Mr. Speaker, we are talking about Motion M-15. It is not a private member's bill. It is not a pathway to anything specific in terms of legislation or regulation or policy. It is basically a suggestion from the colleague across the aisle.
Before I start my comments, I would like to acknowledge something that happened in the House not more than an hour ago. Bill C-225, Bailey's law, was passed, and Bailey's family was here to witness it. It was a lot of hard work from a lot of our colleagues on this side of the aisle in the Conservative caucus, led by the member for Kamloops—Thompson—Nicola. It drained a lot of emotion out of a lot of members on this side of the House, so I really commend and thank all those people and parties that made it happen. It was historic. After 10 years, I think we can see light at the end of the tunnel for the victims and maybe put some real teeth back into our justice system.
Motion M-15 brings me back. It is amazing how much the activities in the House bring me back to my earlier days. I was part of the Haisla Nation Council, which participated in a lot of conservation measures, not knowing that it was somehow attached to a global entity that was proposing an initiative like 30 by 30, which is the idea that we should conserve 30% of the land base by 2030. This is not a made-in-Canada initiative.
When I was chief councillor of Haisla Nation, a small little native band, we did not take our direction from external entities. We did it based on what we needed, what we wanted and what we wanted to achieve. We never took anybody's lead. I often wonder why Canada does this. Why does it look to the World Economic Forum or the United Nations for direction? Members are elected for a reason. We should know what the country needs and what direction we should be going towards. Why do we need direction from somebody else? We are all capable people here, and I hope we are all capable leaders. If anything, we should be thinking about initiatives by Canadians for Canadians.
It took me a while to figure this out as a councillor and then as chief councillor for Haisla Nation Council, but we had the same objectives in mind: We wanted to conserve sensitive areas in our territory. I was a part of an organization called Turning Points, which changed its name to Coastal First Nations. There is confusion in the media about what the term “coastal first nations” means. Coastal First Nations is an official, non-profit organization. I think people get it confused with the first nations that live on the coast, which is a different term altogether.
I did not know at the time that taking funds from American funders to conserve land was an issue. In fact, the funds we received at that time were funnelled through the David Suzuki Foundation. By the time I left and took my band out of that organization, the talk was to eliminate the David Suzuki Foundation as a funnel for the funds coming from American funders. We left because we had a difference of opinion in terms of comments we were told about that had been made toward the LNG industry.
I agree with the concept of protecting ecologically sensitive areas. I read what Prime Minister Harper did at the time, but he did not commit to 30 by 30; he committed to protecting 70% of the land base. That is a good thing now, given what is happening today. It was timely, because we do want to protect ecologically sensitive areas. In fact, we already do, through a number of different measures.
I do not understand why we need this. We protect ecologically sensitive areas within environmental assessments, for example. Not only that, but we actually repair ecologically sensitive areas within the environmental assessment through the environmental offsets initiative. Canada is already doing a good job at protecting ecologically sensitive areas. I do not see why we need a foreign body or an international body to dictate what we should or should not with our land base.
It is timely to have this discussion now because we have not really figured out what the Cowichan court case means in terms of private land. I think we are putting the cart ahead of the horse until we figure out exactly what that means. The federal government may intend to argue on behalf of private landowners, and the B.C. government may intend to do likewise, but it is unclear what the argument is going to be. Until we figure that out, we should think carefully about this, because we might have to undo this and we might have even more chaos in terms of what we are seeing right now in Richmond, B.C.
The other thing, in terms of timing, is that everybody acknowledges that we are in a housing crisis, but this motion is proposing to take even more private land out of the land base and sterilize that land, so we cannot build more houses. It is not the time to talk about private land being taken out of the land base, out of municipalities or regional districts for that matter. We are going to need land if Canada ever decides to live up to its promise of building 500,000 houses per year. The Parliamentary Budget Officer has already pointed out that the Liberals are not going to reach that target, ever. At best, they will do 5,000 houses.
This brings me back to my days in the B.C. legislature, where we thought that the B.C. NDP promise of building 114,000 houses in 10 years was unachievable. It was; it was proven. A Tyee article said that a lot of the houses that they reported were policy-created. There were no new houses built.