Mr. Speaker, I will try to discuss a few of the points being made this afternoon, beginning right away with the very spirited and passionate intervention by the member for Souris--Moose Mountain. The member for Souris--Moose Mountain has done a terrific job this afternoon because he has in a very clear and lucid manner described step by step exactly what this bill is all about as it is written now.
I am glad that he made this point because certainly what this bill is doing is rejecting the U.S. approach, no matter how often members opposite claim that the approach of Bill C-5 can be compared to that of the American approach. It definitely is not. It has been written on the basis of the principles outlined by the member for Souris--Moose Mountain, namely, co-operation first not confrontation.
I can assure everyone that this is how the bill is written and anyone who wishes can see how it would work with action plans, consultations, planning and a sequence of events which leaves the confrontational aspect as the very last resort to be invoked when everything else fails. I can assure the House about that because we have lived with this bill, as the member for Souris--Moose Mountain knows, for quite some time. In that respect I am in a way grateful because his impassioned intervention has really helped to make it quite clear what this bill is all about. He has done it better than I could have.
The second point has to do with the very thoughtful intervention by the member for Windsor--St. Clair. In his intervention he invoked the necessity of the need for flexibility. He spoke about the carrot and the stick. Again we see a different approach because the member for Windsor--St. Clair wants a balance between the two. Whereas the member for Souris--Moose Mountain wants co-operation first rather than confrontation.
The bill itself invokes the stick as a last resort measure. It is a sequence of steps that shows there is a desire to be flexible, to avoid the experience south of the border and to develop the highest degree and level of co-operation that can be achieved with civil society. Of course time will tell whether that is the right approach. We now have to give this approach a chance to see how it works. Of course legislation can always be improved in a second phase.
That leads me to the various rather passionate interventions this afternoon on compensation. I have the impression that the researchers on the side of the Alliance perhaps have not done as good a job as they could have. The member for Skeena, if I understood him correctly, as well as the member for Kelowna did recognize, unlike the member for Red Deer, that compensation was written into the bill. It is no longer permissive. It is a must.
Not only that but the writing of the bill is now mandatory and also the words “fair and reasonable compensation” are in subclause 64(1). Some members opposite have made the point that instead of “fair and reasonable” they would rather have “fair market value”. That, of course, can be discussed. I would argue that fair and reasonable can be as good as fair market value at times of market depressions. It could actually help and be useful as a concept or a guideline to the affected farmer or woodlot owner rather than fair market value.
Of course that is a debate for economists and we do not want to invest too much time in that. There is one opinion for every economist in this respect.
The fact is that on page 36 of the bill it states:
The Minister may...provide fair and reasonable compensation--
It then sets out the procedure, the methods and the terms and conditions for the provision of compensation, but not in detail. Some members of the opposition would like to have the regulations written into the act but that would be absurd. The regulations are called regulations because they are not law. The law sets the parameters for the regulations. The regulations then are written to implement the law. It is then the task of a parliamentary committee to see to it that the regulations are in conformity with the law. To expect that the law would define every detail of the regulation would be absurd. A committee of parliament would be sitting for years before it could report the bill back to the House. Let us be practical here, for Heaven's sake. The official opposition party actually claims to be one of the most practical parties in the world so let it live up to that reputation.
I would be remiss if I did not make a reference to the speech by the member for Fundy--Royal. He made a fair intervention but we must correct one impression that he left in the House about migratory birds. Migratory birds have not been forgotten. Migratory birds and their habitat have been included in the bill. The protection of the habitat for migratory birds is now mandatory on federal land.
Some people will ask why we left out the provinces. The official opposition would be screaming if we were to impose it on the provinces.
It seems to me that not many in the House would have a strong argument to blame the government for having limited its mandatory provision for migratory birds only to federal land, of course in the hope that the provinces will adopt mirror legislation and adopt the same approaches on provincial land.
Let us hope that in a few years when the bill will be debated again, birds which have the unfortunate experience of landing on a provincial stone will not be at a disadvantage vis-à-vis birds which land on a federal stone, but that the provinces will in good faith adopt the approach of the federal government, adopt mirror legislation so that we have an approach to the protection of endangered species that is not hampered by political boundaries.
To conclude, it would be remiss on my part not to indicate to the House that the Prime Minister has taken an interest in the bill. The result has been that vast improvements to the legislation have taken place on the subject of mandatory habitat protection on federal land and also on the dimension of the scientific list. That could then be the subject when we go into third reading because these are items that are not covered by this particular group of motions.
Let me tell members that the bill has been vastly improved. It has certain features that are highly welcome. On the theme of compensation, I would urge members of the opposition to carefully read section 64(1) and to become fully aware of what it contains rather than listening to hearsay or hastily prepared papers as apparently was the case this morning with the member for Red Deer who launched into a criticism of the bill, which actually his own members corrected, for which we were extremely grateful.