Mr. Speaker, after this slough of petitions, I am pleased to rise again and resume my comments on Bill C-5, the Species at Risk Act.
At the outset of my speech, I was trying to convince the House that there was a major inconsistency between what the provinces and the federal government agreed to on October 2, 1996, under the National Accord for the Protection of Species at Risk in Canada, and what we are debating today in the House, Bill C-5.
While we completely agree with the principles of the accord with regards to conservation—I say this because Quebec has already had an act respecting threatened species in place since 1989, as I stated, in addition to an act respecting the conservation and development of wildlife, and fishing regulations to protect threatened and vulnerable species on its lands—I point out that there is an inconsistency. The principles laid out in the accord clearly indicate that when it comes to protecting species, the federal government is committed to improving its co-operation with the provinces.
Again, the Quebec legislation on endangered species was passed in 1989 by the Liberal government of Robert Bourassa. Some of the Liberal members who supported this legislation are sitting in this House today. They are about to accept the fact that the government will pass a bill that will duplicate a Quebec act, overlap existing measures and create a double safety net, this in spite of what the Quebec national assembly did in 1989.
We on this side of the House can only condemn this blatant violation of the principles of co-operation that underlie the national accord for the protection of species at risk in Canada.
Through this bill, the federal government is trying to set aside the Quebec model of protection, which works fine. Here is what the then Minister of the Environment said in 1996 regarding this accord:
We cannot remain indifferent to the fact that this agreement opens the door to overlap between the future federal legislation—
the “future federal legislation” being Bill C-5 now before us.
—and the act that has been in force since 1989, an act that works well and has already proven useful.
The then Minister of the Environment added:
We risk creating more red tape instead of dedicating ourselves to what really matters to us: the fate of endangered species.
The then Quebec Minister of the Environment was right. We have before us a bill that will allow a federal act to apply on the Quebec territory. This is useless duplication. As I mentioned, the Quebec act already exists in Quebec and has allowed for the legal identification of over 340 species. Not only does this legislation allow us to identify species but, since 1989, a series of measures have been in place to allow for the implementation of recovery plans for endangered and threatened species
Today, in the year 2002, as the federal government is about to adopt a bill that affects the provinces, it was already 12 years ago that Quebec was defining principles to legally establish recovery plans for certain species. Direct enforcement was also provided for.
Certain clauses of the bill, especially 32 and 33, provide for direct enforcement. The proposed legislation would create federal officers responsible for enforcing this federal legislation on lands which would not necessarily be designated federal only or even come under federal jurisdiction. This legislation would allow these officers to take action on lands under provincial jurisdiction, when Quebec has had wildlife conservation officers for years now under its act respecting the conservation of wildlife.
Why duplicate officers? Why add a second group of enforcement officers, when the first is doing its job perfectly well?
This bill goes against the 1996 principles underlying the protection of endangered species in Canada. These principles are about co-operation. With this bill, they are now deciding to dispense with co-operation and bring in powerful legislation giving the federal government authority to interfere directly in areas of provincial jurisdiction.
The federal government is also deciding to make provision for a compensation scheme, but at the same time it is not, because it has just imposed a gag and has given itself permission to again put forward amendments which would alter the committee's decisions. This government could perfectly well have spelled out the compensation scheme. Beyond future regulations, it could have taken this golden opportunity to spell out the compensation scheme for landowners in Canada and in Quebec. But no. It has decided to ignore the studies done by the experts, such as well-known academic Mr. Pearse. The latter proposed that landowners who lost 10% of the value of their property be eligible for compensation of up to in excess of 50% of its value.
The government has decided to bring in legislation, but it is not sticking to its own jurisdiction. It has decided to interfere in provincial jurisdiction. Not only that, but it is refusing to tell us how the compensation scheme will work.
We are disappointed in the government's initiative and we will naturally be voting against it. A number of the amendments in Group No. 5 are, in our opinion, unacceptable. I will come back to this a little later. I now leave the floor to my colleagues.