Transport Committee on Oct. 26th, 2009

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank the witnesses for coming here and providing a very interesting point of view about the Gatineau Park.

You'll have to bear with me a little bit, because of course my experience with national parks makes me wonder about the direction you are proposing, to perhaps turn Gatineau Park into a national park. As one who has lived next to a national park all his life, I know the depth of difficulty sometimes in dealing with national parks. Once you establish them it's very difficult to change their pattern. They have management plans that may be reviewed every 20 years. You might have a chance to intervene in the direction they take. They're designed to be ecologically very sound, and I appreciate that. As well, national parks have policies like “no more through roads”. Their direction is to reduce traffic within national parks boundaries.

So I'm curious. How would you think this would be the best structure to put over this? Can you not see that this is actually quite a special area that has a number of very integrated uses that would probably need a more flexible approach for all the residents and all the people surrounding this area? That's my concern, through what I've heard from you.

[Andrew McDermott]

Thank you.

You raised a number of great points. If you look at it historically, there has been a lot of effort put into the creation of national parks, not just in Canada but in the United States, and they've gone through a lot of pains. The creation of the first parks in the United States encountered some of the same problems that happened here with respect to Gatineau Park and, assuredly, other parks in Canada. That is the conflict between users and also the conflict between the public and private owners, because if you go anywhere there is going to be development. People are going to live somewhere, and they live in Gatineau Park right now.

Again, what was supposed to be the first national park east of the Rockies was never created as a national park essentially because of a battle. It comes down to a Hatfield-McCoy situation: the private owners against the public, and the private owners won out.

If you know anything about Gatineau Park, there are three main lakes. Well, there are four, but there are three contiguous lakes--Lac Philippe, Lac Mousseau, and Lac Meech. The people on Lac Philippe were expropriated.

[Jean-Paul Murray]

Francophones.

[Andrew McDermott]

Most of them were French. The people on Meech Lake were never expropriated.

In this bill we're not advocating for expropriation. That would be the route of a true national park act. We're looking for something special here, and it comes down to right of first refusal. No one is advocating for expropriation, and I think at the same time people have to remember how fortunate they are to live in what is supposed to be a national park.

So to your point about flexibility, it's more than flexible at present.

[Nicole DesRoches]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Quebec created national parks--“national” being the UICN appellation for national parks. They have committees. I sit on one of those committees, because in Plaisance, which is now a national park, it used to be what was called a réserve faunique, and now it's a park and there's a committee. At first, everybody was saying “Whoa, we won't be able to go there”, but there's a committee and the mayor sits on it, and people from the community. And there are diverse economic activities. It's going really well. It has been going for five years now and it's getting better and better.

I think if there are problems with national parks, maybe it's a problem of communication. When you sit down with the community around it.... And of course the community is fairly well populated around Gatineau Park. You know, part of the park is in the city of Gatineau, and there are three other municipalities around it with about 6,000 to 8,000 population, and I'm in one of them.

I think if you sit down and you deal.... Gatineau Park has a plan every five years, so I don't think that is a problem either. If you establish a committee, it's called a comité d'harmonisation. Everybody on the committee meets two or three times a year to discuss avenues, and there are friends of the park. I think there are ways of dealing with this. If we have more through-ways going through the park....

As I said, the biodiversity of western Quebec is the greatest biodiversity in Quebec. The park has the most species that are protected in one way or another. If we don't protect this park and we still have through-ways going through it, it will be a problem to protect its environment.

I might also say that a lot of people go out to the park with their bikes now, but they take their cars to carry their bikes. Obviously, they want to be there because of the environment, so you have to protect the environment if you want people to enjoy the environment. It doesn't mean that people can't do anything, but obviously you have to protect the environment if you want them to enjoy it.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

I appreciate that. I take my bike from my apartment and go all the way up into the Gatineau Hills, and I find it to be an extraordinary place. I appreciate that.

What you're suggesting, then, would be less than a formal national park but a.... I'd like to really understand what we're getting at here, because I'm very familiar with how national parks work. I want to clearly understand how you feel, if this were to be a national park, how it would work to accommodate in a very useful fashion all these pressures that are around it.

[Nicole DesRoches]

Well, it's because of the pressures that it needs to be a formalized statute. Otherwise the pressures are so great that even though you say we are protecting Gatineau Park according to the rules of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, if you don't have to, you know, you open doors, then the doors get bigger. So obviously you need a statute, a national park statute. Now, who manages it is something else, but the statute has to be a national park statute. It's the only way it will be preserved.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you.

As a point of clarification for the witnesses, the provinces of Ontario and Quebec have both been invited before the committee.

Mr. Mayes.

[Colin Mayes, Conservative, Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My first question I'd like to direct to Mr. Speyers, please. Are you saying that the NCC does not have any influence on development permit applications that currently come to local governments around the park?

[Al Speyers]

Oh yes, it does, sir. According to my understanding, it certainly does.

[Colin Mayes, Conservative, Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

So what guidelines do the local governments have to follow to ensure that the greenbelt is protected? Are there guidelines in place?

[Al Speyers]

Other than the greenbelt, for example, being mentioned by name and the boundaries being defined in the Ottawa official plan, in terms of actual guidelines of what can and cannot be done with the greenbelt, I'm not aware of any, sir.

Occasionally it's been our experience that there's some sort of a development proposal—for example, the one that comes to mind is the building of a large water theme park in the west end of the greenbelt. This happened just after the previous greenbelt master plan was completed. I don't think the ink was dry when it was announced that the commission was strongly supporting the development of a rather large tract of greenbelt land that had been defined in that plan as ecologically very significant—a natural area that linked the Stony Swamp waters with the Ottawa River—and yet they wanted to proceed with building.

We took this case to the Ontario Municipal Board and tried to resist it as much as possible. Fortunately, the business plan itself was faulty. We don't have the climate here to make a water theme park profitable, but it does indicate the constant and relentless pressure the greenbelt is under.

I should be fair. The NCC at that time was still under the amendments of the Nielsen task force, which allowed them to sell land and retain the proceeds. Since then, Minister Baird, as you know, restored the capital portion—I think $10 million annually. He has restored that, having removed at least for now the incentive for the commission to sell land and shore up its own budgetary needs.

The pressure remains. It's always there. There's road widening now with the proposed new rail system.

[Colin Mayes, Conservative, Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Do you think we need to change the jurisdictional authority in this area, or can it be done within the bylaws of the local government in the area, where they define what a greenway is and what can and cannot happen in the greenway? Do you not think that can be incorporated into the bylaws to protect those greenways?

[Al Speyers]

No, sir, for the same reason that the option was explored already in the 1950s as part of the national plan for the national capital, written by the great urban architect, Jacques Gréber. He also had no confidence in lower levels of government. He felt that the only way to have a greenbelt and to keep it was that the most senior level of government in Canada would have to establish it, maintain it, keep it, and preserve it.

We have no confidence at all, sir, from our long history with the local municipalities, and now, of course, the City of Ottawa. Cities are essentially vehicles for development. Their election campaigns are over 90% financed by the development community. Something has to stand in its way to keep this greenbelt for what it is.

As our city grows demographically and otherwise, it only increases in worth, value, and significance. If we are to maintain it as such and continue to make Ottawa a beacon or an example to the world, I think it's worthwhile doing what we can to keep it.

[Colin Mayes, Conservative, Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

First I want to say, as a former mayor of both communities that I lived in—nine years in one and two years in another—I take offence at what you had to say. We take those responsibilities to govern our communities in a way that is sustainable and preserve the environment we live in.

[Al Speyers]

I meant no offence, sir.

[Nicole DesRoches]

As long as municipalities only have revenue from taxes, they are always going to be subject to pressure from developers.

[Colin Mayes, Conservative, Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Forgive me for arguing this, but the fact is that they are duly elected and they're elected by the citizens. The citizens set out their community plans and direct their councils. I do believe in that.

Let's go back to the activities that are prohibited in a national park but right now are allowed in Gatineau Park and are having a negative impact on the park. Could you name a few of them?

Maybe I could ask this of Mr. Murray.

[Jean-Paul Murray]

Yes, indeed. Well, you can build houses on private property inside Gatineau Park. You can't drink in Gatineau Park, but you can drink in a national park—beer or wine. That's a problem, if you can keep building houses. How many properties in Gatineau Park have 100 acres, 200 acres? There's the Radmore Farm, there's the Dufour property at Kingsmere, there are properties that are ready to be developed.

If you develop property within a park, perforce you're creating pressure within the park, which will ultimately keep the people out. At Meech Lake you have houses all along the shoreline, which deny the people enjoyment of their lake.

They expropriated the francophones at Lac Philippe in 1954. Major General Howard Kennedy, who was chairman of the Federal District Commission, had a property, or his wife had a property, at Kingsmere Lake, and he advocated expropriation everywhere in Ottawa, for the greenbelt, for instance, and for the francophones up at Lac Philippe. The people at Meech Lake and Kingsmere, at the time—now the population proportion is probably about fifty-fifty English and French—allowed expropriation of the French. The people who had good parliamentary contacts and social contacts and legal contacts, well, they got to stay. As a francophone, I find that shocking. I'm appalled by that.

Sorry, I might have skated around the question—

[Colin Mayes, Conservative, Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Yes, skirted.

[Jean-Paul Murray]

—skirted, but the thing is that you can build houses in Gatineau Park on private property, and private property in all national parks is prohibited. Section 5(1)(a) of the Canada National Parks Act says no private property. What you build on in a national park is a leased piece of land, and according to national park rules and policies, mostly only for park purposes. So what is going on inside Gatineau Park right now is not for park purposes; it's for individual purposes.

As I said, we're not advocating expropriation. We sent out a brief to all members in which we explain what a right of first refusal is. It does not infringe on the individual property rights of the people; they get to keep all rights to their property up to and until the moment they decide to sell. But the NCC has a long-term policy, and it has had that policy since 1950, since Jacques Gréber, whereby it must gradually obtain all those properties for the public purpose. What we're advocating is not expropriation but giving the NCC the tools it needs to finish the job.

[Colin Mayes, Conservative, Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Do I have time?

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Monsieur Proulx.

[Marcel Proulx, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Ms. DesRoches, a little earlier you made a comment on existing and new houses.

Could you give us an explanation on that?

[Nicole DesRoches]

As Mr. Murray said, we can't permit new construction, but we aren't going to chase away the people who are already there. This is about the right of first refusal. When the park was created at Plaisance, there were houses, and there were agreements. However, the construction of new houses must stop.