Mr. Speaker, this bill is so important I had to rise today and speak to it.
I do not often find myself in agreement with members of the Bloc Quebecois but on this particular bill they are absolutely right.
What on earth is the federal government doing dictating to the provinces what their marine conservation strategy should be? These are provincial jurisdictions. They always have been. I do not understand where the federal government gets off thinking it is going to somehow make our national unity problem easier to resolve when it keeps forever intruding into provincial jurisdictions on a more and more draconian basis.
I come from northern British Columbia. I have lived all my life there. I think I represent the point of view of most of the constituents I represent who live in northwest British Columbia. I am a skier, a boater and a recreational fisherman. I do a lot of hiking in the back country. I am a hunter. I spend a great deal of my recreational time in the great outdoors. I for one am very concerned and very interested in seeing that it is there for my children and their children, but in Canada we have gone completely overboard in pursuit of this radical environmentalist and preservationist agenda.
One of my colleagues in the Progressive Conservative Party who spoke earlier was lauding the accomplishments of the previous government in the creation of South Moresby park in the Queen Charlotte Islands. That certainly waved a red flag in front of me. It is easy for that hon. member to pontificate on what the creation of South Moresby park meant because he lives 4,000 miles away. He is not the one who has to go out in the middle of the night when some poor family is moving out, taking everything they own in the back of a pickup.
People have been forced out of work. There are no economic opportunities left for them any more. The logging industry was shut down on the strength of a bunch of lies and half truths and mistruths on the part of the radical environmentalist and preservationist agenda.
The Queen Charlotte Islands are an archipelago comprised of two major islands. South Moresby is the large island on the south part of archipelago. In the mid-1980s radical environmentalists, preservationists and others with a hidden agenda made a concerted effort to convince ordinary decent Canadians that something which should not be happening was taking place on the Queen Charlotte Islands. They tried with the help of the media to persuade Canadians that clear cutting was taking place, the Queen Charlotte Islands were being decimated, the environment was being ruined, wildlife was being driven out and there was going to be no future if something was not done.
In 1986 the Government of Canada under Brian Mulroney and the provincial government created South Moresby park. The effect was that it stopped all logging in South Moresby. People were told that there was going to be—