Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise today to speak to what is now Bill C-20, which started as Bill C-37 last year.
I listened to a number of very good speeches today and some very interesting questions. The discussion appears to be around the creation of the National Capital Commission in 1959. Before the National Capital Commission was created, we have to go back in 1899 when the Government of Canada established the Ottawa Improvement Commission, which was designed to beautify the city, including work on parks and the lands along the Ottawa River.
Unfortunately, a series of incidents occurred in the early 20th century, which had an impact on the region. We all know about the great fire of 1900 and another fire in 1916, which destroyed Centre Block of the Parliament Buildings. Centre Block was rebuilt and successive governments at that point realized how important it was to build a strong capital region and a centre that people from across the country would be attracted to. One of the comments I constantly hear from my constituents is they really enjoy coming to Ottawa for all the historical buildings and the museums. The green space in Ottawa is always mentioned in a positive light across the country.
It is important to establish very strong laws governing development in a capital region. Winnipeg, for example, allowed development to proceed on an old railway yard at the Forks 20 years ago. Originally, certainly during the Filmon Conservative years, the NDP was in opposition and did a very effective job of trying to minimize the amount of development in the Forks area. We wanted people to participate in recreation in the area. There was a walkway along the river. The river, by the way, is the longest skating rink in the free world, which has been well established over and over again.
Nevertheless, there was a concern that we in the opposition had about a greater amount of development. There are always development pressures for commercial opportunities. Because the current opposition in Manitoba is very development-oriented and basically rubber stamps anything the city wants to do, there is no pressure to hold back development.
Compared to 10 years ago, the place has become cluttered with too many things. The human rights museum is being built on that land now and there is hardly a parking lot left. There is a hotel there now and parking lots have been built. This is not what a lot of people thought it should turn out to be some 20 years ago. I believe it is very important for people in Ottawa to get this right and make certain that we keep a handle on any sort of commercial development and actions that would reduce the green space and lead to development that really should not be allowed.
The Bloc member who just spoke expressed a concern, which was also mentioned in last year's debate on this very point, that a high percentage of the development was on one side of the river and a smaller part of the development was on the other. I understand there is tension for development, but on the other side of the coin, there are many people who want those pristine areas of the environment left the way they are and do not want developments that are not done in an orderly fashion.
Some improvements would be brought about by this bill. I guess my only frustration is we cannot seem to get this bill, or a lot of other bills, through the House for no other reason than the Prime Minister, now on two successive occasions, has prorogued the House and forced us to start all over over. Here we are back at square one with this bill. I think some of us are losing track of some of these numbers. It started out as Bill C-37 last year and now we are dealing with it as Bill C-20.
We are aware that when we get the bill to committee, which is bound to happen fairly soon, there will be an opportunity for the Bloc member's questions to be answered, hopefully to his satisfaction, and for some changes to be made at committee. The whole process will start over.
For any members who have been unable to get their amendments passed in last year's cycle of this bill, I have good news for them. They are going to have a new chance to get witnesses before the committee. They are going to have a new chance to survey their constituents, send out some letters, make some phone calls, get them involved and active in this file and, hopefully, get them to influence the committee into making the changes they see as being important to the improvement and betterment of this act.
The NDP supported the legislation even last year. We see some positive things that would come about because of the bill. However, the fact is the government started on this whole process back in April 2006. We are already four years into the process. I think we may be a lot older and greyer at the rate the government moves before we get the legislation passed.
This goes for a whole lot of other bills. We are talking about the whole government agenda that has to be reintroduced every time the government decides it wants to recalibrate or it gets fearful and afraid of its shadow and prorogues the House. We hope the government will not do that again. I think by now it probably more or less has learned its lesson. I will make a prediction and go out on a limb and say that I do not expect we will see another prorogation of the House any time soon. I hope I am not wrong. Maybe I should not put much in the way of bets on that point. However, I really think it has learned its lesson and will not do it again.
I have said many times that I believe strongly in minority governments. They can work. It worked with Bill Davis. It worked with Gary Filmon. It is working in England right now. There is no reason why Parliament has to be so acrimonious. Other than the transport committee, some of the committees are falling into a lot of acrimony right now. We saw it in the House today. Maybe it is just the hot weather. However, I suspect this is an ongoing problem. We have to learn to work this out. Otherwise, we will find ourselves very shortly into another $300 million election, which I can assure members will produce the same results. The government will not get any better result than what it has right now. It should wake up and realize that it has had four years already and it may have another four years doing the same thing. However, if it keeps doing the same thing, it is not going to get results. That is what the government wants to show at the end of the game. Any government that gets into this wants to show results.
Look at what happened in the 1960s, from 1962 to 1968, under Mike Pearson. We had a period of a minority government where we brought in a new national flag, we unified the armed forces, we dealt with pensions and the medicare bill. Imagine the huge initiatives that the Pearson government brought in after coming out of four years of a Diefenbaker majority government. The Liberals came in as a minority government and survived a couple of elections. Obviously there was a different mix of people in that environment. That government managed to survive from 1962 to 1968 and dealt with some very contentious issues.
Anybody who lived through that period knows how contentious changing the flag was. It was extremely contentious, yet they got the job done, and they got the job done with the unification of the armed forces. Why they would do that in a minority government, I do not know, but they did it and they got the job done. As my colleague just mentioned, the pensions and the medicare issues were brought up during that time too.
Thus, there is all sorts of evidence to say that minority governments can work. They work in other countries. As a matter of fact, we do not need a majority to get things done. That is the arguments that governments make, but we have seen government after government not only squandering their majorities but also getting themselves into trouble. Majorities are actually not to their benefit. If backbenchers think they are obscure now, wait till they get into a majority government situation. I have been there a couple of times and when we are in a majority situation, it is not a happy time for a lot of the members. This is the members' best time to get their ideas out, to get their ideas up in caucus, and have some influence on their government. That is what they should be doing and they should be working with the intention of making this place work.
In April 2006, the minister responsible for the National Capital Act launched a review to assess the current relevance of the NCC. As I indicated, the commission had been around since 1959, so clearly there were some changes to be made.
We have heard some of the other members talk about the way it was, because when I first looked at the bill last year, I wondered why the government wanted to make these changes after all of this time. If the commission was working so well from 1959, what was the big reason for burning political capital on something like this? However, one of the things we saw was that the National Capital Commission held private meetings; it did not have meetings open to the public. Changing this is one of the positive things that this particular legislation is about to do.
Once again, the government proposed changes and looked for stakeholder input. It wanted to make certain there was a certain amount of feedback. When the minister launched the review, the purpose basically was to assess the continuing relevance of the National Capital Commission and its activities and level of funding. The independent review panel invited a broad range of stakeholders and interested parties to express their views, in addition to a number of individual participants, including from federal departments and agencies.
I might point out at this juncture that it has been mentioned by others in this House that the members of the commission are not just people from the Ottawa area. This is a National Capital Commission; there are people on the board, as there should be, from other parts of Canada.
Other levels of government were also consulted, foreign institutions, parliamentarians, and local and not-for-profit organizations. In this connection, the Bloc member brought up the whole issue of whether or not Quebec was consulted on this bill. I find it hard to believe that it could not have been at some point in the process, but I take the previous member at his word. Once again, as I indicated, he has opportunities to deal with that issue now and to get whatever input into the bill he wants from his local residents, or from the Government of Quebec, because once again, we are just looking now at getting the bill to committee.
The panel released its report in December 2006, and made a number of recommendations concerning the governance of the commission and its activities and funding. I believe a total of 31 recommendations were made and the government, to its credit, has actually taken some action on some of these.
If I recall the speech by my hon. colleague, the member for Ottawa Centre, who has been very involved and very strong on the bill over the last couple of years and who actually had his own bill before the House, he complimented the government and said he had worked very well with the Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities, and he certainly gave the government high marks and credit for that. He said in his speech that he believed in giving the government credit where credit was due. In fact, in working on this particular bill, it was a very positive experience for the member for Ottawa Centre, and he did accept that the government was doing the right thing.
In its backgrounder, the government points out that it has taken several steps consistent with the review panel's recommendation. There was an annual $15 million increase in funding for the National Capital Commission. That was announced in budget 2007. In keeping with the Federal Accountability Act, which received royal assent on December 12, 2006, it separated the chairperson and chief executive officer positions as separate entities.
As well, in September 2008, the Governor in Council approved the acquisition by the NCC of private properties in Gatineau Park. There was some question about what the true size of the park was. I believe one of the Liberal members indicated there was no way of telling how big the park was, yet a Bloc member had it down to the nearest centimetre. Clearly, these two members ought to get together and determine what the actual size of the park is, because we have two divergent opinions on that point.
As I indicated before, the board had private meetings. That is clearly something that has gone the way of dinosaur now. Organizations are being forced through public pressure to open up. We do not have to go any further than the current experiences that all members of the House have in dealing with issues where the public wants to know what is happening. Once again, the board meetings were private and now they will be public. The board will now have to have at least four meetings a year. These will have to be open to the public and there is a requirement that if members need to go in camera, it is logical that their meetings be held in camera if necessary—but only if necessary.
Another really important point is the following. I think I asked a question about this last year, and the member for Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor has also talked it. The National Capital Commission is required to submit a 50-year master plan for the National Capital Region at least every 10 years, including its principles and objectives for approval by the Governor in Council and for tabling in Parliament. That is an extremely important proposition for the National Capital Commission to follow, because this requires it to look ahead and not just to do things on a day-by-day, next-day, next-month basis. Certainly, in terms of any type of commercial activity, this requires it to take the long-term view of that commercial activity. So the whole idea of submitting a plan for the area is something that I think must have been borrowed from someone else, as I do not know if it is original to the board.
I just happened to be in Louisiana a couple of weeks ago at a conference, where we had a briefing on the oil spill. That area is an example of where there is extreme environmental damage and absolutely no plan, no plan at all. They were drilling in huge depths with no previous experience at those depths, and no one seemed to be in charge of the ship. That is hardly a direct comparison, but it still shows us that when we start developing or spending money on development we should have some sort of a plan where we are going. We should not be allowing unfettered, free enterprise development here and allow people to simply develop in any way the almighty dollar tells them they should develop. That is really important.
I really applaud the government for taking the initiative here and doing something that will benefit the national capital region and will, in fact, benefit Canadians as a whole.
