Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to add some comments to the debate. I appreciate the comments by my hon. colleague, which were deeply heartfelt, as are the comments that all members make in the House about this issue. I think protecting species at risk is a broad based concern shared by all Canadians.
In terms of this particular amendment to the bill and others that have been presented, our concerns are based on the desire to see legislation that works. We are concerned with results and to achieve those results one has to consider the socioeconomic aspects of the bill.
To suggest that we will achieve the desired goals we have for the legislation without being fair in terms of the socioeconomic impact this will have on our partners in the use of the environment, the resource companies, the individual producer and the agricultural producers, which is a major concern for my riding, is to suggest something that is unachievable.
The reality is that landowners and farmers deal with these issues on a daily basis. They are the frontline people. They run their businesses in an environment in which they are in partnership with nature. They recognize not only the risk that nature presents to the, but the risk it presents to the species with whom they share the land. In my experience it has been people like those in my constituency, farm families and rural inhabitants, who have been the frontline troops in the battle to preserve our species at risk and their natural habitat.
Many of the projects that have taken place in my riding, such as soil conservation projects, grasslands preservation projects, wetlands conservation projects and the like, have been successful only because of the participation of people in that region who believed these projects were fair, reasonable and that they would work. They involved themselves in a sharing manner in making these projects work. The bill fails to do that and because of that it is flawed.
My dad used to say that some people were so smart they were stupid. What I am referring to is the basic fact that all the scientific data in the world will not change the fact that if people on the land, people who depend on the land, perceive this bill as something that punishes them or is unfair to them, all the brains in the world and all the beautiful laws we write here will not succeed in getting the result we want.
I cannot help but contrast the problems in this bill with the problems facing our Minister of National Defence right now. I am glad he is here with us. In his case he was briefed on an issue but has asserted that he did not quite understand that briefing. He said that he came to a fuller realization of the briefing as the week went on. What that speaks to is a failure to communicate and a failure to understand. That is paralleled by this bill.
I know many groups made submissions to the committee in the preparatory stages of the bill. They were asked to make submissions and did so in good faith. The World Wildlife Fund, the mining industry, the pulp and paper industry, even the Sierra Club all agreed that socioeconomic impacts needed to be considered and considered seriously if the bill were to succeed. The problem we have is that the briefing did not take place and the reality is that the information did not seem to stick. It is the same kind of thing--