Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca.
It gives me great pleasure to rise in support of this legislation. Some things I will be discussing shortly that are of concern to me within the legislation but let me be perfectly clear. As the heritage critic for the Reform Party and with my colleague, the Reform Party parks critic, we recognize fully the value of the national parks system to Canadians and to Canada.
The Reform Party is committed to ensuring that we have national parks today and into the future for our children and for our children's children, that there be proper protection for the environment and the ecology around all our national parks. Our party is very committed to the entire concept of environmental responsibility for generations to come.
This is a good piece of legislation in that it simplifies and makes more efficient the delivery of services. I quote from the Montreal Gazette today, an article entitled “MPs vote to keep parks bilingual”. The article states: “Several MPs feared that the new agency which will contract work out rather than use public servants will jack up entrance fees to make national parks into a money making operation”.
I have four national parks in my constituency. I work with the superintendents and I work with the people who are delivering the services to Canadians from top to bottom in those park organizations. I know that is an absolutely false concern. The concern is to continue to deliver a high level of service and protection of parks at reasonable cost.
I outlined in debate between me and an NDP member an actual case in my constituency creating a contract with a person who is now a former park employee. Painting and maintaining signs in our parks, in Kootenay National Park, is now delivered in a far more cost effective way while this individual is much more involved in his own life. This individual has his own business, he is delivering a commercial service. Now rather than being a park employee drawing wages from Parks Canada, he is delivering services to Parks Canada as a contractor.
This is a far more efficient way of working. This former employee now being in his own business is now in a situation where he becomes a taxpayer generating more work and more wealth in commerce. He has just delivered a couple of massive signs, excellent work, to my community of Wasa Lake, British Columbia.
This concern the NDP has is really unfortunate because having had the great opportunity to work with supervisors, management and hourly workers in our parks, I have discovered a core of Canadians committed to our parks. Because of the bungling by this and the former government, there has been a very serious downloading of concern and responsibility to people who were committed to the parks on one hand but on the other hand parks did not seem to be committed to them.
I look forward to this new agency as being a way of being able to straighten this out, and we are going to be able to bring some order to the management of parks. I think that is excellent.
However, I would be remiss if I did not mention the bit of silliness that was brought to this act by the member for Ottawa—Vanier and his colleague from Brossard—La Prairie.
There is a concept of law that it is bad law to put into law something that already exists. It is not only redundant, it is bad law.
By these two members' bringing forward this motion in committee that was accepted, what fundamentally happened was they brought forward something that already existed. If it did not exist what would have happened? Contrary to what the member said earlier in debate, people delivering services in the new Saguenay park, for example, who might be working on wharfs, I do not care in what language they speak to each other on the job or at home, there is no requirement for those people to be able to speak English.
Conversely, when one goes out west there is no necessity for somebody collecting garbage and cleaning up the campsites to be able to speak French. They put a piece of mischief into this legislation, albeit with every good intention. It was totally and absolutely unnecessary.
To prove the point that it was unnecessary, the top law maker in Canada, the justice minister, said this amendment was not only unnecessary but dangerous. Their colleague, the justice minister of Canada, the top law maker, said that what they did with this legislation was unfortunately a bit of a buffoonery.
It is all very well and good to stand on their bilingual high horse and try and lob salvoes at us in the Reform Party. I guess that is part of the political game the Liberals like to play. The reality is there is absolutely no necessity for this. What did the Liberals do? Last night the Reform Party came forward with an amendment. The amendment said strike this unnecessary amendment created in committee. But in order to save face they asked all their sheep to line up and vote in favour of saying that the Official Languages Act applies to this piece of legislation. Guess what? It already applies to this piece of legislation. It was simply a piece of face saving. The justice minister saw that these people had put this piece buffoonery into the legislation. Unfortunately once again the Liberal sheep lined up on the side of trying to save face.
The reality of the situation is this. This piece of legislation, notwithstanding that one silliness, has the very real potential to create efficiencies in the delivery of service and in the protection of our national parks. That is what the Reform Party is about. I believe that is what all members of this House are about, to create an environment of protection of the parks.
Let me add one caveat. The concern I have is that if we are not very careful in the way we apply protection to these parks, we have the potential to end up with a situation of making them the exclusive playground of rich people. That would be an absolute shame. I hope one of the first things Parks Canada would be taking a look at, before or after this legislation, is the whole issue of entry fees, the way the entry fees are applied to not only local residents but to individuals and automobiles.
We must be very careful while being fiscally prudent, which is what the Reform Party is all about, at the same time making sure we do not make our national parks a playground that only the rich can afford to come to.
On balance, clearly this is a good piece of legislation. My party will be supporting it with great enthusiasm.