Yes, I am told that the minister and his colleagues sweated out an agreement in principle.
I will come back to my own train of thoughts. This resulted in Bill C-65. It was presented as a national agreement, whereby they all agreed on a system to come up with a list of endangered species in Canada.
The provincial environment ministers almost fell off their chairs when they learned, at the end of October 1996, a mere 30 days after the so-called national agreement, that the minister had brought forth a bill.
In just thirty days, he came up with legislation that will allow him to decide how the list of species will be drawn up and which measures will be used to protect these endangered species.
When it comes to protecting the environment, or threatened wildlife, everybody is in agreement. The Bloc Quebecois agrees that endangered species should be protected. The Quebec environment minister is also of the same opinion. However, what we disagree with is the process followed by the minister.
In Quebec, we already have legislation to protect endangered species and regulations to protect them. Why is the Minister of the Environment in Ottawa giving himself the power to act on our territories? We were prepared to work in co-operation with him. Why does he want to go over the heads of the provinces? That is the rub.
I have a few quotes I would like to share with the House. Bill C-65 came about because Canada wanted-and I think Quebec, as a future country, will do likewise-to comply with the UN international convention on biological diversity signed in 1992. This convention calls for signatory states to develop and enforce the legislation and other statutory provisions required to protect threatened species and populations. I am referring to article 8(k) of the convention.
Was it necessary for Canada to have Bill C-65 apply from coast to coast, when four provinces already have provisions and legislation protecting their environment and threatened species? They already have regulations providing for the protection of these species. I think that, once again, Ottawa is looking for confrontation with the provinces, which do not want anyone interfering in their jurisdictions.
In their red book, the Liberals said they had, and I quote: "a vision of a society that protects the long term health and diversity of all species on the planet". We could live with that, since Quebec and other provinces, like Ontario, Manitoba and New Brunswick, already had their own legislation. All they had to do was to urge their provincial counterparts who did not have similar legislation to pass some or at least to exclude those provinces which had legislation. But that is not what is happening here. You will understand that the Bloc Quebecois cannot accept that the current Minister of the Environment is grabbing that much power.
To make it quite clear what I mean when I say we represent the interests of Quebecers, I would like to quote the Quebec environment minister, Mr. Cliche, who signed the agreement establishing how the list of threatened species should be drawn up. But this was an agreement in principle basically indicating that the signatories agreed with the idea. It was then up to each of them to enforce it at home.
On October 2, 1996, Mr. Cliche said: "We cannot remain indifferent to the fact that this agreement opens the door to overlap between the future federal legislation and the act that has been in force since 1989-he is referring to the legislation in Quebec- an act that works well and has already proven useful. We risk creating more red tape instead of dedicating ourselves to what really matters to us: the fate of endangered species". As you can see, whether it is the Bloc Quebecois, or the Parti Quebecois which currently forms the Quebec government, everyone wants to protect endangered species.
However, we do not agree with the powers the minister is seeking with Bill C-65. If he wanted to make this legislation acceptable to the provinces and to the Bloc Quebecois, why did he not accept our amendments in committee, and why will he not accept the amendments that we are moving today, at report stage?
Again, these amendments only seek to obtain some assurances, because there is a legal provision whereby none of this is formally spelled out. In other words, there is a procedural defect. The federal government is trying to interfere, to take responsibility over a greater territory on environmental grounds, but Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba and New Brunswick are not happy about this, because they already have their own legislation in place.
In short, Bill C-65 gives very broad powers to the federal government regarding the protection of species and, to make things worse, this bill was concocted 30 days after an agreement was reached with the provinces. This about-face by the federal government irritated a number of provincial ministers.
Again, after expressing his support for harmonization at the Charlottetown meeting, the current environment minister came up with an all encompassing bill that has too much impact on provincial jurisdictions. We ask members opposite to come to their
senses and to support the amendments proposed by the Bloc Quebecois.