Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to stand in this place and speak to Bill C-5 at report stage and the Group No. 4 amendments. All the speakers, including my hon. colleague from the NDP who just spoke, have an honest passion to help protect endangered species. However, as others have said, there are some real concerns about how the bill has come together and how the government brings stakeholders together because there has been no effort on behalf of the government to bring stakeholders on all sides of the fence together.
That is where the bill will fail. That is where this side of the House will have tremendous difficulty in supporting the bill. I listened to my hon. colleague from Medicine Hat who comes from a rural area. He is clearly someone who is passionate about endangered species. I know he is an avid bird watcher and that he has been known to chase cougars from time to time. He has also actually wandered with the buffalo. I know how committed he is to endangered species but there was frustration in his voice when it came to the government and the basic rights that have been violated time and time again by trying to include property rights, something that is so fundamental.
My colleague talked about the 20 year anniversary celebration of the charter. We still do not have protection of property rights. That is why we find ourselves in the situation today where farmers, ranchers and landowners are so concerned about the prospects of finding endangered species on their land and that the government may not compensate them properly or fairly and will disregard the work they have done when it comes to stewardship and other programs.
The government is not willing to guarantee any form of compensation in the type of equation the opposition has outlined in the past. The government commissioned its own researcher, Dr. Pearse, to put together a fair compensation equation in dealing with land that has to be expropriated because of the endangered species. The government has failed to even consider those recommendations that it commissioned.
Something that particularly frustrates me a great deal in this place is the way democracy works. I have been speaking about that, as many of my colleagues have in the past, with different legislation, different cases, and different issues in committees. I have been trying to see if this place can function more democratically than it currently does. We have another case of where this place has failed because of the government's lack of paying attention to what members of this House do, even outside of the House.
I look at all the amendments that were put together at the committee stage. There were so many positive amendments made on all sides of the House that pertained especially to this Group No. 4 amendments. They dealt with a national aboriginal committee, the creation of stewardship and action plans and public consultations. These were positive amendments made at the committee stage from all members of the House. These amendments were agreed to in committee. They were discussed, debated, studied and witnesses had appeared. There had been some great progress made at the committee level which would have made a lot of things that are in the bill more tolerable right now to all members of the House.
However when the bill came back to the government we see some of the changes the government made to the committee changes that were made initially to the amendments. They are just outrageous. Some of them as simple as changing a name from council to committee particularly where Motion Nos. 6, 16, 17 and 20 deal with the aspect of a national aboriginal committee. When that issue was debated in committee the actual name proposed for this national aboriginal committee was the national aboriginal council. The government did not want to accept that recommendation from the committee and changed it from the national aboriginal council to the national aboriginal committee.
It does not create the type of goodwill we are trying to establish in this place to bring stakeholders together. Even in the areas of stewardship and action plans, the government has made changes since the bill went through committee which are simply outrageous. It almost seems that it is trying to nitpick so that it does not have to give credit to members of the committee who worked so hard to scrutinize the bill.
It does not surprise me that there is sometimes such a disincentive in this place among members. They feel the work and the study they do to get to know a bill so they can make it better is continuously rejected. They are trying to represent the people in their ridings and Canadians generally. It begs the question as to what our role is as members of parliament in establishing proper laws and in trying to represent all Canadians by bringing people from all walks of life together? No wonder there is such frustration and breakdown of the way democracy works in this place, and this is a perfect example of it.
What I want to focus in on, and my hon. colleague from Medicine Hat touched on this, is the idea of driving a wedge between landowners and people who live in rural and urban areas, which I think that is a better way to put it. Canadians from all areas clearly have spoken in different polls and in different forms of expression about species at risk. They are generally in favour of establishing species at risk or endangered species legislation that would help protect species. I believe that in some polls as high as 92% of Canadians were in favour of such legislation.
If there is that form of consensus among Canadians who feel that protection of endangered species is important, then why is it so difficult to bring MPs, who represent all sides of the argument, together in this place? Obviously there was an opportunity for the government to bring those two groups together but it failed miserably.
My hon. colleague from Medicine Hat spoke specifically about the issue of compensation. Let us look at the people who are closest to the land and who are closest to endangered species and know the habitats of many of these species well enough that they can put measures in place to protect these species. These people are clearly ranchers, agriculture producers and landowners in rural areas. They have the knowledge and experience to protect these specifies and to it effectively.
We want to have landowners, ranchers and others on board. We want to work not only with people in the urban areas but also in some of the most crucial areas to the survival of endangered species. We have to bring all these groups together. One of the biggest areas in which this bill has failed is in the idea of compensation. For instance, if landowners potentially find habitat or endangered species on their land, it is still not clear whether that land can expropriated and whether they will be compensated for the confiscation of that land.
As my hon. colleague said, when people rely on that land through the history of generations, their livelihoods or the production for whatever it is they use the land, clearly they will react adversely if that livelihood is threatened. This is not a plea from some of these landowners, farmers or ranchers to receive handouts. Many of these people are providing viable services and businesses to their communities or the country. They only want to have that viability protected.
It is clear that, if the idea of compensation is dealt with even slightly to show that the government cares about private property rights and to show that it will never leave its rural farmers, ranchers and landowners while in the lurch in the process of trying to protect endangered species, then there would be the biggest positive response from some of these groups to help protect endangered species. Clearly that is the concern among many of them now.
This is the third time the bill has been introduced in this place in some form or another. For those who wonder why it has not had the consensus, the government has failed time and time again to bring stakeholders together and to let this place work in a fair and democratic way. Even as bills travel through this place and go through committee to be scrutinized. the government interferes in that process without respecting some of the basic recommendations of all party committees, which basically come together to build consensus.
Finally, the stakeholders have still not been brought together and that is a shame. I am happy that I could voice these concerns on behalf of Edmonton--Strathcona.