Thank you.
We have such amazing environmental challenges: climate change, Great Lakes health, biodiversity. The World Wildlife Fund put out a report about a month ago that said, I think, that more than a half of our wildlife populations are in danger worldwide. When we have a park of public land like this, it's really important that we look at the opportunities for making it better for the public in the future. Because we have separate legislation, ecological integrity should apply.
I'd like to say in terms of connecting people with nature that we came to Ottawa 30 years ago, in 1987, with the help of the Honourable Pauline Browes, and we pitched to Parks Canada then that they should create a national park in the Rouge. With many parks you have more urban people. You have people who come from the most diverse city of our entire globe, and you want to reach out to them and connect them with our distant national parks.
The station wagon story really touched my heart, because every year we went out west to see my mother's family on Vancouver Island, and we went through our national parks and through the U.S. national parks every year; and I developed the love.
My wife's from Trinidad, and she came to Canada when she was 10. Some of her teachers took her out to the parks, and we now go camping and canoeing all over Canada. That's our vacation.
What I'm saying is that you need to reach out to urban and multicultural communities like Toronto and tell them about this wonderful nature. They get exposure to it in the Rouge, and then you open the door for them to explore our wonderful country and all the other national parks. This makes Parks Canada more relevant to a larger population in the future, so there will be more support and funding to protect these wonderful heritage areas.