Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise and speak to the bill today and to the Group No. 4 amendments. This is the first time I have spoken to the species at risk act.
All of us support the overall goals of the act: to protect species that are genuinely at risk; to use scientific evidence and data to identify such creatures whether they be two, four, six or eight legged; and to make sure the ones truly at risk are protected. In some ways doing this is not rocket science. First, we must identify the species. Second, we must see what steps can be taken to mitigate whatever is putting the species at risk. Third, we must make sure there is enough land base and a proper stewardship plan to make looking after the creatures viable and sustainable in the long term.
It is no good to take a species at risk such as a marmot and save it by putting it in a zoo somewhere. That is not a long term, viable and sustainable project. We must protect not only the creature but the environment in which it lives. We must make sure that in the long run these creatures are viable in the wild and not behind glass somewhere in a zoo.
While we in the Canadian Alliance are committed to protecting and preserving our natural environment and endangered species, we have consistently said there are problems with the act. We have heard in committee and across the country that Bill C-5 would not do the job it sets out to do. With respect to the Group No. 4 amendments, we are concerned about some of the things that have been proposed by the government in the creation of the stewardship action plans.
It is interesting that the extensive work done in committee would be undone by the government's own amendments. The amendments would undo the work of the committee and backbench MPs who spent an enormous amount of time listening to, consulting and talking to stakeholders and experts across the country before putting forward proposals only to find the government wants to undo them.
For example, the standing committee had proposed that the stewardship action plans include a commitment to regularly examine tax treatments and subsidies and eliminate disincentives that would put species at risk. The government wants to delete that language but the standing committee put it in for good reason. It demonstrates that compensation would not just be a cash payment but could involve other things like tax treatments. It would also see if there were cash disincentives that kept landowners and others from properly protecting species identified as at risk in their locales. The government wants to delete this portion, make it less specific and take out the work the standing committee put in place. That is wrong. The government should revert to the original language.
The government wants to delete the standing committee's requirement that the stewardship action plans provide technical and scientific support to persons engaged in stewardship activities. Instead the government wants to send out pamphlets to Canadians saying it is important for scientific reasons that certain species be protected. If people asked for scientific and technical support to make it possible to protect species on their land be they burrowing owls, marmots, salamanders or frogs, the government would tell them to get on the Internet and figure it out themselves.
If we are to obligate landowners and others to help with the stewardship of resources or species at risk, and even if they want to help, we had best give them the resources and technical and scientific data to make it possible. There is no sense in telling landowners there is an animal on their property we would like them to protect but that it is up to them to figure out how. The best of intentions will not save a species unless landowners have the help to make it possible.
It is interesting that a growing number of people who want a strong species at risk legislation are saying that the types of amendments in Group No. 4 and others are either making the bill ineffective or are just not doing the job of protecting the rights of landowners. Landowners want to do the right thing but they are finding it impossible to accomplish that goal.
This is where the phrase shoot and shovel came up. People are so frustrated with the idea of having an endangered species on their property that they feel that maybe they should just shoot it, get a shovel and bury it because dealing with the government on this is impossible. It is so difficult that even if they have the best intentions of looking after a species at risk in their area, they cannot get the help, the compensation, the resources or the moral support from the government to make it possible. They are increasingly left to rely on the government to some day bring in legislation to help landowners make it possible; that is, if it happens to be the right minister at the right time with the right budgetary surplus. That is not the way to draft legislation.
I have noticed that while the Canadian Real Estate Association supports the species at risk legislation, it is absolutely worried about the future of real estate values and its clientele who are trying to either buy, sell or maintain their properties. The Canadian Real Estate Association says that it supports the purpose of the bill but that when landowners are deprived of the use of their property while protecting an endangered species, then before the bill is passed it should state for sure what kind of compensation landowners can expect.
As an example, I live up on a hillside in an area just outside Chilliwack. Some new development is going on in the area and there is a concern about a particular species of west coast salamander which is somewhat rare and may exist in the creeks of this hillside area. I say may because no one has actually ever caught one of the little suckers. It is there in theory because it is painted onto the map as the area where the west coast salamander may live. However, people who happen to have a creek running through their property are left with the conundrum of dealing with the reality that there may be a salamander somewhere, although no one can find it, but if they are there huge restrictions have been put on what can be done on that property. The landowners say that whatever they can do to protect it they will do it but that they need the scientific data and they must be shown where its habitat is. They actually have to find one so that they know they have something to protect. They want parameters to work within.
As this hillside receives lots of rain, some landowners who own 10 acre parcels will have two or three creeks coming together somewhere on their property. When the federal government says that it wants a 100 foot setback on either side of the creek, times three creeks going through the property, plus no roads, landowners will be lucky to have an area the size of a city lot to work with let alone their 10 acres. The whole thing is protected with no compensation to the landowners who are trying to do their best but who are frustrated with the legislation and with the sorts of ambiguities in Group No. 4 that make it impossible to do the job.
The problem with the amendments and the bill in general is that while we all want to protect species at risk, we want to do it based on supportable scientific data and, when possible, based on compensation for landowners who are involved in this protection process. The bill does not do it and the amendments do not do it which is why they are not to be supported.