Mr. Speaker, it is truly a pleasure to rise on debate on this bill.
A number of people have been working to create the Rouge national park for many years. By and large, these people truly have the best interest of the land and national heritage first and foremost.
For many years, the people in this area have wanted governments in the past to try to strike a balance between protecting the natural heritage of the area and also protecting the farmers.
I have said this before, but I will recap a bit.
Many of the lands in the northern part of what would become the Rouge national urban park are class 1 farmlands. These lands were expropriated from farmers in the early 1970s by the Trudeau Liberal government for the creation of an international airport in Pickering. Thousands of acres of class 1 farmland were stripped away from farmers. In some instances, farmers were evicted from their farms. In other cases, they were given one-year leases. This has been the reality for these farmers since the early 1970s. They have been working off one-year leases on class 1 farmland.
To fast forward a number of years, the Bob Rae NDP government in Ontario started to try to bring together a process by which we could look at the Rouge Park differently. For the most part, the concentration was on the lands to the south of Steeles Avenue in Toronto.
What we saw through that process and the lands south of Steeles Avenue was that the farmers in that area were systematically, slowly but surely, eliminated. The class 1 farmland in that area is virtually non-existent today.
We have heard speaker after speaker from the opposition get up today and talk about how they believe we can bring forward a process that would not only protect farmers, but would also protect and provide ecological integrity for the Rouge Park going forward.
I know opposition members, particularly from the NDP today, have referenced the fact that they visited the Rouge Valley. They have had some meetings with, by and large, the environmental groups that are opposed to this legislation. They also reference comments made by a farmer at committee, and we have heard it twice in debate today. Her name is Kim Empringham from the York Region Federation of Agriculture.
Bear in mind that the federation represents 700 farm businesses in this area, which is responsible for thousands of dollars of economic activity and hundreds of jobs in the community. Farmers have been there for over 200 years, and the history of farming in this area goes back over 400 years.
What did Kim Empringham from the York Region Federation of Agriculture actually say? She said that the York Region Federation of Agriculture supported what Parks Canada had done. It supported the consultation process that Parks Canada had done and the legislation, which we are debating today, as is.
When asked by the member for Halifax about the legislation, Ms. Empringham said:
We're worried that we will gradually over time lose the land we have. When equal priority isn't given, it's hard for farmers and for agriculture to hold its ground and to maintain that level field.
Moreover, we heard from Mike Whittamore, who is a very successful farmer on the provincial lands in the northern part of the Rouge Park.
To be clear, there are two sets of lands. There are the federal lands on the northern part, which were seized for an international airport by the Liberals in the 1970s, and there are thousands of acres of provincial lands, which, by and large, were accumulated through either the Bob Rae NDP government or the Mike Harris Conservative government and put under the protection of the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority. Some of those lands were also provided by the city of Markham and put under the protection of what was then called the Rouge Park Alliance.
Mike Whittamore is a farmer on provincial lands. He is a very successful farmer. He is one of the farmers, in the 1970s, whose family had been there for 200 years. His farm was expropriated from him, and he has been living off a one year lease ever since. What did Mr. Whittamore, a farmer, say? He said that what he was afraid of is that this would become the death of 1,000 cuts. He said the first step would be re-forestation, after that it would be pesticides and fertilizers, and we would go on and on.
What rationale does Mr. Whittamore have for that? I talked about it before in the House. What evidence does he have of that? In 2007, it was the same provincial government and Minister Brad Duguid, who is now suggesting that provincial lands should not be transferred, that went another step further in this area. They took hundreds of acres of class 1 farmland out of production and evicted the farmers from their lands and homes.