Madam Speaker, I am pleased that you are here today to hear the remarks being made. I am also pleased to see that 3 or 4 of the 178 Liberals elected to the House are here as well.
I listened with interest to the comments of the hon. member from the NDP. I recognize and congratulate them. They are well known for their environmental concerns. However I would hope that any group backing the bill does not become so blinded by the need to put something through to protect endangered species that they ignore some of the harm that can be done from the bill at the same time.
One of the real challenges an MP faces in general terms with legislation is voting and how to really with good conscience decide exactly how he or she will vote on a particular issue.
I wrote an article that went out in my householder recently which talked about the concept of voting on omnibus bills and what to do when facing a bill that maybe had some good things and bad things. Does one vote for the good things and ignore the bad things? Does one vote against the bill because of the bad things and ignore the good things? It is a very perplexing and challenging thing for a member of parliament. Perhaps in itself it is one of the hardest things with which MPs have to deal.
It is particularly frustrating when we have a bill like this, which was good at the outset and which the Canadian Alliance very strongly supported. Who in their right mind would not support the concept of wanting to protect species that are endangered in the country and in the world?
The problem is we have a bill that suggests it will deal with these very things but at the same time it has harmful things in it which are not necessary for the protection of endangered species.
For example, yesterday we talked in terms of compensation. Whether we compensate or do not compensate people has nothing to do with the protection of endangered species. Whether an individual is compensated or not will not alter the aspects that we look at in terms of protecting an endangered species. It becomes a question of right. We are putting through a bill that addresses endangered species, but we are not doing the right thing by addressing the right of a person to compensation for loss of their personal property or the use of that property.
Today, we are looking today at a question of responsibility. It becomes slightly greyer I suppose in one sense. It is not quite as black and white as yesterday in terms of compensation. The bill has a provision which can be interpreted and utilized to penalize people for damaging the habitat or even directly the species themselves at danger without even having known they did it until after the fact.
The hon. member from the NDP said we had to have that because it made it too hard to prosecute people if we had to prove they meant to do it and that there could be consideration in sentencing. Consideration in sentencing means that they would be found guilty of a criminal act. Even instead of the $250,000 fine, they were given a token fine of $1,000, $500 or even a dollar, they would still be criminals and have a criminal record. That is just not acceptable when people do something in all innocence and have no way of knowing they have broken the law, rule or regulation.
How can a farmer ploughing his fields search behind every corn stalk, sheaf of wheat, down every drill hole or every possible place? Plus, they would have to know ever single organism that is in the endangered species act, how to identify them perchance they find some evidence of it on their property so they could take some action to protect that endangered species, whatever it might be. That is absolutely impossible.
The government said it is clearly not its intention to attack people who innocently do something and that that would be taken into consideration.
I remember back some years ago when the now industry minister was the justice minister. He came in with a bill called conditional sentencing. Conditional sentencing was supposed to give judges the discretion that if someone was convicted of any crime and the court felt that there was no need for public safety to put that individual in jail that person could be released on a conditional sentence and serve no time in jail.
Much to the horror and shock to the public and certainly to us in the House on the opposition side, we found that violent offenders and rapists were being given conditional sentences by the courts. When we brought that concern to the House and faced the minister, the minister's direct response was that it was never their intention that it be applied that way.
Whenever the possibility exists, intention means absolutely nothing. The government must write it in a way that cannot be misinterpreted. Its intention must be absolutely crystal clear when it writes the bill. There cannot be any false interpretation that either harms innocent people or turns guilty people free as happened in the case of conditional sentencing.
In terms of intention, this provision of the bill questions the integrity of farmers and ranchers. It shows a suspicious nature on the part of government. It suggests in some cases that the government does not trust their good judgment and integrity. How would the government have come to that type of attitude, that it would feel that cynical about the integrity on the part of farmers and ranchers in relation to the bill?
I guess the best way to illustrate this is a story I heard some time ago about an individual on the west coast of Canada who went sailing one day. It was not a particularly good day for sailing but he went anyway and found himself in some serious trouble. This individual probably would have died at sea were it not for the sharp eye and the swift action of a lighthouse keeper on the rugged west coast. As a result of that action the individual was saved.
Naturally this person was very grateful for what happened and actually went to the trouble of hiking into many of the light stations on the west coast, bringing with him a little gift, a bottle of wine and some other things, as a token of thanks to the people who manned these lighthouses and who had saved this person's life.
Sometime later this individual ran for parliament, managed to get elected and found himself on the government benches. He went through some different positions and was elevated to be a cabinet minister. He found himself as the minister of transport ironically at the very time the government decided to start shutting these lighthouses down. This individual had said to the lighthouse keepers “I am in your debt and if ever there is anything that I can do for you, you can count on me”. Here was the minister of transport in charge of shutting these lighthouses down.
The west coast of Canada is very rugged and a lot of pilots, float operations and so on in a fog infested coast rely on these lighthouse keepers as do people at sea, as obviously this minister had relied on as well.
Is it not ironic that the government appears to have this suspicion of farmers and ranchers that it has to question their integrity to the extent that it has put in the bill the ability to prosecute them for damaging habitat that no one even knows existed and has found out after the fact? Perhaps now at least we have some explanation. Integrity I guess is in the eye of the beholder.
Anyone who can profess that kind of gratitude, make that kind of commitment only to be the very person in a position of power who chooses to shut those lighthouse keepers down, I think suggests what the farmers and ranchers who may innocently destroy habitat or endangered species can expect from the government, intentions notwithstanding.