Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present a petition on behalf of constituents in my riding for the creation of Rouge national park. The current Rouge Park is home to the endangered Carolinian forest, mixed woodland, and plain life zones of Canada. It is also home to the ancestral home of the Mississauga, Huron-Wendat, and Seneca first nations, and their sacred burial and village sites.
This is the last chance that we have to create a large national park in southern Ontario, an area with 34% of Canada's population. Roughly 77% of its land and agriculture and human settlement uses only 1/400 of its land protected in national parks.
The petitioners are requesting that the Government of Canada protects the irreplaceable 100 square kilometres of public land assembly within a healthy and sustainable Rouge national park. They are calling on the government to protect and restore the 600 metre-wide wooded main ecological corridor linking Lake Ontario to the Oak Ridges Moraine in Rouge national park, and to conduct a rational, scientific, and transparent public planning process to create Rouge national park's boundaries, which would include consultations with first nations communities, residents, and activist groups in the community.