Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Provencher.
I represent a riding that is both urban and rural. My riding has a lot of farmers. The endangered species in my riding certainly are the Liberals, because no one who is a farmer would vote Liberal. Farmers know what the government is like. They know what a lack of concern the Liberals have for agriculture.
We had to listen to the minister talk about the sky is falling and all the bad weather with not signing Kyoto. In actual fact if he were to admit it, it is a flawed agreement. There are much better ways to handle global warming. Yes, we should deal with it but certainly not through that flawed Kyoto agreement.
When farmers in my area hear about Kyoto they understand they will lose 30% of their jobs because most of them have to work off the farm. When national energy program one came along, 30% of them lost their houses, their land and their jobs. They know that Kyoto will cost at least that and more.
I want to talk primarily about Bill C-5 and the assault on rural property owners that it represents. We sat in committee for nine months. The minister talked about the farmers, the ranchers, the foresters, the oil and gas workers, the miners all being frontline soldiers. He said here again today that they were the people who had to co-operate if we were to protect species at risk.
We as a party want to protect species at risk. We want legislation that will work. That is the key difference.
Witnesses appeared before the environment committee month after month. We came up with over 300 amendments. We worked as a team on the environment committee to build something we all felt would work.
When the bill came back to the House the government turned back 138 of those amendments. It reversed them and went back to legislation that is exactly the same as legislation we would find in the United States which for 28 years has been nothing but a failure and has resulted in litigation instead of any kind of conservation.
That is what the government really stands for. Obviously it has not worked and it really does not care. The Liberals do not care about environmentalists. They do not care about business. They do not care about farmers. That is what the bill tells us. There is no habitat protection. There is no compensation. There is no mens rea.
There are horrendous penalties. Even though a farmer does not know that he has an endangered species on his land, and the government will not tell him, the farmer could get a $250,000 fine, five years in jail and a criminal record. There are not a lot of other offences with those kinds of penalties, except maybe gun control, as has been mentioned. Those kinds of penalties do not say the government wants to co-operate with rural landowners. They certainly are not farmer friendly.
There is no money budgeted for compensation. The minister says that the government is going to see how it works and in special cases it will give money. There is no money budgeted. Yes, there is $45 million to handle the administration, but that is for the administration. We have found what happens when the government talks about the administration of things. It said that Bill C-68 would never cost more than $85 million and now we know it is $1 billion and growing. That is the kind of shell game and misrepresentation we have seen.
There is not a farmer in the country who would believe the government is really going to give them compensation.
Clause 64 of the bill states “The minister shall”--it was “may” but now it is going to be “shall”, because that means everything--“in accordance with the regulations provide fair and reasonable compensation”.
What is fair and reasonable compensation and what does it mean to have it in the regulations? What it really means is that if there were no regulations there would be no compensation. There is no money budgeted for compensation. How can the government stand in this place and say there would be compensation?
Fair and reasonable is just that, whatever that means to whomever is making that decision. Some would say the Pearse report. It said if people suffer under a 10% loss they should get 50% compensation. Farmers and ranchers are not a bunch of greedy people waiting to sell their land. All they want, if they lose their piece of land, is to get fair market value. I have talked with a lot of people about what the difference is. Fair and reasonable is anything. It could be the Pearse report or whatever the government dreams up. But fair market value is taken by the sale of land around and an appraisal. This is a shell game.
The chairman of the rural caucus stated there were serious flaws pertaining to land compensation. He said:
Landowners must be compensated for loss of property enjoyment that results from compliance with the provisions of the act.Farmers tell me that any coercive approach to species protection will inevitably lead to many cases, with farmers and others faced with taking land out of production, resorting to a three S scenario — shoot, shovel, shut up.
The Canadian Cattlemen's Association seemed to have bought into the government's shell game, but it said there were problems with: lack of certainty regarding availability and scope of compensation, use of strict liability offence as opposed to mens rea , and lack of species notification. It also found fault with it even though it was told to follow the government line.
Farmers are saying the legislation will not work. Why did the government put forward the legislation? Why does it keep saying there is compensation? It is saying that because in actual fact the Minister of the Environment lost the battle at the cabinet table. In fact, one cabinet minister stated:
Removing compensation from C-5 altogether would be the ideal case from my point of view, but this is unlikely given the expectations of resource users.
That is what we have. Rural Canadians out there have no compensation. It might be in the regulations, but we will not draw them up. It will be fair and reasonable, but we will not define what that is. So in actual fact, when Canadians want to save a species, they will not contribute to the saving of that species. That is all that rural people in this country want. It is simply to be dealt with fairly.
Obviously there would be no regulations and no compensation. The government should stand up and honestly say we need this piece of legislation because we agreed to it in 1992 in a biodiversity convention. That is why it is putting it in. It is not going to enforce it. It has no money to enforce it. It has no money for compensation and so this piece of legislation is on the books, but it is really of little use. It will not save habitat. It will not save species at risk. It will not help farmers and is a total failure to rural Canadians.