Mr. Speaker, I am happy to speak once again this afternoon to Bill C-8, an act respecting marine conservation areas, at report stage.
In the motions in Group No. 3, the Bloc is proposing that clause 9 dealing with management plans be deleted. Through this clause, the government will draw up a management plan five years after the establishment of the marine conservation area.
This does not make any sense. There will be no management plan beforehand, only afterwards. The government should go back to the agreement it signed with the Government of Quebec and all the stakeholders to establish the Saguenay—St. Lawrence marine park.
The Saguenay—St. Lawrence marine park was established jointly by the Quebec and federal governments in 1997, when they passed mirror legislation. I wonder if members opposite know what that is. Mirror legislation is passed with the support of everyone concerned, following extensive consultation of all the various stakeholders. These people said “This is what we want”. They wanted a plan and the governments told them that they would pass mirror legislation. Under this legislation, the Quebec and federal governments agreed there would not be no transfer of land. The two governments will continue to exercise their respective jurisdictions. I hope our colleagues opposite now understand what it means.
Second, the park is located entirely in a marine setting. We should not forget that. It covers 1,138 square kilometres. We can just imagine how huge that is. Its boundaries may be changed by mutual consent and following public consultation by both levels of government.
As members can see, public consultation is always carried out because there is a management plan. To facilitate community involvement, Quebec and Ottawa agreed to create a co-ordinating committee, whose membership is determined by the federal minister and the provincial minister. That is what a management plan is all about.
The committee's mandate is to make recommendations to the minister responsible with regard to measures which should be taken to meet the objectives set out in the management plan. The plan will be reviewed jointly by both governments at least every seven years.
We can see that before the marine park was established through mirror legislation, there was a management plan. Under clause 9 of Bill C-8, a management plan would be prepared five years after the establishment of a marine conservation area. I think this is absolutely ridiculous.
As I was saying earlier, this bill should have never been introduced. We in the Bloc Quebecois also think that clause 28, which deals with proceedings by way of summary conviction, should be deleted.
There should have been a management plan with specific benchmarks right from the start, to avoid doing everything all over again. I do not know what language we have to use to talk to the government and tell it that enough is enough, that we already have mirror legislation containing a management plan. We have legislation on marine areas that was drafted in co-operation with all federal and provincial stakeholders. We already have that. So why is the government setting up another structure which will only create further confusion? It will be like the tower of Babel.
Perhaps hon. members do not know about the tower of Babel. People started to talk different languages and could no longer understand each other. One minute they were all talking the same language and the next they were all talking at the same time in different languages and no longer understood each other. A self-styled responsible government should not be setting up such a monstrous structure.
I believe the environment is an important issue and so are the marine conservation areas. Before the government puts the bill to a vote, let it come to my riding. We will explain how to go about this. If it does not remember how we went about establishing a conservation area in 1997, which is not exactly the distant past, we will sit down with the government and we will explain it all.
This bill is a waste of members' time and a waste of money. Members have more important issues to discuss. We will support the Bloc Quebecois amendments in Group No. 5 and we will ask that this bill be withdrawn.