Perhaps they are concerned about Liberals being an endangered species. Just because we are on the eve of an election we cannot assume that. I know for sure the Tories are, but I do not want to get rhetorical here.
I would like to mention two or three concerns of people about environmental legislation. There is broad consensus in British Columbia for public information and education on the environment being near the top of everyone's list of political concerns. Who knows why that is?
My riding gets 60 or 70 inches of rain a year. Everything from how manure is handled on dairy farms to the way logging roads are constructed in nearby mountains are key environmental concerns because what we see up the road today is likely to be washed down into our fields the day after. They are political concerns and real concerns of the people in my area.
There is also the other side. Another group of people have concerns about this type of legislation being so intrusive and restrictive on their economic activity that they cannot go about doing any modern activity without being called down by the government or being called on the carpet for supposedly harming the environment. If we take it to the extreme, too many people breathing in the lower mainland causes some kind of harm to the environment but we understand we have to deal with it the best we can.
The legislation as currently proposed is not the best way to deal with the endangered species problems in Canada. It is too intrusive. It does not take into account safe economic activity on land, whether it be farming, ranching, logging or whatever it might be.
I will refer to an example from my background. Before I came to this place I was a logging contractor. I spent my life in the woods working close to the environment. About 10 years ago the issue of the spotted owl, an endangered species by definition, became a big problem in the lower mainland. To those who are not aware, the spotted owl's supposed territory is all the rain forests of the Pacific northwest including the United States and extending a few hundred miles into the coastal rain forests of British Columbia.
The United States has similar endangered species legislation. The concern there for the spotted owl was so overwhelming that the forests were shut down. Logging was curtailed. Logging towns became ghost towns. Tens of thousands of people lost their jobs. The spotted owl was a happy little owl but the damage it caused economically totalled billions of dollars.
The spotted owl scare worked its way north into British Columbia. The spotted owl patrols began. University students, hopefully biology majors, were hired on summer vacation. Late at night they would go two by two into the woods, because it was environmentally safe to do so, where we were logging and would park their campers. At night they would broadcast tape recordings of spotted owls hooting. If they thought they heard another spotted owl respond in the distance, if they heard it hoot in the background, they would tick on their chart that there was another spotted owl somewhere. It was close by. Although they did not see it they knew it was there. They would say they heard an owl hoot in the night and would therefore shut down the logging in the entire drainage. Who knows if there were spotted owls? Nobody ever saw them but maybe they were there.
To show how silly it was, not only did the area extend several hundred miles into British Columbia but they had on their charts that spotted owls maintain their nests between 2,500 feet of elevation and 3,500 feet of elevation. That is prime logging area. A lot of the logging I did was at those levels of elevation and a lot was done up to 4,500 feet.
This is true confession time. One day we were building road in a valley. No one had ever seen or heard of a spotted owl there. Nobody really knew what they looked like. We came upon a nest in a tree and, scout's honour, it was a spotted owl's nest. There was such an animal and it was in the tree. We shut down all the logging. We shut down the road building and went to the environmentalists in the forest service office to tell them we had seen a spotted owl. We had been to the mountain top and saw the spotted owl.
They were pretty excited. Then they looked at their maps and said: "Wait a minute. You are building road at 4,000 feet. That is not the range of spotted owls. They only go to 3,500 feet. That can't be a spotted owl". We argued with them that it was a spotted owl, that we had seen it and that they should come to see it. They looked again and said: "No. Our range of spotted owls only goes to 3,500 feet so it cannot be a spotted owl. Build the road right over top of the tree". We refused to do that. We managed to get around the tree and save the spotted owl. This shows how ridiculous it can be at times to ask a modern industrial society to make allowances for spotted owls. Then when one is found and because it did not fit into some imaginary criteria they did not care about it.
The other spotted owl site is in a logging area where I spent my youth with my parents. The universities come to investigate the spotted owl that has built a nest right beside the main logging road where 40 to 50 loads of logs go by every day. The university people drive right up to the bottom of this big tree. They all stand there with their binoculars and look at this spotted owl who gets along just fine in an area where there has been logging going on for the last 40 years.
The legislation should not go through in its current form as it has too many flaws. In British Columbia the devastation cannot be overstated. Roads can be built through an entire valley system at a cost of millions. The company we contracted built the roads. After the roads were built they came in to check if there were any spotted owls. After the road is built and the work is done they say: "I think I heard a spotted owl hoot so there is no logging allowed in this valley". Business cannot be done like that.
I remember saying to them: "If there are endangered species tell us and we will work around them, but do not make arbitrary rules and put us in a position where we spend a lot of money that you cannot compensate us for". Reasonable compensation has to be worked into the legislation so that farmers, ranchers and loggers are able to do their work while they protect the environment.
I do not believe the legislation does that. That is why the amendments are necessary. We are grateful the bill will not pass in this session of Parliament.