Mr. Speaker, I would correct one thing that the hon. member for South Shore said. It may have taken him 25 years to learn this lesson but he is not quite as slow a learner as he may have indicated to the House. He is actually a very astute individual and has a background in farming and in the stewardship of the land. He knows of what he speaks.
With respect to the compensation factor of the land itself, I could not agree more. They are stewards of the land and, as I said earlier, not everything is perfect in this very imperfect world but in most cases the owners of the land believe in the stewardship of the land. They make sure to protect the habitat and the species that enjoy that habitat. They certainly utilize the land in the best interest not only of themselves, because that is their livelihood, but also in the best interest of people outside the rural area.
The issue I would like to point out is that urbanites within our country wish to make sure that they have access to other lands. They also want to make sure those lands will be available to them. I sincerely believe that they should be required to pay some of the costs of that stewardship. It means the carrots instead of the sticks that we talked about.
There should be proper compensation built into the legislation to allow producers to access compensation for the impact on their properties. It is essential that compensation be in the legislation. If it is not there then some of those stewards of the land may not be quite as co-operative as we think they should be in order to make the legislation work.