David Anderson

[Kyoto Protocol, June 10th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, this appears to be the day for members of the Alliance to discover things that are long in the past. This was all announced in the budget, in two separate budgets one after the other. They have suddenly discovered it today. It has been a long time since we have had either the 2000 budget or the 2001 budget.

With reference to the work being done by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, there are a number of very imaginative projects. They are all fully available and he can get to the website of the FCM and find out what they are.

[Species at Risk Act, June 10th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the Alliance should get off the idea that time allocation is being used today without any background or because we simply dreamed it up.

Let us look at what the Alliance has done. On April 17 the Leader of the Opposition made a two and a half hour speech to table a defence committee report. He took up the entire time allocated to government orders which was Bill C-5. On April 18 the Canadian Alliance member for Yellowhead used the same trick to drag out the tabling of a committee report until the government called a vote to bring the House to government orders. As these people appear to have forgotten what they did in April and many other months I will cite a quote from the Hill Times in which the assistant to the Alliance Party's then leader said:

We gathered as much information...and we basically culled them together in one document so that [the hon. member for West Vancouver--Sunshine Coast] can fill the two hours and then try to ad lib as much as possible in between the various different things that we've written for him.

That is what Alliance members are saying about their own filibuster. Now they are blaming us for putting in time allocation.

[Species at Risk Act, June 10th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, for the third or fourth time, the hon. member has spoken about the system in the Province of Quebec, and I respect him. I say hats off to the authorities in the Province of Quebec, who have created a good system, but not all provinces have the same system. Not all provinces have systems as effective as that of the Province of Quebec.

This federal legislation will be for all Canada's provinces and territories. We will take action only if the province in which the species at risk is located does not. If a province needs the assistance of the federal government, we will be ready to provide it. It is not a question of trying to oppose a province, or beat it to the draw. It is more a matter of providing support.

[Species at Risk Act, June 10th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the reason for having the words fair and reasonable in the legislation rather than fair market value as suggested by the hon. member is that the legislation is not based on expropriation, the standard language he is using with respect to fair market value.

In other words, it would be possible to have stewardship programs. If in some instances there were some use of the land being infringed, it would not be fair market value because not all the land would be taken over. One may take over a particular part of it, ask that a width of hedgerow be increased for the loggerhead shrike, or ask that a certain crop not be planted in a certain area and that a different one be planted instead. It is not a question of expropriation of land for road purposes which the hon. member seems to have in mind.

[Species at Risk Act, June 10th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I point out to the hon. member it has taken eight or nine years. It is not a question of rushing it through. I gave the number of hours spent on it in committee and in the House, which was 246 hours. I believe the number for days was 93 days. Of course we have also been faced with filibuster, which was admitted and bragged about in the Hill Times by the assistants to the then leader of the opposition.

How much time does the member want to spend on going over the same things again and again? We believe the legislation should be based on the support of people out there. If the hon. member has only received negative comments from those people, why does he not look at the Hill Times where an ad has been taken out by among others the Forest Products Association of Canada and the Mining Association of Canada telling us to proceed with this very bill?

[Species at Risk Act, June 10th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the reason for that is that a piece of legislation such as this cannot be considered in isolation from other provincial, territorial and federal legislation, the vast majority of which is inconsistent with this one. In other words, to establish different standards here would destabilize the approach taken.

We believe that this approach is appropriate. There is of course the defence of due diligence available. We think this is the one that people are familiar with from other legislation and therefore the one that should proceed in this.

We have many new features in this legislation. However this is not one of them. The reason for that is of course we want to ensure that people continue to work with what they are comfortable.

[Species at Risk Act, June 10th, 2002]

Yes, Mr. Speaker, the views and legal opinions conveyed to me on the bill with respect to our international obligations are that it fully meets our international commitments. It provides the authority to prohibit the destruction of critical habitat of listed endangered or threatened species anywhere in Canada.

Along with other legislation, the Canada Wildlife Act, the Migratory Birds Convention Act, the Fisheries Act and the National Parks Act as well as, as the hon. member from the Bloc has stressed, the provincial and territorial legislation, we believe we have the tools to protect endangered species and fully meet our international obligations.

[Species at Risk Act, June 10th, 2002]

Yes, Mr. Speaker, I can certainly give the hon. member the assurance that co-operation is the hallmark of what we are attempting to do. We do intend to work with rural people and rural communities.

I can assure him that the suspicion, fear and the concerns that he is talking about have, unfortunately, been engendered by his party. It is a great mistake that it has done that. If he chose to read the legislation he would see that it is based upon a co-operative approach with other agencies including, as I mentioned on two or three occasions in response to a question from the Bloc, with provincial governments.

[Species at Risk Act, June 10th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I must say that, as the hon. member explained, the province of Quebec implemented legislation with which I fully agree.

However, the federal bill will complement provincial and territorial legislative measures. It will not compete with them. We respect the other governments' jurisdictions, but we also expect them to protect species at risk and their habitat.

Under Bill C-5, the Government of Canada will have the power to act alone, if necessary, on the whole Canadian territory.

[Species at Risk Act, June 10th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, we have no intention at this point, which I believe is understandable to all members of the House after these many years and many hours, of having further amendments. That was ended last Friday when we had House agreement on the amendments that are currently before us.

However I can assure him that we have absolutely no intention of adopting the irrational proposal that he has suggested. We are not here to destroy rural communities. We are here to make sure that rural people, who are just as keen on protecting endangered wildlife as anyone else in Canada and who have already, in many instances, worked assiduously to protect endangered species, are given the advantage of the legislation to assist them in that work.

I can assure him that when he talks about strong-handed and destroying, those words should be out of the lexicon. We are not in that situation. We are here in a facilitative mode trying to make sure we assist people in the countryside whose instincts and wishes are to protect endangered species.