Thank you, Madam Chair, and colleagues. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. I am the member of Parliament for Scarborough—Rouge Park, so I have a particular interest in this file, as the park is within my riding.
I want to also acknowledge my good friend, the honourable member from Scarborough—Guildwood, who has a long-standing commitment to the park and whose work in many ways has gotten us to this point. All governments at all levels and from all parties have in their own ways contributed to where we are.
Certainly, the panel before us has had a very personal interest in the park. In particular, CPAWS and Friends of the Rouge have had an extraordinary level of commitment to ensuring that the park gets to be optimal for the people of Canada.
Mr. Whittamore, I'm very pleased to see you here, as well, in support of this amendment, and the minister's office certainly is to be commended for its work.
That's my preamble. Let me get to the chase with respect to ecological integrity.
I'd like to get a sense from the environmental groups as to why environmental integrity is important, and what more can we do to strengthen the ecological integrity within the park? This is an urban park, so we should really set a gold standard. What are the things that we need to ensure to have ecological integrity strengthened within the park?