Mr. Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to enter into this debate. In the interests of full disclosure, Rouge Park is very close to my riding as well, and I have taken my children and my grandchildren through the park from time to time, both in winter and summer. So I am quite familiar with this piece of real estate and am very pleased to see that we have moved to the point of presenting legislation. But in typical fashion, the government seems to have a talent for taking good news and turning it into bad news.
I suppose it is only coincidental that after the northern gateway decision, we are now debating two park bills, the first with respect to Rouge Park and the second with respect to a park up in the Northwest Territories. It is only coincidental that the announcement about northern gateway and the discussion about parks happens almost sequentially. It has nothing to do with trying to burnish the environmental creds of the government.
Before I go too much further, I want to acknowledge the 25-year effort by my colleague, Derek Lee, in conjunction with Pauline Browes, in advocating on the floor of the House for the park and the reservation of these lands, along with a number of citizens groups, Friends of the Rouge, Save the Rouge, WWF, COSCA, and of course the patron saint of the park, Lois James. I am certain that I have left out a number of NGOs and individuals who have been very important to why we are here today. Regrettably, they do not seem to be as involved in the potential management plan as they possibly should be, and I hope that once the dust settles here, the officials will think it over and see their way clear to incorporate them into the park management plan.
The interesting part of this proposal is that according to the bill itself, what is actually being incorporated into the park are three little pieces of property in Markham. When asked about this at the briefing yesterday, the Conservatives say they are actually in negotiation with three or four levels of government, a variety of conservation authorities, et cetera. But the way it is being presented by the parliamentary secretary and others is that this is 58 square kilometres. Actually it is not 58 square kilometres; it is about two or three acres. By the time the bill actually receives royal assent, it will still be two or three acres and the negotiations will have yet to be completed.
Why is this a concern? First of all, the Government of Canada can unilaterally transfer from the Department of Transport the lands under its control, but for whatever reason, it has not included those lands in this bill or in the schedule that would be attached to the bill. In addition, there are other airport lands that apparently might possibly be under negotiations and that are not included in the bill. Instead of 58 square kilometres, some people would like to see 100 square kilometres, going all the way up to the Oak Ridges Moraine, in order to protect a corridor for wildlife, et cetera.
It is in some respects, as far as a presentation of a piece of land is concerned, much less than what it appears. Take note of the contrast between the bill for the park in the Northwest Territories, whose name I dare not pronounce for fear of offending someone, and this bill. Half the bill, six or seven pages, actually goes to a metes and bounds description of the park itself. That is normally the way a park bill is presented. Bill S-5 is a proper presentation.
In terms of the schedule of the land being presented, the actual amounts are far less, and there is no guarantee that the lands in the presentation by the parliamentary secretary are in fact the lands that will be transferred.
There are two reasons for this. First, negotiations are negotiations and they may go somewhere differently than the government hopes they will. Second, there is no presentation of a plan for ecological protection. That is worth drawing attention to, because in normal park bills we have a specific clause in each and every bill. The specific clause says:
...a set of ecological integrity objectives and indicators and provisions for resource protection and restoration, zoning, visitor use, public awareness and performance evaluation, which shall be tabled in each House of Parliament.
There is no such inclusion in the clause. When I asked the officials yesterday why it was not in there, their reason was that this was a unique park. The reasoning actually does have some sense to it. As others have pointed out, Highway 401 goes over the park, as does Highway 2, and so do Steeles Avenue and Taunton Road, and there is also a huge hydro corridor through the park. Therefore, we cannot set up ecological metrics to evaluate the ecological performance of the park. What we are left with is a very vague clause in paragraph 6 of the bill. It states:
The Minister must, in the management of the Park, take into consideration the protection of its natural ecosystems and cultural landscapes and the maintenance of its native wildlife and of the health of those ecosystems.
“Take into consideration” is not a plan. Let me just sketch a scenario. The minister goes to the Province of Ontario and says, “We would like your thousand acres, or two thousand acres”—or whatever the number is—“and we want to know how you're going to manage this plan and this park”. The minister says, “Trust me.“ Well, “trust me” does not cut it.
As far as I and anyone else in the House know, including the parliamentary secretary or the minister, we do not actually know how this park is going to be managed. If I am the Province of Ontario, or the Town of Markham, or the City of Toronto, I am going to be asking that rather fundamental question. I would say: “No plan, no transfer”. I rather hope that it does not get held up on that. I hope there is a plan. I hope the ecological and cultural integrity of the park would be protected. However, “trust me” is not exactly a great answer when one is asking for thousands and thousands of acres to be transferred, which according to the government's numbers are supposed to amount to 58 square kilometres.
If in fact the government had some ecological or environmental integrity, one might actually say, “Okay, trust us. We will have a plan and we will fulfill this”. However, as we know, the government's environmental credibility is as about as rock bottom as rock bottom can be, so “trust me” is not exactly an answer when we are asking other levels of government to transfer thousands of acres to the park for what would otherwise be a very supportable proposition.
Again, why is this of greater concern? As others have alluded to, in the park there is what is called mono-cultural or industrial farming, and some of those farming practices are in clear contradistinction to proper park management functions. One might say “Well, let's not worry about that, because we'll make sure, as we renew each lease and try to move it up to market value, that in fact we will assure the best farming practices”. When I raised that question yesterday, one of the members of the Conservative Party dismissed the concerns about neonicatoids. Frankly, that stuff is of concern. Here we have Environment Canada and Parks Canada managing farms in the park, which should be held to the highest possible standards, to the best science we have available for farming practices.
The member just dismissed it: “I do not give a hoot about the bees. I do not give a hoot about the watershed. I do not give a hoot about the hiring practices. Just get my constituents the cheapest possible land for the longest period of time.” It does not inspire—