Evidence of meeting #50 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 41st Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was concept.
A recording is available from Parliament.
NDP
October 31st, 2012 / 5:25 p.m.
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Centre-North, AB
First of all, Mr. Campbell, I have to give you a little bit of a reproach for something. Ms. Pam Vino, your superintendent, is sitting in the back of the room here. You stole her from Banff National Park, so on behalf of the residents of Alberta, “Tsk tsk.”
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Centre-North, AB
Anyway, she will do a great job, and I'm very excited to see her here. Her expertise of managing one of our great park systems will lend itself well to this. Congratulations on your hire.
I'm still mad at you, Pam.
Anyway, I just wanted to finish by giving you the chance to expand a little bit more on the consultation process that Parks Canada undertook to get it right. I think that's a theme we've been hearing. Everyone who was here today said, “Get it right.” That's what we've been hearing.
Can you just very briefly talk about the level of consultation that was undertaken—I think it has been unprecedented—and perhaps about some of the principles that resulted and that you've published from those consultations?
Vice-President, External Relations and Visitor Experience, Parks Canada
Certainly we are still at the early stages of being able to analyze, because of how broad the consultation was. We started from the day we were invited in by the alliance. We began a consultation process to see all the different community groups. As I said, we've been out to 120 different organizations. We've met with them. We've sat down and had discussions. We work very closely with the groups that are here today. We've had many meetings with the groups that are here with us today.
Whether it was the York Federation of Agriculture, the anglers of Ontario, or groups that have had a long preservation process and were some of the initial people who started the process, what we heard from all of them was that we should continue to build the park, continue to move forward, and continue to give people access to it. One of the things we've been especially proud of during the process has been a truly unprecedented relationship we've begun to build with all of the first nations.
I'm sure that most people are aware of Parks Canada's extremely proud history and heritage of first nations relationships across the country. There are probably few other federal government agencies that have the level of first nations cooperation we have across the country. We've been able to bring together almost all of the traditional groups that have been in the park, from the first nations perspective. They've come around the table. They've given us input. We've been able to look at the 500-year-old Seneca Village and see how the first nations want to speak about that as the carrying place where they did portaging, using the traditional knowledge of the area to really help us build toward the future.
We've been to Yonge Street, Rogers Centre, Pickering City Hall, and Scarborough Town Centre. We've been to every farmers' market you can think of. It has truly been an unprecedented period for us to consult.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Mark Warawa
Good.
Thank you so much to the witnesses. We appreciate your sharing your valuable time with us on this very important study.
I have one last outstanding issue, colleagues. We have a colleague here who is celebrating her 21st birthday. That is Ms. Duncan. I want to wish her a happy birthday.
