Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to speak today to Motion No. 387. I will take a moment to read the motion into the record. It states:
That, in the opinion of the House, as the various waterways known as the “Northwest Passage” are historic internal waters of Canada, the government should endeavour to refer to these waterways as the “Canadian Northwest Passage”.
This is now the second hour of debate on this motion and I have had occasion to review some of the speeches of the members who have preceded me in this debate. As the Speaker knows, this particular motion is being supported by all parties in the House. In many ways, it is similar to Motion No. 465, the motion dealing with the air passenger bill of rights where all the parties managed to come to agreement that such an action should be taken and such a bill should be brought in, but when action has been taken we find a fracturing of the previously agreeable people.
It is the same principle involved in this motion. The motion is broad enough and certainly finds acceptance with all four parties in the House but when we start talking about specifics that is when we start coming up with differences of opinion.
The fact is that we are also being faced with a threat from outside here. We have, increasingly, the United States and Europe claiming that the Northwest Passage is an international waterway, while Canada's position is that it is an internal passage. We know that with global warming, with the temperature rising up north and with the ice receding, it is potentially possible that within a few years the route may become navigable on a more sustainable basis than it is right now and we will have the incursion of foreign countries, particularly the United States, wishing to consider it international waters, not only for the purposes of shipping but also for the exploration of minerals, oil and so on.
We do have that sort of international issue being dealt with more or less on a worldwide basis.
The north is a beautiful area of the country. I was up in Yukon. The member for Yukon is here tonight and I have read his comments.
At the beginning of September, I was in Yukon meeting with Air North and had the occasion to tour Yukon. It is certainly a beautiful part of the country but it is not unlike my own province of Manitoba where we have a northern port known as Churchill. Both of those areas are very susceptible to even minor amounts of climate change. The tundra is not that stable and in fact is very unstable.
We have a railway that runs up to Churchill and I have been up there many times on the railway. The members will likely know and agree with me that that particular railway requires huge amounts of money for its roadbed. It requires huge maintenance because of where it is running to. It has slow orders on it constantly. I do not think the train is even operating at 30 or 40 miles an hour. I think it is more like 15, if that. I think we could run as fast as the train in some cases. This is as a result of the instability of the tundra in those areas.
We have a railway, which needs a lot of maintenance, and we have the Port of Churchill, which we have been trying to promote as an inland port in order to draw some of the grain trade away from Thunder Bay and from British Columbia to allow our farmers to send their products up through Churchill. We have had occasions of ships, particularly from Russia, coming through and, depending on the year, we have had as many as half a dozen ships show up at the Port of Churchill for loading grain and other commodities and taking them away.
We have the pro development people very interested in the economic possibilities. The people in Haliburton and other companies that rummage around the globe looking for economic opportunities will see the area warming up and the ice melting as very positive and an opportunity to make money and, therefore, more potential for commerce, trade and oil exploration.
However, what people need to recognize is that when we have that warming, when we have a destabilization of the environment and the tundra becomes destabilized, how will people be able to navigate around that area? What we essentially will be doing is destroying the livelihood of the people who are there right now, the people who have been there for thousands of years and who make their livelihood in trapping and fishing enterprises. They have enough stresses on their lifestyle right now. As their environment continues to whittle away, they will not be able to continue their own activities.
In Churchill over the last few years, the polar bears have not been able to get back on the ice and their weights are reducing. This is changing the whole sort of ecology, in some ways, upside down. For those who think this will somehow be a big plus, I guess their plan would be to try to challenge the sovereignty of Canada through the Northwest Passage and try to be available when and if opportunities should arise as far as the resources are concerned.
The four parties in this House have taken the correct action here. I realize that the member for Yukon did introduce a motion in the previous Parliament, which proves the point that nothing is new around this place. When elections happen, the House must start from scratch and all the bills and motions need to be reintroduced. Sometimes it is not the same people who introduced them the first time who end up introducing them the second time. However, the member for Yukon has endorsed this motion and pointed out some of the advantages that will happen because of the warming.
However, the member for the Bloc has pointed out a lot of the disadvantages that we will see as a result of the warming and, in many respects, I think he is right. He talks about the whole process of global warming and about how the ice melting in the north will cause huge instabilities. It will not be an economic opportunity but actually a cost item for Canada.
We need to look at things like oil spills. We think that we will somehow develop, for example, oil exploration. If we are going to develop oil reserves in a certain area and build pipelines across the tundra and take the oil to market, at a certain point, whether we are doing it through the pipeline process or doing it through the shipping process, eventually, statistically, we will have a—