Mr. Speaker, I have heard members opposite concerned about the shutting down of debate. Canadians need to know that the bill has been worked on and debated for somewhere close to eight years now. It has gone through three incarnations and we must bring it to a close somehow.
Meanwhile, over the course of all of those years and just last year 11 new species were added to the endangered species list. Seven species were upgraded and one was de-listed. That is an average of 17 species affected on an annual basis. While members have been debating this, something in the order of 136 species have been affected. It is not exactly a sterling record of movement on the part of members of parliament.
Overwhelmingly the degradation of ecosystems and loss of habitat represents the threat to endangered wildlife. The member who just spoke said this was a combination of carrot and stick. He is right. The stick is clearly the listing process. When the committee on the status of endangered wildlife in Canada proposes a list there has to be a decision made within nine months. For critical habitat on federal lands all critical habitat identified in a recovery strategy or action plan would be protected. More specifically, if after 180 days any portion of the critical habitat is left unprotected, the legal order would have to be made.
That is the stick. The idea of the bill is to avoid the stick, to avoid getting on the list because if a particular species is found on the list and one is a landowner, one would probably have some problems. Many landowners have recognized this. There are woodlot owners across Ontario and Quebec who proudly display their membership and conservation organizations. There are fishers in Atlantic Canada who have invested in nets that avoid trapping whales and sea turtles. Ranchers in Ontario and Alberta have assisted in the recovery of a loggerhead shrike.
Landowners have started to recognize that this kind of thing is in the best interests for all. They want to do the right thing and the right thing is good business. None of them is looking for a handout or the promise of one. They just want to see that the right thing is done and that it is fair and reasonable. That is what rural people are interested in. They are ethical in protecting the waters where fishers have worked for generations and protecting woodlands and prairies. That is in everybody's interest including those who live off the land.
Is it totally naive to rely on this stewardship of the environment, this volunteerism, this willingness to do the right thing? Or is the government being naive and in the process ripping off the landowner? Here is where the stick comes in because that in some respects is the carrot. We have dealt with the carrot which is do the right thing because it is in everyone's interest.
Compensation is a vital pillar to the success of the bill. Nowhere in the debate did the government propose that there would never be any compensation regime and that the landowners would be left swinging in the breeze so to speak. The standing committee amendment clarified that compensation should be provided to anyone who suffers a loss from the extraordinary impact of critical habitat protections in a fair and reasonable way. The government agreed with that. It is hard, however, to be more definitive than that. At any moment can we tell a landowner or anyone else for that matter that 1.6 hectares cannot be used for cultivation for three weeks because that is currently the nesting site for a thrush? How do we calculate that?
In another life I practised real estate law. I have acted on both sides of the equation with both landowners and municipalities that expropriated land. I never met any side that was happy with an expropriation and the compensation scheme. We would indicate the number of acres needed, the relative market value and we would argue about the number within a certain range.
This kind of compensation scheme is far more difficult and extensive than an appropriation of real estate. Yet the landowner will still retain title to the land as in the example that I just gave. Therefore we will have the situation where the landowner still owns the land, yet cannot use the land for three or four weeks in this critical period of time.
How do we compensate for that? What is the value of that land? What is the price of doing the right thing? Those are difficult questions and it is difficult to reduce it to law. The term fair market value applied to land acquisition and land expropriation situations has little relevance in the situation where we are trying to compensate a landowner when there is a species that is endangered.
We need to have the practical experience of implementing the stewardship and recovery provisions of the bill and in dealing with questions of compensation. It is fine and dandy for members opposite to say that landowners must be compensated but it is difficult to establish a grid of compensation for a species that uses the land for a period of time on expensive or relatively inexpensive land. Establishing a prescriptive approach in the legislation without the practical experience may well have an unintended effect on excluding some legitimate claims.
Part of the difficulty over the eight years has been the law of unintended consequences. If we were to set up a regulatory regime which sets up a grid we would create winners and losers. Some of the losers may be the people whom we wanted to compensate. The expertise of qualified evaluation experts would be used to determine the adverse impact on the interest in the property or a quantification of the loss of benefits that may result from not being able to carry on certain activities. There may well be experts who can advise on what that is worth. However having sat on both sides of this for simple compensation cases I remain somewhat skeptical.
There is a general and global compensation regulation scheme that is being set up. I compliment the government for withdrawing Motion No. 109 so that a compensation scheme shall be set up. I congratulate the Liberal rural caucus in its efforts in this area and acknowledge the efforts of the parliamentary secretary who has ably represented the government to the members of the rural caucus and other members and also acknowledge the hard work of the standing committee. This is a far more difficult bill than many members realize.