Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Skeena.
I am pleased to rise to speak on Bill C-29, the parks Canada agency act. My Reform colleagues and I are committed to having our national parks and heritage sites administered in an accountable, efficient and cost effective manner. We support the concept of cost recovery, but at the same time fees should not be levied at such a level that would deter people from using the parks. The national parks, after all, belong to the people of Canada.
The people of Dauphin—Swan River are fortunate to have a national park located in the centre of their riding. It is a beautiful park, possibly 70 miles by 30 miles, and is within an hour's drive for all residents of the riding.
The area that I would like to concentrate on in this brief time is the area of accountability.
Bill C-29 states that the agency will report directly to the Minister of Canadian Heritage who, in turn, will be accountable for its activities before parliament. Current mechanisms to ensure responsible public dialogue and accountability will be enhanced. I agree with that objective, but I will say that from my experience with Parks Canada we have a long way to go before that occurs.
A bi-annual review or forum of stakeholder groups will be conducted to provide an opportunity for public dialogue.
What I would like to do at this time is to relate my experiences regarding the national park located in my riding and basically talk about the process of consultation. I hope that with a new Parks Canada Agency Act the same mistakes will not be made.
Several years ago Parks Canada took on the task of restructuring the organization. The first thing it did was to notify the public and the stakeholders in my riding that it was going to hold meetings, which it did. As a former mayor of Dauphin I attended. Lo and behold, when the report came out, guess what happened? It forgot about listing the town of Dauphin. In fact, I complained about this very issue, but to no avail. It is obvious that in the report the meeting that was held in Dauphin was not there. Obviously we did not have a meeting. We had a meeting, but we really did not have a meeting. Surely this type of behaviour is unacceptable.
I hope this is not the way the new parks agency will conduct its consultations. By the way, the final report did not completely reflect the views of the stakeholders of the region. What it did reflect were the views of the parks officials and the bureaucrats.
The common point of view was that this consultation process was exercised so that Parks Canada could cut jobs. This it certainly did after the report was released.
Who will be the watchdog of the new Parks Canada Agency? Who will make sure that the consultations will not be a repeat of my own experience?
I would like to read a paragraph from a letter written by a 15 year employee of the park who resigned due to this reorganization. This individual had experienced many wonderful years in the employ of Parks Canada, except for his last couple of years. He states in his letter:
However, due to many reasons, both work oriented and personal, I feel that my services are no longer beneficial for myself or the department. It has become very clear to me that my health has diminished and the stress level I am experiencing is intolerable. I have honestly persevered for approximately two years whereby specific individuals engaged in activities that I feel are not only legally unacceptable, but also morally unacceptable. As a result, the working environment has suffered considerably. Therefore I am unable to work in the conditions that now exist within my department. The low staff morale, the high double standards, unfair favouritism, lack of respect and authority along with the continual individual personal attacks on myself and others is beyond control.
It is my hope that the new parks agency will deal with its personnel in a more rational manner. I say again, who will be the watchdog of this new parks agency? The legislation says that it will report to the minister. Big deal. What does that mean? If the minister does not care to take an interest, where do we go from there? This has already happened in my experience in dealing with Parks Canada.
Another area I would like to talk about is cost recovery. I agree that we need to practise this principle. Even here there are limitations. The Wasagaming Chamber of Commerce is concerned that at this time the concept of cost recovery is exercised beyond what is reasonable. It is not considered reasonable for the park to charge local residents who live nearby when they enter the park to buy an ice cream cone.
The chamber of commerce is very concerned when the town site of Riding Mountain National Park is compared to the town site of Banff National Park. Obviously we cannot compare those two different places. There is probably no town site that could be compared to Banff National Park.
Chief Dwayne Blackbird of the Keesikownan Indian Reserve has concerns that they will not be considered as stakeholders in any future discussions with the new parks agency. A portion of Chief Blackbird's reservation is inside the boundary of the Riding Mountain National Park.
The town of Dauphin is also concerned about the new agency because of the water supply. Their water supply comes from the park. They were there before the park came into existence. Obviously they should have some historical rights to water.
Another concern is the decision of Parks Canada to clear cut 80,000 mature white spruce trees from inside the boundaries of the national park. Has anyone ever heard of that, cutting down 80,000 mature white spruce trees inside a national park in this country? I thought parks were to preserve our forests.
Once in a while we hear the threat from Parks Canada that it will charge users of the provincial trunk highway, which travels north and south through the national park. It is a direct access road between Dauphin and Brandon.
The last concern that I will mention concerns the historical rights of access to a road closed by the park during the 1960s which connects the towns of Grandview and Rossburn. This was done without any consultation with the local people. Currently there are seven municipalities which have lobbied hard to have the access road re-opened.
I will close by saying that these and other decisions made over the last many years continue to puzzle the people in my constituency. The people of Dauphin—Swan River want to see more transparency in how decisions are made. People want to be involved in the process and they want the process to be honest. They do not want consultation and then see something totally different written on paper.
One of the problems is that the park superintendent has too much power. At the present time the park superintendent or the director general has total authority within the boundaries of the park.
I challenge the new Parks Canada Agency to put into practice its proposal for enhancing accountability to Canadians. After all, it is the taxpayers of Canada who own the parks.