Environment Committee on Sept. 21st, 2017

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

This kind of legislation would perhaps for, say, federally owned historic sites put commemorative integrity first. It would give that kind of protection and would either mandate or specify that expenditure of federal funds on these conservation practices was legitimate.

[Gordon Bennett]

Exactly.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Okay.

[Gordon Bennett]

It's just as the Canadian Environmental Protection Act gives departments and agencies the authority to spend money on environmental assessment.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

But the intent was never to pull those national historic sites out of the other custodial departments and, say, put them under Parks Canada; it was to leave them out under the departments.

[Gordon Bennett]

No, John. In my dreams I thought it would be lovely to come to work on Parliament Hill every day, which in my view is a premier national historic site. The idea was not to do that.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Okay.

[Gordon Bennett]

Ongoing use is a very important function of heritage character.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

There is so much to explore here, but I have to cut you off. I'm sorry.

Mr. Stetski.

[Wayne Stetski, NDP, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

I get only three minutes, so I'll be quick.

John, were you saying that you weren't able to get copies of the legislation that Mr. Bennett referred to from 14 years ago?

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

We're going to work on it.

[Wayne Stetski, NDP, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Okay, thank you, because I think that's really important.

I want to step outside my comfort box, and perhaps yours. We have a Minister of Canadian Heritage, and Parks Canada ends up currently being responsible for much of heritage. I went through the minister's mandate and there were 13 priorities. One talks about working with the Minister of Infrastructure and Communities to make significant new investments in cultural infrastructure, and another was to work in collaboration with the Minister of Indigenous and North Affairs to provide new funding to promote, preserve, and enhance indigenous languages and cultures. Is Parks Canada the right place to house heritage?

I have to tell you that I'm the NDP critic, but I refer to myself as an advocate for national parks, and I really am. Should there be a separate ministry of Canadian heritage that actually includes this portfolio from Parks Canada, and would that potentially improve things?

Christina, you look as though you'd like to start.

[Prof. Christina Cameron]

It's because Gordon and I don't agree on this point, so I'll give you my quick hit and give him some time.

I was very disappointed that the Minister of Environment's mandate letter did not include cultural heritage. I'll leave that there. I know he'll have more to say about that. The main argument for keeping Parks Canada together has always been an operational argument. In other words, when you deliver at the field level, the country is divided into units and they coordinate the delivery at the field level, and Canadian Heritage doesn't operate on the land like that. That's always been the argument for that side.

Now if I can pass it to Gordon, you'll hear the other point of view.

[Gordon Bennett]

Obviously, I think you could say, a major reason why this legislative initiative petered out was that at the end of 2003, control and supervision of the Parks Canada Agency was transferred from the Minister of Canadian Heritage to the Minister of the Environment. Clearly this was a priority for the Minister of Canadian Heritage. It was not a priority for successive Ministers of the Environment.

I guess the place to really begin is whether the government and whether the minister thinks that this is a good fit. Christina referred to the mandate letter, which contained five explicit references to national parks, one implicit reference to national parks, three references to marine and coastal area conservation, and not a single reference to any of the cultural heritage programs that the minister is responsible for. I'm not blaming the minister. I'm not even blaming the government. I think it's just an assumption that everybody makes that this sort of heritage probably resides somewhere else. There's nothing malicious; that's just the way it is.

I think if the minister is interested in retaining those responsibilities, there has to be a general legislative provision, as exists in Australia, that clearly states the minister's responsibilities. The minister is responsible for the Department of the Environment. The Department of the Environment has no mandate in cultural heritage. Parks Canada is not part of the Department of the Environment, and it's not part of the Department of the Environment for good reasons, which I won't go into here.

I think there are some options. One, look at making sure that the minister and Parks Canada accord much greater attention to this than has been given to date. Two, if in fact it is perceived that these programs are not a good fit, one could look at the CEO of Parks Canada reporting to another minister in respect to these cultural heritage programs and continuing to report to the Minister of the Environment for the others. Three, given what's happened to historic sites, I'm not sure breaking them out of Parks Canada now would do any further damage than has already been done over the last few years.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

Okay. I let you run for an extra two minutes because I could see that we had time to do a two-minute round and I thought everybody was very interested in the answer to that question. I took privilege there and just went ahead and let it run, so we're going to give two minutes to the Conservatives and two minutes to the Liberals, and then we'll wrap it up.

Go ahead, whoever wants to take it.

[Wayne Stetski, NDP, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Sure.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

We'll do the same thing we did Tuesday. Just do another two minutes.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Aldag, for your references to Riding Mountain National Park. We'll have to have a conversation offline about the glories of my park.

Back in 2014, the Prime Minister announced the $2.8-billion program—I'm going to quote here from a newspaper article—“to support infrastructure improvements to heritage, tourism, waterway and highway assets located within national historic sites, national parks, and national marine conservation across Canada. These investments by the Government of Canada include the largest infrastructure plan at Parks Canada in its 104 year history.” It was an announcement that I was very proud our government made at the time. I'm not trying to be too partisan here, but the money was there.

I want to ask you a couple of quick questions. Is that money being well spent on heritage preservation, in your view? I gather that the money was for a three-year period. Should that program continue?

Dr. Cameron.

[Prof. Christina Cameron]

I honestly can't answer that. I'm not inside anymore. I don't know how it was allocated. Really, I haven't done a study of that. I think this is something an auditor general would come through and do another report on to see how it had addressed some of the failings that were identified.

Sorry, that's not a very good answer.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Okay.

Mr. Bennett.

[Gordon Bennett]

I 'd say the same thing. The last departmental performance report contained no information for Parks Canada on how much money was spent on national historic sites.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Again, I find that lack of knowledge quite surprising. It was a major, major announcement. I think it's part of the reason Mr. Aldag talked about some of the improvements that occurred in the parks.

Dr. Cameron, does a heritage site have to have national significance or do locally significant sites that are precious and dear to local communities also deserve national consideration, even though they may not have a national significance?

In my own case, I'm thinking particularly of the Ukrainian migration to western Canada, and that kind of thing.

[Prof. Christina Cameron]

I think you've had Dr. Alway in to talk about how that process works, so I won't repeat that.

I think the idea of the Canadian Register of Historic Places was really designed to capture exactly what you're talking about, and that in terms of federal jurisdiction the responsibility is that no federal action would negatively impact such a place. As you know, property is mostly provincially distributed, so the protection for a locally important site probably comes from a municipality, as delegated from the province. The federal part can be that the federal government commits to not allocating any funds or taking any action that would negatively impact any registered property.

[The Chair, Liberal, Deb Schulte]

You have 30 seconds.