Mr. Speaker, it is customary for members to stand and say it gives them great pleasure to enter into this debate and so on, but in fact it does not give me great pleasure to enter into this debate. I am quite disappointed with the ultimate outcome of this legislation. I had hoped that with the co-operation of the opposition parties at second reading that the bill could have moved to committee where we could have done some business, but the government chose to take its usual bullheaded approach that it is right and everybody else is wrong. The consequence was that there was no movement by the government on anything, whether it was on the size of the park, or trying to make Queen's Park happier, or for the literally thousands of petitioners and all of the various environmental groups, and even some of the farmers, who are worried about where all of this may end up.
It is without any pleasure at all that I rise to talk about this legislation on behalf of the Liberal Party. In the event that we are fortunate enough to form government, we will fix this because it is in need of a serious fix. This was and is a wonderful opportunity to do something right, but the government in its “wisdom” decided that its way is the only way to do things right.
I largely agree with Pauline Browes, a former minister in the Mulroney government, and her detailing of how various levels of government have come together over time, both Conservative and Liberal, to get us to the point we are at today.
It is ultimately a good idea to turn these lands into a federal park, but regrettably the whole thing has derailed. What caused this derailment? Was it Queen's Park? It said that unless the government fixes the bill, Queen's Park is not going to contribute its lands to the park. Those lands constitute some 44% of the park. Instead of what has been advertised as a 58-square kilometre park, it would be 44% less than that.
However, it is actually worse than that. It is not as if we can chop the whole thing in half, make a nice clean line, and end up with half of a park. This would actually be a Swiss cheese park. The lands are owned in bits and pieces by various entities, one of which is the TRCA, which is controlled by the Ontario government. Those lands run largely along rivers and stream valleys. Other lands are owned by the town of Markham, which will make its own decisions. Then there are the federal lands. The whole thing is going to be a mess. There are conflicting jurisdictions, right from Lake Ontario all the way up to the Oak Ridges Moraine. It is a lot of land.
The fifty-eight square kilometres is quite a bit less than the 100-square kilometres that the environmentalists wished to protect. Lands to the east of the park itself are entirely controlled by the federal government and largely set aside for the Pickering airport, much of which is surplus to any airport. That land could have been contributed by the federal government toward enlarging the park, but for whatever reason the government chose not to do that. The 600-metre corridor which would have connected the Oak Ridges Moraine and the bulk of the park itself could have been included in the lands in the first place, but it was not done, for whatever reason.
The Conservatives seem to be fond of setting aside land, but are not quite so fond of ecological integrity and habitat protection. The animals that are in the park would have to stop at some artificial line between the Oak Ridges Moraine and the end of the park; otherwise, I guess they would be fair game.
In the actual bill itself there are three squiggly little pieces of land in Markham. Therefore, we are not getting 58 square kilometres, 100 square kilometres, or any of the lands that the federal government could have contributed from the lands east of the park itself. Instead, we are getting three little squiggly pieces of land in Markham, and that is the content of the bill. However, as the government has argued, we should trust it.
How did this derail? Was it the Queen's Park decision? That certainly did not contribute. Was it the committee process? We would think that a bill of this significance would have had more than three hearings at committee, one of which was the minister and her officials arguing for the bill. Essentially, we had a total of four hours at committee to review the bill and to hear the concerns of people. This park has been 30 years in the making, and it boiled down to four hours at committee. Many of the witnesses were pre-selected for their views, which were favourable to the those of the government's.
The previous speakers alluded to the multiple amendments, many of which centred on the one issue of the creation of some ecological standard. We can argue as to whether there should be ecological integrity or ecological health, but there should be something. Right now, it is ecological nothing. There are so many priorities set out in section 6 that there are actually no priorities. Therefore, for a minister, possibly such as this one, who is predisposed to making it up as he or she goes along, that leaves everybody quite vulnerable. On the other hand, a subsequent minister might be very interested in one aspect, whether it is some sort of development aspect, farming aspect, or some ecological integrity part of the park. We could assume anything. The way that this legislation is written, the minister has almost fiat-like powers to direct the park, and from time to time that will bump up against the best interests of ecologists, farmers, residents, or other levels of government. We have the opportunity here to get it right, to set forward values and priorities, and what we hear is “Trust us”.
It has perhaps derailed with the belittling of the witnesses and the exaggeration of the differences between the farmers and the others. Jane Philpott, one of our candidates for that area, and I, made a special effort to spend an entire day with the farmers. I enjoyed that day. I thought they were reasonable people. Their expectations were quite reasonable. I thought that these were people with whom we could do business. Therefore, my anticipation, largely fostered by the government's members, of some sort of hostility on the part of the farmers, was completely and utterly dissipated. I saw them as some of our foremost ecological stewards. They care about their lands. I was reminded of my father who had a farm not far from that site, and his land was his capital. The current situation leaves the farmers in a difficult position because they cannot enhance or develop their capital, whether with various farming techniques, drainage, or things of that nature. They are in a vulnerable situation. I am reminded of the worst words that a citizen of Canada will ever hear, which are, “I'm from the Government of Canada, and I'm here to help you”. I would tell my farmer friends to beware of the bill. They might think it helps them, but a proper definition of ecological health would help them a great deal more.
I have to say that I was disappointed by the treatment of the witnesses who came before us and whose views did not line up with the government's preconceived views. We have to be worried about a bill that is not supported by the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, CPAWS, the leading organization in Canada recognized internationally, which is basically saying that we should go back to the drawing board and try to get this right because it will serve as a precedent for other bills.
Ontario Nature does not support it, the STORM Coalition does not support it, Nature Canada does not support it, Environmental Defence does not support it, and literally thousands of petitioners do not support it. They are not all foreign radicals. They are not all there to derail development and all of the rest of the ways in which environmental groups are demonized. They actually had quite reasonable, thoughtful and, I would respectfully suggest, modest suggestions as to how to get over the hump of the concerns of the Queen's Park government with the bill as presented by this particular government. Again, everyone else was wrong, the government was right, and there was absolutely no point at which we could arrive at any kind of compromise.
We have had some discussion about this rejection of the concept of ecological integrity. That is actually a difficult thing, and I could be persuaded that we cannot simply layer over the Parks Canada bill onto an urban setting. It seems like a reasonable proposition, but what is the alternative? We are driven to the other alternatives in clauses 4 and 6. When we ask a very simple question, which is what is ecological health, we either get a dozen answers, resounding silence, or tap dancing away from the question, because there is not a person in this chamber, not a person listening to this debate, who actually knows what ecological health is. It is thrown out there with the assumption that people will buy that idea and somehow or another it will work out in time.
The former minister, in his lead-off speech, said that some things go without saying. If we think about that, we are legislators and we put bills forward. To say it “goes without saying” is not something we could put in a bill because it “goes without saying“. If in fact there is a very concerned community about what those definitions should be, “goes without saying” is not an adequate response to their concerns.
We put definitions in a bill for good reasons. We put them in a bill to circumscribe the discretion of a minister. Ministers come and ministers go. Some are persuaded this way, some are persuaded that way, and with this government there is quite a turnover. In the course of eight or nine years of the government, it has gone through six ministers, one twice, and it has gone through either five or six deputy ministers in the same period of time. It is like two merry-go-rounds going in different directions simultaneously. It hardly creates a level of confidence that there is some direction going through Environment Canada or the deputy minister. It is perfectly natural, because the concept in the government is that everything is run from one place and one place only, so a minister and, for that matter, a deputy minister are substituted from time to time if we want to change the name or face of the organization.
It we put that in the context of this particular bill, in the course of the five, six, and possibly seven ministers we have had, each one would have a different idea of what ecological health might mean. Absent a definition, it goes without saying we cannot live with that. This is why this becomes the hill to die on.
Right now it is the ecological community that is unhappy with the bill. The hon. member for Halifax who spoke earlier listed all of the people who are unhappy with the bill. This time next year it might actually be the farming community that is unhappy with the bill, because this is a blank slate for any minister to do anything. Had we spent some useful time trying to circumscribe the arbitrariness of the bill, we might have come to a point where the entire House could support the bill and it could go forward. For the government's purposes, mysterious as they might be, that is not going to happen.
The other clause that gave some pause for concern was clause 8, the appointment of an advisory committee. It says that the minister “may” appoint an advisory committee. That also means that the minister may not appoint an advisory committee. If we take the arbitrariness of clause 6, which is that all priorities are priorities and therefore that we do not actually have a priority, and add to that the fact that the minister may or may not create an advisory committee, the consequence is that we would have the potential of a minister who may well be very arbitrary. That arbitrariness may go against a variety of any one of the communities that spoke, whether the environmentalist community, the farm community, or whatever. It leaves everyone exposed.
This is a whole series of reasons as to why the bill is derailed, when it could have been kept on the rails with a bit of reason and compromise.
There was also this whole argument about connecting the Oak Ridges Moraine with the bulk of the park in order to protect the animal populations that would go back and forth. This point actually exists in some form, although not very coherently, and would require some result where lands would be acquired. Obviously, lands could also be compensated at the same time. Again, I go back to the way the bill is quite arbitrary. Some minister might well say “Too bad for you, Mr. or Mrs Farmer. You're off your lands”. That, frankly, would be quite regrettable. The connection from the mouth of the Rouge all the way up to the Oak Ridges Moraine was something that would actually protect the ecological position of the park.
In summary, the bill is badly derailed. It could have been saved and still could be saved if the government were open to any amendments. Unfortunately, however, we are going to be in the position of it is their way or the highway. Regrettably, we could have achieved a consensus but did not. I dare say that it is quite typical of the government's attitude toward any opposition, no matter how mild or how reasoned.