Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Motion No. 6 which would do a couple of things which I do not think are positive development in whatever parks agency we may end up with.
I am thinking of the idea of using preferential fees for local residents especially when the term local residents is not defined. It is my belief that the national parks system is for the benefit of all Canadians and it does several things.
It preserves ecologically diverse areas of the country, perhaps not always in pristine wilderness but at least it does preserve that area for future generations for all time. If there is human activity in the parks, and inevitably there will be more and more of that, at least the area has been identified and set aside for this and future generations.
Although our national parks are a treasure for the world they are also a treasure for Canadians. I do not believe we want to start differentiating between local residents and distant residents since I think all Canadians in a national institution like a park should be treated equally.
Unless we are talking about something like transit fees through a park to get to a work site or something that is a very unique situation, fees associated with the parks system should be the same for all comers when they have a Canadian licence plate on their car and they are driving in. That is good enough for me. I think we want to be very careful when we start differentiating fees in one area from another.
I think to have a fee structure based on local versus distant, administratively this could be very difficult for the people employed within the parks system. To decide who is local and how local is local would be very difficult. It may be true that all politics is local, as the saying goes, but certainly for administration of a park we want to have all Canadians treated equally.
The vast majority of national parks are located in western Canada and one of the tremendous legacies of the west has been the ability to establish these parks in different areas.
That is a benefit not only for western Canadians but for all Canadians and is something we are very proud of in western Canada. It is a bit of wilderness spirit and an ability even from a large city to be back to nature and the wilderness, often within minutes. Often this takes place in a national or provincial park.
I oppose this motion unless without better clarification as to what these definitions were about local residents. I encourage others in the House to think twice before they pick differing fee structures for different Canadians based on their province of origin or how far away they are from the park site itself. I think that is an unwise motion and I would vote against it.