Madam Speaker, I want to follow in my colleague's footsteps because he made some valuable points about the legislation. The facts are a little different from what the member has said. Of course what the House of Commons is all about is being able to stand and talk about the differences we have and the various political philosophies. Certainly this bill is one which draws out the differences.
My riding is the second largest riding in southern Ontario. If we put it with the riding of Hastings--Frontenac--Lennox and Addington we would have a third of the land in southern Ontario. It is a large agricultural based riding with 44 municipalities, 24 Santa Claus parades and 18 cenotaph services so I think I can talk for rural Ontario.
Rural Ontario is much like the west. We have the alienation of being 80 miles from Toronto, the CN Tower and so forth. There are some similarities between rural Ontario and the west. I have figured it out. Apparently when someone moves out west and buys a pair of Boulet cowboy boots and puts them on, he or she immediately feels western alienation. It is the French made cowboy boots that do it. I have a couple of pairs that I wear in the riding.
Due to the fact that I do come from a large agricultural riding, I have consulted with ranchers, farmers, trappers and the various people who make their living off the land. I was at the dairy farmers banquet on Saturday night and we dealt with this subject. What I explained to them and what I talked to everyone about is that somewhere along the line the government has to govern. It cannot go along leaving gaping holes in the species at risk act as things that cannot be addressed. We have to address them. Somewhere along the line the government in power has to come to the realization that something has to be done.
The member across the way talked about the burrowing owl. I know that if a groundhog tried to take over the trees we would probably do something different with it than we would do with the burrowing owl.
We do have land that is at risk. We do have species that are at risk. We do have the responsibility as a government to make sure that some of the items that are in the bill are brought forward and are acted on by the government. That is what a government is for. It has to govern whether the opposition members like it or not.
Members of the opposition will continue to try to talk this bill out and hopefully earn some brownie points by passing a speech back and forth to each other. I do not know how that works, but I admire them for their tenacity and tell them to keep going. We finally may have an opposition. I have not seen one since I came here.
The species at risk act has been nine years in the making. Nine years seems like a long enough time to put forward policies, different words and a cumulative process to bring forward informed policy. Not everyone will like the act and not everyone will be against it.
Today I met with real estate people from my riding. They have an issue with compensation. I fully agree with them. If someone's land is to be taken out of production, he or she should be compensated. I think we will find support for that particular item.
For instance, if someone takes out a loan with Farm Credit Corporation and a certain number of acres are needed in order to qualify for the loan, if some of that area is taken out of production, does it still remain part of the overall package?
Those are questions that have to be addressed and they are addressed through some of the revisions. We have revisions, changes, studies and refinements and each time the legislation has been brought back, the government listens a little more.
We talk to fishers, farmers, ranchers, resource companies, conservationists and environmentalists. I think I have spoken with most of them because my riding covers large operations. There are 27 commodity groups in the agricultural area I come from.
There was a demonstration. The grains and oilseeds people are in trouble right across Canada but particularly in Ontario because the Ontario government has not come up with its portion of the allotment that farmers need in order to be equal to the farmers in Quebec. Quebec gets the same amount of money on a proportional basis as Ontario. It is just that Ontario does not spend it. Some of the government policies have to be reviewed and we hope the new government in Ontario will do so.
There were 334 motions during the clause by clause review of this particular piece of legislation. There were 125 amendments made to the bill and 75 of those are supported by the government. I think that is progress. An opposition member cannot get everything. The minister will respond to the 75 amendments that were made which will make the legislation much more secure.
As we go through the bill and study it clause by clause, as a good Liberal government should, to make sure all areas are covered, all items are studied and re-examined and various people are consulted. We do not take sides. We do not hang our hat on one particular lobby group that is perhaps well paid to get some section through. We have to look at all aspects, particularly when we consider the various segments of the population that are affected, whether it is people in the dry cleaning business or people who are ranchers.
I was quite pleased to announce this week that I managed to get a $12,000 grant for a school in my riding that will rehabilitate the creek bed leading into Lake Simcoe along one of the valuable tributaries. There will be some tree planting and shoreline development. A couple of settlement ponds will be built for cattle to drink from so the stream will not be polluted. These are very worthwhile projects. It will benefit Brock township, which is in my riding. It will benefit the area. It will benefit the environment. It will teach young people to be land stewards and to actually see what can be done to save the environment.
I encourage members opposite to apply for these grants or to get organizations in their ridings to apply for them. They cannot complain about not getting them if they do not apply. I do not seem to have any opposition in getting them. I have the highest number of grants. It is only because I encourage people to apply. It is not anything I do. I do not take credit for them, but I do push them on this end. If nobody on the other side is competing with me, then obviously I will take everything I can for my riding. My riding benefits from it and that is the way it works. We have to become involved.
We work our way through that program, through the Haliburton game and fish farms and the various things we deal with. A representative from the Haliburton Real Estate Board was at my door today to talk about compensation. I fully agree with him. In my former life I was a real estate broker. In fact I am still a real estate broker; I am just on hold.
Moving along to the bill, there are a large number of species at risk and we have to review them, not just in the context of a burrowing owl or some other species that might be at risk. We are also looking at how we can deal with wetlands. It used to be that farmers would find the worst piece of wetland and use it as a dump. The township would dump all its trash there because it was wet and nobody could use it. Now the wetlands are being cleaned up.
A grant for $650,000 just went to Sir Sandford Fleming College in my riding. The college is developing an ecosystem that will treat all the brown water, all the various pollutants. It will be of great benefit to everyone in the House to copy that type of plan and see that things can be done with land that is reserved for various parts of society, whether it is wetlands or the Carden plains, the Carden Alvar in my riding where people deal with the expansion of quarries and what to do with the waste water from them.
Liberals are more than happy to speak to the bill. However we want to talk about the positive things in the bill, the things that make Canada a better country in which to live, things that make my riding a better place in which to live, and make all provinces and territories equally benefit from this very good piece of legislation along with the amendments.