Mr. Speaker, I am happy to speak to Bill C-236, an act to amend the National Parks Act. It specifically deals with the Elaho Valley near Squamish.
In the case of this private member's bill from the member for Davenport, the Liberal government is on the record as not being in favour of it. I also happen to know that the NDP member from New Westminster is not with the member on this bill, even though he can usually be relied upon to promote preserving forests in British Columbia, the taking of land from the working forest and putting it into the preservation of the forest. The province is certainly not in favour of the bill. There is a very long history to what has gone on in this valley.
I have been in this valley and in this area. I had an invitation from the union to travel to the area. I have also travelled to the area with some European parliamentarians, and with the member for Davenport as recently as September of this year.
To put it all in some context, I have worked adjacent to Pacific Rim Park and to what was then the germination of a national park in South Moresby. Both are in the same region, one of the 39 regions identified by Parks Canada as regions requiring national parks. There are already two parks in the region that are also represented by the Elaho Valley. There are other regions that have no national parks. Rightfully, the priority of the department of the government is not in this region.
B.C. has turned itself inside out in terms of land use planning, particularly on forestry issues. British Columbia has been targeted by people around the world as an area of great beauty, of great forest resources and of special forests. Consequently, the United Nations targets were adopted quite some time ago; 12% preservation. We currently exceed that number already on the coast of British Columbia, the very area covered in the bill.
We have an enviable track record. One of the things that must be considered, and the member for Davenport said it, is that this area is three hours drive from Vancouver. There are individuals in preservation oriented groups who have decided that they want to create their own domain at public expense in an area they can easily access close to Vancouver. Because 95% of the B.C. forest land is publicly owned and because provincial governments tend to respond to the public, coastal B.C. has now reached this 12% target through a public consultation process. That is the way it should be done.
There is a very strong message that can be delivered. As Canadian representatives in Europe, when we talked to European parliamentarians this spring, we talked about the fact that we have been so responsible with our forest practices in British Columbia, in Canada in the Canadian context that we tend to be targeted because we do have this substantial old growth reserve virtually across Canada. Many countries have totally diminished that old growth reserve. We are never going to get there because of our very responsible practices.
What the bill tends to do is promote continued agitation. The reality is that there are protesters in this area. I have visited the protest site. From the very site where the protest was being carried out, I could see the 30,000 hectare Glendenning Park that has just been established to satisfy land use concerns in that area. I found this most disconcerting because any users that wanted to have that old growth experience only had to go there instead of where they were.
I talked to members of the union who were working in that area. They are very frustrated. They have had months of head games and attempts to incite a response by these very professional agitators. It is not a very nice way to spend a day trying to earn a living.
In summary, the 30,000 hectare Glendenning Park does a more than adequate job. There is no great public pressure on it at this point as there is on hundreds of thousands of hectares of other preserved areas on the B.C. coast. We need to balance the environment and the jobs. This is what the provincial land use planning exercise was all about. We have gone through that in the 1990s.
I can only wonder why the member for Davenport is trying to upset this balance that we have now achieved on the coast of British Columbia.