Mr. Speaker, I am very much enjoying following the debate. The questions that were asked of the last speaker are very important even though the bill is not directly related to some of the concerns and issues that members have raised.
I must admit that I was trying to put together a communication for the constituents of my riding about the 12 or 13 bills that have been tabled in this place by the government. I want to let them know what the issues are before the House and to give them an opportunity to receive further information or maybe ask some questions about the bills.
When I got to Bill C-7, an act to amend the Department of Canadian Heritage Act and the Parks Canada Agency Act and to make related amendments to other acts, I had some difficulty writing very much about the bill itself. There are no major policy changes and there are no additional funding requirements related to Bill C-7. Quite frankly, I have not heard of a lot of problems with the technical bill that is before us. I am pretty sure this matter will go forward.
What is extremely important is that the bill has given us an opportunity to reflect on our national parks and historic sites. We tend to take them for granted. We have heard from other members that there are some concerns about the investment made even to the point where the last speaker raised some concern about having surpluses which ultimately are dedicated to paying down debt and there is no money left over to invest in our parks which are calling for some assistance.
Canadians who have had an opportunity to visit some of our national parks, historic sites and marine conservation areas feel a deep sense of pride at the rich history we have. A fundamental part of being Canadian is to participate in the great outdoors in Canada. I know the Minister of Agriculture will agree as he is a great outdoorsman himself.
I do not want to comment on the bill itself. Members have adequately put forward the matters relating to the technical amendments. However, I want to talk briefly about the Parks Canada story.
Canada's national parks, historic sites and marine conservation areas represent what many call the soul of Canada. They are central to who we are and what we are. They are places of great wonder and heritage. Each tells its own story and together they connect Canadians to their roots, to each other, and to the future. This is extremely important because, as members from the Bloc have said, this is an integral part of what Canada is. It is inseparable.
As a Canadian, I own a little piece of each and every square inch of all of Canada, including Quebec, and everyone in Quebec owns a little piece of every other part of Canada. It is a very important linkage that we should make. It is a common bond of association, a binding element among all Canadians.
What we cherish as part of our national identity we also recognize as part of our national responsibility. All Canadians share the obligation to preserve and protect Canada's unique cultural and natural heritage. Together we hold our national parks, our national historic sites and our national marine conservation areas in trust for the benefit of this generation and future generations.
Canada has the distinction of having the first national parks service in the world. Over the decades our national parks system has grown to 41 national parks and reserves, preserving for future generations almost 265,000 square kilometres of land and waters and there are plans to add 100,000 square kilometres through the creation of eight more national parks. This legacy is possible in large part because the provincial and territorial governments, aboriginal people and local communities have worked with us to create many of these new national parks.
The creation and management of our national parks is a delicate balance between protection of ecologically significant areas of importance to wildlife and meeting economic and social needs of communities.
The Government of Canada is committed to working with the aboriginal people, local communities and other Canadians and stakeholders to protect our precious natural heritage through the creation of new national parks and national marine conservation areas.
In October 2002, the government announced an action plan to substantially complete Canada's system of national parks by creating ten new parks over the next five years. This is great news for Canadians. This will expand the system by almost 50%, with the total area spanning nearly the size of Newfoundland and Labrador.In fact, we have already created two of those ten new national parks, with work continuing on eight other proposals. Five new national marine conservation areas will also be created.
Canada is blessed with exceptional marine treasures. My daughter is in marine biology. She is an ecological engineer right now and has had an opportunity to travel all across Canada and experience so many places; I think a lifetime is too short to see and enjoy all that these protected lands and waters have to offer us.
The action plan calls on Parks Canada to work with all of its partners, the provinces and territories, aboriginal and rural communities, industry, environmental groups and others, to complete this effort. It is a good news story and it is an important point to make even in the debate of a bill as benign as Bill C-7.
In March 2003 the government allocated $144 million over five years and $29 million annually thereafter toward this effort. The action plan has already produced two new parks. The new Gulf Islands National Park Reserve of Canada protects 33,000 square kilometres of ecologically rare land in the southern Gulf Islands of British Columbia. At over 20,000 square kilometres, the new Ukkusiksalik National Park of Canada protects virtually an entire watershed close to the Arctic circle in Nunavut. I have had an opportunity to visit Whitehorse and other areas, but I have not been to Nunavut and I hope that one day my family and I will be able to visit that area.
Negotiations to establish the Torngat Mountains National Park Reserve in Northern Labrador are also nearing completion. This long-standing proposal will protect some of the highest mountains in North America east of the Canadian Rockies.
In March 2004, the premier of Manitoba and the former minister of the environment signed a memorandum of agreement identifying the boundaries for public consultation for a national park in the Manitoba Lowlands. They also committed to negotiating a national park establishment agreement by May 2005.
Both parks will make significant and magnificent additions to our world class parks system.
The government is also working with partners to establish five new national marine conservation areas, adding an estimated 15,000 square kilometres to the system. This will be a major step forward in global conservation of marine habitat. Canada has the world's longest coastline and 7% of its fresh water. This commitment to creating new marine conservation areas is consistent with the recent Speech from the Throne in which our government made a commitment to create new marine protected areas as part of the ocean action plan.
These national marine conservation areas will be located in ecologically unrepresented marine regions. Four sites have also been identified, including the Gwaii Haanas off British Columbia's Queen Charlotte Islands, Western Lake Superior, British Columbia's Southern Strait of Georgia, and the waters off Îles-de-la-Madeleine in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. While a site for the remaining national marine conservation area has yet to be finalized, Parks Canada has received a number of proposals from local communities, a testament to the growing interest in the conservation of our marine heritage.
In addition, the government will accelerate its actions over the next five years to improve the ecological integrity of Canada's 41 existing national parks. This will implement the action plan arising from the panel on the ecological integrity of Canada's national parks, whose report was endorsed by the government in April 2000.
These two initiatives, the action plan to expand our system of national parks and national marine conservation areas, and the action plan on ecological integrity, are the most ambitious initiatives to expand and protect national parks and national marine conservation areas in over 100 years, indeed, since Banff National Park of Canada, Canada's first, was established in 1885.
Parks Canada needs to get on with the job Parliament has assigned to it and I am sure we are going to have the support for Bill C-7 to enact these changes, these technical amendments.
The last reference I made is something that concerns me quite a bit. I want to use a little of my remaining time to make mention of it. It has to do with Banff, our first park, established in 1885. I have had an opportunity to go to Banff, to drive slowly, to visit Lake Louise, and to see the beauty of the Banff area and do some hiking, both in good weather and in bad weather, a little of each.
However, over the years one of the things I have noticed is that a tremendous amount of construction has been going on in the areas that lead into Banff. There has been so much that the dust, the rubble, the dirt and the disruption of the area are probably evident even to those who have no idea what the ecological concerns might be and what the impacts would be on wildlife.
I used to work for Trans-Canada Pipelines. I was the director of finance and was involved in a number of things, including the proposed Mackenzie Valley-Delta pipeline project, which ultimately, under the Thomas Berger commission, was shelved for some 10 years. A lot of that had to do with the impacts on the environment, on the flora, the fauna and the migration patterns. At that time, those who were responsible for the development were very sensitive to the impacts on the environment, on plant, animal and other species. I did not see it in Banff. I did not see that same kind of discipline.
The member from the Bloc spoke about the national park in Quebec and talked about some fenced off area where there is a sewer going underneath there and it is not well kept, i.e., it is not remediated to the point where we could have a park which all could enjoy. Something is wrong in terms of the discipline; I do not know what it is. It is not in the bill, but it has to be within our commitment to continuing to develop our conservation areas, our national parks, our wildlife preserves and our marine conservation areas.
In Banff there is now what is virtually a superhighway and a parallel highway in case there is a problem. There are now bridges over the highway, which are meant for the animals to use to migrate from one side of the highway to the other. I understand they do not work as well as they should, but at least there is a possibility for wildlife to migrate.
Now we hear that Banff development has been so saturated it has almost become a place where we need to have money to be there. It is not a place for ordinary Canadians and their families and kids. The houses there are enormous. The development there is enormous. It is hard to believe that this is good. There is wildlife walking through the streets in the evenings. We go there and suddenly there is wildlife; the deer walk through the streets in the evening light and nibble away at the trees. The reason is that we have encroached terribly on the natural habitat of wildlife because it is Banff and because beautiful Lake Louise is there. My goodness, anybody who has seen it knows how pristine and how beautiful it is. The hiking there is terrific and people can do a little horseback riding or simply walk some of the trails.
However, now things are at the point where those in charge have decided that perhaps they have to stop development, perhaps they cannot have any more people sell their homes and that kind of thing. I think the Banff experience should be a beacon to all parliamentarians. It says that if we do not watch carefully, sometimes we drift away from the reason why things were done in the first place.
I suspect if we ever went back and looked at the documents about why we should have national parks and why we should make one the Banff National Park, the underpinnings would be so that our parks would reflect Canada: the majesty, the soul, the peace and the naturalness of a country.
Yet now it has become so commercial. I do not know whether there is a report card on Banff, but I would think that a report card since the park was established in 1885 probably would not be a good report card. I think something has happened.
If that is the case, then I think the example the Bloc member raised has to be looked at in terms of the standards and the underpinning reliance that we place on those in charge to ensure that national parks and the marine reserves and the wildlife reserves, et cetera, are protected and allowed to flourish in the most natural state possible, giving us the opportunity to enjoy them but in a way that does not encroach on the natural activity within those areas.
Therefore, I think Bill C-7 is important not just for the technical amendments, which others have laid out for the House so I will not repeat them; Bill C-7 gives effect to order in council decisions that have been made in the past so it is housecleaning. It would have been very easy to come in here and say that Bill C-7 looks okay to me because it is doing what we have already done, or just noting in the legislation what has been done and how we changed the responsibility from one department to another so let us deal with it all in one stage in the House.
I guess we could do that, but I think it is important that members at least take the opportunity to realize that this is an opportunity to talk about something that is extremely important to all Canadians, not only today's Canadians but future generations. These are the jewels of our country from sea to sea to sea.
When we compare ourselves to other countries, we see that even a country such as Taiwan has more national parks than Canada. This is hard to believe, but there is a tremendous discipline in terms of combining the people's activities with the existence of national parks.
I am pleased that members have raised some of these issues about the condition of our national parks. Perhaps we should look to find out when things deteriorated. Perhaps we should ask who was responsible, what questions were asked, what monitoring was done, and what jurisdiction was involved. Where could members of Parliament be involved so that to the extent possible we can do our part to make sure we preserve these important sites for generations to come?
I appreciate the opportunity to comment briefly on Bill C-7. This is about all I would care to say on Bill C-7, but I am very pleased to have the opportunity to share a few of my thoughts and views on what I believe is one of the most important binding matters in Canada, and that is the preservation of our heritage properties, our national parks, our wildlife preserves and our marine conservation areas.