Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time.
New Democrats want to make sure that we get this park right. That means ensuring that ecological integrity and conservation are our top priorities for the Rouge urban park. However, this does not mean that we want to kick out farmers and it does not mean that we do not want to ensure that we are producing as much food locally for the greater Toronto area as possible, because that both makes common sense and is good for the environment.
We just heard the parliamentary secretary talking about how farmers have not been able to make investments over time to ensure they are following best practices for their own ecological integrity. Of course, we would support measures that would help farmers make those investments and give them the opportunity to improve their land. We want to see protection of the park and the entire region expanded and improved to ensure that the Rouge park and its farmers are there for many generations to come, for the benefit of both the city of Toronto and the greater Toronto area as well as for everyone who eventually goes to the park and enjoys it.
We recognize the decades of hard work and dedication from all community members who have worked tirelessly to protect the existing parklands and conceptualize the national park, and the NDP supports the creation of a Rouge national urban park, but not if it means compromising the protection of our environment. It is too risky a precedent to set for any potential future national urban parks that might be created, because this park is going to be the template on which any future potential parks will be based. That is why we are opposing Bill C-40 at third reading.
At the same time, we will be proposing a new bill that would fix the rollbacks of parks protection that the Conservatives have brought forward. It will build on the positive direction in which Bill C-40 started and would strengthen it based on the feedback and testimony that we heard from witnesses during the committee stage so that we can seek a consensus on the creation of this national urban park. We believe that such an approach would help to break the logjam with the province and the local stakeholders in this process, and ensure that the park is created in the best possible way.
The local community has said that we need better legislation to ensure the Rouge is maintained for future generations. The creation of Canada's first urban national park will set the precedent on how we protect ecologically sensitive land in urban settings in the future. It is imperative that we get this concept right. The government can create all the parks it wants, but without funding and careful protection of the ecological integrity of these and all national parks, the designation is relatively meaningless in terms of conservation.
We listened to expert testimony and proposed 18 different amendments to create a more robust legislative framework for Bill C-40. We were extremely disappointed—but, sadly, not surprised—that the Conservatives have once again shown their unwillingness to listen to stakeholders and work with the other parties to create legislation that represents all of the interests of those involved. That is why we are creating a new bill. The new bill will be in the name of our MP for Scarborough—Rouge River.
We want to see the creation of a park, but we are not going to settle for substandard environmental protections. We will continue to work hard to see the creation of a Rouge national urban park. We will work toward good, strong environmental policies that prioritize ecological integrity and the maintenance of farmland, ensuring the best possible protection of our precious Carolinian forests and watersheds, while working with the agricultural community to ensure the continuation of sustainable farming and local food production in the park.
To summarize, we have been through a process in debating this bill, first at second reading, when multiple petitions were presented that called on the government to act in a certain way. We actually had more consensus at the beginning of the process, but because of the unwillingness of government members to work with other stakeholders, institutional and government support has slowly but surely fallen away from this bill as this process has gone on, as the bill fails to meet the standards that we all believe should be there to ensure ecological integrity, sustainable farming, and protection of our watersheds. A pipeline that goes across the area and multiple highways and roads and infrastructure all add challenges that have to be taken into consideration.
However, in the creation of this park, we also have a golden opportunity to establish worldwide international best standards with respect to the interaction of the environment and infrastructure, with respect to the environment and farming, and with respect to the interaction of people, human beings, within sensitive ecological areas. We could look to making best practices there, taking what already exists around the world in order to make the best park with the best protection. It would the kind of template we would be proud to pass along to other parks and other urban areas in the future, because 80% of Canada's population lives in urban centres already, and the importance of having ecological lands, forests, watersheds, and other aspects of nature in and around these urban centres will continue to increase.
With a growing population, we also need to make sure that we are producing more food locally. This is why we are also upset that the government has continued down the path of past Conservative and Liberal governments in failing to correct the mistake made in evicting of many farmers in the expropriation of land for Pickering airport. There we have tens of thousands of acres of prime agricultural land that should be farmed locally, land that should be producing food for the greater Toronto area. It should be protected for generations to come so that the farmers there could rest assured that sustainable best practices are in place to make sure they are not causing any problems for the surrounding environment and that they are the most productive that they can be and can pass those farms along to future generations who can continue to feed the growing population in the greater Toronto area, which is already well over five million people.
When we factor in areas further than that, within the Hamilton area, we are looking at many more people. A large chunk of Canada's population is found in southwestern Ontario and southern Ontario, so the more food we are able to grow locally, the less environmental impact our food supplies will create. When food from distant places is shipped across a continent or across an ocean, enormous resources are used to get that product to market.
Whether our resources are appropriately priced is an entire discussion altogether, but we can all agree that locally produced food makes good sense for the economy and good sense for families, and it certainly makes good sense for the environment. The government is missing an opportunity to protect tens of thousands of acres of land that was expropriated for the creation of Pickering airport. There are other areas where we can expand airport capacity so that we do not have to lose that prime agricultural land.
The parliamentary secretary kept going on and on about the importance of making sure that farming continues to exist in that area, but where is that member when it comes time to have the discussion about reversing the terrible decision to expropriate that land 40 years ago, which resulted in farmers being on one-year leases ever since?
I and several colleagues have visited many of those farms. We participated in day-long events where we actually got to understand and see what that area brings to the province of Ontario and to our local economy. It could only get better than that if those lands were protected. However, in that debate, the parliamentary secretary is nowhere to be found. He cares about a few farmers, but he does not really seem to care about the rest. It is our total food supply that has to be protected.
The bill falls far short of what we should be expecting and the kind of standards we should be exacting to make sure we have a Rouge national urban park that respects all the stakeholders: farmers, environmentalists, the local community, local governments, and everybody involved in that park.