Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be speaking to Bill C-465 this evening. I see that all of the parties in the House here are in favour of the bill, so we will be sending it off to committee in due course.
The bill is fairly simple in that it will designate September 23 or perhaps the third Saturday, I believe, in September, depending on how the committee develops, as a national hunting, trapping and fishing heritage day. We have to recognize that in the United States there has been such a heritage day in existence since 1972.
With the increased border changes over the last couple of years, with the United States requiring passports for their citizens to get back into the country and with the global recession still not quite resolved, there is a lot of pressure on the tourism industry right across Canada, and certainly in Manitoba and northwestern Ontario which is very close to Manitoba.
The camps are hurting. There are numerous camps, fishing and hunting camps, in northern Manitoba and in northwestern Ontario that rely very heavily on American tourists, cross-border tourism. We are finding that this business is down. I think the sponsor of the bill recognizes that, in effect, it is down around 30%. We have to do whatever we can to try to get the hunters and fishers back to Canada to keep our industry alive.
I listened to all of the speakers today, and each one of them made very good speeches on this topic. The immediate past speaker talked about how large an industry we are talking about. Canada is still a country that is rural based. We like to pretend in the city that somehow Canada is becoming increasingly urban, and that certainly is true.
I recall only 30 years ago, in the 1960s, Winnipeg was, I think, the third largest city in the country. I believe Montreal was first, Toronto was second, Winnipeg was third and Vancouver was fourth. That has all changed now. Toronto, becoming the huge city that it is, is number one. Montreal dropped in terms of the relativity. Other cities like Calgary and Edmonton are coming up.
Having said that, Winnipeg still has a percentage of the Manitoba population. It used to be 50% of the entire population and now it has grown to perhaps 70%. Having said that, and even though my riding is 100% urban, the fact of the matter is people are only one step removed from rural life and rural farms.
People go out in the thousands to cottages outside of Winnipeg and northwestern Ontario. They participate in fishing and hunting. It is a very substantial part of our economy. However, there are pressures with increased populations, with the animal rights movement and our young people increasingly becoming vegetarians, and taking a little bit different attitude toward the rural lifestyle. I find that to be particular to the urban setting.
People are gradually getting somewhat removed from their rural roots. I think it is very important for us to try in some way to get back to our past and recognize where we came from.
I did some research on the topic yesterday and the day before, looking into the history of the buffalo hunt as an example.
I think that the buffalo hunt is a really good example of an activity that had a lot of the worst signs of a hunt. Hunters went out and hunted and just killed enormous numbers of buffalo. The fact is that after a number of years, the buffalo population was almost extinct. However, the settlers of the day recognized that this could not be sustained. They worked to bring back the buffalo population to the point that in 2005, it was estimated that there were over 500,000, or half a million, bison on farms and ranches in North America.
To the pessimistic people among us, I want to say that the history of the buffalo is a good example of how we should be able to recover from our mistakes and create a balance.
The Bloc speakers mentioned that the number of accidents between cars and deer rises in Quebec when hunting activity drops. As in all things, there has to be a happy balance.
It is no different for a minority government. It has to recognize that to get things done, we have to co-operate. This is a good example to the member who brought this idea forward that he is going to have unanimous agreement to move this bill on to committee.
I want to thank him very much for--