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.