Madam Speaker, more government, more regulation, more intrusion into our day to day lives, a heavy-handed approach to basic fundamental rights: this is increasingly becoming the agenda of the government. This legislation is representative of that approach.
I think every member of the House supports the intended goal of the legislation to protect endangered species. That is not the problem. The difficulty here is that there is a whole host of stakeholders who are opposed to this legislation. When we analyze that, the root cause of that opposition is lack of consultation. The government and the bureaucracy have an approach to mandate and legislate results without consultation or co-operation. There is a tremendous amount of opposition to this piece of legislation.
I am from Saskatchewan. This legislation, along with other intrusive pieces of legislation from the government, will have a negative impact on rural Saskatchewan and I suppose other parts of the country as well. What are some of these concerns?
I mentioned that it is running roughshod over fundamental rights. Property rights are the heart and soul or our economic system. The free enterprise system could not work without our concept of property. It would totally break down.
The other day we celebrated the 20th anniversary of the charter of rights. When the Liberal government created the charter of rights, it deliberately chose to ignore the inclusion of property rights in our constitution as a basic protection. I can see why the Liberals did not want that in the charter of rights. It is this type of legislation we are looking at today that underscores their contempt for the concept of property rights.
In a modern democracy, all we can expect is that if the government needs property, at least we will have due process in expropriation proceedings and we will receive fair compensation. The government refused to guarantee those basic rights in this legislation. That is dangerous.
As far as interfering with basic rights is concerned, a second danger point is criminal justice principles. In many ways a hallmark of a western democracy is how we treat the accused in our society. One of the principles of our criminal justice system that is pretty strong and basic is that we do not make criminals out of citizens who did not have mens rea, the intent to commit the crime.
This legislation has serious consequences for someone who innocently might cause damage to habitat or an endangered species. No matter how innocent, he or she could face five years in jail and $250,000 in fines. In my province many of the farmers are corporate farmers. They have been required to incorporate to deal with taxation issues and other matters. The sanctions are even heavier for a corporate entity, some $1 million in fines.
We are observing the decline of rural Canada. In a lot of ways, if the government is not the cause of the decline, it has helped to accelerate it. I had the privilege of driving through North Dakota not long ago. There are five pasta processing plants in that state near the Canadian border. A few years back a group of entrepreneurial farmers in the prairies wanted to develop their own pasta plant. The Canadian Wheat Board regulations would not permit them to do so. Their project was aborted because of government regulation.
In rural Saskatchewan today, any sort of minor roadwork, ditch digging, putting in culverts, removing an old bridge or anything along those lines now requires environmental impact studies due to the legislation of the government.
The government's rail transportation policies have been a disaster for rural Saskatchewan. They have been a disaster for our small towns and our rural highway network which is falling apart.
The government's income support programs have been a disaster as well. When I talk to farm people back in my province I am told these programs are lean on results and very heavy on bureaucracy and complication.
There have now been a few more things added to this legislation including cruelty to animals amendments which are going to have a huge negative impact on rural Canada.
We have already debated the firearms legislation many times in the House. It sends out dangerous and hostile signals to people in rural Canada.
The government should be looking at policies that encourage growth in rural Canada instead of coming up with policies that accelerate the decline of rural Canada, some of which I just mentioned. There are many more. The government is perceived in my part of rural Canada as a hostile, alien entity. Its agenda is not compatible with the interests of rural Canada.
Emerson and Thoreau did not like city life. They preferred instead to get close to nature, to get out to the forest and away from the craziness of urban life in the United States. I have spent a good deal of my life in rural Saskatchewan. After spending a lot of time in an urban area it is very refreshing to get back into a rural area close to nature.
People who live in rural Canada are much more sensitive than their urban cousins are about the environment and endangered species. They have much better knowledge of that as well. Quite often the government gets its inspiration from urban society. It may have good intentions, but as Shakespeare and others have said, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The government should be listening to rural Canadians when bringing in policies of this nature.
It gets a bit scary to hear the words “the government should do something about that” because every time the government takes on a task, its cure is quite literally worse than the problem. It has a bad habit of doing that sort of thing. The government wants to regulate and control our day to day lives. It wants to respond to every request from a group in our society for the government to do something. In response it comes up with more bureaucracy, legislation or something that interferes with our basic fundamental rights.
There has to be a refocus because the country is in decline. When I came back from the United States in 1969 our dollar was almost on par with the United States dollar. Our standard of living and our tax rates were equivalent to those of the United States. Today our standard of living is 30% lower than that of the United States. I do not know what the dollar is today, but yesterday it was still in the 62¢ range. Canada is slowly headed in the wrong direction.
We need a government that creates an environment that challenges people to aim for the gold medal, not the bronze medal. With this government we are dealing with a lead medal. We are not even aiming at third place any more.
We do not need more government interference in our day to day lives. We need some positive signals from the government that encourage growth and give people hope for the future. This legislation is just one of many pieces of legislation which send out the wrong signal.