Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege to intervene as critic for Canadian heritage on behalf of the official opposition on Bill C-48, the marine conservation act at second reading.
I will begin by saying that we oppose this bill.
The secretary of state has certainly painted a beautiful picture of a country called Canada which all of us in this House love and hold dear.
We in the opposition agree with the principle of ecosystem protection. That is not the issue and not the problem. What we disagree with is the process and how it is being done. This bill is poorly written.
The secretary of state has indicated that he feels this bill belongs to parks, but there really is no connection between land, parks and water and marine conservation districts or areas. When most people hear about parks they think about places they can go to and experience with their families. They think about protected areas that will be around for centuries so that all future generations will benefit from them.
What we have here is a marine conservation act that is really about the conservation of marine areas. In other words, it really should be in the hands of the environment minister.
This bill is also about fulfilling, in a rushed manner, the obligations this country has in terms of United Nations initiatives on ecosystem protection. Australia has quite a comprehensive program and plan, but it spent a lot of years doing extensive consultation, study and research. This government, I believe, is rushing it this time to fulfil a requirement on its part.
The biggest reason we object to this bill is that it is really a grab for power again. We find that a lot of bills that come before this House, after reading them, have too many places where the minister has the power by order in council to change the bill. This bill is another one.
I will debate this a little later, but I am surprised that there is no schedule in terms of the areas that the government wishes to establish. In other words, we need to be more definitive in terms of what will happen if this bill becomes law. There is no doubt that this is another bill that will leave Canadians with the short end of the stick while the government will end up with most of the stick.
Consultation is another problem. Consultation is quite a word. Everybody has a different definition of consultation. The secretary of state indicated that they sent out 3,000 pieces of mail to various groups in the country. It would be interesting to see the types of responses they received. It is all right to consult people, but let the people you are consulting with know what the results are. If this is the same kind of consultation that the former justice minister had with Bill C-68, I am afraid I do not have a lot of faith in this government's consultation process.
I travelled extensively throughout the summer. I talked to people from different parts of the country. I was asking them about this government's consultation process. Lo and behold I found out that people are invited to meetings, but they get responses like “Sorry you cannot make it in the middle of the week because you have a job” or “It is too bad it is snowing. There is a storm, but the meeting has to take place anyway”. A lot of questions were raised over the summer that made me believe people do not have a lot of faith in the consultative process of this government.
We appreciate the amount of work done by the Secretary of State for Parks, his officials and staff in preparing this bill. The senior minister, the Minister of Canadian Heritage, really cares about parks. Banff is probably a good example. She makes comments here and there in her travels. She has travelled extensively on the issue. I assume that is why she travels all over the world. During the first six months of this year she must have been preparing herself and her department. The minister must have thought it so important that she and her staff used one of the Department of National Defence Challenger jets.
On February 6 and February 7 the heritage minister travelled by Challenger corporate jet from Ottawa to Charlottetown and back at a cited cost of $7,439 and at an extended cost of $31,933. The cited cost is what National Defence gives as a cost apart from all the overhead and capital costs of maintaining the jet. The extended cost takes into account maintenance, salaries, overhead and other expenses.
On February 12 and February 13 the heritage minister travelled by Challenger jet from Ottawa to Winnipeg and back at a cited cost of $26,000 and at an extended cost of about $54,474.
On March 25 and March 26 the heritage minister, or should I say the minister of Challenger jets, travelled from Ottawa to that great national park of Toronto at a cited cost of $4,157 and at an extended cost of $17,845.
On May 1 through May 4 the Challenger jet minister travelled from Ottawa to Hamilton to see the hockey coliseum of the famous name. She went on to Barbados, to Recife in Brazil, back to Barbados and back to Ottawa. This little fact finding tour set taxpayers back a cited cost of $45,510 and an extended cost of $195,354.
I am doing this to show that we need more accountability and more credibility from the minister of heritage.
On May 9 the minister travelled from Ottawa to Yarmouth, to Greenwood and back at a cited cost of $7,658 and at an extended cost of—