Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today to speak to the Group No. 3 motions concerning Bill C-5, an act to protect endangered species. I had the chance to work quite intimately on the bill when I was environment critic for our caucus.
We in the opposition have serious concerns regarding the last few groups of motions. A number of my colleagues have spoken quite diligently to all the motions in Group No. 3. I commend the last speaker who spoke to all the motions. He knows the issue quite technically and has followed it closely. The government is wise to listen to the things he has to say. I congratulate him for his intervention today.
For the public who loves to tune in and listen to what we do and talk about in this place the technicality of the motions can be somewhat confusing. I wanted to put the motions in a general category so people at home could follow the themes we may be concerned about with respect to the bill on endangered species.
As I have mentioned in the past, it is clear that Canadians across the nation believe we need endangered species legislation. More than 90% of Canadians want effective legislation when it comes to endangered species. However they have concerns as well. They are concerned that property rights should be protected; criminal intent should be clearly defined; and the various interests of landowners, environmentalists and all stakeholders should be brought together. This is a concern many of my colleagues have raised. It not been dealt with by the government.
The prior groups of motions dealt specifically with compensation. This is an issue about which landowners who are the volunteer stewards of the land have a great concern. The question has not yet been answered with a clear equation. It is not clear how compensation would dealt with if land were confiscated because an endangered species was found on it.
The Group No. 2 motions deal with jurisdictional and criminal intent issues. There are concerns about whether the legislation would affect the jurisdictions of provinces. Would we need a national accord to streamline the environmental policies of provinces in relation to the federal government? Concerning criminal intent, if someone accidentally destroyed habitat on their private land they would be guilty until proven innocent. Even if it was an accident it would be difficult to prove in some cases.
In the Group No. 3 motions some of the main themes concern socio-economic interests. There is also the issue of COSEWIC and how the process of listing species would be determined. Motions Nos. 30, 32, 36, 68, 136, 137 and 138 deal with COSEWIC in some form or another. How we would set national standards ties into the provincial jurisdiction issue. Motion No. 79 deals with the issue. There may be a few others.
We spoke about criminal offences in Group No. 2 but Motion No. 120 makes reference to changes when it comes to punishments and penalties. Public consultation is an important issue to all members of the House if not all Canadians. They should all be able to have input on the bill. Motions Nos. 4, 7, 19 and 36 all deal with the idea of public consultation.
Instead of speaking to the specific motions I have identified I will address the general themes I spoke about and the concerns we in the opposition have with the bill.
Mr. Speaker, you are no stranger to this place. You know the importance the official opposition puts on fiscal responsibility. It is one of our biggest concerns and we have raised it over and over again.
Some of my colleagues spoke about this earlier today. As I tuned in to some of the riveting debate, I heard some of my colleagues say that they were not concerned about the costs associated with the bill. One of my colleagues talked about the gun registration bill and the fact that the government told us one amount that it would cost for gun registration when in fact the actual cost of administering that bill was outrageously overbudget.
Are we going down the same road with this bill? We do want endangered species to be protected and we do want effective legislation but we need to be honest about the cost. We hear different numbers right across the board from provinces and from the federal government which say that it could be more than $45 million a year, but we need to know how much it will really cost. When it comes to the socioeconomic interests of all Canadians, this is something that we fundamentally need to address.
There is another area that has caused a number of concerns for environmentalists. I touched on the motions pertaining to COSEWIC, for which environmentalists definitely have a concern, but it does directly affect this place. The concern is about how we will put together the list when it comes to establishing what constitutes an endangered species and what does not.
While dealing with this particular part of the bill, I remember there was much debate on how science should be left to the scientists and it should be removed out of this place completely. Politics should not be involved in the listing process nor in the actual recovery plans associated with deciding what constitutes an endangered species and what does not.
If I am not mistaken, one of the motions put forward by the official opposition tried to come up with a balance to this problem. This is exactly what we had proposed when we said that we should leave science to the scientists. They could put together a list of endangered species that this place could look over and evaluate, and especially cabinet because ultimately it should have the final say in evaluating the resources attributed to going through the whole recovery plan when it comes to dealing with protecting endangered species.
It would be great for all of us to list the endangered species but the reality is that we need the resources to have an effective recovery plan to protect those endangered species. Cabinet has a role to review the potential list of endangered species but it should not be a political game.
We see a lot of political games from the other side of the House which may be why some environmentalists get concerned about this process. We need a list that is produced scientifically. We need cabinet to review that list and to put together a recovery plan cost analysis on which endangered species can be covered right away and which need some obvious time.
The long term effect is to protect as many endangered species as possible but we cannot do that with the resources we have. We need to be diligent about it.
I would argue that cabinet does have a final role but it should be strictly a resource based role and not a science role. We should not question that. COSEWIC's job is to put together people for that committee or group who can evaluate endangered species.
In the motions I mentioned, we proposed an amendment to find that balance between protecting endangered species and realizing the costs associated with that.
I get quite passionate about endangered species but we need to make the right decisions. Sometimes it is difficult to make decisions in this place that will achieve the best results.
I want to quickly touch on the national standards issue, one that is so important when it comes to how we in this place can effectively produce legislation that does not duplicate what is currently happening in provinces but instead works together with provincial governments to achieve the goals that all Canadians feel are so important.
I hope the government will be encouraged to heed some of these suggestions today because that is the only way we will bring all stakeholders together on this very important bill, which hopefully will achieve the goal of protecting endangered species and not the divide and conquer mentality that the government has.