Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for the opportunity to address this committee.
My name is Al Speyers. I'm president of the Alliance to Save Our Green Belt, ATSOG.
ATSOG was established in 1993 to help protect and enhance the national capital greenbelt. We are also members of the Greenspace Alliance of Canada's Capital and the Greenbelt Coalition of Canada's Capital Region .
Today I want to focus on a couple of points in the proposed amendments to the National Capital Act. The first point will deal somewhat indirectly with the boundaries of Gatineau Park as they appear now in the proposed act, as found under schedule 2. The other point I would like to raise relates to proposed section 18, as well as to proposed section 10.2, which deals with the national interest land mass. We'd also like to add at this time that my comments today are very consistent with comments made by Minister Baird, who appeared before this committee on Monday of last week.
First, while we clearly see the need to delineate the boundaries of Gatineau Park in order to enhance the long-term protection of the park against future erosion by development, unfortunately Bill C-37 offers no such protection for the national capital greenbelt.
It may be of interest to you that when the Diefenbaker government decided in the 1950s to implement one of the key recommendations of Jacques Gréber's report on a plan for the national capital, moneys were released by Treasury Board to the NCC specifically to begin the expropriation of land needed for the national capital greenbelt. Approximately 350 farms were thus obtained through this painful process, which eliminated the livelihoods of hundreds of people as well as those of their descendants. However, in spite of funds being released specifically for the creation of a greenbelt, today, more than 50 years later, the greenbelt remains unmentioned in any federal statute or regulation. It is, instead, rolled into the more general NILM, or national interest land mass, without any special protection of this very valuable national treasure.
We support and share Minister Baird's concerns that the greenbelt should not be whittled away and serve as a land bank for municipal projects. In our more enthusiastic moments, we had hoped that perhaps a new statute protecting the greenbelt could be enacted, such as a National Capital Greenbelt Act or something similar, to give it more recognition, more protection, more permanence. However, nowhere in the proposed amendments do we find a direct reference to our greenbelt and nowhere do we find what the Gatineau Park now enjoys, a definition of its boundaries.
At a minimum, we had hoped that the greenbelt's boundaries could be enshrined in either the new National Capital Act or in some other federal legislation to help elevate this significant land mass and preserve it for posterity. In fact, a number of years ago we met with some senior representatives from Parks Canada to explore the possibility, the concept of providing for the greenbelt the same level of protection Canada's national parks enjoy under the National Parks Act. However, if this is perhaps not feasible at this time, we would urge that an important outcome of the current NCC review of the 1996 greenbelt master plan would be to ensure that there are adequate legislative protections for the greenbelt. This would be consistent with recommendation 8 of the panel on the NCC mandate review, which appears on page 31 of their report.
Mr. Chair and honourable members, I cannot overemphasize the need to codify our greenbelt in a federal statute. As recently as 1989, as a follow-up to recommendations made by what was then the Nielsen task force, the NCC's budget was cut significantly, and the NCC was then told to in effect sell land under its jurisdiction to make up the shortfall. To accomplish this, the National Capital Act was then amended to eliminate what is currently found under section 15 of the act, which provides the conditions under which the commission can buy, lease, and sell land. In addition, the commission's requirements under the Financial Administration Act were then also lifted so that the commission could keep all the proceeds of its land sales.
These changes to the National Capital Act had a profound impact on the character of the commission, which instead of being the traditional judicious steward of all our green spaces was now put in the position of having to sell off some of these lands to make ends meet. In short, the commission was transformed from the custodian of these lands to their outright owner, and now these lands are completely without protection.
The Nielson task force amendments to the National Capital Act in 1989 coincided with the need for significant areas of greenbelt land that the Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton required for a Blackburn Hamlet bypass and a Hunt Club Road extension. The greenbelt should not be a land bank for municipal projects. We are basing this observation on real events and painful experiences, of which there are more.
My second point refers to the proposed section 18 in the amendments, which states that the “Commission may expend for any purpose of the Act any money appropriated for its use by Parliament, received by it through the conduct of its operations or received by it by bequest, donation or otherwise”.
It is the phrase “received by it through the conduct of its operations” that gives us some pause. Although it appears that the conditions under which the commission can buy, lease, and sell land under its jurisdiction are defined under section 15 of the current and proposed acts, that's assuming there are no deletions or changes. The commission is the National Capital Region's largest landowner, and land transactions, which are normally outside the scope of Crown corporations, are an integral part of the NCC's operations, .
Although “conduct of its operations” can be narrowly regarded as money generated from its day-to-day operations, such as admissions to special events, a broader interpretation of this phrase could easily include income generated from the sale of lands, including greenbelt lands. To avoid the possibility that section 18 could be interpreted as nullifying, or perhaps diminishing, section 15, either the “conduct of its operations” could be more clearly defined or a special clause could be added to exclude the possibility of land sales as part of those operations.
Our concern also focuses on section 10.2, which speaks to the national interest land mass, where the commission appears to have unilateral and arbitrary powers to “revoke such a designation”. In short, the commission under this proposed amendment has the power to reclassify downward any lands it deems necessary, including greenbelt lands. Already, significant sections of our greenbelt are classified as having higher or lower ecological significance. Our concern is that the ecologically less significant lands, although part of the whole, may lose their greenbelt designation to satisfy some development proposal. Under no circumstances should there be any perception that the commission might have a personal incentive to sell lands under its jurisdiction.
Mr. Chair and members, a previous administration also made amendments to the National Capital Act, resulting in significant and permanent loss of greenbelt lands. I'm here today to ask you if you can assure us that the greenbelt is here to stay in perpetuity. It is our opinion that our greenbelt deserves no less than what Gatineau Park received under this new act. Enshrine its boundaries in this act.
Thank you.