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Crucial Fact

  • His favourite word was debate.

Last in Parliament May 2004, as Conservative MP for Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Aldershot (Ontario)

Won his last election, in 2000, with 41% of the vote.

Statements in the House

Canada-U.S. Border May 3rd, 2002

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister.

One-quarter of all of Canada's trade crosses the border at Windsor to Detroit across the Ambassador bridge, 13,000 commercial vehicles a day. Since September 11 there have been delays at the crossing because of security concerns.

What is the government doing to consult the Canadian businesses that are affected by the delays in order to resolve the problem?

Business of the House May 2nd, 2002

Mr. Speaker, the record will show that the member for Kings--Hants did not understand the question I posed to him when I asked whether he was concerned about the privacy commissioner issuing press releases on his concerns about Bill C-55 instead of reporting first to parliament. The member for Kings--Hants made it very clear in his reply that he thought that the privacy commissioner is an official of government. As we know, the privacy commissioner is an officer of parliament like the auditor general and is required by statute to report to parliament.

The reason why this issue is important is because this is a vitally important debate we are having before the House right now. It is a debate that touches on our fundamental civil liberties and tries to strike a balance with that and the need for public safety in a world that has become much more threatening than it was merely a year ago.

The difficulty with the privacy commissioner in effect going to the media with his concerns about the privacy considerations in the bill is that it inadvertently or maybe deliberately distorts the debate. We had an example when the member for Kings--Hants quoted from the privacy commissioners press release in expressing his concerns about privacy in the relevant section of Bill C-55. I think that is unfortunate, because there is no doubt that the privacy issue in Bill C-55 is very important.

What is of concern to the privacy commissioner is the prospect that the police and security officials will be able to look at the passenger manifests of aircraft, both going from this country to another and domestically, and thereby use that opportunity to look for potential terrorists and even to look for potential criminals.

One can see why they might want to do that, because one of the new things that has emerged after September 11 is the whole business where people who go by air now have to show photo I.D. Suddenly, unlike ever before, the police and security officials have an opportunity to track individual people as they travel on aircraft.

I do not think that any of us would argue that this is a very necessary thing that we would want the police and security officials to have in the interests of tracking potential terrorists. There is a legitimate question about whether or not this opportunity should be extended for the tracking of possible or known criminals. That is an issue that I think needs to be debated at length in committee. For myself, I do not think it is unreasonable to use this new opportunity to try to identify known criminals as they use our air services, given that we now have the opportunity to see precise photo identities for every passenger who boards an aircraft.

Let us set that aside for a moment. I thought the member for Mount Royal raised a number of very important concerns about Bill C-55. These are concerns that in many respects, at least in my view as a member of parliament, are more important than the privacy issue, certainly because they strike to the very heart of the accountability of this legislation to parliament. I will not repeat those because I have limited time, but in my turn let me point out something that I find in the bill that causes me great worry. It is something which needs to be dealt with in committee and of which I think every member of parliament should be aware.

The way the bill works is that it gives ministers the ability to issue interim orders. These orders enable the appropriate minister, whether it is the Minister of Health, the Minister of the Environment or the Minister of Transport, to issue orders within the context of the particular legislation to meet a current emergency.

For instance, the appropriate minister can issue an interim order with respect to the Quarantine Act. We can see why the minister might want to issue an order in that case because one of the world dangers that has arisen is the possibility of a terrorist attack using biological weapons. There is also, concomitant with that, the whole danger of new diseases coming out of Africa and South America that have never been seen before which are high contagious and highly dangerous.

I do agree that the minister should have this authority and certainly there should be a debate about how that authority should be limited, but I would agree that he needs the authority.

What I find troubling is in each one of these interim orders we find the words:

The Minister may make an interim order that contains any provision that may be contained in a regulation made under this Act if the Minister believes [the situation warrants it]...

We are talking about regulations. This gives the minister, the relevant minister, a huge opportunity to circumvent all parliamentary knowledge.

One thing that backbench MPs and all members of parliament complain about always is that the bills we pass may say one thing but the real crucial thing is what is said in the regulations. Unfortunately, so often the legislation that we pass in this House allows an open door on the type of regulations that may be made.

What that provision does in all these various bills that it touches upon, the pest control act, the drug safety act, the transportation security act and so on and so forth, is it gives the government an absolute opportunity to do anything it pleases by simply changing the regulation and then declaring an interim order.

At the very least what we have to do is ensure that when this bill passes it only applies to existing regulations and these interim orders cannot be applied to regulations made subsequently unless those regulations are cleared by parliament. It cannot leave those regulations to the bureaucracy alone.

I think this is very necessary legislation. I do not accept the thesis advanced by the opposition that this is some attempt by the government to grab massive power. The reality is that the ability to write this kind of sensitive legislation is very difficult and delicate. It is done by the people in the bureaucracy, mainly in the justice department. Our responsibility as MPs is to go through this legislation as carefully as possible, identify concerns like I have just outlined and not be deflected by those who would lobby us to concentrate on only one aspect of the legislation rather than the others.

We must look at this legislation across the board and we must also see it in the context of the Emergencies Act to ensure that there is nothing in this bill that should not properly be under the Emergencies Act because it has much better parliamentary oversight than this bill has. I hope the committee will do this.

I will conclude by saying that I think this is important legislation. It tries to strike a difficult balance. I am extremely concerned about the regulation aspect of it. I will have a great deal of difficulty unless the government, parliament and committee address that problem. I think that otherwise most provisions in the bill can be dealt with.

Let me finally say that I attempted to raise a question of privilege with you, Mr. Speaker, with respect to the privacy commissioner. I realize now in reflection that I began that question of privilege in a way in which you had no opportunity to rule other than how you ruled. However the point remains that we cannot have an officer of parliament lobbying the public through the media for his particular point of view before his concerns are brought before this House as allowed for in the Privacy Act in sections 38, 39 and 40. This House I believe will have to deal with that matter in due course.

Business of the House May 2nd, 2002

Mr. Speaker, I think all of us share the concerns expressed by the member about privacy. This is very difficult legislation and it is very hard to strike a balance surely between public safety and privacy.

I wonder if the member shares my concern about the privacy commissioner who reports to parliament and has an important role in advising parliament about issues pertaining to privacy. I noticed that the member quoted from the privacy commissioner's press release about a totalitarian society. I informed the member opposite that the privacy commissioner issued a press release before and without consulting or informing parliament of his concerns.

Does the member think it would have been more appropriate for the privacy commissioner to have brought his concerns to all members of the House before he brought his concerns to the media?

Privilege May 2nd, 2002

Indeed, Mr. Speaker, I checked and I was unable to find any MPs who had received so much as an e-mail from the privacy commissioner outlining or even suggesting his concerns about Bill C-55.

I will skip over a bit if you wish, Mr. Speaker, and I say first that my rights as an MP were abrogated because I did not get timely access to the privacy commissioner's urgent views on legislation that was then before the House. If that is not an abuse of my ability to act as an MP, I do not know what is.

Second, my rights are being abrogated because the privacy commissioner is using his press releases and media interviews to pose as the champion of privacy at the expense of MPs. His message is consistent and clear. He must speak up to defend privacy because MPs cannot be trusted to do so. That is what he is saying.

In the privacy commissioner's press release, which I offer for your perusal, Mr. Speaker, you will note that the commissioner concludes by saying that his concerns are of the greatest gravity and it is his duty to seek explanation or amendments to the law. Amendments? Where is it written in the law that--

Privilege May 2nd, 2002

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of privilege to complain that contempt has been shown to parliament and my rights as an MP have been abused by the privacy commissioner when yesterday he chose to express his concerns about Bill C-55 by issuing a press release and giving media interviews before and without reporting those concerns to parliament as he is enjoined to do by sections 38, 39 and 40 of the Privacy Act.

I remind you, Mr. Speaker, that section 38 says that the privacy commissioner shall submit a report on the activities of his office once a year. Where a matter is of such urgency or importance that it cannot be deferred to the year-end report, section 39 gives the commissioner the option of making a special interim report to parliament. Section 40 says that these reports must be transmitted to the Speakers of the House and the Senate for tabling in those Houses.

In writing about Bill C-55 in the aforementioned press release, the privacy commissioner uses language such as “a dramatic expansion of privacy-invasive police powers without explanation or justification” and “practices similar to those that exist in totalitarian societies”.

These are extreme and troubling statements. Surely, if they truly do reflect the privacy commissioner's concerns, they are matters of importance and urgency that should have been reported to parliament as provided for in section 39. Instead, within not much more than an hour after the Minister of Transport opened second reading debate on Bill C-55, the privacy commissioner issued an elaborate press release to all major media by fax and other means, condemning a very specific aspect of one section of the bill. By late afternoon the commissioner, one Mr. George Radwanski, was being interviewed on national television.

Mr. Speaker, the direction in sections 38, 39 and 40 of the Privacy Act is clear. If the privacy commissioner has an important concern, he shall report it to parliament and he may do it any time depending upon the emergency of the matter. Not to do so, to choose to share his concern with the media first by a wilful and deliberate press release, is as eloquent a demonstration of contempt of this place as ever this House might see.

I remind you, Mr. Speaker, the privacy commissioner is an officer of parliament. The position is created by statute and subject to statute. To ignore both the intent and the spirit of the Privacy Act and his responsibility to report to parliament is unacceptable behaviour on the part of the privacy commissioner. The affront, I point out, is directed at both Houses in that the act requires the privacy commissioner to report to both the Speaker of the House and the Speaker of the Senate.

Furthermore, the reason why officers of parliament report to the Speaker is so that you can table the reports in the House. You do that, Mr. Speaker, so that MPs can access their expert opinions to better understand all aspects of legislation being considered in the House and in committee. The earlier such reports are tabled, the earlier and more completely the opportunity MPs and senators have to use them to positively contribute to creating the best laws possible for Canadians.

Mr. Radwanski's views on Bill C-55, by virtue of his position as a privacy commissioner, are exquisitely relevant to debate on a bill like Bill C-55. I was looking for and expecting to hear of them, though probably at committee stage. Instead I learned of his views when I was scrummed yesterday after question period.

“Had I read the press release”, I was asked. “Do you think the bill goes far beyond anti-terrorism?” I was also asked. Not only had I not read the press release, I had not even received it. It went only to the media--

Excise Act, 2001 April 29th, 2002

Mr. Speaker, again I think the problem is that this is not the bill that will deal with the problem. It is a tax problem. However this is a parliament that is dealing with the problem. We have heard some comments about parliament being dysfunctional and not working. I can suggest to all members that this is when parliament is working, when members bring forward an urgent issue.

I just regret that the issue got deflected on the chairman of the finance committee. I do not think that is where the issue really is. The issue is that there is a quality of life problem, a small business problem, and we all share the desire to help small business.

We have raised the issue and the message is clear for the government. Regardless of what happens to Bill C-47, the government needs to move very quickly on this issue. Maybe a private member's bill is the way to go if we can make it votable.

Excise Act, 2001 April 29th, 2002

Mr. Speaker, I certainly recognized at the very beginning that beer was not in the bill and that is what I said. I also appreciate the disappointment on the part of my colleagues on the opposite side in this sense, and I agree.

As I mentioned in my remarks, there may be some special problems with respect to the micro-beer industry and the beer industry at large that require special attention by the government, and that may have led to the government not including it in the bill. It is certainly true that this bill is not about the excise tax on beer and I would support the reduction.

However what is important here is that the government move swiftly because, and I think all of us would agree, we have to protect these quality of life industries wherever we find them. If I heard correctly what has been said from the other side, the fear is that the microbrewery industry in Canada may be in jeopardy. We all know that there is a temptation by government, when it gets lobbied, to sit on things for maybe a year or two or three or four.

If the message coming from my colleagues on the opposite side is to move swiftly, then it is a good message.

Excise Act, 2001 April 29th, 2002

Mr. Speaker, the simple answer is yes. I think most of us would agree that we would want to support a small industry that has, shall we say, not wanting to be ironic, a Canadian flavour or a Quebec flavour depending on where one happens to be drinking the beer.

It is a quality of life issue. One of my great joys when I go on my French lessons at St-Jean-sur-Richelieu--

It is possible to choose among an assortment of microbrewery beers that one drinks in small glasses. It is an experience that I truly enjoyed. It is something that we must protect. So, yes, absolutely.

Excise Act, 2001 April 29th, 2002

Mr. Speaker, we have heard a lot about the beer that is not in the bill. I would like to talk a little bit about the wine that is.

One of the purposes of second reading debate is to examine legislation in detail to try to find flaws or make observations about it and bring the contents of the bill before the House. I certainly acknowledge that there has been some very passionate feelings about microbreweries and the fact that beer is not included in the legislation. I wanted to tell the member opposite that there is no reference to beer, but it is true that beer was defined so it would appear that there was an intention at one time to include beer in the legislation. I will come back to that a little further along.

One of the things that really interests me about the bill and I should point out to Canadians at large is that while it does not deal with brewing our own beer, it certainly does deal with the growing industry in Canada involved in making our own wine. This is a phenomenon that got its start, at least in Ontario, in the mid-1980s, basically taking advantage of some loopholes in legislation that existed.

In my own community, several of these little shops developed, first I should say, to brew their own beer and then started developing make your own wine on the premises operations. This was an enormous opportunity for Canadians, at least in Ontario. I acknowledge that in Quebec, because of the French heritage of my Quebec colleagues, there is a far greater sensitivity to wine than there ever has been in English speaking Canada, at least up until the time bottle your own wine businesses developed in the 1980s and then spread. They started as make your own beer, but just looking at the small shop fronts in my own riding, beer is now taking second place to make your own wine.

These are wonderful opportunities because we can do it all on the premises. We can get various grape concentrates from some of the famous vineyards in France. We can also get them from Canada. We can make a Merlot, Chablis, or a Bordeaux and many other types of wine. It is interesting because this started out almost as a cottage industry. As I say, it piggybacked on the brew your own beer.

I was looking at some Statistics Canada figures. It is very difficult to find out because I tried very hard all day to get some idea of how large a sector of the market make your own wine is and I was unable to do so. But looking at some Statistics Canada figures from 1980, it is very, very interesting because starting in 1970 we see an overall decline in spirits consumption. That is all kinds of other alcohol. We see a sort of dip and then a rise in beer and then a flattening out. Parallel to that flattening out is a sudden sharp rise in wine consumption and wine sales.

I would suggest that what is happening there, again possibly mostly in English speaking Canada, is the result of so many Canadians being able to go to a little shop in their community and instead of making beer, they make their own wine. They make it for about a third of the price of a brand wine. Actually, a lot less than that sometimes. It has introduced them to the entire experience of wine drinking.

I would suggest that after a certain length of time making our own wine at these shops we begin to develop a taste for better wine, because the reality is that in these places where we bottle our own wine and ferment our own product, it really does come out as different grades of plonk. After a little while, those of us who struggle along and can finally afford a good bottle really appreciate it. I would suspect that the increase in popularity of make your own wine stores has had a very good effect on all kinds of wine sales in Canada.

That brings me to Bill C-47 because it regularizes the actual production of wine in these establishments. As I was saying earlier, a lot of this was done basically as a result of loopholes in legislation, and mostly provincial legislation. Here we have the government, at long last in my view, attempting to formally regulate the make your own wine establishments and set some rules.

I draw attention to some of the clauses. In section 62, and there are a number of subsections, the bill would make it legal to produce wine and package it for one's own personal use. There are various other aspects of it. It also covers the possession of wine. One has to possess wine for one's own use.

It sets rules for the establishments themselves. If they are holding wine in bulk then they would not be breaking the law. Up until this legislation, or at this moment I would suggest, it is an entirely grey area as to what is happening on those premises. The bill would attempt to give it some system or regulation. I think it will be a benefit to everyone.

However, there are clauses that are kind of interesting and need to be dealt with by the standing committee that will be looking at the legislation after it passes second reading. Clause 63, for example, states:

No person shall sell or put to a commercial use wine that was produced, or produced and packaged, by an individual for their personal use.

I can see a problem here because a lot of charities and non-profit organizations, and perish the thought, even political fundraisers, rely heavily on trying to bring in beverages that are cost effective, shall we say. This clause has to be looked at.

There is provincial legislation that already applies here with respect to spirits on premises for fundraising events but this particular section in Bill C-47 would appear to forbid a charity from using wine made at a make your own wine store as part of a fundraising effort. I would say that should be revisited because the reality of it is that commercial wine, the wine that comes under label for the most part, is much too expensive to be a beverage at a fundraiser. That indeed is one of the reasons that many fundraisers, if they are to have an alcoholic beverage at all, choose beer. I think we have to look at section 63.

There is a similar section, section 64, about the packaging of wine, that it has to be packaged only on their own behalf. That of course raises questions about packaging make your own wine as gifts. Again, I think we have to look at that.

Then there are some other peculiarities. I found one section that was quite amusing. It is wonderful to prowl through a bill, and I suggest to Canadians that they should get onto the Internet when they see bills like this appearing in parliament and do exactly as backbench MPs are supposed to do, and look through it and make their own inferences. There is quite an interesting section, section 2, on the definition of wine. I found that fascinating because we are talking about make your own wine.

In section 2 wine is defined, among other things, as a beverage of normal alcohol content but it is also defined as a beverage that is not fortified in excess of 22.9%. Well, Mr. Speaker, that is some wine.

What the bill basically does, and this might be something else the committee might look at or other people who have some strong thoughts about alcohol consumption in general, is it makes it permissible to make our own sherry and port. It is quite bold because it suggests that we can fortify it. Quite apart from all the sections about the regulating and the denaturing of alcohol, alcohol that is not denatured can obviously be applied in this bill to make our own sherry, which I find somewhat amusing. These are positive aspects of the bill.

I think we need to debate this because one nice thing about making our own wine is that it is very much an ordinary person thing. This is what Canadians have been doing. I think the rise of brew your own beer or make your own wine establishments has been a very positive thing.

In that context I would like to allude to the fact that the bill does not deal with the brew your own beer. I have great sympathy for the complaints from the opposition on this. I am a great fan of the microbreweries in Quebec. I have had the happy occasion to visit St-Jean-sur-Richelieu. There are about five microbreweries in that area and they are all excellent.

However I suspect that the government may have run into a problem that is quite different than the problem that is perceived by the opposition involving the major breweries. I think that problem may be the fact that, at least in Ontario, every brew your own beer franchise is a microbrewery. The difficulty is that in Ontario we can go to these establishments, get a recipe to make an English beer, a wheat beer or a German beer. We can duplicate just about every imaginable beer that can be bought under label from a store. I suspect that one of the problems is how to manage the difference between this type of microbrewery and the type of microbrewery that exists in Quebec.

I will say that I would absolutely support trying to find a way in which to ensure that the microbreweries, not just in Quebec but elsewhere, are retained. I would say in passing that it is not quite the same thing with wine because the beer produced in these brew your own stores is a very close imitation of the very best beer we can buy anywhere, including in the microbreweries, whereas at the make your own wine establishments the best wine we can make will never match a French, Canadian or Australian label.

However, the bill is not just about wine and spirits. I would like to also draw the attention of the House to the fact that the bill also deals with tobacco. I think that is very important because in the early part of the 1990s this country experienced a very severe problem with respect to tobacco smuggling. In my view, a lot of it was the government's fault in the sense that the federal government, the predecessor government to the Liberals if I may say so, elevated taxes on tobacco to such a level that contraband taken from across the border from the United States became very profitable.

I well remember in 1995, I had only been up here two years, that we had a crisis basically along the St. Lawrence Seaway where organized crime and other interests were importing not just hundreds of millions of dollars but a billion dollars worth of tobacco products from the United States. The statistics from that period are quite shocking. The government in the end had to lower taxes and, to a large degree, that addressed the problem.

What remained was the fact that a lot of the tobacco products that were being smuggled in from the United States during that particular period were actually made in Canada.

We had a situation where tobacco products, as it later emerged in investigations in the United States and in our own investigations here in Canada, that enterprises were producing tobacco in Canada and then shipping it to the United States both in an unfinished fashion and as cigarettes. These products were then being smuggled across the border back into Canada. It was a billion dollar industry and none of that money went to government. There were no taxes. It was a very severe problem.

One of the interesting statistics was that in 1993, just to give members an idea, 18 billion finished cigarettes were being exported from Canada to the United States. Whereas four years earlier it was only 4 billion cigarettes. In other words, the contraband market in Canadian cigarettes increased enormously.

What Bill C-47 does, and I think it is a very positive thing, is it introduces some severe penalties with respect to the illicit manufacture and distribution of tobacco products.

I draw the House's attention to clause 214 which provides that if somebody is convicted of manufacturing and selling cigarettes without government authorization, without going through the proper channels, which would include smuggling, the fines on conviction range from $50,000 to $1 million and imprisonment for a term of not more than five years. That is a heavy penalty and I think we all should be pleased to see it there. The one thing we do not want to do is go back to that period when tobacco smuggling was a major industry and, I regret to say, a major industry on our border Indian reserves. I think Canada came to a very near point of lawlessness along our borders as a result.

The key regulations that these penalties apply to are clauses 25, 26 and 29 which basically say that no person, other than a licensee, shall manufacture a tobacco product, and no person shall carry on the activity as a tobacco dealer without the appropriate licence, and so on. I suggest that this is a very positive step forward.

It is good technical legislation. I am very pleased to see that it has sort of addressed the problem of tobacco smuggling in a very substantive way. It has addressed the problem of the illegal manufacture of cigarettes. Cigarettes have been with us for a number of centuries and we are not going to stop people smoking. We might stop a lot of people smoking but it is an addictive product and a lot of people will continue to do so, just as they will continue to drink alcohol.

It is very important that we have the regulations and the legislation in place that administers these two product which do not always do the best for us but two products that people insist they will live with. If I may say so, I could certainly do without tobacco but I think wine and the microbreweries are certainly worth saving.

Species at Risk Act April 29th, 2002

Mr. Speaker, I have a cottage in which I believe is probably in the most dangerous part of Canada in terms of wildlife and it is only an hour out of Toronto. My cottage is on the Moon River just west of the Muskoka, which those in other parts of Canada might not realize that the Muskoka area is one of the earliest settled cottage countries in Canada outside Quebec. For the most part the land in Muskoka for cottages is extremely expensive. This is where the rich people come to play.

I happen to have a cottage there not because I am rich, but at the time I bought my cottage, which was built in 1890, it was surrounded by forest. It was not in the area of Muskoka that had high status. It is only in the last 10 years that roads have been put in and development has moved around on the river opposite my property.

I tell this story because the wildlife community around my cottage is moose which is one of the largest land animals in North America and very dangerous. We hear wolves all the time. Even though the cottage settlement is along the river there is a lot of wilderness immediately behind us. We have had bears on the land. I saw a bear move by my cottage a couple of years ago. That does not sound unusual, particularly to MPs from out west.

However my cottage is also the habitat for the eastern massasauga rattlesnake. I have rattlesnakes galore around my cottage. Every one of those rattlesnakes is quite capable of dealing with a politician in a very summary way. The massasauga rattler is an absolutely gorgeous snake. The particular land that I have is wilderness right down to the shore. The south section of the Moon River where I am is still undeveloped after all these years. It was logged at the turn of the century but nothing more after that.

When we bought the cottage, which as I said was built in 1890, there were very few cottages around us. It is still very wild right down to the shore. We had heard about the massasauga rattler. It did not take long before my wife saw one. My wife hates snakes. She saw this snake, curled and hissing. The massasauga rattlesnake knows that it can deal with anything that comes its way, so it does not run away and makes quite a display.

This is a creature on private property that literally can kill a person. We made our choice very early on that we would not cut the weeds along the shore of the property that we own. We wear boots when we go down to the cottage because we know that the snake will not run away and if we step on it will strike. In the 10 to 12 years we have had the cottage we have seen the snakes about a dozen times. What we do is carefully step around the snake or preferably get a long stick and bother it to persuade it to go away and not come back.

As I was describing, on the opposite side of the river where we are located a road was put in. Because Muskoka is very expensive cottage country, suddenly in the course of the last eight years all these huge $200,000 cottage homes have gone up along the opposite shore. The first thing people did was slash and mow down all the weeds. The lawns are now beautifully manicured with pansies right down to the shore. Of course, the massasauga rattler lives on a diet of frogs and insects. If the shoreline is destroyed where we live in Muskoka, we destroy the critical habitat for the massasauga rattler.

At any rate, these new cottagers soon discovered that the snakes they were seeing were not the friendly type. They complained to the local municipal authorities and a public meeting was held.

These cottagers, most of them very well heeled from Toronto, filled the room. Basically what they said to the politicians was that the snakes were dangerous and they all had to be killed. It was quite an interesting meeting. If we follow the theory and logic, that every time one moves out into the wilderness or countryside, or has a cottage or goes hunting or camping, which I suppose is the better analogy, and in Canada we are used to species that are dangerous, of these people from Toronto who own $200,000 cottages, we would not have any bears or wolves or moose because they are all dangerous.

I tell that story because the whole question of preserving habitat and preserving species is, in the end, political. The massasauga rattler is common where I live because that is its only range. It extends from Lake Muskoka to Georgian Bay in a narrow swath only about 10 miles deep, and that is it. One of the reasons it is listed as a threatened species is because it does not exist elsewhere in the country. My cottage is right in the centre. The snakes only exist where my cottage is but they are very abundant there.

The problem is, if we bring in legislation that were to decree that the protection of the massasauga rattlesnake is punishable by law and we bring in absolute sanctions, it is impossible to provide compensation because governments could not afford these cottages. These people have a lot of political clout. If we do that, if we take away the political process from these landowners who were so upset because they discovered that their beautiful property also included a dangerous snake, they would just go out and kill it.

The range is small. It is perfectly easy to go out in the countryside and exterminate the snake. I think enough people armed with .22s would be able to do the job in a couple of seasons. That is why I think that in the general theme of this legislation, which I do support, if we are going to protect species and habitat, we will have to make it political to some degree and discretionary to some degree. In the end there are always people I think who, and I hate to use my own analogy, like me will instead of wanting to civilize the wilderness to the point that nothing wild exists, will realize that what makes us Canadian and why it is so wonderful to be Canadian is the fact that every one of us, no matter where we come from in the House, are on the threshold of the wilderness. We as Canadians interact with the wilderness.

This is why earlier today we had this most interesting debate about preserving the loon. This is an essential part of the Canadian psyche. It is very important to have species at risk legislation. The bill before the House is exactly what is necessary, but it has to be discretionary and it has to respect the fact that in the end the common sense of Canadians will prevail and they will try to do the right thing. Even though my neighbours right now are busy mowing down the shoreline and destroying the habitat of the frogs in which the snakes live, I would like to think that in a few years perhaps they will realize that they are guests in the wilderness, not the owners.