—and Peterborough.
In the mountain parks where there is normally a tremendous requirement for snow clearing and road maintenance, although this year has not been a breeze, it has been the next thing to it. The cost has been very low. This was really quite fortunate because Parks Canada initiated a system whereby it ended up pulling the maintenance facilities for the road clearing equipment from where it should be and I believe should continue to be, back to Lake Louise.
I really hesitate to think what would have happened if we had had a normal snow year or a heavy snow year. However, the gods of snow shone favourably on this Liberal government in spite of its rather bone headed way of doing this road clearing reorganization.
My point is that the two year rolling budget is going to be beneficial exactly in that situation. When there is a low cost year, why would we turn around and paint signs and bridges that do not need painting? We would do it under the existing regime because the money had been left over from the snow clearing. But then next year, when we did not have El Niño and we ended up with a dump of snow in the parks, we would be short on budget.
As a matter of fact a couple of years ago it was so short on budget because of a heavy snowfall in Mount Revelstoke Glacier National Park. On the Trans-Canada Highway over the Rogers Pass there was a series of accidents as a result of not having sufficient salt or gravel to take care of the Trans-Canada Highway.
This is an absolutely classic example of why the parks agency is going to be such an ideal fit in its present form. We are going to look at it. We are not giving it the green light completely but at least it is a faint green light. There are some good ideas which recognize that parks in Canada are not like a theatre operation which comes under the heritage minister and they are not like a television network. Those are things that can be built up or cut down. However, we cannot build up and cut down on what we are doing with respect to natural ecosystems in parks.
In conclusion, a major concern that we have in this process and one I am sure we are going to have good co-operation on from the minister is to ensure that all interested parties, all people who will be impacted by the parks, will have an opportunity to have a say in committee.
Again I am going to remark parenthetically. There is the situation when the marine park in Quebec was set up recently. I was the parks critic and I said I was looking forward to people being able to make representations at committee. That did not happen. We basically got involved in a clause by clause study. For the people reading Hansard or the viewers who might not understand, we went over the legislation clause by clause, shall this clause pass, shall that clause pass and then boom, it was back in the House. I was very disappointed with that process.
I just want to say very clearly to the minister that will not happen on this bill. We will give everybody who was involved particularly on the human resource side an opportunity to have a kick at the can. We want them to help us understand, perhaps not only from a legal point of view but also in their judgment as they read the words, what this will mean to them in terms of everything from collective bargaining to the way in which their hours will be set, the whole nine yards.
The Reform Party will be supporting this legislation at second reading to go to committee for this process. As I said to a colleague just before I rose to speak, when I am the heritage minister I will probably do this legislation this way.