Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to rise in the House today to participate in the third reading debate on Bill C-29. This bill seeks to establish a new parks agency responsible for the administration and protection of our national parks, national historic sites and other heritage areas.
As the House knows, the responsibility for national parks presently lies with the Department of Canadian Heritage. Bill C-29 would transfer that responsibility from the heritage department to a new body that would operate at arm's length from the government.
The new agency will still be accountable to parliament through the appropriate minister. As well, accountability will be ensured since the new agency will be subject to the Access to Information Act and the auditor general will be able to report on the agency's activities.
The bill, as it was originally drafted, ensured that the chief executive officer of the agency would undertake consultations at least every two years. It committed the CEO to hold public forums and to invite interested parties to participate. However, the Liberal government has removed that provision and placed those consultations at the discretion of the minister.
As well, reference to public forums has been removed from the bill and in its place the minister will convene a round table of persons. There is no commitment to making these discussions public nor to making the minister's responses to the round table public. This is a step backwards in the bill since it leaves the public on the sidelines and consolidates more power in the hands of cabinet. That is something that we should be moving away from, not entrenching further.
There seems to be a movement within this government to diminish the role of parliament and to move decision making into cabinet and rule by regulation. I think this is a disturbing trend. It leaves many members of the House feeling powerless and ineffective.
Nevertheless, I am pleased to note that members of the heritage committee did at times work well together on this bill and some sensible amendments were the result. First of all, the name of the agency was changed to the Parks Canada Agency. Many witnesses who appeared before the committee expressed a concern that the Parks Canada brand name was going to be lost. It is a name that has international recognition. There was also a concern about costs if Parks Canada signage needed to be changed.
Accordingly, I introduced an amendment at committee stage to have the new agency renamed the Parks Canada Agency. Other members of the committee could see the sense in that, so the amendment carried. It was unusual, but the Secretary of State for Parks testified against the name change, saying that it was unnecessary.
I was pleased that the committee members were not swayed by his arguments and opted to maintain the Parks Canada name. Indeed, a great many amendments were moved at committee stage which I believe reflected the keen interest each member had in producing a good bill.
Unfortunately, one part of the bill is drafted very poorly. It is in fact redundant. I refer to clause 36 which refers to the application of the Official Languages Act.
To paraphrase, clause 36 now states that the Official Languages Act will apply to the new agency, since the agency is a federal institution.
What is wrong with that? The Official Languages Act applies to all federal institutions anyway, so there is no need to spell it out in the bill. Why is it there? It is a smoke and mirrors clause to cover the tracks of the justice minister and the member for Ottawa—Vanier.
At committee stage the member proposed an amendment, which passed, that would force the application of the Official Languages Act on subcontractors working in national parks. Make no mistake about it, despite his denials to the contrary, the intent and the objective of his amendment was obvious. He completely went against the advice and instructions not only of his own justice minister, but of justice officials who were present at the committee meeting. They told him in no uncertain terms that the Official Languages Act would apply because it is a federal agency and that by writing it specifically into the bill with specific reference to subcontractors was unprecedented and would result in the criticism that followed, that being that people who were never before subjected to the requirement of being fluently bilingual would be. Painters and garbage collectors were the examples that were used in committee that day.
He was also discussing whether it was a Liberal dominated committee. In fact it is. I invite anyone to look back at the record to see how the voting went. As far as I know, I am the only person who voted against the amendment.
Furthermore, if what he was saying was so benign and innocent, why did the Liberal officials take him behind closed doors, force him to withdraw the amendment and replace it with this new amendment? They were obviously admitting that they were making a mistake.