Madam Speaker, I am happy to rise in the House today to express my concerns about the legislation respecting the national marine conservation areas of Canada, Bill C-10, which brings back the former bills C-8 and C-48 introduced during the 36th parliament.
Of course, I was not in the House when these bills were introduced during the 36th parliament. However, this legislation easily attracted my attention and should be studied in-depth because Quebec was among the first to ensure public access to its waterways, as it so desires.
Protection of the environment has been a constant concern for the Bloc Quebecois. I remind those listening and the government that the Bloc Quebecois supported the government when it introduced its legislation to create the Saguenay-St. Lawrence marine park in 1997. That legislation provided for the creation of the first marine conservation area of Canada.
Unfortunately, this time, we cannot support such a legislation. I will only give three reasons why the Bloc Quebecois cannot agree to this legislation.
First, in Bill C-10, instead of focusing on working together, as it did in the case of the Saguenay—St. Lawrence marine park, the government is giving itself the right to establish marine conservation areas with no regard for Quebec's jurisdiction over its territory and environment.
Bill C-10 does not respect Quebec's territorial integrity. My colleagues from Manicouagan and Châteauguay were saying that it is under the Constitutional Act, 1867, that we have this territorial integrity. At the time, the provinces, including Quebec, were guaranteed exclusive jurisdiction over the management of crown lands.
At the same time, Quebec legislation concerning crown lands applies to all crown lands in Quebec, including the beds of waterways and lakes and the bed of the St. Lawrence river, estuary and gulf, which belong to Quebec by sovereign right.
However, according to the notes provided by Canadian heritage on this famous bill, marine conservation areas are planned for the Gulf of St. Lawrence, as well as the river and estuary, three areas where the seabed comes under Quebec's jurisdiction.
This is a very clear example of federal meddling in a provincial jurisdiction. I find it terrible that, as Quebecers, we are once again subjected to provocation and lack of respect by the government, which wants to do only what it wants.
It is clear that this government is working to create almost voluntarily an explosive climate for Quebecers. It continually infringes areas exclusively under Quebec's jurisdiction and is endlessly trying to impose unreasonable legislation, whose content and effect Quebecers consider an insult to their intelligence.
There is another reason why we are not supporting this bill. Canadian heritage as is its practice all too often is proposing to put a new structure in place, the marine conservation areas, which will duplicate the marine wildlife reserves of Fisheries and Oceans Canada and the marine areas of Environment Canada.
Canadian heritage has done a poor job protecting ecosystems. Its decisions will take precedence over regulations already established under the Fisheries Act, the Coastal Fisheries Act, the Canada Shipping Act, the Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act, the Navigable Waters Protection Act and the Aeronautics Act.
It will be readily understood that this practice can only lead to a whole raft of problems with respect to marine protected areas, marine wildlife reserves and marine conservation area with regulations for each and other regulations superimposed by Canadian heritage.
We might quote from the testimony of Patrick McGuinness, the vice-president of the Canadian Council of Fisheries, who totally opposed this initiative because it is “ineffective and encumbers the administration of public affairs”.
Third, we could talk about Canadian heritage's great achievements in protecting the ecosystems of existing national parks and its expertise in the field along with its role as leader in protecting our ecosystems.
They are far from brilliant. I will quote a few of the findings reported by the Panel on the Ecological Integrity of Canada's National Parks. This panel released a public report and urged the government to make the ecological preservation of parks a priority once again.
The same panel found that, in some national parks, the stress on the resource was so great that some species were disappearing. In Fundy park, in New Brunswick, three species have disappeared since the park was created. Only one of the 39 national parks of Parks Canada does not experience this stress. The situation is worse than what the panel of scientists expected. To make matters worse, there is a dramatic lack of scientists in national parks to evaluate ecosystems.
Allow me to doubt that Parks Canada and Canadian heritage can preserve marine conservation areas, since they do not have the minimal resources needed to protect national parks today.
A sensible and responsible government would have adopted a more logical approach, that is ensuring that only one department deals with the protection of our ecosystems and that departments involved arrive at an agreement in which they would transfer their responsibilities to the department in charge. Would that not make more sense?
In this case, I believe it would have been better to centralize all activities in one department, to give it the necessary resources to do its task and to ensure an adequate protection of marine conservation areas, administered and implemented by expert and competent people.
Moreover, the government is not only intruding unduly into provincial fields of jurisdiction—something that is extremely important for me—it is also squandering the money of Canadian and Quebec taxpayers in a tangle of complicated and endless legislative and administrative measures.
That is why the Bloc Quebecois will not support this bill. It is an act that is unrespectful of Quebec, legislation for which there has been no real consultation with stakeholders and that does not take into account the recommendations made by the government's own experts, who advised the government to solve the more urgent problems before doing anything else.