Mr. Speaker, in 1972, the then Trudeau Liberal government seized thousands of acres of class 1 farmland in my community, separating farmers from the lands they had farmed for generations. Yesterday was truly an historic day as the Governor General provided royal assent to the Rouge National Urban Park. It is a great day.
In 2008, I promised to find a way to reverse what the Liberals had done to farmers and yesterday we did that, thanks to the hard work of the Minister of the Environment and other members of Parliament on this side of the House. This park will guarantee our farmers the right to farm with long-term leases. It also creates a national urban park for the first time under a model which can be used not only in Canada but globally.
In creating this park, we consulted with over 150 municipal, provincial and aboriginal partners, and we took over 15,000 comments. The park will have the highest level of protection it has ever had, which far exceeds the protections the current provincial Liberal government gives.
I am so proud of the work we have done to get this done and I am proud of the community that made this park a reality.