Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak on second reading of Bill C-53, an act to establish the Department of Canadian Heritage.
The bill will give the new department a mandate to assume its rightful share of responsibility in administering the legislative responsibilities of the heritage department. As everyone in the House is aware, the new department came into being in 1993 with the amalgamation of several departments.
The legislation creates a department that will have responsibility in the areas of national parks, historic sites, cultural development, amateur sports, multiculturalism and official languages. All these areas were previously in five separate ministries and are now combined into one. That in itself is a very significant cost saving measure. All these areas have clear links to our identity as Canadians.
I found it very disconcerting yesterday to listen to every member of the Reform Party and how they spoke against Bill C-53. I did not hear one positive comment from that side of the House with regard to Canada's heritage. One after another they stood in their places in the House and spoke about each of the main aspects of the heritage department.
I would like to quote only one member. I am sorry the member for Kindersley-Lloydminster who just spoke had to leave. He mentioned what the new ministry was responsible for, as reported in yesterday's Hansard :
-an unruly collection of agencies which has been lumped together arbitrarily. It truly is the ministry of lost souls, a ministry put together consisting of many irrelevant and outdated agencies with nowhere else to go.
Let me mention a couple of the so-called unruly irrelevant areas the member was talking about. He was talking about the Museum of Civilization, the Museum of Nature, the National Archives, the National Arts Centre, the National Battlefields Commission, the National Film Board, the National Gallery, the National Library, the Museum of Science and Technology, Parks Canada, Heritage Sites, and on and on.
If anything shows our Canadian identity, it is those particular national agencies that we happen to be very fortunate to have in the country.
The institutions I have mentioned are some of the cultural heritage institutions of Canada. Not that many years ago I chaired for several years in the region of Ottawa-Carleton the advisory committee on the arts. I would like to explain my connection between a local regional advisory committee on the arts and the heritage department. They are very different. One is huge and one is small.
Their roles are the same, to retain the heritage of our country and to promote the language and the culture.
Without the help of a major department like the department of heritage or without the advisory committee on the arts which I just spoke of, one requires the assistance of municipal governments, regional governments, provincial and federal governments.
Without those four levels of government, culture would not survive in the country because of its size. Whether it is film, music, radio, television, archives, museums, our rivers, lakes and mountains, we as legislators have a responsibility to promote and protect.
Most of the Reform Party people come from the province of Alberta. I happened to be in Alberta two weeks ago and spent a week in the beautiful Banff resort area in the Banff National Park. What a jewel in the crown of Canada is the Banff National
Park with national funding going into that park. I am proud that all Canadians recognize the importance of not only this national park but many national parks in this country.
I mentioned the commemorative war memorial. Soldiers from every province in the country died in Europe during the wars. Have you ever gone to those cemeteries? Have you ever visited them? I did this past-