Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise again to finish my thoughts on Bill C-5. It bears repeating that the Canadian Alliance is committed to protecting and preserving Canada's natural environment and endangered species. In that vein there are a few comments I have left to make.
The objection that we have as a party to the bill is the shift in the cost to landowners rather than it being fair. We are to spend $45 million for species at risk, which is a very minimal amount of money when we think about the fact that we are trying to protect animals and plant life that will disappear from the earth forever. Yet the government has seen fit to spend over $700 million on a gun registry. One has to ask what are the priorities when there is such discrepancy in spending. I believe it is an unconscionable thing to do and that we have to correct what is happening in the House.
The government has failed miserably with the softwood lumber agreement and the cost of that mistake is being paid for by innocent people across the country. We cannot afford to let this happen again. The endangered species bill must be looked at very seriously.
What upsets me the most about the bill is the fact that when it comes to compensation there are two words that can be used: the word may which means we are allowed to do it and the word will which means we must do it. The word will has to be substituted in here. Otherwise people who own their own land and have done all the work for many years risk losing the land without compensation to save a species.
As I said previously, my colleague from Wild Rose has made it very clear that shoot, shovel and shut up will be the way things will happen in Canada. We do not want that. We need to protect species and in protecting species we must also protect the rights of landowners. We must give adequate compensation. Until that is addressed within the bill I cannot support it, and neither will my party.
Other matters have been raised inconsequentially and I would like to address them a bit more seriously. In this piece of legislation we have race based law. What applies to non-aboriginal people does not necessarily apply to aboriginal people. We may find ourselves in the position where private land backs on reserve land and the person on private land is obliged to follow the rules about endangered species whereas those on the other side on the reserve land are not required to do so.
How can we do this? Will we draw an imaginary line and say that if someone is living on this side of it they must preserve the species and if they are on that side of it, it is up in the air? It has been said that it was for medicinal and ceremonial purposes, but that does not specify what needs to be specified in the bill.
This should be a concern for aboriginal people as well because they have been stewards of plant life for many years. They do not have a unique view in this regard. Many of us have been stewards of plant life. However in the case of aboriginal people they use plant life a great deal for medicinal purposes.
I have a list of 47 endangered plants, some of which would be very familiar to both aboriginal and non-aboriginal people. One is a lichen and another a moss. They are on the endangered species list. Some 25 fall under the threatened category. If the legislation is put through with its bias and its unfairness in its lack of compensation, we can expect those numbers to grow by leaps and bounds.
When we are talking about fairness and when I mention the phrase race based law there is a reason for the concern. I will take the opportunity to read from an article which states:
A Coast Salish mask dancer is sentenced to two years in prison and ordered to pay a restitution fine of $147,000 for smuggling, trading and selling eagle feathers in Washington State. Terry Antoine, a 47-year-old medicine man from Cowichan First Nation near Duncan, B.C., was found guilty on one count of illegal importation of eagle parts and four counts of violating the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act. Antoine's lawyer argued that he traded eagle parts to other Aboriginal people who use them in religious ceremonies. Although Cowichan First Nation has members on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border, it is not among the 550 tribes that are federally recognized by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
I think we can see the danger. We need something that applies to both aboriginal and non-aboriginal people. In fairness that must take place. The current legislation does not address that adequately and I think that is a huge gap in the legislation.