Mr. Speaker, I wish I could say it is a pleasure to address the amendments that are before us on Bill C-5, but it is definitely not. I have not felt so vehemently opposed to a bill in a very long time.
It should be obvious to the government that virtually all the members we have heard speak today have objected vehemently to the bill, including a government cabinet minister and many Liberal MPs. It behooves the government to take a second look at this legislation and put it on hold. Definitely there are some serious flaws with it. I am going to draw attention to some of them. Before doing that I want to comment on the process.
We do not have nearly enough time to debate this issue. I have quite a number of concerns on this group of amendments alone and it would take much longer than 10 minutes to address them. We should put this bill on hold if for no other reason than to allow us to properly address all the issues that have arisen in this group of amendments.
We have put forward some very good amendments. One of the process objections I have is that when we put forward these amendments very often they are not seriously considered. Rarely does the government accept what we have suggested as a good, positive contribution to a bill. That is something else we should look at in the House. Many members on this side of the House represent Canadians in a way that is a very constructive and helpful in improving legislation. Very often the amendments we work so hard at drafting to improve the legislation are dismissed. That is not right.
For example, I worked on the gun control legislation. We put forward some very constructive suggestions and amendments to the bill. The government completely ignored them and $685 million later, the Liberals realized we were right. They are going to plow how many more hundreds of millions into a system that was supposed to cost less than $100 million originally, because the government does not listen to the opposition.
Hopefully the comments I have made will cause the government to pause and take a second look. I will now address the amendments.
Some aspects of the bill are contrary to 800 years of civil and criminal law tradition which we inherited from Great Britain and our ancestors. That in itself should cause us to take a serious second look at this bill. Let me explain. The amendment we propose would try to correct the flaw in that the bill makes it a criminal offence with a serious penalty to unwittingly do something, to unknowingly commit a crime. That has not been the case in law and the tradition we have had for 800 years. Our amendment says that no person shall knowingly kill, harm or harass. One key word needs to be added to the bill.
As the bill now stands, it is a criminal act to kill, harm or harass any one of the hundreds of endangered species or to interfere with their critical habitat. The fines are steep. The fines are up to $1 million for a corporation and a quarter of a million dollars for an individual. The bill provides for imprisonment for up to five years for an indictable offence. We are talking about something very serious.
I referred to another bill that I have a lot of experience with, the gun control bill. Again the Liberals put into criminal law the same kind of reverse onus. A person could accidentally make a mistake on a form that has to be filled out and could end up in jail for five to ten years. A person has to prove his or her innocence.
It used to be that someone had to be proven guilty and intended to break the law. The same problem exists with this bill. There is a reverse onus and that is not right.
Someone could commit an offence without knowing it and the bill does not require intent or even reckless behaviour to be a factor. Rather it places the burden of proof on the individual to prove that he or she was exercising due diligence should harm come to any endangered species. In this way the bill ignores one of the fundamental tenets of our western legal history: that criminal penalties are only given for offences committed with a criminal mind. The term in Latin is mens rea .
Is it fair to convict a person of a serious criminal offence when the person might have had no idea he or she was in danger of committing one? In order to protect themselves from breaking the law, people would have to become experts at recognizing many different species, such as the sage grouse, the barn owl, the aurora trout, the Atlantic salmon, the prairie lupine, or the American water willow. People would not only have to recognize them but would have to recognize their critical habitat in case they disturbed a place where some of these animals spend part of their lifecycle. If we know anything about our natural environment, we know that is almost impossible to do. Even if animals used to live in an area or might be reintroduced into an area, people could be charged. There are some serious problems with this aspect.
In my last address to the House I spoke about what would happen if we passed the bill as it is. I mentioned the shoot, shovel and shut up principle which we would end up having because of this kind of law. People who discover an endangered species on their land will shoot, shovel and bury it, and then shut up and not tell anybody because of the way the bill is structured.
What is the alternative? It is simply to have incentives built into the bill for people to want to preserve endangered species rather than being made criminals if they accidentally do something or cover up something. That is a flaw with the bill. There is not adequate compensation for those people who have endangered species on their land or come across endangered species on their land.
We support the goal of protecting endangered species. It is a laudable goal. It is a responsibility we take seriously. However it cannot be done in a heavy handed way as it is in the bill. People want to co-operate but this “got you” approach from the government is adversarial and does nothing to encourage co-operation. People might not know they are harming an endangered species but the government says “we got you”. All people can do is hope that the minister is reasonable in exercising his discretion. This trust me principle is not good enough.
How are companies, for example those involved with mineral or oil and gas exploration, supposed to demonstrate due diligence over operations covering hundreds of thousands of hectares when they do not even control all the external factors involved? It is totally unreasonable to expect that. That is why we suggest proper incentives should be put in the bill. That would be much more effective in meeting the goals of the bill.
There are 70 million hectares of agricultural land, that is over 150 million acres, and 25 million hectares of privately owned forest lands in Canada. How do farmers and operators exercise due diligence over these areas, especially when many are small operations with limited resources and no familiarity with endangered species regulations?
The minister knows this is a problem. At the standing committee on October 3, 2001, in response to a question from the member for Red Deer, the minister said:
It's a legitimate matter for concern. The accident, the unwitting destruction—it is a concern, and we want to give the maximum protection we can to the legitimate and honest person who makes a mistake, who unwittingly does that.
The minister's fine words really do not cut it. His bill would make such an honest person a criminal. We need some protection.
I wanted to address some other concerns and at this time I simply do not have the time to do it. We need to respect provincial jurisdiction and I wanted to speak out on that. I wanted to also talk a bit about the severe penalties and the whole mens rea intention of this bill. I am hoping that the government will put this off so that I have more opportunity at a later date to express a lot more of the concerns I have, just with this group of amendments.