Mr. Speaker, I will be dividing my time with the member for Calgary East.
Creation of the new park of Tuktut Nogait is a good idea. We should have some tundra hills preserved for posterity. However, I would hasten to point out that this site certainly is not unique. There are hundreds of thousands of square kilometres of virtually identical terrain. The boundaries that were arbitrarily developed are not necessarily the ideal ones. It is very unfortunate that they were established without any environmental assessment and without a resource inventory.
As a matter of fact, with respect to the resource inventory, there was a mining company with exploration rights on a portion of that park. It was proposed as the hon. member for Rimouski—Mitis has just explained to have a small portion of the proposed area removed so that the mining company's exploration program could proceed. The proposal by the Inuvialuit was actually presented by no less a personage than Nellie Cournoyea.
Nevertheless the government in its wisdom has decided to press on. The mining company was pressured to “voluntarily” relinquish its rights and here we are. It is the usual story of urban know it alls from central Canada dictating to the local people with respect to parks.
Unlike the great parks of the Rocky Mountains which have negligible mineral potential, Tuktut Nogait may contain economically important deposits. Nobody knows because nobody has ever made a serious effort to find out.
Fortunately future generations will be able, I suppose if it is deemed in the public interest, to change the boundaries of the already established park. But why not start out correctly from the very beginning? There should have been an assessment. This should be true of any new park.
There should always be an economic and environmental assessment, a cost benefit study to decide where the park should precisely be and then cast the boundaries in stone. Do not just draw lines on maps and say “Gee I think it is a good idea to have a park here”. It requires a bit of science and a little thought.
As far as the possible disturbance of the bluenose caribou by this exploration proposed in two and half per cent of the park is concerned, my personal observation is that caribou are quite compatible with human activity. I have seen them browsing in the shadow of a mine headframe. It is well-known that prospectors or explorers in the barren lands have had their tents knocked down because the caribou find that they are very convenient rubbing posts. Caribou are not shy animals; they are anything but.
The local people regard them as being a little on the dumb side and easy pickings for hunters. There is not much glory, not much honour, going out and shooting a caribou. It is like going out and milking a cow on the farm.
Talking about interfering with local people, just a few days ago our revered heritage minister vetoed a very carefully thought out and democratically approved development plan in Banff park. The local people looked at this very carefully. They decided what they felt was needed, decided what was suitable for their own particular environment. But no, our heritage minister gets up on her white horse, comes roaring in and says “They shall not do it. Never”.
The same people in Banff had to fight for years to preserve their airstrip. Fortunately they were able to enlist the assistance of the Canadian Air Line Pilots Association who pointed out that the airstrip in Banff as well as the one in Jasper are very important for safety reasons, for emergency landings.
They have been able to keep the airstrips but one wonders what the furore was about. Both of these parks are bisected by a highway and a railway. They were going to shut down a little 3,000 foot grass strip, which is highly essential to the preservation of human life, because somebody got a bug in their ear. Anyway, that battle has been won.
Hopefully when the present minister is sent to her reward with whatever patronage appointment she will get, this airstrip will again be returned for the local people to use. There are people in Banff who fly and use their aircraft for search and rescue. They have done so for many years.
Eventually I think they will get their airstrip back. It probably will revert to the situation which existed wherein they did the maintenance work at no cost to the federal government. Since these airstrips are going to be strictly for emergency use, the federal government's parks department will have to cut the grass and plough the snow.
I have another example of the local people being run over roughshod by Parks Canada.
This one is rather near and dear to me because it is in my own riding, the Grasslands park in southern Saskatchewan. The local people are really frightened by this vast area of ungrazed prairie which is beside their farms and ranches. This is a powder keg, a potential fire hazard of unparalleled proportions. They have begged and pleaded with Parks Canada to allow limited grazing of cattle in that park.
The natural condition of the prairie land is to be grazed by large ungulate. They used to be called buffalo. We have no buffalo any more. So not only does the prairie grow wild and present this terrible fire hazard, but it is deteriorating because in the natural balance certain species tend to overcrowd the others when ground is not grazed. Any rancher knows this, but the academic geniuses in Parks Canada who have never probably seen a cow or a buffalo or a blade of grass do not know what is happening out there.
The same parks people also continually get into unpleasant situations with the local people simply by being bad neighbours. They unlawfully impound stray livestock, for example. They refuse to participate in the maintenance of line fences. They say “that is your problem”.
On one occasion they actually were convinced under great duress to put up a fence. A fence the local ranchers had moved off the survey line for generations was then placed exactly on the survey line right down the middle of a creek. Brilliance. So naturally the first spring it went away and there was no fence at all and the rancher had to rebuild the fence back on his own land.
The problem with stray livestock was taken seriously enough that the local municipal government has passed the only open herd law in Saskatchewan that I am aware of. You can now run your cattle anywhere, including on your neighbour's front lawn, between I think October 1 and April 1, simply because Parks Canada is so obdurate that they will not get along with their neighbours.
I have to leave some time for my hon. colleague but I could go on for a long time about people at Parks Canada, some of my favourite whipping people.