Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-20, An Act to amend the National Capital Act and other Acts. This is not the first time I have spoken to such a bill.
Bill C-20 was introduced following the prorogation, but had previously been introduced on June 9, 2009 under a different number, before Parliament was prorogued. At the time, important statements were made by the hon. member for Pontiac, because Gatineau Park borders the Outaouais region.
The Outaouais region includes four ridings, namely Hull—Aylmer, Pontiac, Gatineau and Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, which I represent in this place. I have one foot in the Laurentians and the other in the Outaouais region.
As the former chair of the Conseil régional de développement de l'Outaouais, I can say that Gatineau Park has definitely always been important to me. This park, which occupies more than 360 km2, is a federal property on Quebec soil.
Everyone knew that, at some point, the National Capital Act would have to be amended and modernized. I sit on the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities, which received the June 9, 2009 version of this legislation. The committee will now have to review Bill C-20, which is before us.
I was in favour of modernizing this legislation, particularly since the community had set up a committee to make recommendations. I am not going to speak at length about this committee, which is made up of volunteers and which proposed interesting recommendations.
When I looked at the June 9, 2009 version of the bill, I had some reservations. As a member of the Bloc Québécois, I was proud to welcome to the committee the member for Gatineau, whose riding is closer to Gatineau Park and is part of the territory covered by the National Capital Commission. I am a member from the Outaouais, but my riding is located outside the territory that is under the National Capital Commission.
We benefited from the nice contribution made by my colleague for Gatineau. He takes an interest in the land covered by Gatineau Park, because his constituents ask him questions on this issue. It is not just an area: it is a park used by the public.
So, it is important to see how the federal government, which owns the land, manages this park for the benefit of the community. I was keeping abreast of this major issue in the local media. I thought the bill would put to rest most of the concerns I had at the time, when I was chair of the Conseil régional de développement de l'Outaouais.
One of the main concerns was the presence of the Quebec government at the table. We cannot have a federal property managed by the National Capital Commission and make changes to the National Capital Act without taking into consideration the Quebec government, which must make important decisions regarding its whole territory.
In this bill to amend the National Capital Act, I was surprised to see that the government of Quebec and that of Ontario—since part of the land managed by the National Capital Commission is located in Ontario—are not involved in the discussions.
The NDP member said that the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities works well, and it is true.
I have been a member of the committee since 2000. We have always been fairly pragmatic, and it is no secret that the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities takes a logical approach to issues.
We need to leave partisan politics aside as much as possible and try to resolve issues and problems one by one, in a logical manner. Members are familiar with the good parent concept. What would a good parent do in a given situation? That is how I have always acted at the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities.
If we are going to update the National Capital Act, why not do it right? When the time comes to once again discuss the acquisition of land, for example in Gatineau Park, why not consider what the provincial governments—of Quebec and Ontario—think, and consider the letters that have been sent to the member for Pontiac from the Government of Quebec?
I will not read out these letters written by Minister Pelletier, who was the minister responsible for the Outaouais in the Quebec National Assembly at the time. He was a Liberal minister who had no ties to the Parti Québécois or the Bloc Québécois. In 2007, he wrote a letter to express his interest in participating in discussions, because the bill provided for some very important additions, including the creation of a national interest land mass, which would allow the NCC to designate any land as part of this mass, and to proceed with the acquisition process. I am thinking of Gatineau Park and other land in the city of Gatineau and the surrounding area.
The same thing could happen in Ontario. The Bloc Québécois heard about a letter from Minister Pelletier, who was a member from Gatineau, in the Outaouais. He represented a riding at the National Assembly. Minister Pelletier wrote to the member for Pontiac, a member from the Outaouais, to say that the Government of Quebec must be involved in discussions regarding the national interest land mass. The Government of Quebec had to participate in these discussions and be involved in the decision. It was not simply a matter of consulting the Government of Quebec.
We are talking about land that is in Quebec. This Parliament has recognized the Quebec nation. Obviously, it comes up often and the Conservative members constantly repeat that they have recognized the Quebec nation. But the problem is that there is a world of difference between the recognition and applying this recognition. There is a world of difference and a sea of Conservatives that prevent these debates.
In committee I felt that we should have been able to make the Conservative members understand that we were updating the National Capital Act. And one way of updating the act would be to require that provincial governments—Ontario and Quebec—be involved in discussions about land acquisition and policies. The master plan will inevitably have an impact on land in Quebec and Ontario. Quebec and Ontario must be given a proportional number of seats at these discussions.
If we are talking about updating the act, we should actually do it. I can understand that the reporting committee was comprised of people from the area, citizens who participated in the debate. They were far removed from political concerns, but once the bill is passed and we want to update it, political concerns are obligatory, especially when the possibility of property or whatever being bought and sold affects land belonging to Quebec and Ontario.
Obviously, the Conservative representatives would not budge. Knowing my Conservative colleagues on the committee, I would say that this is not coming from them because they are usually open to negotiation. There was an official order.
We asked the National Capital Commission chair to appear and we will do so again when we examine Bill C-20. We realized that this bill represents the wishful thinking of NCC administrators who would like it to be a deciding body regarding federal land in Quebec and Ontario, even though they are not elected.
Understandably, we have many reservations. I think the Liberal Party also has many reservations. The NDP—we will see what happens when it is time to study Bill C-20—appeared to support it, but based on the speeches, I think the NDP members are beginning to have some doubts.
I was very surprised to see how reluctant the Conservative members were to enter into negotiations with Quebec or Ontario regarding lands within Quebec and Ontario. I was also surprised that those provinces were not given seats at the negotiating table or that a formal recommendation was not required from the Quebec National Assembly if there is to be any change to the total area or any land is sold. After all, we are talking about land that falls within the borders of Quebec and Ontario.
Quebec did not sign the Canadian Constitution, but the fact remains that the Constitution gives the provinces and territories certain rights. This bill ignores that fact. That is worrisome. The Conservatives say they want to update the legislation, so they introduced a bill to update the National Capital Act, to bring it in line with 2010, yet they are ignoring a slew of complaints and demands.
Through then Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, Benoît Pelletier, the Government of Quebec wrote directly to the hon. member for Pontiac, who was the Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities at the time and responsible for the National Capital Commission. Mr. Pelletier said the act could not be amended in any way, especially regarding this new concept of “national interest land mass”, there could be no discussion and no decisions made without the consent of the Government of Quebec or the Government of Ontario.
No one is trying to take away any rights Ontario may have in that regard.
I thought this could have been negotiated easily in committee. Before prorogation, we were conducting the clause-by-clause review and we could sense that the Conservative government had many reservations. After the prorogation, the Conservative government introduced the new bill before us today, Bill C-20. I thought the government would have taken the opportunity to listen to us. We had already submitted our lists of amendments. We believed that, after the discussions, the government would have taken the opportunity to update the law or the new bill. That is not the case.
The Conservatives are digging their heels in, probably because they believe they may have the support of the NDP.
We are in favour of sending Bill C-20 to committee. Our objective today is to send Bill C-20 to committee for amendment.
I will take this opportunity to send a message to the NDP, often considered the centralizing party. If it decides to support the Conservatives and once again centralize the power to make decisions about Quebec or Ontario lands in the hands of the National Capital Commission, it will be maintaining its centralizing approach, which the Conservative Party wants to take advantage of in this matter.
I would like to say to my Conservative colleagues that, if they are not a centralizing party, they should not give the centralizing powers that it does not wish to give itself to an organization comprised of unelected officials, the members of the NCC board of directors. That is what they are doing. They are handing over the power to purchase and sell Quebec and Ontario land to an organization that is at arm's length from Parliament, without the say of the House of Commons and, even worse, without any authorization from Quebec and Ontario.
The CEO said that they would be consulted. They are consulted, but it is the commission that makes the decisions and its members are not elected. That was the message from the CEO of the NCC, a very nice Quebecker. She said that the committee established to make recommendations found that it was reasonable for the National Capital Commission to make the decisions because it was not a government jurisdiction. It seems that the members of the board of directors are experts and that they will make decisions about the purchase and sale of land.
With this new concept of national interest land mass, non-elected officials would make the decision to dispose of or acquire lands in Quebec and Ontario or do whatever they want with them, with no legislative decision by the House of Commons. It is laughable. Even worse, they would do so without the authorization of the governments of Quebec and Ontario, just because these people represent a federal agency that is not subject to provincial laws. The NCC, in addition to the members of the House of Commons, controls these lands. It is quite something.
Sometimes, democracy can be set back for a good cause. That is what the government is doing with Bill C-20, An Act to amend the National Capital Act and other Acts. The government is knowingly giving non-elected officials powers that belong in theory to elected officials. The NDP seems to be the Conservative government's willing partner in this.
This brings me to the minister, the member for Pontiac. That is not how I know him. When he was a member of the National Assembly, he always had respect for the laws of Quebec and Ontario, because they are important parts of Canada's Constitution. One can try to set them aside, which is what the National Capital Commission would like to do with the new powers it is asking for in this bill. These administrators can always decide to consult Quebec and Ontario, two provinces that, alone, account for at least half the people of Canada.
The Bloc Québécois will reach out as it has always done. I am glad my NDP colleague said the transport committee has always worked well. We have always taken a logical approach and tried to act as a good parent would. What would a good parent do in this case? I do not believe a good parent would give responsibility for lands in Quebec and Ontario to an agency run by non-elected officials who could decide to buy or sell them.
We are talking about lands as important as a park. I did not talk about the greenbelt in Ontario, but I am talking about Gatineau Park. We are talking about giving non-elected officials responsibility for lands in Quebec and Ontario, without letting the House of Commons have any kind of say.