Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise and speak to this bill today. The idea of a bill to protect endangered species has been kicked around Parliament Hill for a long time. It has gone through numerous ministers. The only continuous factor has been the chairman of the environment committee, the member for Davenport, who has been through all of it and is certainly an advocate for strong environmental laws.
We support the protection of endangered species. My colleague from Red Deer said the other day that polls have indicated that 95% of Canadians support some kind of legislation to protect endangered species. He wondered why it was not 100% and why anybody would not want to do that? We agree that it needs to be done, but it needs to be done in a way that is fair and that deals with some issues that we feel are not being dealt with in this bill.
We will support the bill but we will put forth some amendments. We are hopeful that the government will, at some point in time during the bill's process through the House to become law, look at those amendments. We are also hopeful that the government will listen to the people of Canada and make the changes needed to make the bill work properly.
We cannot have the three s' s, shoot, shovel and shut-up, in Canada. It happened when some strong handed legislation was introduced in the United States and it did not work. We need to deal with co-operation, compensation, partnerships and working with stewardship initiatives in the private sector.
Compensation and scientific integrity are two issues in the bill for which we will have a lot of input. Scientists should decide what species are at risk. They should create the list and that is it. There should be no political interference in who decides what an endangered species is. It should be done scientifically and then presented to the House.
However, I feel, and I am sure this has been stated by others, that if any action is taken on that list it will require dollars and the intervention of some body with authority, which should be the duty of the elected politicians.
We have to be very careful that the co-operative efforts put forward already and the stewardship initiatives that we see across Canada are supported, enhanced and rewarded. We have a huge concern with that issue. We have to ensure that the people who are working so hard on their own to create habitat for endangered species and to preserve habitat that exists are recognized.
I had a great opportunity the summer before last to go up to the eastern irrigation district around Brooks. I was invited up there by a fellow named Tom Livingstone. There is a huge tract of pure virgin prairie grass that is being used for grazing. It is managed very well. There are oil and gas wells on this land.
Among all of this is the burrowing owl habitat. I was able to actually see a number of owls living there and raising their young right in among the cattle and the other development. The people there do things very carefully. They make sure that when the species need to be left alone, they are left alone. There is a huge tract of water that is used for wildlife and fowl. It was incredible. There were antelope and all kinds of ducks and geese there. It was quite a thing to see. These people have done that as an irrigation district to preserve what was on the prairies when we first came.
So in regard to this idea that we need to have heavy-handed legislation to bring our ranchers, our oil and gas exploration companies and our farmers into line, I do not think it needs to be done. If we work co-operatively with them and show them some support for their initiatives, we can go a long way to really doing this thing in a proper manner.
We have to make sure of something: people have told me that they want to have input into the bill. They want the committee to sit. After the committee gets Bill C-5, people want it to hear witnesses from all sectors of society. They want the committee to travel, to get out to parts of Canada, to get into the north. The member from the Yukon has issues in his area. People on the east and west coasts have issues. All across Canada people should have the ability to come to the committee to present their ideas to help make a bill that will work well. I encourage the members of our caucus on that committee and the others to work that way, to get out and go across this country to get that input that is so rightfully needed.
My party feels the compensation issue has to be in the legislation. To say that it will be worked out in regulation afterward is not something that we can live with. We certainly do not support the position presented by the Pearse report that one does not receive compensation until over 10% of one's livelihood has been affected and then one is only compensated for 50%. We would like to see full compensation. If we do it that way, we will encourage landowners and others to really take an active part in this. That has to be in the legislation. It has to spelled out very clearly that compensation will be given and that it will be given to the full extent that the landowner is affected.
The idea that all Canadians feel something needs to be done for the protection of endangered species brings us to the fact that all Canadians should be part of the cost of any mitigation implemented to preserve habitat. If it is a cost to society in general, then let us put it into the legislation and let all Canadians have a look at what that means. Certainly the elected officials have to be the people who are responsible for any spending of dollars that go into the protection of endangered species.
When I was on the environment committee we talked at length about residual powers, as we have here, about who should have effect over whom or which level of government and provinces should. A lot of the provinces have strong endangered species legislation. We have to work hand in hand. We have to receive the input from the provinces. We must make sure they understand that this is going to be a co-operative effort and that the end result will be to the benefit of the endangered species in the country.
We saw some really unusual coalitions formed when the bill was introduced last time in the House. We saw environmental groups get together with industry. We saw the mining industry come forward with the pulp and paper people, the Sierra Legal Defence Fund and the Canadian Wildlife Federation. Seeing all these people getting together to work together for the common good of endangered species was very encouraging. That is something that we as a country have to build on.
We have to encourage these types of partnerships and coalitions to get together to come up with the right plan that will work. If we have them all involved, if we have input from everybody and if we come up with the proper balance, there is no reason why we cannot have a law in place that will do the job but will allow us to go on with our lives.
Members know that we need to preserve what is here. I have children and grandchildren and I certainly want them to have the ability to see the things that I have seen in my life. We need to do this as a country.
In regard to the whole idea that it will not work, the idea that one part of society will go against the other and it will not come to be because we cannot come to an agreement, I do not buy into that. I think there are ways we can do it. If we have the compensation in the bill, if we work hard at the co-operative level to reward stewardship and reward the programs in place today—and enhance them if need be—if we show that we are willing as a government, as a body of elected officials, to receive input from Canadians in all parts of society, we will have support. We will have a bill that we can work with.
One of the things I experienced in the environment committee when we went through some other legislation was the wish of some to take out any reference to the word economics. If we were looking at social and economic reasons for doing something, people said let us not worry about the economics. However, I think we need to. When we are talking about the livelihood of people on the land and on the waters of the country, we need to bring that into the mix, into the formula.
Let us put the compensation aspect into the bill, let us work co-operatively, let us listen to all Canadians and let us come up with a bill we can all be proud of.