I would remind Ms. Duncan that I represent a rural constituency with communities that depend on the harvesting and management of resources. I don't need any lectures about who cares about rural Canada. My communities understand, to their bones, what a healthy and ecologically sound environment is.
However, I want to zero in on the phrase in the definition “essential ecological processes are preserved for their own sake”. Again, I find that a bit of a laughable phrase. I'm still waiting for somebody to define what a non-essential ecological process is. They are all essential, so the word is redundant.
In terms of “preserved for their own sake”, that phrase has the potential to give the environment rights. Rights are a human concept, not a concept in nature. Ecological processes are extremely important, but they don't have any rights. It's rather like the concept of animal rights, which some of you may remember was almost enshrined in law ten years ago in Bill C-15B. The Chrétien government tried to bring it in. That caused an uproar in rural Canada, the same kind of uproar this particular act will engender.
If you look at all of the environmental fights in this country, they were all directed primarily, if not all, against rural resource harvesting and rural land management activities.
I think the Hydro-Québec example is a pretty good one. In terms of environmental change in Quebec, 23,000 square kilometres of land have been flooded by the hydro development. In my own province of Manitoba, which has a very similar kind of hydro development scheme, there is 6,000 square kilometres of land that has been flooded.
I know the oil sands get beaten up, but in the oil sands there are only 602 square kilometres of land that have been affected—far, far less than any hydro developments in Canada. I should also make the point that in terms of the oil sands, 10% of the land that has been affected has been reclaimed.