Blaine Calkins

[Ethics, December 1st, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, it is clear that when someone wants something from the Liberal government, all one has to do is pay the entry fee to one of its consultations. Its friends at Canada 2020 and Bluesky Strategy Group know it. Their friends at Apotex know it, Chinese billionaire bankers know it, and their pot friends know it too. Everyone can see it. The Liberals are only fooling themselves. When will the Prime Minister finally do the right thing and put an end to his cash for access fundraisers?

[Ethics, November 30th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, Canopy Growth Corporation, which two weeks ago had a market capitalization of over $1.7 billion, was co-founded by the former chief financial officer of the Liberal Party of Canada, Chuck Rifici. However, it gets worse. Laurier Club Liberal donors Bruce Linton and Mark Zekulin are also large shareholders and executives of Canopy Growth. Something does not add up here unless an individual is a well-connected Liberal pot shareholder.

What preferential information did these well-connected Liberals get in return for their large Liberal Party donations?

[Ethics, November 29th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, we are just trying to weed out the truth here. The Cannabis Friendly Business Association paid the entrance fee and got their 10 minutes of face time with the parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Justice.

Abi Roach said, “There was lot of people from the cannabis industry as well who were vying for his attention, more from the licensed producers’....”

Licensed producers? Did the Liberals take money from unlicensed producers as well? Does the Prime Minister actually believe in his own open and accountable government document, or did the paper it was written on go up in smoke?

[Ethics, November 29th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, it seems like Cheech and Chong are stuck in Groundhog Day with these answers.

Abi Roach of the Cannabis Friendly Business Association told the media, “They took our money happily without question” and, that, “no one vetted [me] ”. She also said, “I would rather to speak to a politician one-on-one in an office than have to pay.”

I guess everyone got the memo that if one wants to talk to the current Liberal government one has to pay up. It sounds like cash for access to me.

When will the Prime Minister put an end to these unsavoury hash for—I mean, cash for access events?

[Rouge National Urban Park Act, November 24th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, quite contrarily, it actually exacerbates the issue that I have just raised. Because the mandate that is to be imposed on an urban park is actually for non-urban parks, we are trying to put a square peg in a round hole, and good luck.

[Rouge National Urban Park Act, November 24th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, I believe what the member is getting at is that for every park, whatever level of government is looking after it, be it municipal or provincial, it aspires to leave it in its best possible natural state, allowing trees to grow, and the like. I have been to Stanley Park and in some parts of it the grass is mowed, there are paved trails, and so on. I am not saying these things do not happen in national parks, I am saying that the process by which these things happen is completely different.

If the City of Vancouver needs to do something in Stanley Park, it does not have a legally mandated objective of preserving ecological integrity, of going through an ecological impact assessment on something as simple as putting in a new washroom or doing something like that. Parks Canada is a very bureaucratic organization. That is fine. I am not saying one way or the other if that is good or bad. However, it has a mandate for ecological integrity that takes priority over all of the other needs and wishes of the people who would be using the park. That would be the difference between Stanley Park in Vancouver and Stanley national park in Vancouver. If the Stanley Park in Vancouver became a national park, in a little while we would not recognize it as Stanley Park or what its intent would be. I am not saying one is better than the other, I am saying those are choices, and we had better be sure about what those choices actually are and what they mean.

[Rouge National Urban Park Act, November 24th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, I will simply ask if anybody knows of any national park in Canada that allows farmers to start up operations and farm the land inside a national park. No, that is not happening.

We are starting a national park that currently has farming operations in it, with an organization that has no mandate. In fact, it has an opposite mandate when it comes to agricultural practices. They are diametrically opposed. The culture and management starts with the minister and deputy ministers in Ottawa, all the way down. Alan Latourelle, the head of Parks Canada for 13 years, a distinguished career, said that he disagreed with including the provision of ecological integrity in the mandate of Rouge National Park. That is good enough for me. I do not understand why it is not good enough for the rest in the House.

[Rouge National Urban Park Act, November 24th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, in principle, I do not disagree. Rouge Park is a tremendous opportunity to use as an educational facility, to engage many Canadians who, and I do not know if I am right on this, in our larger urban centres might be a little disconnected from our natural environment. I applaud the notion that my colleague brings forward. I am simply relaying to him my personal experiences in dealing with a Government of Canada agency, a Government of Canada agency for which I proudly worked. I am not bashing the agency. I am not bashing the people who work there. They are doing fantastic work according to their mandate.

My concern is that the House does not truly understand how the mandate is implemented. In an area where there is so much opportunity for contentious uses of that very small land space, there will be many bumps along the road. I am just suggesting that we had better not put some more bumps in it by adding ecological integrity at this time.

[Rouge National Urban Park Act, November 24th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, let me preface my comments by letting folks in the House and those who may be watching know that I was very proud in a previous life to serve as a conservation officer in the province of Alberta. I served at a variety of provincial parks. In fact, when I last served at a provincial park I was the in-charge officer for that provincial park. I also had the privilege of being a national park warden for Parks Canada in 1995. It seems like a long time ago. I also had the privilege of being a back country warden on the north boundary of Jasper National Park. I had several horses and seven cabins that I would stay at as I patrolled. I was able to live at the Decoigne Warden Station during my free time, while it was still a warden station.

I have a zoology degree in fisheries and aquatic sciences, and a conservation law enforcement diploma from Lethbridge College, designed specifically for a career in parks, fisheries, and wildlife, and working as a law enforcement officer in the conservation field. I did not spend a lot of time doing that, just a number of years in my 20s. I was successful at it for a while. Of course, that kind of work is seasonal work for the most part when starting out, so I was thrilled to have the opportunity to work in the oil patch in the wintertime. As a farm boy in Alberta, one could pretty much walk in and get a job in any oil company. If one knew how to use a wrench, one was hired. I thank the companies in the energy sector for supporting my parks habit in my 20s, because I loved to work in parks, but needed the money that the energy sector provided. The energy sector is suffering so badly right now in my home province. My heart goes out to my constituents who I know are struggling mightily with what is transpiring there.

However, I am digressing. I need to get back to the issue before the House today.

Some people in the House will be surprised to find that, given my background, I am not going to stand here and advocate for a national urban park in the greater Toronto area. It is not because I do not believe in the value of national parks. As I said, I dedicated a portion of my life to them, and most of my education has gone into that. However, I understand the culture of Parks Canada. I am not saying it is a bad culture. I am not saying it is negative. I need people to understand what they are getting with Parks Canada. They are getting an organization that believes in its mandate wholeheartedly. That is a good thing. That is not a negative thing. However, in a country that is almost 150 years old, there is a reason that not a single national urban park was created until this park was.

If we look at Parks Canada and what Canada is known for in its national parks, it is known usually for broad landscapes. It is protecting vast amounts of land and protecting areas, whether those be marine protected areas, or mountainous regions, like Alberta, or vast tracts of land in Yukon, the Northwest Territories, or Gros Morne in Newfoundland and Labrador. All of these parks are usually set aside far away from urban areas. The reason for that is that human and natural conflicts are sometimes difficult to manage. I am going to speak a little about this.

I have been a member of Parliament for a long time. It will be 11 years pretty soon. Some people on this side of the House would think I have a long future ahead of me. Some people on that side of the House would probably encourage me to think of other things. That is fine. I get that. I truly do.

I have been an MP in Alberta, and I have had the good fortune of doing that for a long time. I used to represent the community of Rocky Mountain House, with its national historic site and its proximity along highway 11 to the Saskatchewan crossing and highway 93 between Lake Louise and Jasper.

I had dealings with all of the people there, whether someone operating a ski hill who simply wanted to build a small maintenance building to augment their services, or those involved in something as broad as expanding the size of a ski hill to accommodate tourists and guests.

I spent most of my summer holidays with my family in Waterton Lakes National Park and Jasper National Park. I returned to that national park I had worked in so long ago because I love it. I knew what the deal was going to be when I went there and I received the deal. People were constantly telling me that the tire on my truck was a bit off the gravel pad and on the grass, that I would have to move it. They would tell me that I had left my empty cooler outside and that I would have to get it. They would come into my campsite and take away things. They did not know me. They did not know that I knew what I was doing. They assumed that I was like everyone else in the park, that I might or might not have been be skilled in doing these things.

The people of the GTA need to understand that with its mandate, Parks Canada will micromanage everything that happens in that park, especially the people.

What I am concerned about is the fact that four million people are in the immediate area. The bill currently before the House talks about preserving the ecological integrity of a parcel of land that is a mere 79 square kilometres in size. I have news for everyone: If this legislation passes and the protection and preservation of ecological integrity becomes the mandate of Rouge National Urban Park, I promise everyone watching today that there will be complaints and conflicts between the people living near, living in, doing business with, or having anything to do with that national park. The mandate of Parks Canada and the protection and preservation of ecological integrity will not sit well in a 79 hectare park with houses right up against it and with virtually no buffer zone around it. It is important to understand this.

Jasper National Park and Banff National Park are themselves not islands alone surrounded by development. There is Kootenay National Park and Yoho National Park right across the border. There is the Willmore Wilderness Park, the White Goat Wilderness Area, and Kananaskis Provincial Park, as well as all kinds of other provincial parks, municipal parks, and crown land surrounding those national parks. Those national parks, when compared to Rouge National Urban Park, are geographically massive, and yet Parks Canada still struggles with managing ecological integrity.

Cariboo migrate massive distances, but because there is an ecological and hands-off approach, letting natural systems take their course, even in a park surrounded by the Willmore where there is no ATV traffic, cariboo still have a hard time surviving. There are basically similar rules to what we see in a national park. Provincial parks and recreational areas are all around it. However, even in a park that size, cariboo, which are not threatened by oil and gas activity and not threatened by forestry activity, still have a hard time surviving because, when ecological integrity is preserved, natural systems take care of themselves. Thus the presence of wolves and mountain lions in an uncontrolled, non-predator controlled environment such as a national park has led to the virtual extirpation of cariboo from Jasper National Park. They are not hunted. Aboriginals are not hunting in Jasper National Park. They are not exercising those rights there. It is not oil and gas activity. It is not forestry activity and it is not even forestry activity all around it, because all around that park are buffer zones that prevent those same kinds of activities. Yet we cannot actually preserve the integrity of a species in its range even in a park of that size.

How on earth is Parks Canada going to manage a conflict should cougars, black bears or other types of large predatory animals find their way into the Rouge National Park where they would be afforded all the protections of the National Parks Act, which is exactly what this bill intends to do? I am saying straight up that the current Parks Canada mandate will not work well in an urban national park surrounded by four million people. This is a fool's errand. It will be expensive, it will be frustrating, and it will not work.

Parks Canada can get into memorandums of understanding with landowners, but I know the culture of Parks Canada. Parks Canada officials do not want human activity in a national park. It is that simple. People can say whatever they want, but I can assure the people watching and the people in the House that Parks Canada officials want little to no human activity in a national park. That is the culture. I am not saying it is right. I am not saying it is wrong. I am saying that is the way it is. I have been there. I have done that. I know it.

What is going to happen? How do we provide ecological integrity in a park that is 79 kilometres square in its size, hardly bigger than some family farms in places like Saskatchewan and Alberta on the Prairies? What is going to happen when the beavers get into the waterway and decide to dam things up, and people have to go through the paperwork and the process or a national park warden has to make the call where public safety is an imminent threat to kill the beaver? They cannot protect that ecological integrity.

What about insect infestations? What about crop management for farmers asking for the privilege of putting a herbicide or pesticide on their crop inside a national park which has the mandate to provide for ecological integrity? They cannot circle that square. Something has got to give. Alan Latourelle knows this very well. He wrote a letter saying that this would not work, as he was leaving after 13 years at the helm of Parks Canada. He said not to do it, not to go that extra step.

Parks Canada has other stages of parks. We have park reserves. We have land that is being held in trust for parks. We can simply change the regulations and the law to allow for the uniqueness of an urban national park. We can take all of the policies that generally come out of an urban park in any of our cities. I am sure the city of Toronto has them. I know the city of Edmonton did when I worked for Edmonton parks and recreation. Virtually every city has its own rules and its own policies for the parks inside city limits, because those are the rules and policies that make sense in a city.

What is going to happen when there is an insect infestation? What is going to happen if that insect infestation is either destroying the crops of the farmer, threatening the neighbourhood, threatening the trees and other physical improvements that the city has put in place in proximity to that park, or private landowners who have spent money on cherry trees, orchards, fruit trees or whatever they have in their backyard? When they tell the MPs in Toronto that they have a bug problem in their backyard coming from the national park and ask them what they going to do about it, MPs from the GTA are going to do nothing about it. They are not going to be able to do anything.

Members should trust me. I know what I am talking about. They cannot change the law all by themselves. Therefore, they are going to have to look their constituents in the eye and say that the member of Parliament for Red Deer—Lacombe, in a speech eight years ago, warned about this, but they did not listen to him and voted in favour of the government bill, and now wished they had listened. It is coming. They do not have to believe me if they do not want to, but it is coming.

There nothing anybody is going to be able to do about it because Parks Canada is going to say, no, that the ecological integrity has to be maintained, that the insect is naturally occurring in this area, and if it spreads out of the park's boundaries, so be it.

Members may not believe me, but Parks Canada has a much more enforced mandate than provincial parks. Anybody can understand these three words “mountain pine beetle”. The NDP government of the day in British Columbia did not understand that if it did override the ecological integrity provisions of the B.C. Parks Act, which is less onerous than the National Parks Act, it could have gone in and extirpated the infestation of mountain pine beetles in Tweedsmuir Provincial Park. I know my colleague is going to talk about this later. It could have saved the ecological integrity of virtually tens of thousands of square kilometres of pine trees all through British Columbia, Alberta, and now into Saskatchewan, even the ones in the national parks like Jasper.

That is what it would have been able to do, but the NDP government could not do it, or it would not do it. It let nature take its course. It was billions of dollars to the forestry industry, bailouts, and fighting this pine beetle scourge as it moved across from B.C. through Alberta and across the north. Had there been a different mandate or a provision that would have allowed for common sense and management of these lands in an appropriate way, we might have been able to prevent this problem.

Parks Canada changed its mandate a long time ago. I used to ride my horses through the back country of Jasper National Park. Some of it was on trails. Some of these trails looked awfully sculpted. When I inquired what they were, they were old fire roads. Parks Canada used to have a fire suppression policy, where it would go in and protect the forest because the forests were beautiful.

People cannot dispute that when they drive through a national park, or through a forest management area or some crown land, and we have plenty of that close to us, whether it is nearby Quebec or northern Ontario, it is beautiful. Driving along the highway and seeing the boreal forest, whether it is in the Shield or wherever the case might be, is absolutely lovely.

This summer, my family and I went back to Jasper, and we drove up the Maligne Canyon. A fire broke out in the Maligne Canyon last year. It was a beautiful picturesque landscape. On basically three sides of that canyon, it is scorched earth, right down to the rocks. The fire burned so hot that it actually burned through all of the forest. Normally a forest fire just burns the canopy and goes through and kills the trees, but this bared it right down to the rocks. That is how hot and intense that fire actually was.

Forest fires are natural. We were not going to harvest the trees in the national park anyway. They tried to suppress the fire simply to protect the physical assets and infrastructure, such as buildings, businesses, and so on in the area. That is the only reason they got involved.

The fire suppression policy is going to apply unless a specific exemption is made in Rouge National Urban Park. Which MPs here are going to say that they wished they could have told people that they could have saved their homes when the fire broke out at a picnic site in Rouge National Urban Park, but they voted in favour of the ecological integrity provisions for an urban national park next to four million people.

If members do not think a fire can get out of control and affect a city, they should look at Fort McMurray or Slave Lake in my province. It is not funny at all. This is serious business. I would love to keep going. If I could have just a few seconds—

[Ethics, November 24th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I wondered what kind of defence they would try to chuck across the floor today. It is obviously a lot different than the one they tried yesterday.

Canada 2020 gets it. The Commissioner of Lobbying gets it. The Ethics Commissioner gets it. The former Liberal deputy prime minister, Sheila Copps gets it. I watched Peter Mansbridge last night. I think he got it. Good God, even the Toronto Star gets it. They all understand that these Liberal cash for access events are unethical. When will the Prime Minister put a stop to these cash for access events?