Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased today to speak to the proposed amendments to Bill C-5 that make up the third group. The House will recall that Bill C-5 replaces Bill C-33, an act respecting the protection of wildlife species at risk in Canada.
This leads me to comment more specifically on the amendment introduced by my colleague, the member for Rosemont--Petite-Patrie, who is the Bloc Quebecois critic for the environment. He proposes amending clause 56 of the bill, which reads as follows, “the competent minister may...establish...national...guidelines with respect to the protection of” species.
Yet the second statement of the accord signed in 1996 stated that the minister will establish “a Council of Ministers that will provide direction, report on progress and resolve disputes”.
It seems to me as though this government is obsessed with establishing national standards from one end of the country to the other, imposing them in areas that come under provincial jurisdiction. The species at risk act is yet another example.
Clause 56 would allow the government, as I said earlier, to establish codes of practice and impose national standards or guidelines, yet the federal government is not responsible for most of the lands involved and has no power over the resource management in these areas.
Therefore, this clause not only violates the division of powers set out in the constitution and interpreted as such over the years, but it also grants broad discretionary powers to the Minister of the Environment.
This bill interferes directly in provincial areas of responsibility and excludes the provinces from making real and direct contributions to the process. Existing laws are ignored. It is an outrage.
Of course, the protection of certain species is only effective if their habitat is also protected. But it is up the provinces to manage this in co-operation with the various stakeholders involved.
Despite the fact that the minister theoretically supports shared responsibility between the federal government and the provinces for the protection of species at risk, first, he is disregarding the division of powers and the provinces' responsibilities in managing habitat and protecting species; second, he is ignoring laws that already exist; and third, he is assuming extremely broad powers to protect species. The federal government is therefore going against real environmental harmonization between the different levels of government.
I would also like to mention the position of environmental groups and industry which are opposed to this bill. The bill scares them. The main problem, which seems to have been raised by all these environmental groups, is the fact that the decisions on the designation of species will be taken by the minister and his cabinet, and not by scientists themselves.
Will somebody tell me what sort of decision the minister, who does not have the qualifications and has not studied this area, will take? They will truly be informed. He is excluding the scientists who have been studying these endangered species for years. The minister will tell them what to do simply because he is the minister. It is scandalous too.
Quebec's position on this bill has been expressed by Quebec's minister of the environment. When his federal counterpart first introduced the bill he said that it was just another useless development for Quebec. Quebec's minister said that not only was the bill introduced by the federal government designed to put in place a safety net for endangered species and their habitats on sites under federal jurisdiction but also throughout the territory of Quebec.
While the federal government may be responsible for protecting migratory species, it has no Constitutional authority—this government interprets the constitution when it suits its purposes—with respect to the management of habitats located in provincially owned lands. There can obviously be no question of the government of Quebec sitting by while the federal government invades areas of jurisdiction that do not belong to it and tells Quebec how to go about protecting its ecosystems, when Quebec already has legislation to protect endangered species and their habitats.
Quebec's minister said:
Quebec has always behaved in a responsible and appropriate manner regarding the protection of the most threatened fauna and flora species and intends to keep on exercising its authority in this matter. We will never accept umbrella legislation covering all the initiatives in this area.
In fact, the government of Quebec believes that legislation such as that proposed in the bill could be acceptable if it excluded any species or habitat under provincial jurisdiction and if it were applied to provincial lands if, and only if, the province or territory specifically so requested.
The Quebec government would not need to use such a provision, since it passed its own act in the late eighties. Indeed, the Quebec government passed the act respecting threatened or vulnerable species in 1989. It also passed an act respecting the conservation and development of wildlife, and fishing regulations. These three legal supports provide Quebec with the tools required to identify species at risk, to legally designate them as threatened or at risk, to protect their habitat and to develop implementation plans that provide sufficient protection for species and habitat that are in a precarious situation.
The situation is clear. The province of Quebec and its government do not need a federal act to encroach on its jurisdictions.
With the increasing rate with which species are disappearing, the situation is serious. It is true that effective action is necessary, but does this bill really make a contribution to improving the protection of our ecosystems and of the endangered species in it? In our view, the answer to the two questions asked at the beginning is negative.
The Bloc Quebecois completely supports the principle of providing additional protection for species. However we do not think the bill would improve the protection of threatened species. In fact, we are opposed to it because it constitutes a direct intrusion into many jurisdictions of Quebec that I just listed.
This bill is liable to create more red tape, rather than to make it possible for the limited resources to be properly channeled where they can do the most good. The government of Quebec is already legislating in the areas addressed by the bill. While acknowledging the urgency of improving the implementation of these statutes, we do not believe the bill will make it possible to achieve results.
We will not let this bill intrude in our jurisdictions. We already have an excellent act and we want to keep it.