You are welcome.
I am now hearing thanks, Mr. Speaker. That is quite encouraging.
We must instruct those people who assist government, people in the Privy Council and in the Prime Minister's Office, that they in fact may not be steering the ship entirely. They may have to talk to their own party members, and heaven forbid, they may even have to speak to some of the opposition members to gain support for a piece of legislation that Canadians clearly think is important.
It has been suggested in committee that every time we do this move it costs approximately $25 million, For a drastically underfunded department, like Parks Canada, the cost of $25 million and the staffing time it takes to move this thing over every other time, we now have a somewhat arduous process in order to do it again. Clearly, there is not enough money to go around in the parks system as it exists right now. Why would we spend our time switching all the letterhead, signs, aides, firing and hiring, and going through that entire process every five or six years?
I am glad that it is going to be difficult and that we will have to come back here, and seriously consider whether we want to do that or not, and not strip away more badly needed funds to the parks. This is a distraction from the parks mandate. It is not meant to be moving offices, changing signs and looking at new letterhead every five to six years. It is meant to be protecting our cultural and ecological heritage.
In polling at times, Canadians have consistently identified parks as one of the strongest national symbols that we have, above the anthem and the flag. Why, under such a strong significance and such a strong identification, does this House find it impossible to properly fund it? When flags are distributed and we ensure that the anthem is known to all school children, we understand that it has something to do with keeping the national identity across such a vast and varied land.
Why, when we look to our parks system, do we simply assume that it will take care of itself and we can consistently underfund it and in fact create a deficit year in and year out?
The topics have been wide ranging whenever we raise the environment as a topic and members feel a certain privilege to address many environmental issues. That is not my prerogative today. I do not have a great deal of interest in talking about many other environmental aspects, but I will talk about the Kyoto protocol for a moment, something that we have signed on to and ratified. With the recent ratification by Russia, we have certain obligations.
I think that in some small way the process that we went through on this technical bill could in a sense offer some leadership and guidance to the government because the bill is starting to talk about some of the interjurisdictional problems that we are going to face in a serious way if we are going to address climate change in any significance.
Right now, we have done little to next to nothing. I believe the minister is in Iceland hearing about how accelerated the process is around climate change and that we do not necessarily need further studies. We are hearing about it. I represent a northern riding and we are hearing from people who have lived on the land for thousands of years that they have never seen anything like this.
We are seeing forest fires that we have never seen before. We are seeing incidents of weather and climatic change we simply have never seen before.
The science is in on climate change. To continue to stick our heads in the sand over this issue is wrong. We need to collaborate to make sure that the old debate on environment versus jobs goes somewhere else. It does a disservice and shows disrespect to future generations to constantly pit jobs against the environment.
The university in Peterborough, Ontario which I attended had a strong program in retrofitting houses which created all sorts of jobs around that small community. By simply looking at the issue of energy leakage in houses and identifying where the problems were in a sense created a whole new industry. It was profitable to the economy and good for the environment. It was a simple and small measure.
We must start to tackle the issues in connection with Kyoto, because like it or not, it is here. We have to do something about this. The lack of leadership and vision from the government has been rather disappointing to many Canadians. We have not seen enough strength, will or coordination of effort.
Here it is a minority government, however long it may or may not last. This is an opportunity to work together to address these issues. This is an opportunity to work collaboratively with the provinces. The parliamentary secretary took great satisfaction in the government's ability to do that with respect to heritage sites.
Imagine the implications if we were able to get the Canadian Federation of Municipalities, the provinces and territories and the federal government working in conjunction with each other. This would avoid any serious shocks to our economic system and would start addressing the effects of climate change on our economy and on future generations.
As a new member I found the process last night to be uplifting and encouraging. Not only were we as a party able to put forward a health bill that will address future generations and the health of Canadians, but we were also able to amend a government bill to the satisfaction of the opposition parties. Although government members may have voted in different directions, they may have obtained some satisfaction as well.
Canadians have consistently said that they want to see this place work better. That is only going to happen when we establish common interests and common goals by pushing the government and holding it to account. We need to find pieces of legislation that we can put forward in the House that will address the concerns and needs of Canadians, that will do things right by the economy and by the environment and health. Those are the foundations of this country and they will be the foundations for future generations.
