Madam Speaker, I appreciate my hon. colleague thanking Mr. Prentice, our former minister of the environment responsible for Parks Canada for the extremely great job he did in protecting natural spaces in this country.
I take some offence that he mentioned I was not in the House earlier today when the original motion was presented and the debate started. I was at committee. I am the chair of the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development. We are dealing with important legislation there from his colleagues, so I could not be in the House to observe the speech that was taking place. I do take offence with that comment.
The way parks were created over the last 100 years was that a lot of parks were established in areas where there were communities and land was taken away from people. Expropriation happened in my province of Manitoba in the creation of Riding Mountain National Park. That was done in the 1950s. For the creation of Hecla Island Provincial Park, under the Schreyer government, land was expropriated and many people were forced off their farms. That area is now one of the greatest places to visit in Manitoba. The same can be said for Birds Hill Provincial Park and Duck Mountain Provincial Park.
Provincial governments have done this. It has been done by NDP governments, provincially. It has been done by Liberal governments, federally. It has been done, I am sure, by Conservative federal governments, historically.
However, we all realize that process was the wrong way to go about establishing these parks and creating those types of hardships on the families and communities that were impacted. We have learned from that. As I said in my speech, Parks Canada has taken a much more collaborative and co-operative approach in dealing with those individuals and communities to ensure that we never make those mistakes again.