With all due respect, Mr. Dion, they are going to be sustainable. Do you know why they're going to be sustainable? It is because of the people who are engaged in those activities that they're going to be sustainable. It is the hunters, the fishers, and the trappers who want to ensure that not only for themselves.... In my case, it's not only for myself and for my two sons, but for my grandchildren, one of whom, my granddaughter, received a .22 rifle for Christmas because her dad wants to take her hunting in British Columbia when she reaches the age of 10. I was surprised that in B.C. you can hunt accompanied from 10 years old. In Ontario, I believe it's around 16 and I think in Quebec it's the same thing.
Mr. Dion, every single wildlife federation or group across this country was contacted in my first iteration, and we made sure that they're still in favour of this bill. Let me give you an example. I was about to say to the previous questioner that when I was engaged in the reintroduction of salmon into Lake Ontario, we were out with some high school children and we were rehabilitating the Cobourg Creek in certain areas in a safe manner. So we collected the bicycles and tires out of the water so that the fish could properly....Then, of course, the salmon were released and we planted trees along the bank because salmon like to have a shaded area in order to spawn.
As I told the high school students, there are two kinds of conservationists out there. There are the conservationists who grab a sign and march up and down the streets of our cities, towns, and villages demanding somebody do something about conservation. Then there are the people who actually roll up their sleeves and do something about it. I said, “You are people who roll up your sleeves and do something about it.” The wildlife federations, the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters, the Sierra Club: the principal aim of all these wildlife organizations is to ensure conservation. So it is the very people who are engaged in these activities who will ensure....
With regard to the beaver, I'm going to tell you something else that we MPs need to do. We need to tell those people who think it's terrible to wear a beaver coat.... I purposely bought my wife one, because my grandpa told me a long-haired beaver is the longest-wearing coat, so if I was going to spend some money, I'd make sure that I bought one that would last. If we want to do something good for our hunters and our trappers, particularly our aboriginal trappers, and if we really care about our aboriginals, we'll wear sealskin coats; we'll buy our wives fur coats; and we'll wear fur coats. That's how we will sustain those species, because the trappers will not trap them into extinction.
Mr. Dion, in the past we did some of the things because we didn't understand conservation. We didn't understand that these things didn't miraculously happen and that, as an intelligent species, man had to manage those species. So as members of Parliament, the guys should be buying their wives fur coats and the wives should be buying their husbands fur coats if we really want to help sustain our aboriginal brothers and sisters, because these are their traditional things.
Just anecdotally speaking, when I visited Canada's largest penitentiary, Warkworth Institution, which is in my riding—and I forget the name of the program for the aboriginals to bring back pride in who they are—one of the things they were beginning to learn how to do was to properly skin and prepare muskrats and other animals in order to engage in traditional activities. It's up to us to help them.