Mr. Speaker, if I had a single message today I think it would be that all parties in the House would commit fully to protect and preserve Canada's natural environment and our endangered species. That is clear. That is motherhood. However there are obvious differences in the way we would approach the issue.
I was in the House when the member for York North who sits on the environment committee was speaking not too long ago. She talked about the international commitments we must make on endangered species and other environmental issues. While I agree with that statement, it is also very important that Canadians recognize, because the rest of the world certainly recognizes it, that Canada's land stewardship is world class. We have every reason to be very proud of much of what we pursue. I think in particular of our broad landscape activities such as agriculture, ranching, forestry and other industries which obviously have a major influence on our landscapes.
Canada, by virtue of being a vast country with a small population, has become the victim of negative campaigns launched both internationally and domestically by groups that denigrate Canadian practices as a matter of mission for their own self-serving interests.
I certainly agree that Canadians care deeply about the environment. Rural Canadians do not need a lesson from anybody on land stewardship. They have a deep commitment to the environment. I have children as do most of us. I remember reading a book to my children about the city mouse and the country mouse. Country mice certainly do not need lectures from the city mice about land stewardship. It is true the other way around as well.
Half the problem could thus be summarized as one in communication between Canadians, as well as between Canadians and the international audience. Canada has the optics internationally of being a vast wilderness. Somehow that sets a higher standard for Canada than it does for other nations. We have accepted that is the way it is. In accepting that, we have set a different standard for ourselves for a long time which is all very positive.
We can learn things from others. We should learn from what has occurred with endangered species legislation in the United States. The Americans have ended up with a very unhealthy situation in many areas. They have gone to a system based on penalties rather than on incentives. They do not have what we would call land managers so much as they have legal managers. It has created a legal mess. The court has become the arbiter of how land will be managed.
That is very destructive and leads to a lack of creativity and progress. It is so polarized that in the western states for example some fur from an endangered species was planted into the ground to demonstrate that that species must be there and therefore activities on that land could not take place. That issue has become very messy. It was demonstrated eventually that it had been a covert activity to utilize the planted material to try to influence land management behaviour. We do not want to go there.
There have also been major confrontations and demonstrations in the last couple of years because of the draught in the western states which has created a real problem both for the agriculture industry and for what is called the sucker fish which is an endangered species. Thousands of people have lost their livelihood because of legislation that did not seem to recognize common sense behaviour and compromise as being another way to go.
The lessons we need to take from that are very clear. We want land managers who are land stewards. We do not want legal messes and a place where lawyers rather than land managers will thrive.
I spent 20 years as a land manager. I managed tens of thousands of hectares of forest land in British Columbia. That land was predominantly owned by the people of British Columbia. It was crown land. I spent five years at university preparing to do that. I am very proud of the land management activities I carried out. I am proud of the accomplishments. I operated primarily under a system of incentives rather than penalties. I am worried that is going to change.
During that time, prior to running for politics and changing my career, I spent some time in Washington and Oregon on a postgraduate mature student program. It was for a period of 12 weeks over the course of a year. The spotted owl controversy was going on in that part of the world. It was totally polarizing and totally destructive. It led to panic clear cutting of huge swaths of land. It led to tremendous legal actions. There was chaos and destruction in small forestry towns in those states. It was totally unnecessary. A much better resolution could have been derived and it all was lost in the fog because it became a fight among law makers, politicians and lawyers.
In summary, we still have a problem with the legislation. Unless there is mandatory compensation and no criminalization of unintentional behaviour, we will not achieve our goal of effective protection of endangered species.