Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to have the opportunity as the Secretary of State for Parks to address this important piece of legislation.
This is my first opportunity as secretary to have legislation in this House. I believe that when this is passed it will form an important step, an important part of what we are trying to do in this country to protect our special places.
Bill C-7, the establishment of this park, represents some important initiatives, some important achievements. This is the first time ever that we will have a federal-provincial marine park established in legislation and I think that is a good milestone. It is a good accomplishment and it is something excellent that this House is moving toward.
It is moving on a broader sense to completing and working on what we hope to have one day, a national group or national plan of marine conservation areas. We recently published some material. We indicated there are some 29 specific marine ecosystems, marine environments that we want to protect and this represents one of the steps along that way.
I think it is an important step in protecting a very critical ecosystem in that part of the country where the St. Lawrence and the Saguenay meet and in particular, as some other members have mentioned, the protection of the beluga whale.
As was mentioned by the previous speaker, it is a good example of this government's working with its provincial counterparts to achieve some important objectives in this country.
As I said, this represents our achieving some very broad principles which we are dedicated to as a government. We believe it is important that we work toward protecting our built and natural heritage, that we ensure that we can pass on, unimpaired, to future generations these special places we have in Canada. This legislation is one step toward that important objective.
What we will be doing is honouring what happened over 100 years ago when people had the foresight to establish the first national park in Banff. We look back to that over 100 years ago and we see how much foresight those people had when they undertook that.
I hope with the actions we are taking in this House today that 100 years from now generations will be able to look back to us and say that we shared the same foresight as the people did over 100 years ago who first began the national parks in western Canada.
It is important to note as well that we are doing this, we are providing this protection as a public trust in this country under a public mandate and to be answerable for all Canadians from coast to coast.
Bill C-7, which establishes this marine park, is one part of an overall strategy that we are undertaking as a government, that we are undertaking as a nation, to protect our special places. We undertake that in a large number of ways.
As I alluded, we have an extensive national park system. Indeed today we have 38 national parks. We also protect our national historic sites. Through the Historic Sites and Monuments Board we have designated over 700 important areas in Canada as national historic sites. Parks Canada operates directly almost 130 of them. We are able to protect and to ensure our heritage for future generations.
In addition, a number of important canals and waterways are recognized as historic and come under the mandate of Parks Canada, waterways such as the Chambly Canal in Quebec, the Rideau Canada in Ontario and the Trent-Severn Waterway near my own home riding of Parry Sound—Muskoka.
We have talked about the legislation in terms of co-operation with the provinces. We also operate with the provinces the Canadian heritage river system. We have an opportunity to work with our provincial counterparts on important waterways within Canada that have been nominated by the provinces that have come forward to the federal government. Between those nominated and those designated we have almost 30 such waterways in Canada.
We also work to protect our national heritage railways stations so that a very important part of our Canadian heritage, our Canadian history, will be maintained for future generations. Parks Canada works with other government departments to protect the built heritage already contained within the federal government.
I am pleased as the Secretary of State for Parks to have the opportunity to pursue a number of policies that will help us continue to do those types of things in the future and continue to protect those special places.
One commitment we have made is one that I believe is shared as a good objective by most Canadians. I am referring to the expansion of our national parks system. As I mentioned earlier we have 38 national parks. We have designated 39 specific geographic areas in Canada that we would like to see a park represented within. We have 38 parks and we are represented in 24 of them.
We are working actively in co-operation with provincial government, with territorial governments, with first nations, with other aboriginal groups and with stakeholders to expand the park system so that early in the next century we will be able to say we are represented with a national park in all 39 regions.
Good progress has been made. Within the last two years we have set aside close to 60,000 square kilometres for protection. That is important progress. I am pleased we have been able to accomplish it.
Later in this session I hope to be able to table amendments to the National Parks Act which will provide a legislative framework to achieve these accomplishments even more efficiently and with a streamlined process that will allow us to provide protection in an orderly fashion.
In terms of the work we are doing in protecting our special places, we are committed to undertake an ecological review of existing parks. We will be proceeding with that objective in the near future. It is important not only to look at expanding the parks system but to make sure those parks within the framework right now, the ones that exist today, are being correctly managed and correctly protected.
In terms of protecting our special places we announced in the 1996 budget the movement to a Parks Canada agency. This will be a public body reporting directly to the minister and accountable to parliament. It will help to provide new organizational, financial and human resources tools to the employees of Parks Canada. It will allow us to apply our resources such that we can go even further in protecting our special places.
We hope to build on Bill C-7, on the establishment of the Saguenay—St. Lawrence marine park. We have held extensive consultations with Canadians to move forward with comprehensive legislation within which other marine conservation areas can be established.
Our government has aggressive objectives that we hope to put in place over the next several months so that we as a nation, as Canadians, can recognize the specialness, the uniqueness of what we have. When we had the opportunity to travel around the country we learned very quickly that we have some of the most beautiful places in the world right here in Canada. Part of our parks system is to ensure those special places are not only for the enjoyment of this generation of Canadians. The responsibility we intend to live up to is to ensure those special places are there unimpaired for future generations to enjoy.
That is our dual mandate. That is what we wish to accomplish and that is why we are bringing forward this type of legislation and the other tools I mentioned that will give us the ability to protect those areas for today as well as for the future.
Some important principles in establishing this park with Bill C-7 can be applied as we move forward in the future. This is the product of an agreement between different levels of government. It is important to see that kind of co-operation. We in Parks Canada ensure that we work with our partners, with the provincial and territorial governments, with the first nations, aboriginal groups and stakeholders, to make sure we have a consensus and an understanding of where we want to go.
In my time as a secretary of state and in talking to Canadians from coast to coast to coast I have noticed a deep desire among Canadians to see us move forward with these programs, to see us move forward with the protection of our special places.
The establishment of this park and the establishment of other parks and other historic sites should represent an expression of public will and not government working in isolation. That is why we took so much time, and I think appropriately so, on the consultative process. We wanted to make sure various components within the community, such as the public at large, the commercial components or the business components, understood, appreciated and bought into the types of objectives we were trying to achieve.
The bill helps to protect a very important and fragile marine ecosystem in that part of the country. That is the genesis of the bill. That is why we have moved forward. That is why we have co-operation between governments and the buy in of the public. They see the importance of protecting the ecosystem for conservation purposes and for the benefit of future and present Canadians.
As we operate our existing parks and historic sites, and as we move forward to create more, it is important to ensure that we have an opportunity through these facilities to educate Canadians; that we have an opportunity to provide them with recreational opportunities; and that we an opportunity to allow Canadians to celebrate the specialness of our unique land and to celebrate the specialness of what we are. That is important and that is part of what we do.
In conclusion, I urge the House to support the legislation, to allow it to move forward, to be passed and to come into law so we will have accomplished one more important step in protecting the nation's special places.