Madam Speaker, this being my first formal speech in the House of Commons in this session, I wish to congratulate you on your position in the chair and the Speaker of the House on the democratic process that we went through a couple of weeks ago. I know all of you are working very hard to make sure that parliament is conducted in a way that we can have our political differences but at the same time in a way that all decisions by the Chair are fair.
Another thing I would like to do obviously is to thank the people of Kootenay—Columbia for vesting their confidence in me. I had a vote of 62% and certainly I thank those people for their vote, but I also feel a tremendous responsibility to the other 38% who chose to vote for someone else, that they would see me as representing them in the Kootenay—Columbia constituency and be worthy of the trust the people have given me.
I was very interested in the comments of the heritage minister about her personal experience on the Atlantic. Of all the divisions within the heritage department probably parks are closest to my own heart. I have been very fortunate. My wife and I have reared three children on a lake in the Rocky Mountains. It is not unusual on my way home either to see muskrat, elk or deer. We have white swan. We have loons. We have everything constantly around us. I have a tremendous appreciation for nature.
Probably the difference—this is perhaps a personal difference and a political difference—is the vision I have of parks in Canada as creating more of a balance. There is a tension between the side of preservation of what we have in Canada and the access citizens and visitors to Canada should have to parks. Perhaps that is where we would end up with a difference of opinion.
Because of the time I have spent at my home and in our own area I have personally seen and smelled grizzly bear, seen the caribou and the moose.
About 15 years ago in the fall during the rut I was rather chagrined. I was driving a TransAm. That car rode very close to the road. As I was driving between two centres in my constituency a moose walked out very slowly. I had just finished passing a Greyhound bus and I slowed down to a stop. The moose was absolutely a gigantic, magnificent animal. He kind of looked at the front of the car with that great big thunderbird on it. I was wondering if he saw it as something he wanted to mangle or attack. I was particularly concerned about the bus coming up behind me, that somebody might honk the horn in which case this animal might do something unexpected.
That is the kind of country I come from and I am very proud to represent. I have a strong feeling about nature and what we have in Canada.
It is with that vision that I speak to the bill before us. My understanding is that this is federally enabling legislation for an agreement between Canada and Quebec, signed in 1990, to create a marine park at the confluence of the Saguenay fiord and the St. Lawrence estuary and to conserve and manage its marine resources. Bill C-7 does not involve any transfer of land. The Government of Quebec retains ownership of the seabed and subsoil resources. The Government of Canada continues to exercise its responsibility over navigation and fisheries. Existing laws remain applicable in the park.
The legislative process that we enter into in the House is very important. All steps in the process are very important. In this case the committee work will be a very valuable part of putting this important legislation in place.
There is collaboration in the involvement of local and regional organizations in protecting the site. It suggests that there is support for this 1,138 square kilometre protected zone.
It will be very important for the committee to hear from people about the issue so that we clearly understand we have representation from people and, if there are two sides to this issue, so that we clearly understand where the local people are coming from.
Funding was provided for in the February 1995 federal budget and the federal contributions toward development and operating costs totalled $20.7 million over three years. Additional funding from the federal government has been $6 million between 1989 and 1993 and $4 million for green plan funding between 1993 and 1995.
I am a little confused with the funding. It will also be an important part of the job of the committee to take a look at the issue of funding. I have the numbers for 1989-90, 1990-91, and so on and so forth all the way up to 1996-97, where I see a total of $16.3 million in federal money went into the park.
I have two figures in front of me that I find a little confusing, $20.7 million and $30.7 million. I heard the minister in her speech talk about the figure of $30.7 million. I am trying to portray the issue of the dollars and cents.
The Reform Party is noted for looking after the financial affairs of Canada and calling the government to account for the way it spends its dollars. The dollars that have been spent to this point do not appear to have been exorbitant or out of line. However there does seem to be some confusion about them. I would look to the committee to examine expenditures.
Parliament must approve all new parks and all changes to existing parks. This should ensure some accountability to parliament and ultimately to the public. Our national parks are owned by all Canadians and purportedly managed on their behalf. The legislation attempts to put in place a federal-provincial management regime that is already operational.
I also had the good fortune, as the minister just indicated, to visit Newfoundland this summer. I was on the opposite side of the island. I was at Gros Morne National Park. I cite this by way of example of the kind of work we must do in committee. I cite Gros Morne as a template. If we take a look at it we should be able to see the kinds of questions we should be asking in committee.
Gros Morne is 20 to 25 years old. It is still in the formation stages and is working under an agreement between the federal and provincial governments. The applicable laws and their enforcement come under the provincial government because enabling legislation has not been brought through the House to bring it under Parks Canada.
One of the good things I saw in Gros Morne Park was the relationship of the services being provided either to the park or to the visitors of the park. They were very simple.
In Jasper National Park, Banff, or Riding Mountain National Park in Manitoba people constantly run into conflict between commercial interests providing services to the park and its visitors because of an overlay, duplication, and many years of trying to jig and redo leases.
The beauty of Gros Morne is that the leases that have been negotiated have been done on the basis of a percentage of gross revenue. That is something we could take a look at for any leases in the Saguenay—St. Lawrence Park. We should be looking at simplifying leases, particularly for people who provide boat services and things of that nature.
Another very good thing about Gros Morne is that the towns, although geographically within the park, are nonetheless not contained within the actual park boundary. This has tremendously simplified the relationship of the towns to the park and to the park administration.
This is something we could learn about, for example, when we take a look at the conflict we are currently undergoing in the town of Banff. Jasper certainly is not far behind, as are the other towns within park boundaries.
We have a very interesting situation in Gros Morne. We are talking about the moose and land animals there. They do relate to Beluga whales and to the marine life in this marine park. The problem with moose in Gros Morne is that they are literally eating the park to death. I can see a situation forthcoming where there may even have to be a cull of moose because the park could actually be killed by the overgrazing of moose.
One interesting thing about moose in Newfoundland is that they are not actually natural to Newfoundland. They were imported at the turn of the century. I believe the year was 1906. As a consequence they have adapted to an absolutely ideal territory but unfortunately are eating the park to death.
Another interesting point is that we can learn from the Gros Morne template relative to this act and what happened with respect to the agreement on snowmobiles in Gros Morne. When the agreement was negotiated some 20 years ago there was no vision, nor could we have had a vision, of how the capability and capacity of snowmobiles could be increased to extreme heights in terms of speed and carrying people.
As a result the agreement negotiated with the people in the area at the time is now called into question. With access to the high plateau areas in Gros Morne Park there is actually what I call shoulder season problems. In other words, if the snowmobiles are out too soon, or particularly in the spring when the snowmobiles are out too late, they are actually causing damage.
That is why I am suggesting to the House and to the committee that we must take a look at flexibility in anything to do with the legislation so that we do not end up finding ourselves in a box with respect to people who are running boats in this area.
We cannot possibly foresee the technological capacity of boats that will be in this area. As a consequence we must ensure we have flexibility within any legislation and within regulations so that we do not end up with the same kind of problems with boats at Saguenay that we are currently experiencing with snowmobiles at Gros Morne.
As I indicated at the outset of my comments, I believe that the majority of people in the Reform Party and I have a different vision of Parks Canada than the minister and certainly the Liberal government. We see parks as being areas that must be properly confined and protected for the benefit of our children and our grandchildren and for the benefit of all people in the world, which is why Banff is designated a heritage site. We understand that. However, we have a lot of difficulty when we try to apply preservation techniques and policies on an area where people are already coming into the parks.
I believe there has to be a better balance and a better approach to parks and preserves. My vision of this in committee would be to look at it more from the perspective of the people who are presently going into this area. As the minister indicated, it is important to protect the beluga and its environment. At the same time we have to take into account that one of the major reasons for this park is for all Canadians and all visitors to have the potential for the same kind of experience the minister had with the whale and the iceberg.
I have one criticism that could be considered partisan. Once again the Liberal government is using the House as a rubber stamp. And it is not just the Liberal government. Between the Liberals and Conservatives who have bounced back and forth across this Chamber frequently there has been the implication that because one has a majority government, it will simply bring in the legislation in due course, in due time.
When the minister talked about “putting the final touches” on this legislation, she also indicated there was a Conservative initiative to this. Why does the legislation come at the very tag end? Why is it that when these parties are in government they consistently use the House as a rubber stamp?
All the details were worked out with the province of Quebec long before it was brought to the House for any kind of discussion. That is really unfortunate and takes me back to the first item on my shopping list for committee. The people in the area and all concerned parties must be heard relative to their support for this park. We have some documentation to back it up but let us hear the people in place.
What are the implications for commercial and sports fisheries on the St. Lawrence? What are the implications for other uses of the river? It is absolutely essential that the people who are presently using that area for its marine life be taken into account.
I cite by way of example a situation in my constituency. We in Kootenay—Columbia are part of one of the major flyways for waterfowl that come from northern Canada and head south to the U.S. and further. On the Columbia River are very delicate nesting areas. We have to be very conscious of power boats being used in specific locations on the Columbia River, otherwise we would be really fouling up the waterfowl.
However, last summer in particular several idiots on personal watercraft roared through some of these areas. I cannot imagine what if anything was going through their heads. The net result of these few people who chose not to use their brains, who were acting in a reckless and irresponsible way—there was only a handful of them—was that the B.C. ministry of environment suddenly slapped a 10-horsepower limit on an 80-mile stretch of the river.
That really flies in the teeth of the people in my constituency, the vast majority of whom are very responsible, the vast majority of whom choose to live there, as I do, because we respect the area and we respect nature. Those people use the river responsibly. Now, all of a sudden out of the clear blue sky, boom, a 10-horsepower motor limit. That kind of knee-jerk reaction by bureaucracy not only does not solve the problem but actually ends up seriously irritating responsible people.
Why do I say that it does not really solve the problem? If you could put a 10-horsepower motor on something like a canoe—which you could not do because you would sink it—and ran it full bore up the river, you would create as much damage as these personal watercraft are creating in these nesting areas. The 10-horsepower limit means nothing.
With that in mind, what are the implications for commercial and sports fisheries on the St. Lawrence as a result of this bill and particularly as a result of the overlay of park regulations? That is another question we must answer to our satisfaction to ensure that we do not end up doing things unnecessarily and making people angry.
This 10 horsepower limit is seen by myself and many others like trying to kill a mosquito with a 10 pound sledgehammer. It is unnecessary and would probably create more damage than was intended in the first place.
There is another issue. Unfortunately because of the separatist aspirations of the BQ and PQ we must take into account what kind of implications this bill may have. We cannot just say “It is all drafted and it looks fine”. We must seriously examine what this bill means, what its implications could conceivably be relative to the relationship between the federal government and the government of the province of Quebec, particularly as long as the province of Quebec is represented by people who would break up this country. We must be very careful with this bill.
Finally, what precedents does this bill establish for future parks? Probably more important, what precedents does it set for the establishment of other marine parks in Canada?
Legislation does not happen in a vacuum. Legislation works almost like an onion, layer upon layer. For the people in the rest of Canada who may have a marine park brought forward in their area, we must be very careful to determine what precedents this bill establishes. We cannot see the establishment of this park and the marine control in isolation.
The minister has already said there is a movement afoot—probably a good movement—to establish a full park system. If we do not take into account what happens on the west and north coasts as it relates to marine life and the use of that water by existing and potential future users, we would be making a mistake.
We are concerned about a number of things. We insist the committee go through these questions and other questions that will be raised by other members. This will not be a committee rubber stamp process, nor do I expect it to be. The parliamentary secretary, the secretary of state and the chairman of the heritage committee are fine gentlemen who will see to it that this is not a rubber stamp process and that we will have the opportunity, in a totally non-partisan way, to establish answers to some of the questions I have posed and hopefully some of the questions that other members will pose.
However, because we do believe this is a good bill in principle, the Reform Party will support it at second reading.