Back in 1997, Mr. Duguid was the parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing in the Province of Ontario. This was at a time when the Province of Ontario seized 600 acres of class 1 farmland in the area, provided $2 million, evicted farmers from the class 1 farmland, and actually evicted some of those who lived in that area and had lived there for 40 years. The Ontario government evicted them, reforested that 600 acres of land, and called it the Bob Hunter Park, which to this day is still closed. That's what that very same government did in 1997.
Now, in speech after speech in the House of Commons, we are hearing from both opposition parties about this ecological corridor concept that has been advanced by a gentleman by the name of Jim Robb, who, whether or not people would agree, has an extraordinarily poor relationship with farmers in this particular area.
This 1997 seizing of the lands of course builds on what happened 40 years earlier, when the Liberals actually expropriated this land and put them on one-year leases.
Would you agree that the farmers—and I know you've been working closely with them—have reason to be concerned when they hear the name of Jim Robb being associated with a provincial minister who in his press release cites Mr. Robb regarding an ecological corridor from a 1994 report that is no longer accepted by even the Rouge Park Alliance, to which some of the members of the opposition belonged? Nobody accepts that report. Would you agree that the farmers have reason to be concerned that a minimum of 1,700 acres of their land would have to be taken out of production? These are Mr. Robb's own words—and you can't actually do that without evicting farmers. Would you agree that's one reason that the farmers are so worried about this provincial government's lack of desire to transfer the lands?