Mr. Speaker, as an outdoorsman, a guy who spends a lot of time in the wilderness, I have a personal interest in this topic and I will approach it from that perspective.
I spend many hours in the wilderness. I have hiked, climbed, hunted and fished in spots that do not see very many individuals. I believe that Canadians have an interest in and a public need to protect species at risk. That is certainly the case in my riding, a riding that extends from Calgary down to the U.S. border and from the mountains out to the southwest corner of Alberta.
I will give an example of a rancher, a landowner, who in my view typifies the somewhat typical western perspective on this. This individual lives west of High River. His name is Francis Gardiner. He is a big, tall, raw-boned rancher, a guy with a cowboy hat and boots. If you met him on the street you would not sass him, but inside him is the softest perspective when it comes to species at risk.
He has a large, beautiful tract of land in the foothills, land that has very diverse countryside. Beaver, deer and elk roam the hills to the west. He has whitetail and mule deer on the grasslands. He and his family have been there a long time.
He has been recognized for some of his achievements with species at risk. He has tried to be very natural in his stewardship on the land. It is titled land but he looks upon himself as a steward of that land.
In the old days there used to be fires throughout the country regularly and the fires took care of the brush. There have not been fires lately. We are good at preventing fires. We take fire prevention measures there so he has brought in animals that will eat some of the vegetation to maintain the grassland because the diversity requires that. His land would have been overtaken by brush. To bring in a bulldozer and push the brush aside and smash all the undergrowth is against his beliefs. This sounds kind of corny but he brings in goats for certain periods of the year to eat the vegetation and maintain the grassland. The grassland is specific to species that might be displaced.
Francis Gardiner, in my view, is a trustee or a steward of the land. Has anybody forced him to do that? Has anybody pushed him with legislation? Has anybody rammed it down his throat? Not for a second. He has done this co-operatively and eagerly. As I say, he has been recognized and has just received some of that recognition here in the House.
One other thing that is not often mentioned is that species are not static. There is a change with species. Raccoons were unknown in my part of the country until a few years ago when they moved in. Raccoons have had an impact on other species, for instance pheasant. I enjoy pheasants but the raccoons have had an impact on them. Here we have interspecies activity. I think we sometimes from our human activities miss that.
I believe that the interests of many of the individuals merge. I have said that I am an active outdoorsman. I believe my interests merge with those of the industrialist who wants to do a sustainable harvest of some of the forests. I believe that unless those individuals and industry look after some of these species they will get shut down completely and the harvest will not take place. Of course, the harvest of a forest, if it is done properly, results in new growth and that new growth sustains and supports species sometimes at risk.
Co-operation is what is necessary. I will not criticize the bill specifically, but I do not believe that co-operation is given the highest profile in this legislation. The co-operation I look at is the co-operation of a fellow like Francis Gardiner. Surely, if there is a species at risk on his property and if he is given the opportunity, he will do what he can do to prevent that species from being pushed aside. If he cannot do enough—remember I said that this was an overall societal good—and it is determined that his land must be taken from him, either through the use being taken away from him, or actually purchasing the land from him, or maybe even expropriating it, if he does not get fair market value compensation it turns this steward of the land into an enemy of the species.
If there is one thing that I urge my colleagues across the way to do, it is to change the clause in the bill that says that compensation may be provided. Compensation must be provided, if the public good says that the land is no longer available to a farmer, a rancher or somebody building an apartment building in a city, it does not matter what the land is designated for, even if it is a a grazing lease. I cannot stress this strongly enough.
To my colleagues opposite who put blinkers on and say that species at risk is the only issue, they know that in other jurisdictions there has been the shoot, shovel and shut up mentality. As soon as a species at risk is found, it is shot and buried and nobody knows about it. It is totally against what I believe the trustees of the land would do if they felt they would be treated properly.
The scientific process is important when it comes to species at risk. We have a big panel that will decide which species do in fact require protection. That panel should also be given the task of looking at how the habitat should be protected. It should also be given the task of coming up with the cost to the community at large to protect that species at risk, and when do the numbers allow us to back away from the program that is so specific for that species at risk.
There have been some remarkable successes. Canada has had a part to play in some of those successes. I think of the whooping crane. We knew how many of them there were in the world but we did not know where they nested or where they went for migration. Early on in these conservation efforts we used tracking methods that were quite primitive according to today's tracking methods and we also made some moves in capturing and raising whooping cranes and then releasing them into the wild. This was a success story and it was done co-operatively.
Luckily, the whooping crane did not have a huge impact on landowners because they did nest far away in the north where there was not very much impact and most of the impact was from accidental killing and activity that was inappropriate as they went through their migration patterns.
There is hope for species at risk. There is an increased awareness of species at risk. The Alliance will vigorously oppose some of the principles in this bill, especially the one with regard to the lack of compensation. If the government thinks that it can take this issue and do it by regulation, it is be sadly mistaken because it will lose the goodwill of many of the individuals, certainly in my riding of Macleod.
The criminal powers in this legislation get completely away from the co-operation I believe is necessary. A person should be encouraged to be trustee of the land and given recognition. That is the way we will go. If land must be taken away, it must be taken away in the public good in the larger sense with fair market compensation.
I could go on much longer about the bill. It is an important one to people like me and to people in my part of the country. It is a privilege to speak briefly in this regard. I encourage the government to look at the issue of compensation because surely that is where the bill will fail.
