need to protect historic areas.

The launch in 2004 of the Canadian registry of historic places is a product of that collaboration. It is probably one of the most important initiatives that we have seen in this country in terms of the preservation and the celebration of history. For the first time in one place Canadians will have a registry of the buildings and the sites that are recognized as historic by any order of government in the country.

It is anticipated that the registry will contain approximately 20,000 historic places when it is fully populated. The registry will be an important tool for policy makers, community organizations, teachers, students, and families who want to learn about and help preserve the past.

As a former educator, one who taught Canadian history for 20 years, I can say that this is a significant breakthrough, not only a significant breakthrough in terms of establishing this registry, but because we now have a joint commitment by all orders of government. This is an example of good federal-provincial-territorial cooperation.

The standards and the guidelines provide clear and accessible guidance on good conservation practices. This document was developed in consultation with federal, provincial, territorial, municipal and non-governmental stakeholders. There will be a common benchmark for conservation principles and practices in Canada.

It has already been adopted by Parks Canada and by several provincial and municipal jurisdictions. The standards and guidelines are a model of promoting a new approach to the science and technology of building conservation, and promoting and circulating the information broadly for the benefit of all Canadians.

Parks Canada is also implementing the commercial heritage properties incentive fund, a new program announced in 2003 to engage the private sector in the conservation of historic buildings. This fund is a four year $30 million plan designed to tip the balance in favour of conservation over demolition. It provides financial incentives to eligible commercial historic places listed on the registry in order to encourage a broad range of commercial uses for historic properties within our communities.

Fiscal measures like this program are central to engaging others to achieve the government's goal for built heritage. Historic places connect us to our past, to our future and indeed to each other. They provide places of learning for our children and places of understanding for both new citizens and Canadians of long standing.

What we cherish as part of our national identity we also recognize is part of our national responsibility. All Canadians share the obligation to preserve and to protect Canada's unique culture and national heritage. Together we hold our national parks, national historic sites and national marine conservation areas in trust for the benefit of this and future generations.

With this new reporting arrangement, through the Minister of the Environment, it will clearly define responsibilities for built heritage programs. Parks Canada will continue to work to safeguard Canada's built heritage, support the protection of historic places within federal jurisdiction, and engage Canadians broadly in preserving and celebrating our country's historic places. It will continue to play a similar role in the protection of Canada's heritage sites for which it is so well respected by Canadians and indeed admired internationally.

I respectively encourage all my colleagues on both sides of the House to support Bill C-7. The bill again has technical amendments to move the Parks Canada Agency from Heritage Canada to Environment Canada.

However, the work that we are doing collectively to ensure that not one more historic site is lost is extremely important. We have lost 20% of our historic sites since the 1970s. Therefore this agreement on the registry is very important and the work that we do and the support that we give Parks Canada, both emotionally and financially, will be important for generations to come.

Again I urge all members to support the legislation.

[Liza Frulla, Liberal, for the Minister of the Environment]

moved that Bill C-7, an act to amend the Department of Canadian Heritage Act and the Parks Canada Agency Act and to make related amendments to other acts, be read the third time and passed.

Canada Not-for-profit Corporations Act

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Charlevoix—Montmorency, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Earlier, I alluded to Bill C-7, but the Chair will know that Bloc Québécois members are in favour of the motion dealing with Bill C-21.

(The House divided on the motion, which was agreed to on the following division:)

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Charlevoix—Montmorency, QC]

Mr. Speaker, Bloc Québécois members will support this motion on Bill C-7.

Department of Canadian Heritage Act

[The Speaker]

The House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded divisions on the motions at report stage of Bill C-7.

The question is on Motion No. 1. The vote on this motion will also apply to Motions Nos. 2 and 3.

(The House divided on Motion No. 1, which was agreed to on the following division:)

[Odina Desrochers, Bloc, Lotbinière—Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I too am pleased to speak to Bill C-7, an act to amend the Department of Canadian Heritage Act and the Parks Canada Agency Act and to make related amendments to other Acts.

In other words, it means that from now on Canadian parks will come under the Department of the Environment. Our parks have been neglected and abandoned for too long. Human and financial resources are insufficient. The Government of Canada has now decided to bring national parks back into the Department of the Environment.

I will say right away that we support the bill in principle, but that we have some concerns. Usually when a piece of legislation like this one brings about such an important change, one would expect improvements. One would expect the Canadian government to take advantage of this opportunity and give more resources, directly and indirectly, to national parks. However, it did not.

I have visited many national parks across Canada and have noticed that they were always short of resources, be it at the reception desk or the information booth. Often when one is looking for more information than what is available in the parks, one is given literature which is three or four years old and has not been updated for a while. This is the way visitors to our national parks are welcomed. I would have hoped that these flaws would have been corrected, but they have not.

As I said two weeks ago, it looks like only names are being changed under the present government. Two weeks ago I made a speech saying that the Economic Development Agency of Canada for the Regions of Quebec would now come under a different department and I did not see that as an improvement. Again today we see that moving Parks Canada to the Department of the Environment adds nothing more.

We must still keep one thing in mind. I hope that the minister who will eventually deal with the management of the national parks will not be tempted, as was the former heritage minister, Ms. Sheila Copps, to make petty politics. We were at the point, with the former prime minister, Mr. Jean Chrétien, where parks were named not for people who had made history, but instead for people who had dealings with the Liberal Party of Canada. Liberals even wanted to change the name of an important mountain, which raised considerable uproar in English Canada. This shows once again how much the federal Liberal government respects traditions in the history of our national parks.

I am still concerned that the minister responsible for the Department of the Environment is also tempted to use the national parks in Canada as an instrument of propaganda. I hope that the Minister of the Environment will want to show that he is responsible, and not do what he did earlier in oral question period, when he raised both arms in the air to try to get some applause. I can tell you that he could have gestured all he wanted in the House of Commons, there would not be many members of the Bloc Québécois who would applaud him.

I hope that the Minister of the Environment will take the time to see what is involved in the national parks, namely wildlife, trees, in fact, all ecological issues.

A major survey published recently in La Presse showed clearly that the environment had become the public's main choice. When we see today that the responsibility for national parks in Canada is being transferred to the Department of the Environment, we want a change in the way management is perceived and, mostly, respect for wildlife, birds and everything that we find in the parks.

Nowadays, the future is of great concern to the young people of Quebec and Canada, who are also concerned about the environment. Often, we hear people go on at great length about globalization in terms of millions and billions of dollars. But when we listen to our young people, we learn that they are concerned about having safe drinking water for years to come, about being able to breathe fresh air and particularly to eat good fruit and vegetables grown in the ground. These are important issues, and our young people are showing great interest in them. Just think of the number of young people registering at events relating to the environment. They are there to support these events promoting a stable and sustainable environment.

I hope that, when the current Minister of the Environment has been handed over the responsibility for the management and maintenance of Canada's national parks, he will pay attention and be very sensitive to these important issues for the 21st century. The idea is to stop playing petty politics and, instead, develop a policy for the environment and sustainable development.

Five years ago, there was not much talk about sustainable development, but now everyone talks about it, and not necessarily only on Sunday night. Everyone talks about it anytime, anywhere, on a regular basis, when we meet with young people.

This is why I caution the Minister of the Environment that he must be sensitive to the expectations of our young people, because they will remember when there is an election.

I said at the beginning that I wished significant changes had been made to Bill C-7 concerning the management of Canada's national parks. All we are hearing about today is changing responsibility, department and minister.

I hope that the federal Liberals in this House will finally grasp the important issues relating to the environment, namely the Kyoto protocol, and having a policy that is fair to Quebec, and not profitable for the great petrochemical polluters in western Canada.

As we know, there are many national parks in western Canada, and these parks are often affected by this dust and pollution from the big oil companies. I hope that the Minister of the Environment will be sensitive to the maintenance of these national parks.

We support the bill in principle, but have great reservations about who will be entrusted with the responsibility of administering Canada's national parks and ensuring they are the big winners, in the coming years, in terms of both conservation and sustainable development.

[Bernard Cleary, Bloc, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Mr. Speaker, to a certain extent, I will speak to Bill C-7 as my party's official aboriginal affairs critic.

As some hon. members will know, I have had a number of opportunities to be involved in the negotiations. The Parks Canada aspect has always been extremely important for the associations I have worked with. The explanation is simple: the territories on which parks have been established in Quebec and elsewhere have often been considered to be included in aboriginal land claims. We thus had a past life and a future life to settle with Parks Canada.

I confess I was deeply disappointed as I read Bill C-7. I would have expected the Liberal government to use it to try to provide a number of remedial measures and ensure that aboriginals who have been pressing claims for the past 20 years would find a number of elements promoting their inclusion in these parks.

Hence, I believe that the Liberal government has missed an opportunity to implement the ideas of the famous panel on ecological integrity of Canada's national parks. It gave the government a number of guidelines to ensure that the aboriginals' place in our national parks would henceforth be a lot more prominent.

As we know, tradition in parks is to expel aboriginals rather than to include them within parks as participants. It so happens that this panel on integrity has a totally different view when it talks about aboriginals. Obviously, it has put forward a number of conclusions, that I will share with you by quoting passages from a book I wrote on the aboriginal issue. This is from page 185:

The panel on the ecological integrity of parks recommends:

that reconciliation between Parks Canada and aboriginal peoples be brought about as soon as possible;

that there be recognition in the history of national parks and its interpretation of the occupation of the territory, as well as the past and present use by aboriginal peoples;

that Parks Canada invite aboriginal peoples to take part in its activities;

that Parks Canada sponsor a series of meetings in order to launch the reconciliation process to move from confrontation to collaboration;

that Parks Canada adopt a clear policy encouraging the creation and maintenance of sincere partnerships with aboriginal peoples;

that Parks Canada design, with the collaboration of aboriginal communities, education projects which will lead to a better mutual understanding and to a joint measure with a view to protecting the ecological integrity in national parks;

finally, that Parks Canada ensure the protection of cultural sites, sacred places and artifacts.

Those are recommendations from a panel that studied this file and which we would have liked to see in the bill. It was a unique opportunity, considering the time for reflection on these recommendations available throughout Canada.

One could have found a number of elements favourable to aboriginal groups who could have helped in establishing the national parks desired by the groups who want to work.

I was telling you that I had worked and negotiated for the Mingan park, which everyone knows, as well as for Forillon and Saguenay parks. All the aboriginals who live in these regions asked the Government of Canada include them in the development of the parks and to make them natural elements of these parks.

You know, we are not butterflies. The aboriginals live in these parks. The aboriginal way of life is part of Canada's history, of these parks' history. We keep asking that this be taken into consideration. Of course, it has never been in the culture of parks to keep a place for the aboriginals.

The integrity panel did a job. Will we see the results one day? Will we feel one day that the Government of Canada is responding to the will of the aboriginal people to be a part of these parks?

When we travel in the United States, we always see that, in the parks, no matter which ones—quite often, they are much less pleasant and interesting than our national parks— the aboriginals have an important place. Of course, we criticize the folklore surrounding this, but the fact remains that, in Canada, it would be beneficial if we were present in all the parks. We could pursue our way of life and show the public that aboriginal groups in Canada are alive and part of our development. We should use this resource, which will make our parks that much more enjoyable and interesting.

I did not want to make a long speech on this, but I did want to take this opportunity to point out that it is urgent we work in the direction that many people across Canada are asking. Perhaps it will not be with this bill, because it is at second reading stage, but we should act urgently.

[Don Boudria, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will conclude.

We discussed the amendment to Bill C-7 at report stage. For the next couple of minutes I will elaborate on the plan I have for my riding, namely turning the Alfred bog, in Ontario, into a national park.

As I already mentioned in the House, in the riding I have the honour and privilege to represent, there is a highly sensitive ecological zone known as the Alfred bog. It is ecologically important because it is inhabited by several unique animal and plant species.

Moreover, there are very few bogs in southern Canada. They are generally found in the North. However, we have this exceptional area in our riding, and people as a whole want to preserve it.

The United Counties of Prescott and Russell—the equivalent of a RCM in Quebec—heard about this initiative I am espousing, namely turning the Alfred bog into a national park. This is why on November 25 it will attend a large meeting hoping to find all the stakeholders in the area to put together a proposal to convince Parks Canada of the need to create the park. We all want a park to preserve this very unique ecological area and, of course, to turn it into a place where people could occasionally go provided the proper restrictions are in place to avoid damaging the ecology and so on.

My time is up. I will just add that this is the plan I have for my riding.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to participate in this debate this morning on the motions to amend Bill C-7, which is the act to amend the Department of Canadian Heritage Act and the Parks Canada Agency Act and to make related amendments to other acts.

As a member of the New Democratic Party, I strongly support Bill C-7, because I think this is a long overdue change to put Parks Canada back with the Minister of the Environment. However, I have some concerns about making that a permanent decision and ensuring that responsibility stays with the Minister of the Environment. The motions now before us now address that. We want to ensure that the Minister of the Environment continues to have the responsibility for Parks Canada.

We want to ensure that person who has the expertise and who has concern for the biodiversity of Canada and for the ecological concerns in Canada maintains the responsibility for our parks, as they are a key aspect of the policies around the environment.

We are also concerned about the constant shifting of the responsibility for Parks Canada. Some years ago it was with Environment Canada. It shifted to Canadian Heritage. Now it is shifting back to the Minister of the Environment. Each time we do that, we spend valuable dollars that could be spent on building and maintaining our parks and infrastructure in our parks, which is always in jeopardy and has always been underfunded. We want to avoid those changes which constantly add to the problems of our park system. We think the Minister of the Environment is the key person to look after parks and that is where responsibility for that should lie.

We want to avoid those changes which constantly add to the problems of our park system. We think the Minister of the Environment is the key person to look after parks and that is where responsibility for that should lie.

Earlier it was suggested that this might be some attempt to limit the power of the Prime Minister to appoint the minister. We are saying nothing about the Prime Minister's ability to appoint the Minister of the Environment. All we are saying is that the Minister of the Environment should be the cabinet minister who has responsibility for parks. We want to ensure that responsibility remains with that minister.

Furthermore, we think that if there is to be some change in this, given the importance of it, the House should have some say in that decision. That is why we suggest that the ability of the cabinet, the governor in council, to shift the parks mandate from one ministry to another without seeking the consent of the House should be removed from the bill, and one of the motions addresses that issue.

Parks are a key issue for Canadians and a key part of our Canadian heritage and our sensibilities as Canadians. Our natural areas are important to us. They are a spiritual place for Canadians. They are a place where we go for recreation and where we celebrate the natural beauty of the country. We want to ensure that central place in the psyche of Canadians is recognized by the legislation before us. We think that ensuring the House has a say in where that responsibility lies and a continuing say in where it lies will address that.

We also want to ensure that people with expertise in ecological integrity and other ecological issues can have the responsibility for parks. That is why we think it is important that this function remain with the Minister of the Environment.

It is part of an overall strategy. Parks are not something that is isolated that can be shifted around willy-nilly from ministry to ministry. We have fought long and hard to ensure that the responsibility for our parks is seen as part of a broad environmental strategy for Canada, a broad strategy of biodiversity in Canada. We want to ensure that the parks remain with the appropriate minister for that. Clearly for us, that is the Minister of the Environment.

Bill C-7 addresses some important issues, important issues that the NDP has always supported. We have always believed that the environment department should have responsibility for national parks. Our critic, the member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley, has spoken very strongly in the House and in committee on that issue.

We think this shift supports the biodiversity goals that we have. Centralizing responsibility for agencies concerned with biodiversity ensures for a more coherent strategy and communication. Park Canada Agency will join the Canadian Wildlife Service, the biodiversity convention office, in the environmental umbrella. We think that is a very appropriate place for it to be because it is linked intimately with those other agencies and offices.

In contrast, the Ministry of Canadian Heritage has no other responsibilities for biodiversity. We think this is a really crucial move, a key one which makes logical sense and gives the biodiversity issues their appropriate place.

This shift also resonates with our philosophy of national parks as wilderness areas. Parks Canada Agency's most sacred charge is to protect our national parks. We view many of these as wilderness areas, biologically diverse places where Canadians can connect and identify with nature.

Our parks are places where Canadians go for recreation. It is a spiritual trek for many Canadians. It is not just recreation in the sense of diversion, sports playing, hiking, or time away; it is recreation in that we get to recreate our sense of self and our sense of the world. Our parks have a particular place in that , a very central place in the spirituality of many Canadians.

Moving responsibility for Parks Canada to Canadian Heritage was widely seen to reflect a more mundane philosophy of national parks. It conflated them in with our built heritage, our human constructed heritage. Moving Parks Canada back to Environment Canada makes a positive statement about the value of our wilderness areas.

We have noted that organizations such as the Sierra Club of Canada in one of its report cards acknowledged that there was some progress on a green agenda in Canada, but concluded that the federal government's marks have been sliding in relation to protecting nature, parks, endangered species and the life of our oceans. We want to make sure that that trend is reversed. Putting the parks in with Environment Canada is a significant way of ensuring that we do better in the area of protecting our wilderness spaces and ensuring that the appropriate attention is paid to our national parks system.

Canadians do not want to see any slippage in our parks system. They do not want to see any further loss of our wilderness areas, any further decrease in the biodiversity of this country. We want to make sure that our parks, as a primary agent of ensuring those things, are resting with the appropriate people. We want to make sure that the appropriate people are doing that work and that the appropriate minister is overseeing that work.

That is why with the amendments we are proposing today we want to ensure that the Minister of the Environment is the key minister involved in overseeing and ensuring the health, well-being and the development of our parks. We want to ensure that they are protected wilderness areas, that they are places of retreat and recreation for Canadians, that they have the appropriate habitat for wildlife and flora and fauna.

We want to make sure that continues and cannot be changed willy-nilly and cavalierly. We want to make sure that the House has a say in any further changes or any further attempt to move that around. We want to make sure the House has a chance to examine exactly what the reasons for any proposed change in the future would be. We want to ensure that the ideals of Canadians are maintained with regard to the importance of parks within our country.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I understand that Bill C-7 is a technical amendment, a minor technical bill to move Parks Canada Agency from the Department of Canadian Heritage to the Ministry of the Environment.

While my party sees no reason not to support this legislation, I believe it is appropriate to put on the record a number of concerns that the federal government should be aware of in transferring Parks Canada Agency to the Ministry of the Environment.

It has been noted previously in the House that many of the problems that have come to be associated with the poor administration in running our national parks had more to do with the personal failings of the previous minister of Canadian Heritage than in the original intent of Parks Canada Agency being under the purview of Canadian Heritage. I hope that in the haste to distance Parks Canada from the previous minister Parliament is not creating greater problems by putting the environment ministry in charge.

I appreciate that naming the Minister of the Environment as the minister responsible for the purposes of the Parks Canada Agency Act is a transitional provision. Normally, giving any additional power to cabinet and away from Parliament is bad for democracy. It contributes to the democratic deficit which has been accelerated by the Prime Minister. In this case it may prove to be quite necessary to have a sober second thought clause. That is a clause designating which minister and which ministry should be ultimately responsible for policy governing national parks in Canada.

I make this observation based on the example that the people in Ontario have had to face as a consequence of the decision to move some traditional activities as well as traditional responsibilities from their respective departments to the Ontario ministry of the environment. In each of the instances to which I intend to draw attention, the results for the public have been an unmitigated disaster. It would serve no useful purpose for the federal government to repeat the mistakes that are now occurring in the province of Ontario. It is unfortunate that the problems that have been created are all because the Ontario ministry of the environment is involved and because of the way it has interpreted its mandate.

The Ottawa Valley has a proud heritage when it comes to the lumber industry. The decision to move activities normally associated with the industry to the ministry of the environment has caused undue financial hardship as well as job loss to the small sawmill owners of eastern Ontario. I know our friends in northern Ontario are watching to see what is happening here because if we do not stop the attack on sawmills in eastern Ontario, they will be next and they know it.

The Ontario ministry of the environment has taken the position that sawdust is no longer an industrial product. In its mind it is now an industrial waste. The environment ministry has taken that position and now views sawmill owners as being guilty of producing this so-called industrial waste, without the benefit of due process. When asked in court to produce scientific evidence to support the ministry's position, the government lawyer has asked for adjournment after adjournment. This in turn has racked up thousands of dollars in legal bills with postponement after postponement.

Small business does not have the same deep pockets as government. Faced with work orders from the ministry of $40,000, $50,000 or $100,000, as well as mounting legal bills, many small business employers are shutting their doors. Some of these are third or fourth generation family businesses.

Never mind that their product, sawdust, can even be found here in the flower beds on Parliament Hill. Never mind the fact that sawdust is used in many products, such as particle board, which is used in construction, furniture, kitchen cabinets, and products like fuel pellets. It is even used as an ingredient in foodstuffs.

I have stood side by side in court with some of our small sawmill producers. Forcing everyday hardworking citizens into court is wrong.

The decision to remove the administration of the nutrient management act from the department of agriculture to the ministry of the environment has had an equally disastrous effect on farmers in Ontario. With the nutrient management act, water regulations and BSE, farmers are quickly becoming an endangered species. Perhaps farmers could qualify for assistance as endangered species because they sure are not seeing it from government programs.

I have drawn attention to these examples because this so-called housekeeping legislation is transferring our national parks to the ministry of the environment. The record speaks for itself when it comes to activities of ministry of the environment. There needs to be a balance between the desire to preserve the natural heritage in our national parks and the enjoyment of that legacy.

Another example of the chaos that is created when environmental zealots take control is the decision to transfer the responsibility for safe drinking water from the Ministry of Health in Ontario to that same ministry of the environment. Campgrounds, rural churches, community centres, restaurants, any small public facility all face either excessive charges or closure from costly, unworkable regulations. While the minister admits these new regulations are onerous, she still intends to ram them down the throats of rural residents. Delaying the implementation of the new regulations and hoping the anger dies down seems to be the plan with the latest announcement on this issue.

If anyone does not understand the rural revolution that is happening in Ontario and the need for rural people to fight back against government, one need only look no further that the actions of the ministry of the environment to know that rural Canada is at a breaking point when it comes to government intervention. Canadians have traditionally pursued heritage activities. Heritage activities like hunting, fishing, and logging are at odds with certain environmental fanatics who refuse to accept the fact that these traditional heritage activities are legitimate pursuits.

While the government has promised to strengthen the focus on the ecological integrity of Canada's national parks, what does the phrase ecological integrity actually mean? Does it mean that under a ministry of the environment mandate, people will be barred from our national parks?

When I was the official opposition critic for Canadian Heritage, I was approached by snowmobile clubs that had legitimate concerns that the creation of a new national marine park along the north shore of Lake Superior would shut down a major snowmobile trail that links northwestern Ontario with the rest of the province. Can the concerns of snowmobiles and their owners be accommodated by a department of the environment in the same way that Canadian Heritage would?

I urge the government to move slowly and cautiously when it comes to our national parks. For most Canadians, it is our outdoor legacy that really sets this nation apart from all other countries. I look forward to monitoring the way in which the ministry of the environment, or whatever ministry is finally named, handles its mandate when it comes to Canadian heritage, both natural and historic.

[Alan Tonks, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to speak at report stage of Bill C-7 which is an act to amend the Department of Canadian Heritage Act and the Parks Canada Agency Act and to make related amendments to other acts.

In the context of committee debates on this issue, there appears to be an impression among MPs that Parliament and not the Prime Minister decides which minister has the responsibility for departments and agencies and that such organizations cannot be transferred to another minister's responsibility unless Parliament expressly agrees to such a change. It appears to me that is the nature of the amendment that is being proposed.

It is important to note that the Prime Minister has the prerogative to assign responsibilities to ministers. This also includes allocating ministers' portfolios, establishing their mandates in keeping with existing legislation and identifying priorities for their portfolios. Parliament has also given the government the ability to transfer portions of the public service, ministerial powers, duties and functions from one part of the public service or from one minister to another.

This power gives the government the necessary flexibility that it believes it needs to reorganize the institutions of government and to address governmental priorities and public needs. It does, however, not give the governor in council the power to expand or alter the powers of either ministers or departments, which appears again to be the concern that is in the amendments.

As of December 12 the Minister of the Environment is in fact the minister responsible for Parks Canada Agency. It can therefore be said that the proposed amendments merely reflect the status quo and therefore are not as serious as they may appear at first consideration in terms of the government not wanting to be able to firm up the intent and spirit of this bill and give the Minister of the Environment very clear authority.

However, the government cannot support the NDP amendments at this time and at the same time defend the principle regarding the Prime Minister's prerogative to make organizational changes. It would be the contention that the legislation and the amendment thereto are primarily technical in nature. I hope that gives another side of the amendments that are being put forward, albeit those amendments are being put forward in a very positive spirit in order to firm up and make this bill in fact work. The government understands that also.

The bill will give legislative effect to the government reorganization that was announced on December 12, 2003 as it affects Parks Canada, the Minister of Canadian Heritage and the Minister of the Environment. The bill will also update existing legislation to reflect two orders in council that came into effect in December 2003 and July 2004, which transferred control and supervision of Parks Canada Agency from the Minister of Canadian Heritage to the Minister of the Environment.

The bill also clarifies that Parks Canada is responsible for historic places in Canada and for the design and implementation of programs that relate to built heritage. It updates the Department of Canadian Heritage Act and the Parks Canada Agency Act. The remarks I am going to make underscore the urgency with which the bill will attempt to deal with the challenges that are facing our heritage sites and Parks Canada.

Canada's national parks, national historic sites and national maritime conservation areas represent the very soul of Canada. They are a central part of our heritage, who we are and what we are. They are places of magic and wonder and heritage. Each tells its own story. We do not take this lightly. Together they connect Canadians to their roots, to their future and to each other. That is why the spirit of this legislation is an attempt to reinforce what we believe to be the true heritage of Canadians, that Canadians want to see us do better with respect to our heritage.

Responsibilities for safeguarding and celebrating heritage will continue to be shared among departments and agencies across government. I would like to assure the House that Parks Canada's organizational integrity has been and will be maintained.

Responsibility for built heritage is managed through a number of programs, including national historic sites, federal heritage buildings, heritage railway stations, federal archaeology, heritage shipwrecks and the federal role in the historic places initiative. These activities are of interest to all parliamentarians and to Canadians in general. Built heritage includes sites, buildings, and monuments recognized for their historic value.

Through the Parks Canada Agency, the Minister of the Environment has responsibilities in three key areas: management of Parks Canada's built heritage; federal government leadership in programs relating to built heritage; and a Canada-wide leadership role in built heritage.

Hon. members are probably most familiar with the first of these areas, Parks Canada's role as a steward of heritage places. Parks Canada leads the national program of historical commemoration which identifies places, persons and events of national historic significance. The program aims to celebrate Canada's history and protect associated sites.

Parks Canada administers about one in six of the more than 900 national historic sites which speak to the diverse and rich history of our country. Parks Canada's stewardship role with respect to these places and their historic values and resources is similar to its stewardship role with respect to national parks.

Unfortunately, many of Parks Canada's built heritage assets are under threat. The Auditor General's report on the protection of cultural heritage in the federal government indicates that two-thirds of Parks Canada's national historic sites and federal heritage buildings are in poor to fair condition. The same is true for Parks Canada's assets more generally, which need $140 million annually to be maintained. They only receive about $40 million at present. This is a major challenge for the preservation of these irreplaceable national treasures. All members of the House are concerned about this.

Despite strong management systems that put care for cultural resources at the centre of planning and reporting for national historic sites, the future of many of these places continues to be threatened. Repair of masonry and wooden structures weakened by exposure to our climate, such as those repairs required at Fort Henry National Historic Site of Canada, are ongoing. Coastal erosion threatens to literally wash away significant parts of the Fortress of Louisbourg National Historic Site of Canada.

These examples are symptomatic, not exceptional, of the state of our cultural resources and of the infrastructure that supports Canadians' ability to visit such sites. These resources, once lost, will be gone forever and with them will go their evocative testimony to Canada's dramatic past. Addressing the ongoing deterioration of resources needs to be a priority for the government.

Federal government programs relating to built heritage is the minister's second key area of responsibility. Through its leadership in the federal heritage buildings program, Parks Canada works with departments to protect the heritage character of buildings while the property is within federal jurisdiction.

The minister's third area of responsibility is to provide Canada-wide leadership in built heritage. Only a small portion of historic places in Canada are owned by the federal government, so cooperation with others is absolutely key. Government alone cannot save Canada's built heritage. This requires participation by individuals, corporations and other governments across Canada.

Year after year, decade after decade, more and more historic places are being lost. The remaining heritage buildings and structures, cultural landscapes and archaeological sites continue to be threatened. Recognizing the need to deepen its resolve to protect built heritage, the Government of Canada has responded with the launch of the historic places initiative, the most significant conservation effort related to historic sites in our national history.

The profound nature of what we are talking about with respect to the spirit of the bill is a subject that crosses all partisan lines of the House. It is of interest to all Canadians, be they new immigrants or those who have seen the traditions through generations of immigration to this great country.

I am confident that all members of the House will support not only the spirit but the substantive nature of the changes that are part of the bill. I hope the bill will carry unanimously as it really symbolizes what we as Canadians believe in, in terms of protecting our heritage.

[Bernard Bigras, Bloc, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to take part in today's debate on the amendments by my colleague, a former fellow member of the Standing Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development, in connection with Bill C-7.

I will start by saying that we will be voting in favour of the three amendments proposed by my colleague over the way.

Why? Because we need to make sure to avoid what has happened in the past with respect to the supervision, monitoring and administration of parks. Why do I say this? Because we need to keep clearly in mind that, before this bill was introduced, it was precisely the Department of Canadian Heritage that had responsibility for administering the parks and ensured a degree of supervision. It did so, of course, via an agency, Parks Canada, but the ministerial responsibility lay with Canadian Heritage, which also had responsibility for historical sites.

How can we agree, in any vision or policy on sustainable development and with the government's firm intention to protect the ecological integrity of an area, to any department but the Department of the Environment having control and supervision in this perspective. Well, in fact it was the Department of Canadian Heritage of former minister Sheila Copps, which was responsible for managing our parks.

I feel that the introduction of this bill, which makes official an order-in-council that dates back several months, was a step in the right direction. I do feel, however, that the motions presented by my colleague over the way have clarified the role Environment Canada will need to play if it is to respect the ecology and our ecosystems.

As far back as 1996, an Auditor General's report had some pretty sharp criticicisms of Canadian Heritage's behaviour as far as our parks are concerned.

I will quote just one excerpt from the Auditor General's report, page 7. This is recommendation 31.46:

Parks Canada should develop an effective system for monitoring the ecological conditions in all national parks

And so there were serious shortcomings. What we hope, here on this side of the House, is that the bill and the amendments proposed by my colleague will ensure that the law is perfectly clear with regard to ministerial responsibility.

In fact, as my hon. colleague said, the governor in council gave itself broad power to designate a minister responsible rather than the minister of the environment, at any time. So some limits have been set on this.

I must speak, furthermore, to the sorry state of Canada's parks. I say that because there are two conflicting visions of the way Canada's parks will be managed.

The first vision involves a desire to increase the number of areas under Parks Canada responsibility, so as to increase the number of crown lands, in Quebec among other places, of course. There is another vision under which, in view of the sorry state of our park infrastructure, existing parks would be consolidated.

I have met many Parks Canada employees. As recently as yesterday, they were in my office telling me many things about our Canadian parks system. One of their points was that our Parks Canada employees do not have the resources to do their jobs adequately.

They also reminded me about the sorry state of Parks Canada infrastructure.

Thus, we have important choices to make in coming years. Either we increase the designated areas, protected areas, and abandon the parks we already have, or else we decide to consolidate, restore our surveillance and control systems, and possibly reinvest in the parks we already have.

I hope that we can develop an integrated vision. Of course, we must protect the ecological integrity of our land, especially where there are particularly fragile ecosystems, endangered species, and habitats in need of protection, if we are really going to protect endangered species and those at risk.

Still, this all must happen in cooperation with the Government of Quebec, which has its own network of parks and wildlife reserves. Of course, they, too, need improvement, but we must do it in an integrated way and there is room enough for both systems.

It should be remembered that, whenever an area is designated under Parks Canada, it inevitably becomes federal land, that is land under federal jurisdiction governed by federal legislation.

I think that, in a broader vision, our sensitive areas, our ecosystems could be protected by relying on the sense of responsibility shown by the Government of Quebec in recent years and in recent months in particular. It has demonstrated its desire to increase the number of protected areas. Quebec is, admittedly, seriously lagging behind.

However, we must recognize at the same time that, in recent months and years, the Government of Quebec has come up with a vigorous policy to make up for lost time. I think we are on the right track. We must trust Quebec with protecting these areas.

With respect to existing parks, which come under federal jurisdiction, I am pleased to hear that the responsibility to be conferred upon the Department of the Environment will be further defined.

Also, there are parks not too far from here, like the Gatineau Park, which are under federal jurisdiction and are the responsibility of the National Capital Commission. Yet the NCC does not come under Parks Canada.

The fact is that there are currently areas such as the Gatineau Park, which, while a federal responsibility in principle, are awaiting some form of recognition from the federal government to be integrated into the Parks Canada system.

Even in existing federal structures under federal responsibility there is a serious cleanup to be made. As far as parks currently under federal jurisdiction are concerned, I think the time had come to hand the ministerial responsibility of Canadian Heritage, which has dabbled in propaganda now and then, over to a department whose role is clearly to protect the ecological integrity of our parks. That is the mission of Parks Canada.

It is therefore with great pleasure that I will support my hon. colleague's amendments to clarify the responsibility of the Department of the Environment.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

moved:

Motion No. 1

That Bill C-7, in Clause 3, be amended by replacing line 6 on page 2 with the following:

“replaced by the following:

“Minister” means the Minister of the Environment.”

Motion No. 2

That Bill C-7 be amended by deleting Clause 4.

Motion No. 3

That Bill C-7 be amended by deleting Clause 28.

Mr. Speaker, the amendments are consistent, one with the other, and are all directed to the same issue. Bill C-7 would transfer the responsibility for our national parks from the heritage ministry to the environment ministry. As an aside I have to say that I never could quite figure out why it went the other way a number of years ago. However it is back and the parks are where they should be, with the Department of the Environment.

The amendments address one anomaly in the bill, which is that the responsibility for the decision making around Parks Canada is not directly and specifically appointed to any particular minister. It allows for some flexibility as to who the individual will be who will make the final decisions on the issues within that department as it affects Parks Canada.

It was the opinion of our party that was a flaw and continues to be a flaw in the legislation. We are proposing these amendments, which, as I say, flow one into the other, that the Minister of the Environment will be the person designated to make these decisions. The first amendment asks that he or she be named specifically and that occurs in clause 3 on page 2, line 6, so that the minister would be the Minister of the Environment.

The second amendment would delete clause 4. That clause, as is in the bill now, would provide that the Governor in Council, cabinet in effect, may designate a member of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada to be the minister for the purposes of this act. It is not specific at all. It would allow any minister, who may have little or no knowledge of the requirements of our parks and the issues affecting our parks, to be designated.

We have not had any logical explanation from the government as to why it is simply not appointing the Minister of the Environment and leaving open options that would allow the government of the day to appoint someone else. It just does not appear to be logical, which is why we have moved that amendment.

The third amendment is to clause 28, which leaves open the possibility that some other minister would be named. Clause 28, as is, reads:

The Minister of the Environment is the Minister for the purposes of the Parks Canada Agency Act until another member of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada is designated under section 2.1 of that Act, as enacted by section 4 of this Act.

The first amendment asks that the minister be named. The second amendment asks that the clause, which gives cabinet the ability to name somebody else, be deleted. The third amendment, with regard to the Parks Canada Agency Act, asks for the same thing, that clause 28 be deleted.

With regard to the thrust of this, we know that the parks system is under severe pressure. In the next riding over from mine is the smallest national park in the country. At the rate it is deteriorating, it may almost totally disappear because of lack of remedial action on the part of the government to protect it. It could disappear some time in the next 50 to 100 years. That is just one example. It may be one of the more extremes.

Of all of the parks in Canada, Point Pelee National Park is at the greatest risk of disappearing over the next century, but there are any number of other parks that are under great stress. These are heritage properties that we as a government have a responsibility to protect, enhance and make available to the greatest degree possible, without damaging them, to the Canadian citizenry and visitors from foreign lands for that matter.

We have a long history of doing just that, but under this government, particularly in the last 10 years, our parks in fact have deteriorated. Our concern, then, with regard to these amendments is if we do not have the minister who is and should be the most knowledgeable, and I will repeat that, the most knowledgeable about the importance of the role the parks play in the protection of our ecosystem generally as well as specifically in those geographic areas. If that person is not the one responsible for making decisions to fight for the parks and for funding for the parks, to advocate for the preservation of these parks, if the key minister is not doing that, I think it is quite clear what will happen: a continued deterioration of our parks.

It is no coincidence, I believe, that the parks deteriorated when they were outside the Department of the Environment and under the heritage department. The thrust of the Department of Canadian Heritage was in other directions and Parks Canada was all too often a secondary consideration. As a result, we have seen in some cases destruction of parts of parks and in others a rapid deterioration.

If the House sees fit to accept these amendments, it will be in a position where the minister, who is a key determinant of how well and how extensively we are going to protect parks, will in fact be in the driver's seat, if I can use that colloquialism. The person who will be making the decisions will be the one who is and should be most concerned about protecting them.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Marcel Proulx)]

There are three motions in amendment standing on the notice paper for the report stage of Bill C-7. Motions Nos. 1 to 3 will be grouped for debate and voted upon according to the voting pattern available at the table.

I shall now put Motion Nos. 1 through 3 to the House.

Business of the House

[Tony Valeri, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I want to inform the House that the Hamilton Tiger Cats are certainly looking forward to next year at the Grey Cup. We actually have a great contingent up here for the Sunday game.

This afternoon we will continue with the opposition motion.

Tomorrow the House will proceed with report stage and, if possible, third reading of Bill C-7 respecting parks. When this is complete, we will consider a motion to refer to committee before second reading Bill C-20, the first nations fiscal legislation. Should there be time left after that, we will return to Bill C-9, the Quebec economic development legislation.

On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday we will start with Bill C-7 and Bill C-20, if they are not already complete. We will then proceed to consider reference before second reading of Bill C-21, the not for profit legislation. This will be followed by second reading of Bill C-23 respecting human resources, and Bill C-22 respecting social development. We will then return to any bills not yet completed.

On Tuesday evening, as all members know, the committee of the whole will consider the estimates of the Minister of Health.

Next Thursday shall be an allotted day.

Committees of the House

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the first report of the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development.

In accordance with its order of reference of Tuesday, October 26, 2004, the committee has considered Bill C-7, an act to amend the Department of Canadian Heritage Act and the Parks Canada Agency Act and to make related amendments to other acts, and agreed on Thursday, November 4, 2004 to report it without amendment.

Business of the House

[Tony Valeri, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, this afternoon, as hon. members know, we will continue with the opposition day debate.

Tomorrow we will begin with second reading of Bill C-9, the Quebec economic development bill. If that is concluded, we would then return to debate on the motion for reference before second reading of Bill C-16 respecting impaired driving. If there is still time remaining when that is concluded, we would consider a motion to refer to committee before second reading Bill C-18 respecting Telefilm.

As all hon. members know, next week is the Remembrance Week break. When the House returns on November 15, we will call at report stage and if possible third reading of Bill C-4 respecting the international air equipment protocol, and then bring forward Bill C-6 respecting public safety for report stage and third reading.

We would then return to any of the items already listed that have not been completed.

This will be followed by motions to refer to committee before second reading Bill C-19 respecting competition and Bill C-20 respecting first nations fiscal institutions.

We will then be consulting our friends opposite on the appropriate day that week to consider report stage and third reading of Bill C-7 respecting parks, a bill, I am informed, that is about to be reported from committee.

On Tuesday evening, November 16, the House will go into committee of the whole to consider the estimates of the Minister of Canadian Heritage.

Thursday, November 18 shall be an allotted day.

With respect to the specific question with regard to the motion mentioned by my hon. colleague across the way, it is government orders and it is a very important item. I know that we will bring that forward in the fullness of time.

Contraventions Act

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the debate on Bill C-17, which has now become known as the bill to decriminalize marijuana. In its brief title alone it sends the wrong message to anybody who hears it, because obviously the bill is not to decriminalize marijuana. It is subject to certain conditions and amounts.

It leads me to phrase my comments in this sense. Since this is a brief debate to refer the bill to committee before second reading, where a lot more work will happen, I want to lay out a few of the questions I might have and hope that members of Parliament will consider the answers at committee.

I oppose the bill. I oppose the decriminalization. If we were to take a step here, let us not be coy. If 15 grams is okay, why do we not decriminalize it and let us deal with it. It really is almost like a step. Let us take a little step and maybe later on down the line we will see.

There are too many other questions that we have to ask. I have spent a lot of time with my own police chief talking about this. We are very concerned that this is the wrong message to send to our young people. This is the basis for my concern about the bill.

Here are a few points The Tetrahydrocannabinol, THC, content of marijuana today is about 10 times higher than it was 25 years ago. People talk about experimenting with it when they were in university. We could smoke a whole field of the stuff and it would not have any impact. Today it is different. We have to ask ourselves this question. Is a few grams of something with low THC the same as the same number of grams with a high THC? It seems to me that the level of THC content in terms of how many grams it is okay to have and then smoke really is relevant. I do not know why we have not talked about that. We know it impairs one's ability to operate machinery, et cetera.

Bill C-16, which is coming forward, deals precisely with how do we determine whether someone is impaired when driving a car, et cetera. We will probably spend about 75% of policing costs trying to find who is 15 grams below and those who are above. What a waste of money in my view. Let me pose that rhetorically. I cannot say it is a waste, but it seems we should find out whether it would be a waste.

What about customers versus the criminals? It seems to me that a young person in high school who wants some marijuana has to get it from somewhere. Under the law it will still be a crime to produce or to distribute. Therefore, anyone who will be using marijuana has to have obtained it from someone who is committing a crime. Most of it is coming directly and indirectly from grow houses which are controlled substantively by underground criminals, the Hell's Angels and the like.

The marijuana dollars will not go to finance fancy lifestyles for bikers. It will go to finance prostitution rings, loansharking and all kinds of criminal activities. We do not have to talk about the terrible situation we have around the world with this crime element. It is very concerning. A lot of things that are happening in the bill are on the backs of grow ops. It is like saying that we will deal with grow ops.

The bill is trying to deal with far too many questions and it is trying to resolve far too many issues. Maybe somebody at committee will ask this question. Why do we not come up with a bill that is focused and targeted solely toward addressing the issue of grow ops? Let us deal with it. Are there tools that are necessary to deal with it? I know we talked about infrared technology to detect heat in houses, et cetera. An important privacy issue comes up on that. It is an important debate and I think it would be lively.

There are 50,000 grow houses in Canada. Our objective should be to deal with that in a separate bill, not bury it in a bill with a bunch of other things. It is an important issue.

Is marijuana an entry level drug? I do not know of any expert who has ever discussed this who would deny that marijuana is an entry level drug. Do hon. members think that pushers just sell marijuana? Do they think maybe they could also sell some hard drugs? Absolutely.

I know a little about this. I chaired a committee for a couple of years that was studying Bill C-7 on controlled drugs and substances. I heard the RCMP and the various police agencies. I heard some of the proponents for the legalization of marijuana. I heard all this stuff over a two year period of my life. I came to the conclusion that people were not being honest with the facts.

What is going to happen? Even the former justice minister said that if we were to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana there would be a significant spike in marijuana usage. We need to find out whether that would be temporary or a reflection of the fact that we really were sending the wrong message and all of a sudden a whole bunch of other people are engaging in so-called recreational drugs. I do not know what recreational drugs are. It is just a fancy name that people use. It is drugs, drugs that impair one's ability. It is drugs that lead to other drugs that can harm not only that person but others. It harms all of society. There are some very serious questions here.

People talk about not wanting kids with records because they would not be able to get into the U.S. if they have a criminal record for the simple possession of marijuana. However I know what the facts are. Many of these people who have been convicted of simple possession of marijuana, those charges are also in conjunction with other criminal charges. It is not just people being charged because they had marijuana. It is because in the act of a crime other things were found. How much of that is there?

In a survey, which I read in the paper this morning, 10% of Canadians said that they had tried marijuana at least once in the last month. Well, excuse me, even if that is correct, that means that 90% of Canadians have not. Is 10% the threshold for us to say that we should decriminalize it for everybody? What is this arbitrary thing about 10% being socially acceptable? I do not accept that at all. I would challenge that. I do not think behaviour should be driven by a minority. Behaviour is the consensus. Consensus in our place does not mean 10%. It means the preponderance, the majority.

Drugs are in the schools in my own community. The teachers are concerned but they do not have the tools to deal with this. This is not going to help them. Our police chief needs to have his officers spending all their time trying to deal with these things. They cannot keep up with it because we have not enforced the laws. We have cases now where policing authorities are not enforcing even the current laws. Some courts have stopped opining on these cases because somebody sent them the signal that it would be changed, so why would they want to deal with those case. We have put ourselves in such a mess that I think it is time to question whether we are doing the right thing.

What would this do to our anti-smoking program? If people are going to smoke marijuana I suppose they could start smoking cigarettes too even if they are not smokers. It could happen. What are the numbers? We should find out.

I have heard a lot of people talk about a national drug strategy. This is something we have had for a long period of time. It covers a broad range of stuff, not only drugs but alcohol and tobacco. If we look at the programs, we have spent an enormous amount of money with a fundamental theme of healthy lifestyles, healthy choices. This bill leads us on another step of abdicating our position on healthy lifestyles, healthy choices. It creates some concerns. Where do we get a foothold on this whole question of decriminalization?

I would have much preferred, quite frankly, if the bill had been split where we could deal with grow houses and some of the serious issues and then be able to deal with the marijuana issue, but not decriminalize, because nobody understands the difference between decriminalize and legalize. It has confused the heck out of Canadians. We should have come forward with a bill to legalize marijuana and watched the House defeat that bill.

Canadian Heritage Act

[Russ Powers, Liberal, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is my great pleasure today to speak at second reading to Bill C-7, an act to amend the Department of Canadian Heritage Act and the Parks Canada Agency Act and to make related amendments to other acts.

The bill would give legislative effect to the government reorganization that was announced on December 12, 2003 as it affects Parks Canada, the Minister of Canadian Heritage and the Minister of the Environment.

I would like to take the opportunity today to speak to the House about an important new initiative at Parks Canada; that is the creation of the historic parks initiative. This initiative is based on the recognition by the Government of Canada of the fact that historic places capture the meaning and values of Canada, as well as the drive, sacrifices, ideas and hard work of those who have shaped our country over these many generations. That is an understanding shared by all governments in Canada and by Canadians at large. This appreciation of the importance of historic places does not just apply to place with national designation, but to a large number of places in every community in every corner of Canada.

Heritage buildings make cities more interesting places to live in and can revitalize downtown cores. Historic places can also draw in tourism dollars to our rural communities, our small towns and hamlets and our urban centres alike.

Restoration and redevelopment of historic buildings help the environment by capitalizing on the energy invested in the original structures. It also provides well needed jobs and an opportunity to spur the economic vitality of the communities.

Most significant, historic sites and buildings provide places of learning for our children and our grandchildren and places of understanding for all of us. It is very difficult to determine where we are going to go when we do not know from where we have come. That is part of the rationale for making every attempt to preserve and where possible restore historic properties.

Despite this positive sentiment toward historic places, the reality is that year after year, decade after decade, more and more historic places are being lost for whatever reason. Recognizing the need to resolve and to ensure that Canadians can enjoy a rich heritage both now and in the future, the government three years ago announced plans to work toward a historic places initiative, initially with a $24 million infusion by the government to kickstart the process. That has been in the works since first announced in May 2002.

The keystone of the initiative is federal, provincial, territorial and municipal cooperation coupled with equally valuable collaboration with members of Parliament. Yes, we as members of Parliament are part of the process. Aboriginal peoples, heritage experts and a comprehensive number of institutions, organizations, communities and individuals will all be part of the process.

Consensus has emerged on where Canada and Canadians need to be when the historic places initiative is fully implemented. Parks Canada will play both a leadership and partnership role to make that consensus move from concept to reality. Strategies will focus on helping Canadians to build a culture of conservation.

Among our common goals is the need to provide all Canadians with the practical information and tools they need to protect historic sites. The initiative for this historic places is the most significant conservation effort related to historic sites in our nation's history. Thanks to the excellent teamwork of all the provinces and territories, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and the Heritage Canada Foundation, we have begun this year, through consultative efforts, to see its first tangible results with the launch of the on-line Canadian register of historic places.

I remember this very well. In May 2002 the then minister of Canadian heritage attended the annual conference of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities to launch this initiative. At that time she indicated that it was very important to do this not only for continuity in communities, but also from the standpoint of the potential for economic renewal. She started the consultation process. She made a presentation to the working group at the annual general meeting of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. She and her staff visited the meetings over the next year to consult with their economic development committee to work toward the development of the initiatives.

A number of times her staff visited community group and well established, well recognized community conservation business groups, whether it was work with the housing or commercial sectors, to develop the initiative. The first stage, the creation of the Canadian register historic places, is a culmination of lot of work and agreement by many people and organizations.

The Canadian register of historic places will for the first time in one place provide a register for all Canadians to inspect and determine those buildings and sites that are recognized as historic by any level of government. Whether it is from a federal perspective, or a provincial, territorial or a community perspective, they will be recognized and identified in a single location.

It is anticipated the register will contain approximately 20,000 historic places when it is fully launched. The register will be an important Internet-based source for planners, policy-makers, community organizations, teachers, students and families who wonder how they can learn about and help preserve the past.

In addition, Parks Canada has already adopted the Canadian standards and guidelines for the conservation of historic places in its practices in the area of conservation. It is also encouraging all other jurisdictions to adopt them so that there will be a common benchmark for conservation practices in Canada. There is a real movement toward a very short period of time as those standards will become the norm in every one of our communities, provinces and territories.

In the year ahead Parks Canada will also implement the commercial heritage properties incentive fund, a new program which was announced late last year to encourage the rehabilitation of historic sites. In other words, this would be an opportunity for the commercial sector to work hand in hand with the communities to preserve buildings that are important to the integrity of their communities.

The fund is a four-year $30 million plan to ideally tip the balance in favour of heritage conservation over demolition. Taxable Canadian corporations will be eligible for reimbursement of a portion of the cost of restoring historic properties for commercial use.

I know in my riding, involving part of the old city of Hamilton and a number of suburban and rural communities which date back well over 200 years, there are clearly identifiable historic properties. The old part of the city of Hamilton, which is an established old city, has buildings that are worthy of consideration for their restoration. In fact some developers are looking for the opportunity to work hand in hand and take opportunities for this. I know the city council of Hamilton is looking at ways to work with these developers to preserve these magnificent buildings that, for whatever reason, have been left to decay over the years. I would think, in anticipation of our program, they will tend to be oversubscribed and the demands will be filled quickly.

To qualify, buildings must be on the new Canadian register and the projects must follow the new standards and guidelines. Therefore, there is an onus upon the communities to get out ahead, to follow the standards to ensure that their properties are registered and to adopt within their cities the new standards and guidelines for the preservation and reconstruction of these heritage buildings. A new Parks Canada certification process, involving expert evaluation, will evaluate all submissions.

At the end of four years, Parks Canada will review results with the intention of determining the value of recommending permanent incentives for the government. Parks Canada will also strengthen the dialogue already begun with aboriginal peoples to meet practical needs so aboriginal people may be fully engaged in the historic places initiative.

I have lived in the same area for about 40 years. For me, standards have developed to which I have become accustomed. One thing about this wonderful country is the diversity. What is historical for me, may not be something that is historical for someone else. The importance is upon the abilities for each of the communities, provinces and territories to identify those that are important to their needs.

While many of Canada's other historic places are buildings, for aboriginal peoples, those places are far more likely to be ceremonial places, sacred burial grounds or images that are inscribed on stones. Parks Canada will draw upon the wisdom of the elders and others to find appropriate ways to ensure full aboriginal inclusion in the historic places initiative.

I would respectfully encourage all my colleagues from all sides of the House to join me in the passing of Bill C-7.

[Don Boudria, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to contribute to this debate and speak this afternoon on Bill C-7, an act to amend the Department of Canadian Heritage Act and the Parks Canada Agency Act.

On December 12, 2003, as we remember, control and supervision of Parks Canada Agency were transferred from the Minister of Canadian Heritage to the Minister of the Environment. This was done by order in council.

On July 20, 2004, another order in council regarding responsibility for built heritage came into effect. This was necessary in order to clarify the preceding orders. On the one hand, the control and supervision of the policy group on historic places were transferred; I will say something about that in a few moments. The powers and responsibilities and the functions of designing and implementing programs with built heritage as its primary focus, were transferred from the Minister of Canadian Heritage to the Minister of the Environment. Bill C-7 will amend the legislation to reflect these two changes.

I have the honour of representing the riding of Glengarry—Prescott—Russell. I often talk about it in this House. It has a very significant place in the history of Canada. Indeed, it is in the Glengarry area that Sir John Johnson and his disciples, if I can use that term, arrived in 1784. These people were refugees from the war between the United States and England, the war of American independence. At least, this is what the Americans are saying, because the British called that same war by another name. In any case, in the aftermath of that conflict, around 1784, there was this exodus of people living in the 13 colonies, but particularly the state of New York, in the Mohawk Valley. These people crossed the border to get to the area of Lancaster and, later, Williamstown. Incidentally, that town is named after Sir William Johnson, the father of Sir John Johnson, who was the founder of that region.

Mr. Speaker, if I am not mistaken, you are yourself a descendant of these people, some of whom came to my riding of Glengarry—Prescott—Russell.

Sir John Johnson's manor is still in Williamstown, in the Glengarry area. Unfortunately, it is no longer part of my riding. Following the redrawing of the electoral map, it is now located in the riding of Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry. Most of the other sites are located in the riding that I represent.

Talking about interesting historic sites, I do not need to remind hon. members of the flour mill of father Alexander Macdonell, after whom is named the town of Alexandria, in my riding. I should also mention the Macdonell-Williamson house, which proudly bears a plaque attesting to its status of provincial historic site. It is located east of Chute-à-Blondeau, actually in Pointe-Fortune, where part of the town is in Quebec and part of it is in Ontario. The Macdonell-Williamson house is right on the border. These are some examples of historic places in the riding that I represent and in the Glengarry area in general.

It is also interesting to note that the Longueuil seigneury, the one in Ontario, is located in the electoral riding that I represent. Jean Lemoyne, the seigneur of Longueuil, owned that seigneury, which later became the township of Longueuil. Indeed, after 1791, it became the township of Longueuil. We are talking about the region located in my riding. In fact, this means that a part of New France is now in Ontario, because this was a seigneury, the seigneury of Longueuil. I can see that some members opposite are surprised and even pleased by this.

I would also like to talk about some other aspects of the bill, which is, after all, about parks. I am among the lucky people who, because of my duties as a member of Parliament, have had the opportunity to visit a number of national parks, each one more beautiful than the last. I am thinking, for example, of some parks I visited in western Canada this summer, particularly in British Columbia and Alberta.

But I am also thinking about Gross-Île, that extraordinary place in Quebec. That, of course, is the island that saw the arrival of many Canadians of Irish origin, including my wife's ancestors. The hon. members who have met my wife will have noticed her Irish heritage, which is particularly visible in the colour of her hair. My grandchildren resemble her, with those special features. I had the pleasure of visiting Grosse-Île and I recommend such a visit to all my colleagues. It is a truly fascinating experience.

I have been describing some national parks as they exist today. I know there is talk of establishing new parks in a number of regions. For example, in the North there are interesting sites but there are other ecologically interesting areas that I think deserve to be national parks.

For example, here in the national capital region, there is a bog called the Mer Bleue. It is part of the National Capital Commission's lands. It is an NCC park. It is well protected. The NCC is doing a fantastic job and is well managed by its president, Marcel Beaudry, whom I salute and to whom I send my best wishes. The NCC's parks and areas are well protected.

There is another, still larger area of my riding, the Alfred bog. This is a highly sensitive ecological zone. RIght now, it comprises perhaps between 15,000 and 20,000 acres of land. In recent years, unfortunately—but not this past year or the one before, for reasons I shall explain in a couple of minutes—an ecological disaster was shaping up in that region. A group of entrepreneurs had the idea of digging up peat and bagging it for sale to be used as gardening peat moss for vegetable and flower gardens, lawns and the like. This had a very devastating effect on the bog, and on the flora and fauna of the region. Suddenly the people in the villages started to find deer and other smaller wild animals on their lawns. These animals were not able to negotiate the huge ditches dug to drain the peat bog and then excavate the peat. This was a very sad state of affairs. I appealed to the Minister of the Environment, the hon. member for Victoria, who is no longer a minister but one of the benched former ministers, like myself. I got a great deal of help from him in this matter, and take this opportunity to thank him.

Thanks to him, a group known as Nature Conservancy of Canada, or Conservation de la nature in French, bought outright some 3,000 acres of this bog, thereby protecting this huge area.

Just a few months ago, thanks to the United Counties of Prescott and Russell which spearheaded this effort, another large stretch of what was left of the bog that was not already in the hands of the public or para-public sector was purchased. As a result, virtually all that is left of the Alfred bog, in eastern Ontario, is part of this property, either public or para-public, if we include Nature Conservancy of Canada. We have at least protected this very sensitive area.

I am one of those who think the time has come to go further on this issue. The time has come to join our forces to convince the Government of Canada to turn this ecological area, now partly owned by the public, through the United Counties of Prescott and Russell, the South Nation River Conservation Authority, Nature Conservancy of Canada and others, into a park.

With this plea, today, I am taking a first step in advocating in the House of Commons the creation of this park.

Many members go through my riding to get theirs. Many parliamentarians go to Montreal or elsewhere. When they leave Ottawa, they go through the beautiful riding of Glengarry—Prescott—Russell. I hope that members making this trip will stop frequently and spend a lot of money to contribute to the local economy of my riding.

These members who travel in the region and go to the outskirts of Casselman or Saint-Isidore, before stopping to spend lots of money—I sincerely hope they will—will see this area. There is the Larose forest, the site of the Écho d'un peuple production, which talks about our Franco-Ontarian ancestors, and not far from there is the ecological area known as the Alfred bog.

The United Counties of Prescott and Russell and the others made these acquisitions with the support of yours truly and, of course, the then Minister of the Environment. I would like to reiterate my appreciation for everything the hon. member for Victoria did. Now that this has been done, I think it is time to move ahead to the second stage. In other words, the Alfred bog should become a national park.

Today is the first time you have heard this plea in the House of the Commons. It will probably not be the last because this is a very worthwhile project, in my opinion. Some might wonder why I did not raise this issue sooner. After all, I was a minister for a long time. As I just described in detail, the bog was not publicly owned at the time. It was private property.

Now that almost the entire bog has been acquired by government or quasi-government bodies, the project is possible. That is why we should now consider moving ahead with such a project.

Some might say it is not directly related to the bill before us today, but I say it is. We are creating, through legislation, the structure I described at the beginning of my speech and there is no better time to tell officials, ministers and anyone else interested, about the merits of the project I am undertaking for the Alfred bog.

I have thanked the minister and I thank colleagues for supporting the bill. I not only look forward to its speedy adoption by the House of Commons but I also look forward to the day when I can invite all members of the House to the official opening of the Alfred Bog national park.

[Paul MacKlin, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to address the House on the occasion of the second reading of Bill C-7.

On December 12, 2003 control and supervision of the Parks Canada agency was transferred from the Minister of Canadian Heritage to the Minister of the Environment. The transfer was given effect through an order in council.

On July 20, 2004 a further order in council came into effect relating to the responsibilities for built heritage. It was required in order to clarify the earlier order in council. First, control and supervision of the historic places policy group were transferred from the Department of Canadian Heritage to Parks Canada. Second, the powers, duties and functions related to the design and implementation of programs that have built heritage as their primary subject matter were transferred from the Ministry of Canadian Heritage to the Ministry of the Environment.

Bill C-7 updates legislation to reflect these changes. It deals with the machinery of the government and does not contain any substantive policy provisions. It simply gives legislative effect to the government reorganization that was announced on December 12, 2003 as it affects Parks Canada.

In addition to amending the Department of Canadian Heritage Act and the Parks Canada Agency Act, Bill C-7 also amends statutes through which Parks Canada delivers its mandate. They would be the Canada National Parks Act, the Historic Sites and Monuments Act, the Heritage Railway Stations Protection Act, the Canada National Marine Conservation Areas Act, the Saguenay-St. Lawrence Marine Park Act, the Species at Risk Act and the Canada Shipping Act.

There are no additional funding requirements related to Bill C-7.

Parks Canada's organizational integrity has been maintained. The agency remains committed to working with Canadians to protect and present nationally significant examples of Canada's natural and cultural heritage for present and future generations.

I would like to take a few moments to talk about the Parks Canada story. Canada's national parks, national historic sites and national marine conservation areas represent the soul of Canada. They are a central part of who we are and what we are. They are places of magic, wonder and heritage, and each tells its own story. Together they connect Canadians to our roots, our future and to each other.

What we cherish as part of our national identity we also recognize as part of our national responsibility. All Canadians share the obligation to preserve and protect Canada's unique cultural and natural heritage. Together we hold our national parks, national historic sites and national marine conservation areas in trust for the benefit of this generation and future generations.

Canada has the distinction of having established the first national parks service in the world. Over the decades our system of national parks has grown to 41 national parks and reserves, preserving for future generations almost 265,000 thousand square kilometres of lands and waters. There are plans to add, as has been mentioned earlier, an additional 100,000 square kilometres through the creation of eight more national parks. This legacy is possible in large part because provincial and territorial governments, aboriginal people and local communities have worked with us to create many of these new national parks.

The creation and management of national parks is a delicate balance between the protection of ecologically significant areas of importance to wildlife and meeting economic and social needs of communities. The Government of Canada is committed to working with aboriginal people, local communities and other Canadians and stakeholders to protect our precious natural heritage through the creation of new national parks and national marine conservation areas.

In October 2002 the government announced an action plan to substantially complete Canada's system of national parks by creating 10 new parks over the next five years. This will expand the system by almost 50% with a total area spanning nearly the size of Newfoundland and Labrador. In fact, we have already created two of these 10 new national parks with work continuing on the eight other proposals. Five new national marine conservation areas will also be created.

Canada is blessed with exceptional natural treasures and we owe it to Canadians and to the world to protect these lands and waters. The action plan calls on Parks Canada to work with all of its partners, the provinces and territories, aboriginal and rural communities, industry and environmental groups and others to complete this effort.

In March 2003 the government allocated $144 million over five years and $29 million annually thereafter toward this effort. The action plan has already produced two new national parks.

The new Gulf Islands National Park Reserve of Canada protects 33 square kilometres of ecologically rare land in the southern Gulf Islands of British Columbia.

At over 20,000 square kilometres, the new Ukkusiksalik National Park protects virtually an entire watershed close to the Arctic Circle in Nunavut. This park is a product of an agreement between the Government of Canada and the Inuit of Nunavut, forged over several decades of hard work all focused on protecting land, waters, caribou and polar bears for present and future generations.

Specific sites for more national parks have been selected in other natural regions across Canada: the southern Okanagan; lower Similkameen in the interior of British Columbia; Labrador's Torngat Mountains and Mealy Mountains; Manitoba's lowlands boreal forest; Bathurst Island in Nunavut; and the east arm of Great Slave Lake in the Northwest Territories. Sites for the two remaining national parks are being identified by Parks Canada.

Negotiations to establish the Torngat Mountains national park reserve in northern Labrador are nearing completion. This longstanding proposal will protect some of the highest mountains in North America east of the Canadian Rockies.

In March 2004 the premier of Manitoba and the former minister of the environment signed a memorandum of agreement identifying the boundaries for public consultation for a national park in the Manitoba lowlands. They also committed to negotiating a national park establishment agreement by May 2005. Both parks will make magnificent additions to our world-class national parks system.

The government is also working with partners to establish five new national marine conservation areas adding an estimated 15,000 square kilometres to the system. This will be a major step forward for global conservation of marine habitat.

Canada has the world's longest coastline and 7% of its fresh water. This commitment to creating new marine conservation areas is consistent with the recent Speech from the Throne in which our government made a commitment to create new marine protected areas as part of the ocean action plan.

These natural marine conservation areas will be located in ecologically unrepresented marine regions. Four sites have been identified: Gwaii Haanas off British Columbia's Queen Charlotte Islands; western Lake Superior; British Columbia's southern Strait of Georgia; and the waters off Îles-de-la-Madeleine in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

While a site for the remaining national marine conservation area has yet to be finalized, Parks Canada has received a number of proposals from local communities. This is a testament to the growing interest in the conservation of our marine heritage.

In addition the government will accelerate its actions over the next five years to improve the ecological integrity of Canada's 41 existing national parks. This will implement the action plan arising from the panel on the ecological integrity of Canada's national parks, whose report was endorsed by the government in April 2000.

These two initiatives, the action plan to expand our system of national parks and national marine conservation areas and the action plan on ecological integrity, are the most ambitious initiatives to expand and protect national parks and national marine conservation areas in over 100 years; indeed since the Banff National Park of Canada, Canada's first, was established in 1885.

Parks Canada needs to get on with the job Parliament has assigned to it. I urge members of the House to give speedy passage to Bill C-7.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am very much enjoying following the debate. The questions that were asked of the last speaker are very important even though the bill is not directly related to some of the concerns and issues that members have raised.

I must admit that I was trying to put together a communication for the constituents of my riding about the 12 or 13 bills that have been tabled in this place by the government. I want to let them know what the issues are before the House and to give them an opportunity to receive further information or maybe ask some questions about the bills.

When I got to Bill C-7, an act to amend the Department of Canadian Heritage Act and the Parks Canada Agency Act and to make related amendments to other acts, I had some difficulty writing very much about the bill itself. There are no major policy changes and there are no additional funding requirements related to Bill C-7. Quite frankly, I have not heard of a lot of problems with the technical bill that is before us. I am pretty sure this matter will go forward.

What is extremely important is that the bill has given us an opportunity to reflect on our national parks and historic sites. We tend to take them for granted. We have heard from other members that there are some concerns about the investment made even to the point where the last speaker raised some concern about having surpluses which ultimately are dedicated to paying down debt and there is no money left over to invest in our parks which are calling for some assistance.

Canadians who have had an opportunity to visit some of our national parks, historic sites and marine conservation areas feel a deep sense of pride at the rich history we have. A fundamental part of being Canadian is to participate in the great outdoors in Canada. I know the Minister of Agriculture will agree as he is a great outdoorsman himself.

I do not want to comment on the bill itself. Members have adequately put forward the matters relating to the technical amendments. However, I want to talk briefly about the Parks Canada story.

Canada's national parks, historic sites and marine conservation areas represent what many call the soul of Canada. They are central to who we are and what we are. They are places of great wonder and heritage. Each tells its own story and together they connect Canadians to their roots, to each other, and to the future. This is extremely important because, as members from the Bloc have said, this is an integral part of what Canada is. It is inseparable.

As a Canadian, I own a little piece of each and every square inch of all of Canada, including Quebec, and everyone in Quebec owns a little piece of every other part of Canada. It is a very important linkage that we should make. It is a common bond of association, a binding element among all Canadians.

What we cherish as part of our national identity we also recognize as part of our national responsibility. All Canadians share the obligation to preserve and protect Canada's unique cultural and natural heritage. Together we hold our national parks, our national historic sites and our national marine conservation areas in trust for the benefit of this generation and future generations.

Canada has the distinction of having the first national parks service in the world. Over the decades our national parks system has grown to 41 national parks and reserves, preserving for future generations almost 265,000 square kilometres of land and waters and there are plans to add 100,000 square kilometres through the creation of eight more national parks. This legacy is possible in large part because the provincial and territorial governments, aboriginal people and local communities have worked with us to create many of these new national parks.

The creation and management of our national parks is a delicate balance between protection of ecologically significant areas of importance to wildlife and meeting economic and social needs of communities.

The Government of Canada is committed to working with the aboriginal people, local communities and other Canadians and stakeholders to protect our precious natural heritage through the creation of new national parks and national marine conservation areas.

In October 2002, the government announced an action plan to substantially complete Canada's system of national parks by creating ten new parks over the next five years. This is great news for Canadians. This will expand the system by almost 50%, with the total area spanning nearly the size of Newfoundland and Labrador.In fact, we have already created two of those ten new national parks, with work continuing on eight other proposals. Five new national marine conservation areas will also be created.

Canada is blessed with exceptional marine treasures. My daughter is in marine biology. She is an ecological engineer right now and has had an opportunity to travel all across Canada and experience so many places; I think a lifetime is too short to see and enjoy all that these protected lands and waters have to offer us.

The action plan calls on Parks Canada to work with all of its partners, the provinces and territories, aboriginal and rural communities, industry, environmental groups and others, to complete this effort. It is a good news story and it is an important point to make even in the debate of a bill as benign as Bill C-7.

In March 2003 the government allocated $144 million over five years and $29 million annually thereafter toward this effort. The action plan has already produced two new parks. The new Gulf Islands National Park Reserve of Canada protects 33,000 square kilometres of ecologically rare land in the southern Gulf Islands of British Columbia. At over 20,000 square kilometres, the new Ukkusiksalik National Park of Canada protects virtually an entire watershed close to the Arctic circle in Nunavut. I have had an opportunity to visit Whitehorse and other areas, but I have not been to Nunavut and I hope that one day my family and I will be able to visit that area.

Negotiations to establish the Torngat Mountains National Park Reserve in Northern Labrador are also nearing completion. This long-standing proposal will protect some of the highest mountains in North America east of the Canadian Rockies.

In March 2004, the premier of Manitoba and the former minister of the environment signed a memorandum of agreement identifying the boundaries for public consultation for a national park in the Manitoba Lowlands. They also committed to negotiating a national park establishment agreement by May 2005.

Both parks will make significant and magnificent additions to our world class parks system.

The government is also working with partners to establish five new national marine conservation areas, adding an estimated 15,000 square kilometres to the system. This will be a major step forward in global conservation of marine habitat. Canada has the world's longest coastline and 7% of its fresh water. This commitment to creating new marine conservation areas is consistent with the recent Speech from the Throne in which our government made a commitment to create new marine protected areas as part of the ocean action plan.

These national marine conservation areas will be located in ecologically unrepresented marine regions. Four sites have also been identified, including the Gwaii Haanas off British Columbia's Queen Charlotte Islands, Western Lake Superior, British Columbia's Southern Strait of Georgia, and the waters off Îles-de-la-Madeleine in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. While a site for the remaining national marine conservation area has yet to be finalized, Parks Canada has received a number of proposals from local communities, a testament to the growing interest in the conservation of our marine heritage.

In addition, the government will accelerate its actions over the next five years to improve the ecological integrity of Canada's 41 existing national parks. This will implement the action plan arising from the panel on the ecological integrity of Canada's national parks, whose report was endorsed by the government in April 2000.

These two initiatives, the action plan to expand our system of national parks and national marine conservation areas, and the action plan on ecological integrity, are the most ambitious initiatives to expand and protect national parks and national marine conservation areas in over 100 years, indeed, since Banff National Park of Canada, Canada's first, was established in 1885.

Parks Canada needs to get on with the job Parliament has assigned to it and I am sure we are going to have the support for Bill C-7 to enact these changes, these technical amendments.

The last reference I made is something that concerns me quite a bit. I want to use a little of my remaining time to make mention of it. It has to do with Banff, our first park, established in 1885. I have had an opportunity to go to Banff, to drive slowly, to visit Lake Louise, and to see the beauty of the Banff area and do some hiking, both in good weather and in bad weather, a little of each.

However, over the years one of the things I have noticed is that a tremendous amount of construction has been going on in the areas that lead into Banff. There has been so much that the dust, the rubble, the dirt and the disruption of the area are probably evident even to those who have no idea what the ecological concerns might be and what the impacts would be on wildlife.

I used to work for Trans-Canada Pipelines. I was the director of finance and was involved in a number of things, including the proposed Mackenzie Valley-Delta pipeline project, which ultimately, under the Thomas Berger commission, was shelved for some 10 years. A lot of that had to do with the impacts on the environment, on the flora, the fauna and the migration patterns. At that time, those who were responsible for the development were very sensitive to the impacts on the environment, on plant, animal and other species. I did not see it in Banff. I did not see that same kind of discipline.

The member from the Bloc spoke about the national park in Quebec and talked about some fenced off area where there is a sewer going underneath there and it is not well kept, i.e., it is not remediated to the point where we could have a park which all could enjoy. Something is wrong in terms of the discipline; I do not know what it is. It is not in the bill, but it has to be within our commitment to continuing to develop our conservation areas, our national parks, our wildlife preserves and our marine conservation areas.

In Banff there is now what is virtually a superhighway and a parallel highway in case there is a problem. There are now bridges over the highway, which are meant for the animals to use to migrate from one side of the highway to the other. I understand they do not work as well as they should, but at least there is a possibility for wildlife to migrate.

Now we hear that Banff development has been so saturated it has almost become a place where we need to have money to be there. It is not a place for ordinary Canadians and their families and kids. The houses there are enormous. The development there is enormous. It is hard to believe that this is good. There is wildlife walking through the streets in the evenings. We go there and suddenly there is wildlife; the deer walk through the streets in the evening light and nibble away at the trees. The reason is that we have encroached terribly on the natural habitat of wildlife because it is Banff and because beautiful Lake Louise is there. My goodness, anybody who has seen it knows how pristine and how beautiful it is. The hiking there is terrific and people can do a little horseback riding or simply walk some of the trails.

However, now things are at the point where those in charge have decided that perhaps they have to stop development, perhaps they cannot have any more people sell their homes and that kind of thing. I think the Banff experience should be a beacon to all parliamentarians. It says that if we do not watch carefully, sometimes we drift away from the reason why things were done in the first place.

I suspect if we ever went back and looked at the documents about why we should have national parks and why we should make one the Banff National Park, the underpinnings would be so that our parks would reflect Canada: the majesty, the soul, the peace and the naturalness of a country.

Yet now it has become so commercial. I do not know whether there is a report card on Banff, but I would think that a report card since the park was established in 1885 probably would not be a good report card. I think something has happened.

If that is the case, then I think the example the Bloc member raised has to be looked at in terms of the standards and the underpinning reliance that we place on those in charge to ensure that national parks and the marine reserves and the wildlife reserves, et cetera, are protected and allowed to flourish in the most natural state possible, giving us the opportunity to enjoy them but in a way that does not encroach on the natural activity within those areas.

Therefore, I think Bill C-7 is important not just for the technical amendments, which others have laid out for the House so I will not repeat them; Bill C-7 gives effect to order in council decisions that have been made in the past so it is housecleaning. It would have been very easy to come in here and say that Bill C-7 looks okay to me because it is doing what we have already done, or just noting in the legislation what has been done and how we changed the responsibility from one department to another so let us deal with it all in one stage in the House.

I guess we could do that, but I think it is important that members at least take the opportunity to realize that this is an opportunity to talk about something that is extremely important to all Canadians, not only today's Canadians but future generations. These are the jewels of our country from sea to sea to sea.

When we compare ourselves to other countries, we see that even a country such as Taiwan has more national parks than Canada. This is hard to believe, but there is a tremendous discipline in terms of combining the people's activities with the existence of national parks.

I am pleased that members have raised some of these issues about the condition of our national parks. Perhaps we should look to find out when things deteriorated. Perhaps we should ask who was responsible, what questions were asked, what monitoring was done, and what jurisdiction was involved. Where could members of Parliament be involved so that to the extent possible we can do our part to make sure we preserve these important sites for generations to come?

I appreciate the opportunity to comment briefly on Bill C-7. This is about all I would care to say on Bill C-7, but I am very pleased to have the opportunity to share a few of my thoughts and views on what I believe is one of the most important binding matters in Canada, and that is the preservation of our heritage properties, our national parks, our wildlife preserves and our marine conservation areas.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Natural Resources]

Mr. Speaker, I will not be splitting my time.

It gives me great pleasure today to speak at second reading of Bill C-7, an act to amend the Department of Canadian Heritage Act and the Parks Canada Agency Act and to make related amendments to other acts. The bill would give legislative effect to the government reorganization that was announced on December 12, 2003, as it affects Parks Canada, the Minister of Canadian Heritage and the Minister of the Environment.

Other hon. members have spoken to the specifics of the bill, of Parks Canada's national parks program and its celebration of our national heritage. I would like to take a moment to talk about Parks Canada's cultural heritage program, the national historic sites program.

Based on the national historic sites of Canada system plan 2000, Parks Canada will continue to mark the historic achievements of Canadians, in particular aboriginal peoples, women and ethnocultural communities. The goal of Parks Canada is to bring about 135 new designations of national historic significance within a five year window, including 55 designations specifically commemorating the history of aboriginal people, ethnocultural communities and women.

It should be understood that while the Minister of the Environment and Parks Canada are responsible for officially honouring the designated places or people, the actual choice of designations is made by the minister on the advice of the independent Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada. Any Canadian individual, group or government can make a formal submission to the board. That said, it takes time, effort and extensive know-how to learn about the process and to complete the requisite submission. The process is rigorous because Canadians expect any national historic recognition to have deep meaning and importance.

Parks Canada has launched major efforts in the past few years to ensure that more Canadians know how to initiate and complete submissions. A good example is the major outreach program to ethnocultural communities launched last year. The program consists of both information, meetings and user friendly educational material.

Parks Canada is going to communities and asking for their participation rather than waiting for communities to come to it. The agency's recent efforts have ensured that sufficient nominations have been submitted to the Historic Sites and Monuments Board to meet its overall goal of an average of 27 new designations. I know one in my riding, the site of the Klondike River first nation, is an excellent new site.

Parks Canada is confident that it will achieve its targeted goal of 11 new designations a year specifically related to the achievements of ethnocultural communities, women and aboriginal peoples. To achieve these three strategic designated priorities, women, aboriginals and ethnocultural communities identified in the system plan, Parks Canada will maintain its focus on partnership efforts with aboriginal people, building awareness of the commemoration program, expanding its work with ethnocultural communities and strengthening its planning related to the history of women.

The target for designations will be reviewed annually with the aim to ensure that historic achievements of Canadians of both genders and from all backgrounds are appropriately honoured by the nation. As it moves forward with the system plan, Parks Canada can take pride in the achievements to date in celebrating the history of aboriginal peoples through the commemoration of significant people, places and events.

Let us look at a number of these sites in more detail. The Kay-Nah-Chi-Wah-Nung national historic site, known as Manitou Mounds, is near Fort Frances, Ontario. Parks Canada's partnership with the Rainy River first nation will ensure that this site, an important aboriginal religious and ceremonial ground for 2,000 years, is conserved and presented to Canadians.

Chiefswood national historic site on the Six Nations Grand River Reserve in southwestern Ontario is the birthplace of famed poet and performer Pauline Johnson. Chiefswood is being developed as a museum by Six Nations Council in partnership with Parks Canada.

Pauline Johnson herself has been designated as a person of national historic significance. As a published poet myself, I can tell members that Pauline Johnson is one of my favourite poets. I recommend to anyone in this chamber or watching on TV who has not read Pauline Johnson's poetry to take a look at some very beautiful renditions.

Kejimkujik National Park in Nova Scotia has also been commemorated as a national historic site of Canada, recognizing first nations use and occupation of lands.

The earliest inhabitants of Kejimkujik were Maritime Archaic Indians about 4,500 years ago. They were followed by the Nomadic Woodland Indians who set up seasonal campsites along Kejimkujik's rivers and lakeshores.

The Mi'kmaq, descendants of these people, have called this area home for the last 2,000 years. It is they who have produced the park's famous petroglyphs that represent the lifestyle, art and observations of the Mi'kmaq people in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The park is administered by Parks Canada for all Canadians but a Mi'kmaw network has been established to provide Parks Canada with advice on Kejimkujik from band members, elders and political and spiritual organizations.

Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump was designated a national historic site in 1968. It is one of the world's oldest, largest and best preserved buffalo jumps knows to exist. In 1981 it was designated a UNESCO world heritage site. Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump has been used continuously by aboriginal peoples of the plains for more than 5,500 years. It is known around the world as a remarkable testimony to pre-contact life.

As a world heritage site, the jump is among such other world attractions as the Egyptian pyramids, Stonehenge and the Galapagos Islands. Parks Canada is only one of a circle of friends that has provided support for a first nations owned national historic site in Saskatchewan.

Wanuskewin Heritage Park was created to be both a heritage park and a first nations' centre. Wanuskewin became a reality in June 1992, and hundreds of thousands of people have visited this model of cross-cultural partnerships since opening day. Over 14,000 school children participate in cultural and educational programs at Wanuskewin each year.

Batoche was declared a national historic site in 1923. Its commemoration initially focused on the armed conflict between the Canadian government and the Metis provisional government in 1885. Today, Batoche also commemorates the history of the Metis community of Batoche, home of the Metis culture and heritage. Surviving portions of the Carleton Trail and river-lot system, and the roles of first nations in the northwest rebellion and resistance, are also commemorated.

Administered by Parks Canada, the site benefits from a formerly established shared management board with the Metis Nation of Saskatchewan.

Among persons of national historic significance, we might mention Mokwina, not a single man, but several who held the name as a hereditary title given to the chiefs of the Moachaht First Nation confederacy in British Columbia.

[Member spoke in Gwich'in]

[English]

Nagwichoonjik national historic site is in the Northwest Territories. It covers that part of the Mackenzie River between Thunder River and Point Separation. It is of national significance due to its prominent position within the Gwichya Gwich'in cultural landscape.

The Gwich'in people, for anyone who may not know, are a people in northern Canada and Alaska. I think there are around 18 communities that are spread across Alaska and northern Yukon, specifically in the Yukon-Old Crow, and then into the Northwest Territories into places that we know as Arctic Red River, Inuvik and Fort Macpherson, et cetera.

These people depend primarily on the Porcupine caribou herd which migrates past all their villages. Canada has made tremendous efforts to ensure that their calving grounds in the 1002 area of the Arctic national wildlife refuge are protected and we will keep up that fight.

The Nagwichoonjik historic site on the Mackenzie River is of national historic significance due to its prominent position within the Gwichya Gwich'in cultural landscape. The Mackenzie River flows through Gwichya Gwich'in traditional homeland and is culturally, socially and spiritually significant to the people. The Gwichya Gwich'in people express the importance of the river through their oral histories, which trace important events from the beginning of the land to the present.

Gwichya Gwich'in history is told through names given along the river, stories associated with these areas and the experience drawn from these stories. The river acted as a transportation route allowing the Gwichya Gwich'in to gather in large numbers to dance, feast and play games during the summer.

Everyone is missing something if they have not been to a Gwich'in square dance. Sometimes each individual dance lasts over an hour with jigging and square dancing. These dances in celebration can go far into the night until four or five in the morning and then the people are up for work at eight in the morning. The good thing about these experiences is that all generations of people are enjoying these celebrations, from the children to the elders who are given great prominence, and everyone has a good time. No one has any bad feelings.

It is an asset of another culture that we must always remember, which is one of the reasons I have worked so hard to protect the Porcupine caribou herd. We are not just protecting the caribou herd, we are protecting a culture in this very diverse and complex world full of conflicts.

We need answers from all cultures to help us survive in this technological age. Therefore it is important to preserve all the cultures that are left today. Some are extinct but ones like these, which can provide such other avenues and methods to provide happiness and a way to live for their people, are well worth preserving.

Archaeological evidence supports the Gwichya Gwich'in oral histories concerning the importance of the Mackenzie River. Sites along the river show extensive precontact fisheries and stone quarries which have ensured the Gwichya Gwich'in survival through the centuries.

Canada's national historic sites are part of a larger family of special heritage places, which include national parks and national marine conservation areas. They stretch from coast to coast to coast, from the Arctic to the Great Lakes, and from the Pacific to the Atlantic. Together the national parks, the national historic sites and the national marine conservation areas tell the story of Canada with each one contributing its own unique story and sense of place and time. These special places have been set aside for the benefit of all Canadians. Protecting our heritage is a national enterprise and can only be achieved through collaborative relationships.

Just as aboriginal people help Parks Canada advance its mandate, Parks Canada endeavours to assist aboriginal communities. Bill C-7 is a good example of just such an initiative and I ask all members of the House to give speedy passage to Bill C-7.

A couple of members mentioned integrity in national parks and integrity in the environment. I cannot agree more that it is a very important aspect of national parks that will be well served by Parks Canada being in the Department of the Environment. I have certainly made that same point as have other members of the House. It is a very important point for the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society.

As for where Parks Canada sits, that depends on the whole structure of government. To be flexible and not to incur the costs that were discussed before of going through this whole exercise again, the way the bill is written it would allow that, but it puts it in a place where I think all parties in the House agree at this time, within this structure of government, is where it should be.

Before I get to the results of some of the discussions earlier relating to the number of parks and protected areas, I should get to the costs. I definitely agree with the comments that there should be sufficient funding for parks for costs inside the scope of available resources to handle the various functions that Parks Canada provides for Canadians. This is a particularly difficult task at the present time because of the recent announcements made by the government concerning a number of new national parks and new national marine areas in Canada.

Those announcements have been celebrated by Canadians and by members of the House that these new national parks and new marine areas will be created, especially parks, to preserve some of the landscapes on the ocean floors that before this time did not have protection. It will also allow us to set aside areas particularly so that all the various species are at least in one place and protected as much as possible. Although erosion of species is a natural process, we need to mitigate as much as possible the man-made effects that exacerbate the diminishment of the number of species on earth. The new parks and marine areas are definitely helping to do that. They are great initiatives but, as members of the opposition say, we have to put adequate funding in those areas.

I am sure the environment committee, when it comes to the estimates, will be looking at those financial commitments to be available because that is where those items would be looked at.

Because I am talking about the heritage aspects of Parks Canada, which would also be transferred through the various attendant amendments in this bill with technical amendments to other acts, that the heritage benefits of these sites are a tremendous asset to my riding. I think there are few people in Canada who have not heard of the world's greatest gold rush in Dawson City. Parks Canada over the years has made tremendous investments to restore historical buildings. One of them, after the Parliament buildings, is the second most valued building in Canada because I believe it was done by the same architect. It brings tremendous knowledge of our history, the preservation of our history, and a lot of foreign currency because the vast majority of the tourists who come to Dawson City, as one area to see that history, would not be there if that history was not preserved.

In recent years there has been investment in a gold dredge. After the hand miners mined the creeks in Dawson during the original gold rush, the huge corporations came in with massive machines called dredges. It is somewhat amazing how they ever got them there without any roads or railways at the time. These huge dredges were part of the history, and recently Parks Canada, with army engineers, has raised one that was stuck in the mud and refurbished it all. It is a great tourist site. As these tourist sites allow Americans and visitors from Germany and other countries to stay longer in Canada and invest in our hospitality industry and learn more about Canada, I do not think anyone would dispute their value.

I fully support the legislation and hope that other people in the House do.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to make my maiden speech, which I am proud to make with respect to Bill C-7. As the member who spoke before me clearly indicated, this is a technical bill. It also has very grave significance for our parks system.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the people of Skeena--Bulkley Valley who placed me in this chair. I have a deep feeling of honour and respect for this place. I thank them also for the amount of trust they have placed in me, particularly as a young person, young by certain measures in this place, and that is clearly measure enough.

For those who are not familiar with my riding of Skeena--Bulkley Valley, it takes up the entire northwest corner of British Columbia. I would argue with any member in the House that it is the most beautiful corner of Canada. It is virtually the size of France and is a bit bigger than the entire British Isles. In that scope and region the diversity of views is matched by the size of the riding itself.

My riding is home to a number of first nations communities whose respect and honour I also hold dear. I thank them also for giving me the ability to speak on their behalf in this place.

Canadians have consistently identified parks as one of their greatest sources of national pride. In a recent poll, parks placed high, right up there with Don Cherry and the flag. This issue is serious and is of significant importance to many, if not all, members in the House. Management of this source of national pride is of significance also.

While Bill C-7 is a technical bill, we hold some reservations about it. In essence, the NDP supports the movement of Parks Canada to the Ministry of the Environment. The fit is more natural and makes sense, particularly when we are constantly harping on about the idea of ecological integrity.

Oftentimes our parks are subjugated to other interests and means, but ecological integrity must remain of primary importance as to why a park exists and in its constant maintenance. We would hope that this one factor would continue to be essential in the management of our parks. The NDP was happy that this was mentioned in the Speech from the Throne.

With parks under the jurisdiction of the environment minister, we hope that the ecological integrity aspect will be a consideration in everything that happens within a park's boundary. This is not the case right now. Parks are perennially underfunded. There is always a temptation to make up for the budget shortfalls by encouraging activities that threaten the ecological integrity of the parks in my region and throughout Canada, by using off-peak seasons and encouraging increased tourist traffic, for example, in highly sensitive places.

Overall we are pleased that parks will find their place in the Ministry of the Environment. However, we are concerned with a few things which I will point out now.

The bill does not actually state that parks will stay within the Ministry of the Environment. That is of grave concern. It causes confusion for me and many members of my caucus as well as other members across the floor. If parks belong under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of the Environment, why not simply state it and place it in the bill in a permanent way? Parks have been moved between jurisdictions before. Every time this happens, it sucks up resources and valuable time from an already improperly resourced department. Why not firmly fix parks within the Ministry of the Environment, have done with the discussion and thereby not incur costs of $20 million to $25 million every time a minister decides that it needs to move again?

We will take up the issue of the language and the lack of clarity in Bill C-7 at committee. I look for support from all members of the House to make sure that we can clarify the bill.

Another concern with this legislation is it allows the governor in council to shift the parks mandate from one ministry to another without seeking the consent of the House. This is of grave concern because the decision of where parks, and therefore the ecological integrity of parks, end up is entirely at the whim of a very select body rather than by the House. Parks affect all members of the House in one way or another.

One also has to wonder if the government is going to make some quick cash by moving parks to industry or selling off specific lands. The decision to be placed in different ministries at the whim of the government is a problem, although finding extra cash does not seem to be a problem for this particular government. Moving the agency around costs a huge amount of money and puts a huge amount of effort on an already overly stressed parks staff. It distracts them from the important efforts that are needed with respect to maintaining ecological integrity.

Also of concern is that within the Privy Council, any member can be designated as the chief person responsible for parks. Within the Privy Council there is a wide assortment of people, some elected and some non-elected. For us that is a grave concern. The notion that at some future date we could have a non-elected official representing and leading parks in future directions is of grave concern, particularly when we talk about matters of ecological integrity. They can bump up against some other concerns such as financial matters.

Parks occupy a place both emotionally and mentally in the Canadian psyche. Parks are a place where many of us have gone to identify ourselves as Canadians. When we travel abroad, we place some identity of ourselves in the idea of wilderness and places far-reaching.

It has already been identified within the park structure that we do not have all the ecological areas of Canada captured within the park system. They are not representative of the most significant and important flora and fauna within the country.

As the bill goes forward, Canada now sits at a crossroads in a sense of either boldly going forward with initiatives that bring parks up to the proud place that we hold them or continuing the digression down a slippery slope, which has been presented already by the auditor's report and the hon. member, to a point where parks become an embarrassment for us or they become a place of scourge where we cannot go to rejuvenate or identify ourselves.

I strongly encourage the government to finally take strong measures, both fiscal and ecological, to ensure that parks maintain themselves as a proud place in the Canadian heritage.

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister (Canada—U.S)]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to take part in the debate on Bill C-7 at second reading.

Before starting, I would like to go back to the question put to the member for Rosemont--La Petite-Patrie by two of my colleagues and myself.

The member tried to turn our question into a political issue, distorting its goal. Nobody in the Quebec Liberal caucus wants the Quebec government to transfer national parks under its own jurisdiction to the federal government . That is not the case. What the member tried to say is not fact. The fact is that in Quebec there are national parks under federal jurisdiction. As a matter of fact, there is one in my riding. It is a tiny one located in an urban setting. It comes under federal jurisdiction. It is federal land.

In the Province of Quebec there is land which is not provincial but federal. The question was whether the member, in view of his concern for the environment and the ecological integrity of national parks under federal jurisdiction, wanted the federal government to create and manage other national parks in Quebec.

I now return to my speech. I'm quite sure that the member for Rosemont--La Petite-Prairie will use the question and comment period to get back to the topic.

It gives me great pleasure today to speak at second reading of Bill C-7, an act to amend the Department of Canadian Heritage Act and the Parks Canada Agency Act and to make related amendments to other acts.

The bill would give legislative effect to the government reorganization that was announced on December 12, 2003, as it affects Parks Canada, the Minister of Canadian Heritage and the Minister of Environment.

The bill would update existing legislation to reflect two orders in council that came into effect in December 2003 and July 2004, which transferred control and supervision of the Parks Canada Agency from the Minister of Canadian Heritage to the Minister of the Environment.

The bill would clarify that Parks Canada is responsible for historic sites and places in Canada, and for the design and implementation of programs that relate to built heritage.

Permit me to take members back a few years to introduce members to what is meant by ecological integrity of our national parks. In March 2000 the independent panel on the ecological integrity of Canada's national parks tabled its report. The panel's report was quite comprehensive and contained more than 120 recommendations for action. As it was intended to be, the report was very frank.

The report was very frank in pointing out the challenges that face our national parks. In fact, it is perhaps a misnomer for me to say the challenges that face our national parks, but the deplorable conditions in which some of our national parks exist.

The report confirmed that most of Canada's national parks have been progressively losing precisely those natural components which they were dedicated to protect. Accordingly, the independent panel called for a fundamental reaffirmation of the legislative framework that protects the parks, together with policies to conserve these places and the appropriation of the funds necessary to support these efforts.

I was quite pleased, listening to my colleagues on both sides of the House, Conservative, Bloc, unfortunately the NDP has not spoken as yet at second reading but I am positive that someone from the NDP will speak at second reading on the bill, and the colleagues within my own caucus.

They have all made the point that this is a good piece of legislation that they support. They have also made the point that there needs to be, other than this legislation, the appropriation of proper levels of funding to ensure the ecological integrity of our national parks and monuments.

Parks Canada committed itself to implementing the report and its recommendations fully, that means all 120 recommendations, insofar as it was legislatively and fiscally possible. It is now being done in full dialogue with all affected parties and helped tremendously by the funding announced in the 2003 budget.

Parks Canada's first priority is to maintain or restore the ecological integrity of our national parks. This is prescribed by the governing legislation, the Canada National Parks Act, which was proclaimed in February 2001. For instance, clause 8 states:

Maintenance or restoration of ecological integrity through the protection of natural resources and processes, shall be the first priority when considering all aspects of the management of parks.

Why is ecological integrity so important, some Canadians may ask and some of my colleagues on both sides of the House may ask? I am sure I will never be able to answer it fully. There are others who have a lot more knowledge than I do in this area. I will make my poor attempt to answer it.

Ecological integrity is important because the loss of natural features and processes deprives Canadians of the opportunity to use and enjoy these places for the purposes for which they were intended. Loss of ecological integrity contradicts the very purposes for which our parks were set aside and constitutes an irreversible loss of heritage for both current and future generations.

By making ecological integrity a priority, we make human beings a priority through protecting our precious heritage sites today and forever.

Achieving the maintenance or restoration of ecological integrity also means putting science first. Parks Canada is committed to becoming a science based organization. This includes traditional ecological knowledge.

Our national parks and our national historic sites are very important symbols of Canada. Canadians, through personal visits and other learning mechanisms, can use these places to enhance their pride in and knowledge of Canada and Canadians.

Parks Canada is also committed to an expanded outreach program to convey accurate, interesting and up to date information to Canadians. The provision of information via the Internet is a priority for Parks Canada. This approach is paying off as millions are visiting the Parks Canada website on a monthly basis, not only from Canada but also from countries such as Australia, Japan, Italy and Germany. This type of proactive outreach continues to intensify and is aimed at our urban areas.

In effect, the objective is to bring our national parks and their values to people who may not otherwise have the opportunity to visit them or who may have an opportunity to visit them only infrequently. Let us just talk about local historical sites in one's town, community or city. When family comes to visit we tell them about those sites. In Montreal, we say they have to see the St. Joseph's Oratory, the Notre Dame Basilica in old Montreal or this place or that place, the various historical sites.

Most of the time, at least 5 times out of 10, when we speak to residents of that city, we find there is a good chance they have never set foot in particular historical sites, for a variety of reasons. If that is true when the sites are immediately accessible through a bus ride, a walk, the metro or a bicycle ride from where someone lives, we can imagine how inaccessible some of our parks may be to ordinary Canadians who perhaps do not travel outside of their immediate environment. By having this Internet website and the outreach program available, we bring the knowledge, the pride and the information, those parks and those sites themselves, into the homes of ordinary Canadians.

The marketing programs emphasize the primary conservation purposes of our national parks. Accordingly, visitors are encouraged to understand and respect these purposes and to plan their activities and visits to align with them.

Parks Canada is committed to improving ecological integrity in a number of ways: first, through communication, specifically, enhanced interpretation and education activities; second, reducing facility impacts; third and finally, implementing up to date environmental management practices and technologies.

In its tourism and marketing planning, Parks Canada must take fully into account the huge economic value and significant social contribution of our parks both locally and nationally.

I would stress that one cannot sustain economic benefits without enhancing both the natural environment of parks and the visitors' enjoyment of them. It is only common sense that we must maintain or restore the ecological integrity of our parks. People will simply refuse to visit our parks that are unacceptably degraded; I believe that was one of the points made by the independent panel on the ecological integrity of our national parks in its March 2000 report.

Equally, I would stress that any changes must be and will be implemented in full consultation with partners, including provinces and territories, national and regional tourism, non-governmental bodies and of course our first nations.

A priority area of the panel's report concerned the impact of elements that had their origins in places external to park boundaries. To deal with such factors, the panel called for renewed and extended partnership. Proposed transfers of land is one such partnership. In this respect, the panel was coming from a place that we are all familiar with: the notion that what I do in my backyard can have significant effects in my neighbour's backyard.

It is difficult to overestimate the importance of these issues because, as we know, our national parks have many concerns shared in common by partners such as provinces, aboriginal people, private landowners and various other interests.

In particular, I have never known, and I do not believe there is an MP in the House who has ever known, nature to recognize or respect a human boundary. One day a grizzly bear may be in a national park and the next day in another jurisdiction. Likewise, rivers flow through jurisdictions. Acid rain from many kilometres away becomes a park problem when it impacts on our national park resources. The list goes on and on, so fundamentally, renewed and extended cooperation among neighbours who share common concerns is the only option toward maintaining ecological integrity.

The bottom line here is that we must improve the ways we work together if we are to safeguard the future of our national parks. The nature of the programs we devise to do so has to be established in cooperation and consultation with interested parties. Throughout the process, the prerogative of constitutionally defined jurisdictions--that is for my colleague from Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie--as well as the rights of private property owners will be and must be respected.

I have just sketched a very broad overview of where Parks Canada is coming from and where it hopes to go. In summary, the panel report on ecological integrity was an important milestone for the future of the national parks of Canada. Parks Canada has taken it seriously and is moving forward to implement the directions it recommended. That implementation in a purposeful yet sensitive way is bringing benefits to us all. Its neglect would have meant untold costs to Canadians forever. The provinces, the territories and aboriginal peoples are, will be and shall be significant partners in achieving the protection of our national parks.

Viewed narrowly, however, in terms of jurisdiction alone, Canada's national parks and other federal protected places fall under the stewardship of the federal government, but really they belong to all of us, to each and every Canadian. They are the legacy of each and every one of us today to future generations. Let us in a very small way, by voting in favour of this legislation, enable future historians to say that on our watch at least we did what we could to protect this precious legacy and hopefully we left it in better condition than we found it.

I will close by saying that in the House during the debate someone said that the unions for employees of Parks Canada were in favour of this legislation transferring the Parks Canada Agency from Heritage Canada to Environment Canada, but the speaker was not sure, given the labour disputes that were ongoing, whether or not they were still in favour. That party intended to meet with members of the union.

I would like to say that I have in fact met with members of the union. I met with them early in September. I met with some constituents who are members of Parks Canada and members of the union. One of the subjects of discussion, besides the issue of the contract negotiations and their requests for their collective agreements, was in fact the future of Parks Canada, the future of our national parks. They were very supportive of the idea that the Parks Canada Agency be transferred to Environment Canada. They were very supportive of the fact that in doing so we have a better chance of preserving and enhancing the ecological integrity of our national parks and monuments.

However, I also have to say that one of their concerns was lack of sufficient funding and the fact that too many of the employees were not full time, permanent employees, the result of which is at times disjointed implementation of policies. One of the things they asked me to do was bring that message to the Hill. I have done so. I have spoken with the ministers responsible, with the parliamentary secretary and with members of our caucus.

In conclusion, this is, as everyone has said, a technical change, but it is an important change because it shows the vision that this government has going forward with regard to our national parks and sites and monuments located within the parks. This is our vision for our national heritage. I encourage all members of the House to support this legislation. I look forward to the work that the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development will do with this piece of legislation.

[Bernard Bigras, Bloc, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-7, an act to amend the Department of Canadian Heritage Act and the Parks Canada Agency Act and to make related amendments to other Acts.

I remind the House that this bill was introduced and read the first time on October 8, 2004. The purpose of this admittedly technical bill is to transfer responsibility for the ParksCanada Agency from the Department ofCanadian Heritage to Environment Canada. It is rather technical but we think it is probably time that some changes occur within the federal government in terms of responsibilities.

The people responsible for Canadian parks and their resources must strive to maintain the ecological integrity of those resources and protect our ecosystems. We have our doubts about leaving responsibility for ecosystems, which come under Parks Canada, with Canadian Heritage. Who better than the Department of the Environment to protect the ecological integrity of our resources and our parks, since its mandate is to protect and promote the ecosystems and to make the various ecological aspects of this environmental heritage more accessible to the public?

On December 12, 2003, pursuant to an order, control and supervision of the Parks Canada Agency were transferred from Canadian Heritage to the Department of the Environment. On July 20, 2004, another order concerning the heritage responsibilities had to be made to clarify the previous one. Following those two orders, the legislation had to be amended, which explains the introduction of Bill C-7 to bring about the required amendments.

Of course, the bill is technical in nature. It contains—let us be honest—no substantive provision, even though it will affect several other acts. I emphasize this, because it will be examined in committee. We agree in principle with the introduction of the bill. However, when a bill has the effect of making amendments to the Canada National Parks Act, to the Canada National Marine Conservation Areas Act, and—note this third act—to the Saguenay-St. Lawrence Marine Park Act, to the Historic Sites and Monuments Act, to the Heritage Railway Stations Protection Act, to the Canada Shipping Act and to the Species at Risk Act, there is good reason to ask ourselves a number of questions. Indeed, this bill changes a number of acts, and this is quite important.

What we were told, and I certainly want to believe the government, is that these changes will have no organizational impact for the Parks Canada Agency, and that the organizational integrity of Parks Canada will be maintained.

Unions seemed totally in favour of these amendments in principle. However, in committee, we will have to question officials to see if, in light of the various disputes that occurred in recent weeks, among others with Parks Canada, the government will actually be able to guarantee this organizational integrity. Even though we agree in principle, it is our intention, on this side of the House, to meet with unions and to ask them if these changes meet their expectations and if they do not have concerns on the organizational level.

The state of parks in Canada is a pretty major concern. There are two visions, which may not necessarily be competing but rather complementary. According to the first one, we should start by consolidating the network of parks across Canada which, in many cases, are in a pitiful state because of severe lack of funding in recent years. Even customer services have been greatly affected and, in some instances, resource preservation may be in danger. So, there is this school of thought which recommends that we start by consolidating the existing network.

There is another one, according to which we should increase the number of parks in Canada. There are not enough parks; there should be more. What does that mean for Quebec? This means creating more Canadian zones, more federal lands. We must never forget that these places managed by Parks Canada inevitably come under federal jurisdiction. That means that federal law, including the Species at Risk Act, automatically applies. We never objected to such legislation applying to federal lands or crown lands.

Increasing the number of lands under the authority of Parks Canada inevitably increases the federal presence in Quebec. But in Quebec, we have a similar structure, called Parcs Québec, which allows us to create our own network of parks and wildlife reserves.

In the coming years, strategic choices will have to made. Should we consolidate, strengthen the existing networks of parks, invest public funds in greater amounts to preserve the ecological integrity of existing parks, or should we develop and increase the number of parks across Canada instead?

I think the ecological integrity of these lands ought to be preserved. I travel across Quebec; I am one of those who, each year, during tourist season, visit many parks that come under the jurisdiction of the federal government. I observe how rundown these parks are. Personally, I think we should reinvest in the parks, but in existing ones.

As indicated earlier, we must not forget that Parks Canada comes under the Department of Canadian Heritage. We must remember what the mission of these parks is. The Canada National Parks Act, 1988, states:

The national parks of Canada are hereby dedicated to the people of Canada for their benefit, education and enjoyment, subject to this Act and the regulations, and the parks shall be maintained and made use of so as to leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.

We cannot but be pleased with this. In recent years we have seen Canadian Heritage's propaganda strategies at work throughout Canada. This was grounds for concern. So what could be more normal than for the parks, which used to come under Parks Canada, to move to Environment? Perhaps this will enable us to ensure that the primary role that parks in Canada ought to play will be played, namely maintaining ecological integrity.

This is, in fact, precisely what is lacking in Canada at present. This morning Johanne Gélinas, Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, tabled a highly interesting report on the state of our environment. I would invite hon. members to pay particular attention to one chapter of that report, the one on strategic environmental assessment.

The majority of departments refuse to integrate strategic environmental assessment, not just into their policies but into their plans and programs as well. If they did, we would at last be able to apply a directive that has been around for 14 years now, yet is very often not applied by the departments.

The Minister of Natural Resources over there must know what I am referring to. I would invite him to read the commissioner's report, as well as Bill C-48. The commissioner considers this no more or less than an unacceptable legislative initiative that does not promote sustainable development. When major oil companies are given tax incentives through Bill C-48, is this a policy promoting a sustainable development strategy for Canada? The answer to that is no, and that answer comes, not from the opposition, but from the commissioner of the environment, a person whose very mandate is to analyze this government's policies, plans and programs.

We have every right to be concerned about the way federal departments maintain the ecological integrity of the various areas for which they are responsible. To transfer Parks Canada from Canadian Heritage to Environment Canada is quite normal. Why is it normal? Because we now have a direct link to the Department of the Environment, which is responsible for protecting endangered species for instance. What can be more natural than to enforce this legislation in our parks? Maybe we could ensure that the environmental impact assessments in Canada, which come under the Department of the Environment, are applied to our parks as well as to everything Environment Canada does.

We have demonstrated again this morning that the strategic environmental assessment is applied in very few departments. A lot of departments are dragging their feet. Therefore, it is a good thing that our parks come under Environment Canada. The Environmental Assessment Act might finally be applied to crown lands. What could be more basic than to have federal legislation applied to crown land? What could be more normal than to ensure that the species at risk legislation in Canada is enforced on the crown lands that make up our Canadian parks?

It is quite normal. If the government carried out environmental assessments, a process triggered by the Department of Finance in the first place, we might not be in the situation we are right now as far as the state of the environment is concerned. As early as 1993 the Auditor General of Canada pointed out some administrative problems, as well as a lack of reinvestment dating back to 1996. There has been no reinvestment for eight years. The Auditor General said eight years ago that planning did not always provide a clear link between ecological integrity objectives and initiatives.

He is one of her recommendations: “Parks Canada should ensure that park management plans are updated in accordance with the requirements of the National Parks Act and policy, and business plans should be clearly linked to those management plans. Parks Canada should also introduce a formal process for monitoring the implementation of management plans”. The Auditor General also said in 1996: “Parks Canada lacks key information necessary for park management”.

The number of visitors increased by 25% between 1988 and 1989, and also between 1994 and 1995. Canadian parks are getting busier all the time, but investment is down. Moreover, ecological integrity, which should be the main concern of the government, leaves a lot to be desired.

This transfer of responsibility from Canadian Heritage to Environment Canada will not ensure that those goals will be met, which was harshly criticized by the Office of the Auditor General as early as 1996. Why I am saying that? Because since I have been here, I have seen an increase in the number of legislative measures affecting the environment, be it the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, the Canadian Environmental Protection Act or the Species at Risk Act.

Therefore, it is not because there have been legislative initiatives that the federal government has necessarily enforced the appropriate laws which it enacted itself. It is not because there is an endangered species act in Canada that the federal government has enforced that act on the lands within federal jurisdiction, such as those managed by Parks Canada. It is not because there is an environmental assessment act in Canada that this government has necessarily enforced its own law on its own lands. Of course, this transfer from Canadian Heritage to Environment Canada is, I think, a real test for the federal government.

We shall see whether the intentions and actions behind the introduction of this bill on October 8 translate into tangible activities to preserve ecological integrity on the lands belonging to the federal government. I am skeptical. We are ready, in principle, to give the federal government a chance. We are ready to do whatever we can to help this government enforce its own laws.

I believe that this restructuring, while technical, shows the essence and spirit of this desire. But I shall remain skeptical. We must ensure that in coming years we can put all possible means at the disposal of public servants and all who wish to maintain this ecological integrity and protect and increase accessibility. Naturally, this involves a transfer of responsibilities. It also involves reinvestment in actual, existing parks, and not necessarily scattering zones that would be more protected by Parks Canada.

Let us begin by consolidating our network of parks in Canada which, as I have often said, is in a precarious state. We must put our resources where they are needed. We can begin a process of organizational change, which is desirable, and transfer this responsibility away from a department, namely Canadian Heritage, whose purpose in recent years has been political propaganda to a department that, finally, must shoulder its responsibilities to protect resources, endangered species and ecological integrity on the lands for which the federal government is responsible.

[Bob Mills, Conservative, Red Deer, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to Bill C-7. As has been pointed out, this would transfer Parks Canada from Heritage Canada to Environment Canada. In looking at this it seems that is the obvious place where it should be. It has been there in the past and that makes a lot of sense.

Let us review what parks mean and what parks are for our country. What do people think about Canada when we travel internationally? One of things that indicates our national identity is to say that we are pristine, that we have clean water, babbling brooks, lots of forests and all of those green things that represent Canada. All of us know there are some flaws in that thinking but as long as we are travelling internationally we will continue to promote the fact that Canada has all of those good things.

Our parks probably represent the focal point of that thought internationally and so very often when we are travelling people will tell us that they have been to Pelee Island, Banff, Jasper or to one of the many resorts and parks that we have across Canada.

When Canadians are asked about our park system they will say that this is a place to preserve habitat for future generations to enjoy. It is for our children and grandchildren to enjoy. It is a place to protect wildlife and a place where wildlife can live, prosper and remain for future generations. It is also a living, breathing ecosystem that we can look at, understand better and sometimes it even provides great benefits for our own population in terms of pharmaceuticals and so on.

The controversy I think is what role humans have in parks. This has been something for debate. We have talked about it many times. We have attempted, as we have encroached on our park areas, to make them more friendly for the people, animals and habitat.

We have had some problems. I can think of the wildlife crossings that we have built over our Trans-Canada Highway. Those crossings are for animals but we forgot to put anything there for humans to get across the highway. As a result we have humans crossing on the animal crossovers, thus leaving their scent and sometimes their garbage, and obviously animals are not using the crossovers because they do not want to be where humans have had such close contact.

There are a lot of planning issues that we need to have in our parks so that humans play a role within that park system. That is open to a lot of debate. How much or how little humans use our parks can be discussed at much greater length but that is not the purpose of the bill.

Whether it is picking cranberries or whatever, the most important thing is the consultation process we need to have with Canadians regarding their parks. We need to promote consultation and cooperation as opposed to the confrontation which often leads to some very unpleasant things happening within our park system.

We must also be very aware that our park system represents a major source of foreign income for Canada and the many people who work in and depend upon the national parks have to be considered in any equation with regard to what we do. Many young Canadians have jobs in our parks system through the summer in order to pay for their university. They learn about the parks and they make them better for all of us.

As well, there is the wilderness experience. As more and more people live in urban communities, it becomes more important to have natural areas in our parks system for them to enjoy and experience what the real wilderness might be like.

I am talking about a balanced approach, one that takes science and the ecological integrity of the area into consideration and one that consults the people who are part of that parks system.

In speaking to the bill, obviously I think Environment Canada is better able to consider the environmental integrity and the use of the parks than Heritage Canada. For that reason, it makes sense to support the bill and to support the transfer.

We will always have people who are the extremes, people who do not want anyone to go into parks at any time, in any way. They literally want to build walls around these parks. They probably would go so far as to say they want such a pristine environment that we should all live in caves, not drive cars, be without electricity, et cetera. The other extreme of course are the people who say that we do not need parks so we should get rid of them and not preserve them. Obviously that is not acceptable either.

We need to have trade-offs. We must consider both sides of the issue. I am sure Environment Canada can come up with the ecological integrity in these parks and maintain them with humans using them.

As well, we need to look at some of the issues that parks face. One that I am very aware of is the situation where they have limited budgets, where their infrastructure has serious problems and has declined over the years. Some of the problems are due to a lack of money while others are problems of allocation. I guess the most obvious one is the fact that some of the highways being maintained by parks are throughways through parks.

Jasper Park in my province has a major highway running through it. The truckers and others who are on that highway do not want to drive through a park. They would rather use another road but with the mountains being where they are, they have to use that highway. Likewise, if they take the Trans-Canada Highway, they must to drive through Banff Park, which they do not particularly want to because they have to slow down for the animals and tourists.

Parks Canada's budget is used to clean the snow and repair the roads because the roads are inside the park. I do not know how much of its budget is used that way, but I think it is something that the committee can look at to say that money really is part of transport. This must happen right across Canada. The money should in fact stay in the parks and not be used for things like roads.

I think those are the kinds of examples where we can probably provide, even within the present budget, money to be used to improve those parks. I would hope Environment Canada would look at those things when Parks Canada becomes part of its new mandate.

I tried to find out what the concerns were with this transfer and who would not like it. I could summarize it in a couple of areas that we could look at. The first one would be Environment Canada's reputation. Some would say that within Environment Canada there are a number of fanatic environmentalists, people who would live in a cave and who do not want anyone within parks. That is a major concern because, as I said earlier, we want to be somewhere in the middle. Trade-offs have to be made. We do not want to live in a cave. We want our standard of living and we want to be able to enjoy the national parks.

It would be important to deliver the message to Environment Canada that it must find a balance. It cannot be 100% concerned about the pristine preservation of an area. Areas can be restricted and people can be controlled but we cannot go so far as to keep people out. It is my general feeling that the minister will probably set the tone for that development.

Some members on the other side might agree with me that one former heritage minister set the tone for the parks and created a lot of problems. Ms. Copps created a real concern that the minister could stop development and prevent things from happening without any consultation. It became a very confrontational approach to how parks should be dealt with. That minister is no longer here and I do not believe the new minister will take that approach.

However it is a concern and one we need to address. We as parliamentarians need to be sure that Environment Canada understands there is a middle ground involved, the middle ground being what is acceptable, not the extremes on either end where parks are over-used or under-used.

The second concern I heard when I was researching this subject was about some of the heritage sites. I was asked what concern Environment Canada would have for an historic railway station and how that would mesh with that department as opposed to Heritage Canada. I did not have a good answer for that question. When I pursued it further I was told that Environment Canada would be the poor cousin and that it would not get the resources or the dedication by bureaucrats to preserve historic sites. If that were to happen that would be a major concern and a concern that should be addressed.

One of the historic sites in the former boundary of my riding is a very important part of the parks system and it is utilized that way. I understand there are other historic sites that may not be close to the park and may become poor cousins in Environment Canada. Because this would be all inclusive, we should ask those questions and ensure Environment Canada gets the message that this is not acceptable.

As we send Bill C-7 off to committee after second reading, it is important that it shows concern for all of the different stakeholders. The committee needs to look at cottage owners who live in many of our parks, the businesses that depend upon our parks, and the many students who are employed in our parks. This would be an opportunity for the committee to listen to what those people think and maybe use it as a lever to make sure there are different and better considerations for these kinds of things. There will not be a lot of other parks bills in the House in the upcoming years so this is an opportunity for the committee to look at some of the things that I have raised. This could be a real positive thing for the committee to look at.

Should the committee hold extensive hearings? The hearings do not have to be extensive but the committee should listen to all the stakeholders with the intention of working with Environment Canada to improve the administration of our parks. The committee must send the environment bureaucrats the message of what Canadians want.

Committee members need to listen and make decisions. The committee must send to the environment bureaucrats the message that this is what Canadians want.

We could use the example of the member who raised cranberries. That is a fairly small issue to the whole of Canada. However, it is likely a huge issue to the person who has done that for five generations. Obviously, we must tell Parks Canada that it needs some flexibility, it needs to be reasonable, and it must use common sense in its approach to how it deals with parks.

I would see the committee serving the function of sending that message to the minister and employees of Parks Canada and, of course, to Environment Canada who are the administrators of this whole thing. People are concerned about what happens to our national parks. People are concerned about the decline of the infrastructure. People are concerned about a number of things. I am sure that any members who have a park in their riding have heard of these concerns.

We must be sure that Environment Canada understands that there is a place for recreation, tourism and access. While it can be controlled and limited, it obviously must be a part of any plan. I think this is better off under Environment Canada. That department should be able to look at a broader base of considerations than possibly Heritage Canada could, with the exception of perhaps some of those heritage sites which I am still a little concerned about.

We really need a vision for where we are going. At the moment we are talking about parks. I think we could do it in a lot of other areas. That vision is extremely important to the kind of Canada that we want in 2050 and in 2100. Parks are not planned over short terms. They are planned over very long periods of time. Ecosystems do not develop quickly. It is a very slow process. Therefore, what we do with these parks then becomes important.

I would include a much broader range for Environment Canada to look at, everything alternate energy to garbage and how we deal with our garbage. All of that should be part of that long term vision which we should be able to develop.

We want to maintain the view of Canada as a green country, as a great place to visit with clean air, clean water, clean soil and where we really care about our environment. Unfortunately, we have signed over a hundred international agreements. As the environment auditor general has told us for about the last four years, we have not lived up to very many of those 100 international agreements. We talk a lot about it, but we really do not score very well on what we do.

We are likely to support this bill based on the fact that parks are better off under Environment Canada. We should use this opportunity to improve our parks, to look at some of the concerns, and make our parks better for all Canadians now and in the future.

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of the Environment]

Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure today to rise to speak at second reading to Bill C-7, an act to amend the Department of Canadian Heritage Act and the Parks Canada Agency Act and to make related amendments to other acts.

The bill would give legislative effect to the government reorganization that was announced on December 12, 2003, as it affects Parks Canada, the Minister of Canadian Heritage and the Minister of the Environment.

The bill would update existing legislation to reflect two orders in council that came into effect in December 2003 and July 2004, which transferred control and supervision of the Parks Canada Agency from the Minister of Canadian Heritage to the Minister of the Environment.

The bill would clarify that Parks Canada is responsible for historic places in Canada, and for the design and implementation of programs that relate to built heritage.

The legislation is primarily technical in nature. It updates the Department of Canadian Heritage Act and the Parks Canada Agency Act. As well, it amends the statutes that enable Parks Canada to deliver its mandate, notably the Canada National Parks Act, the Historic Sites and Monuments Act, the Canada National Marine Conservation Areas Act, the Species at Risk Act, the Canada Shipping Act, and the Heritage Railway Stations Protection Act.

Canada's national parks, national historic sites and the national marine conservation areas represent the soul of Canada. They are a central part of who we are and what we are. They are places of magic, wonder and heritage. Each tells its own story. Together, they connect Canadians to our roots, to our future and to each other.

Responsibilities for safeguarding and celebrating heritage will continue to be shared among departments and agencies across government. The Minister of Canadian Heritage retains a key leadership role and overall responsibility for cultural heritage, and will continue to work closely with the minister responsible for Parks Canada and with other ministers to achieve common objectives for heritage.

I would like to assure the House that Parks Canada's organizational integrity has been maintained. Parks Canada remains committed to working with Canadians to protect and present nationally significant examples of Canada's natural and cultural heritage for present and future generations.

The hon. members of the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development should be aware that the committee's responsibilities are now expanded to include matters related to built heritage. This is fitting given the important links between the environment, heritage and sustainable development.

Built heritage includes sites, buildings, and monuments recognized for their historic value. These include battlefields, forts and citadels, shipwrecks, archaeological sites, cultural landscapes, bridges, houses, cemeteries, railway stations, historic districts, ruins, engineering marvels, schools, canals, courthouses, theatres and markets.

Responsibility for built heritage is managed through a number of programs, including national historic sites, federal heritage buildings, heritage railway stations, federal archaeology, heritage shipwrecks, and the federal role in the historic places initiative. These activities are of interest to all parliamentarians and to Canadians in general.

Through the Parks Canada Agency, the Minister of the Environment has responsibilities in three key areas: the management of Parks Canada's built heritage; federal government leadership in programs related to built heritage, and a Canada-wide leadership role in built heritage.

Hon. members are probably most familiar with the first of these areas, Parks Canada's role as a steward of heritage sites. Parks Canada leads the national program of historical commemoration which identifies places, persons and events of national historic significance. The program aims to celebrate Canada's history and protect associated sites.

Parks Canada administers about one in six of the more than 900 national historic sites, which speaks to the diverse and rich history of Canada. Parks Canada's stewardship role with respect to these places, and their historic values and resources is similar to its stewardship role with respect to national parks. Unfortunately, many of Parks Canada's built heritage assets are under threat.

The Auditor General's report on the “Protection of Cultural Heritage in the Federal Government” indicates that two-thirds of Parks Canada's national historic sites and federal heritage buildings are in poor to fair condition. The same is true for Parks Canada's assets more generally, which need $140 million annually to be maintained but receive only $40 million. This is a major challenge for the preservation of these irreplaceable national treasures.

Despite strong management systems that put care for cultural resources at the centre of planning and reporting for national historic sites, the future of many of these places continues to be threatened. Repair of masonry and wood structures, weakened by exposure to our harsh climate, like those repairs required at Fort Henry National Historic Site of Canada, are ongoing. Coastal erosion threatens to literally wash away significant parts of the Fortress of Louisbourg National Historic Site of Canada.

These examples are symptomatic, not exceptional, of the state of our cultural resources and of the infrastructure that supports the ability of Canadians to visit such sites. These resources, once lost, will be gone forever and with them will go their evocative testimony to Canada's dramatic past. Addressing the ongoing deterioration of resources needs to be a priority for this government.

Federal government programs relating to built heritage is the minister's second key area of responsibility. Through its leadership in the federal heritage buildings program, Parks Canada works with departments to protect the heritage character of buildings while the property is within federal jurisdiction.

The Auditor General has indicated that problems similar to those for national historic sites administered by Parks Canada exist for national historic sites and federal heritage buildings administered by other federal departments. The government is considering ways to respond to the Auditor General's concerns over weak conservation standards and accountability requirements, as well as the recommendation to strengthen the legal framework to protect built heritage.

For many years Canada has lagged behind other G-8 nations, and its own provincial and territorial governments, in the protection of historic places.

The minister's third area of responsibility is to provide Canada-wide leadership in built heritage. Only a small portion of historic places in Canada are owned by the federal government, so cooperation with others is key. Government alone cannot save Canada's built heritage. This requires participation by individuals, corporations and other governments across Canada.

Year after year, decade after decade, more and more historic places are being lost. The remaining historic heritage buildings and structures, cultural landscapes and archeological sites continue to be threatened.

Recognizing the need to deepen its resolve to protect built heritage, the Government of Canada has responded with the launch of the historic places initiative, the most significant conservation effort related to historic sites in our national history.

The historic places initiative is based on the acknowledgement that government alone cannot save all historic buildings and other historic places. The keystone of the initiative is a broad national coalition with provinces, territories, and municipal governments, coupled with equally valuable contributions involving aboriginal peoples, heritage experts, and a comprehensive number of institutions, organizations, communities and individuals.

In the field of heritage we are truly in an era of policy interdependence. The goals of the initiative are to create a culture of heritage conservation in the country by providing Canadians with basic tools to preserve and celebrate the historic places and by protecting historic places under federal jurisdiction. Strategies focus on helping Canadians build a culture of conservation.

The protection of Canada's built heritage is not only about saving what is meaningful from the past. It is also about sustaining strong communities for today and tomorrow, the rehabilitating of existing buildings, capitalizing on the energies invested in the original structures and preventing unnecessary use of new materials and energy.

Less demolition means reduced pressure on landfill sites. Revitalization of historic downtown areas decreases the need for new civil infrastructure, such as roads, sewers and public transit. By contributing to such sustainable communities, public policy truly makes a difference in people's lives.

Consensus has emerged on the role that Canada and Canadians want historic places to play in our lives and communities. Among the common goals is the need to provide all Canadians with the practical information and tools they need to protect historic places.

The launch in 2004 of the Canadian register of historic places is a product of this collaboration. For the first time Canadians will have in one place a register of buildings and sites that are recognized as historic by any order of government. It is anticipated that the registry will contain approximately 20,000 historic places when it is fully populated.

The registry will be an important tool for policy-makers, community organizations, teachers, students and families who want to learn about and help preserve the past.

Another important accomplishment is the development of the standards and guidelines for the conservation of historic places in Canada. The standards and guidelines provide clear, accessible guidance on good conservative practice. This document was developed in consultation with federal, provincial, municipal and non-governmental stakeholders so there would be a common benchmark for conservation principles and practices in Canada. It has been adopted by Parks Canada and by several provincial and municipal jurisdictions.

The standards and guidelines are a model of promoting a new approach to the science and the technology of building conservation and promoting and circulating this information broadly for the benefit of all Canadians.

Parks Canada is also implementing the commercial heritage properties initiative fund. It is a new program announced in 2003 to engage the private sector in the conservation of historic buildings. The fund is a four year, $30 million plan designed to tip the balance in favour of conservation over demolition. It provides financial incentives to eligible commercial historic places listed on the registry to encourage a broad range of commercial uses for historic properties within our communities.

Fiscal measures such as this program are central to helping to engage others to achieve the government's goal for built heritage. Historic places connect us to our past, to our future and to each other. They provide places of learning for our children and places of understanding for both new citizens and Canadians of long-standing.

What we cherish as part of our national identity, we also recognize as part of our national responsibility. All Canadians share the obligation to preserve and protect Canada's unique cultural and natural heritage. Together we hold our national parks, national historic sites and national marine conservation areas in trust for the benefit of this and future generations.

With the new reporting arrangement through the Minister of the Environment and clearly defined responsibilities for built heritage programs, Parks Canada will continue to work to safeguard Canada's built heritage, support protection of historic places within federal jurisdiction, and engage Canadians broadly in preserving an celebrating our country's historic places. It will continue to play a seminal role in the protection of Canada's heritage sites for which it is so well respected by Canadians and admired internationally.

I respectfully encourage all of my colleagues from both sides of the House to join me in passing Bill C-7.

[Andy Scott, Liberal, for the Minister of the Environment]

moved that Bill C-7, an act to amend the Department of Canadian Heritage Act and the Parks Canada Agency Act and to make related amendments to other acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Business of the House

[Tony Valeri, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, we will continue this afternoon with the debate on the Conservative opposition day motion.

On Friday we will debate a motion of reference before second reading of Bill C-10, the mental disorder legislation. We will then turn to a motion of reference before second reading of Bill C-12, the Quarantine Act amendments. We will then resume this debate commencing on Tuesday and follow it with second reading of Bill C-7, the parks reorganization, and Bill C-8, the public service human resources agency bill.

We would then turn to second reading of Bill C-14, the Tlicho legislation. This will be followed by reference before second reading of Bill C-13, the DNA bill, followed by Bill C-9, the Quebec regional development bill.

Next Thursday will be an allotted day.

On Monday, instead of a normal sitting of the House, there will be an address to both Houses by President Fox of Mexico. This will take place at 2:15 p.m.

With respect to my hon. friend's last question, that legislation will be coming forward in due course.

[Tony Valeri, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I am sure that the minister will table the document at the first available opportunity.

With respect to the business going forward, this afternoon, tomorrow and Monday, we will continue with second reading of Bill C-5, which is on learning bonds, followed by second reading of Bill C-6, which is establishing the department of public safety; second reading of Bill C-3 which is the Coast Guard bill; second reading of Bill C-7 respecting national parks; second reading of Bill C-8 creating the public service human resources agency; and second reading of Bill C-4, which is the international air protocol bill.

There will, as the House knows, be divisions at 3 p.m. on Monday.

Tuesday and Wednesday will be the last two days of debate on the Address in Reply to the Speech from the Throne, and Thursday will be an allotted day.

Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply

[Yvan Loubier, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my illustrious colleague from Joliette for his most important question.

The two and one-half years during which I was responsible for aboriginal issues were a great revelation to me. I learned something new every day. The situation of Canada's aboriginal people is disastrous, and not far off third-world levels. Every throne speech makes reference to aboriginal problems. It looks good. In all throne speeches there is a paragraph about recognizing the first nations.

How then does it come about that the necessary actions are not taken? The first thing we should have seen in the throne speech, particularly after the battle we led against the governance bill, C-7, unwanted by every aboriginal nation across Canada, is that the government was planning on allocating additional resources to speed up negotiations on first nations self-government. This is the only way to enable the first nations to take charge of their own affairs, to have their own tax base, to make decisions on their own future, and to have full jurisdiction over that future.

There is a frequent tendency to paint a bleak picture of our first nations, whereas 90% of these communities are administering their lands appropriately. They ought to be allowed to do so because it is their jurisdiction. They ought to be given the resources as well as compensation for the harm done by an Indian Act that is as bad as any apartheid regime the world has ever known.

But no, back they came again with the usual paternalistic approach, telling the aboriginal people what was good for them and how to do things. There we were with Bill C-7. My NDP colleague and I fought for 55 days and 55 evenings, some of them into the night, to get that bill rejected. Despite what we were told, this was just a second version of the Indian Act on top of the original one, which was terrible enough on its own.

The problems are so obvious: chronic under-employment, otherwise known as unemployment, a youth suicide rate double that of the rest of society, multiple addictions, housing problems. Some of the housing is not fit even for an animal to live in. I have had the opportunity to visit reserves in Quebec and in Canada, and the situation is shocking.

It is disgrace for a government not to have made the aboriginal issue a priority. Aboriginal people are promised the moon every five years or so. Such was the case with the report of the Erasmus-Dussault royal commission, which opened up incredible possibilities for them. In opposition to the Erasmus-Dussault report, they are presented with a bill no one wants. Enough time has been wasted on this issue. It is time to speed up negotiations. First, there has to be a recognition of first nations as nations, according to the UN definition, like any other nations of the world. In that sense, they have the right to self-determination and ought to be able to decide their future, as should Quebec's people.