Environment committee  Not so much that it's going to affect other parks. The trepidation I have is that when these lands get transferred, it's not going to end.... We're going to have to work together, and that's why I said exactly what I said. We're all going to have to sit down, because there are go

Environment committee  Members of the committee, thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak to you today regarding Bill C-18 and the proposed changes to the wording in the Rouge National Urban Park Act. My brother and I operate a pick-your-own farm market and farm entertainment business in th

Environment committee  I'm sorry, could you repeat that?

Environment committee  They want that added to the legislation.

Environment committee  No, because it's a slippery slope. I know where that leads to.

Environment committee  I acknowledge your point about driving the bulldozer through it; however, I've read the recommendations of what Friends of the Rouge Watershed want in amendments, and the amendments they want go back to what was there before. You can probably put a bulldozer through it, but let's

Environment committee  Well, we can save the farmland and keep farming it, but once you've planted trees, for somebody to actually stand up and say, let's rip all those trees out, and we'll go back to farming, that is just not going to happen.

Environment committee  In the park study area...?

Environment committee  The biggest threat would be if we endorsed and followed the Rouge north management plan, and then we apply that same type of thinking about ecological integrity to the whole thing, because... Listen, we're the feedstock. We're the feedstock to reach ecological integrity. It's r

Environment committee  Yes.

Environment committee  We want to work with the groups. We've been working with Parks Canada. Parks Canada is the best mediator, negotiator, conduit, call it whatever you want. They will be the best hope we have for bringing all the parties together to find a reasonable solution. I still go back to the

Environment committee  I didn't spend a lot of time on Bill C-40. Where I spent my time was in that draft management plan, and I compared it to what Jim and other people would like added, which is the 1994 plan and the 2001 plan. What I see in this new draft management plan is an equal weighting of agr

Environment committee  Everybody understands it's 600 metres. There's no agriculture inside that corridor. It was developed to support interior dwelling species, birds. That's where that came from. It's a 600 metre corridor; it's going to use up to 2,000 acres of land. In the draft management plan, an

Environment committee  Over the years, Jim has said a lot of things, that farmers pollute the rivers. I've asked him repeatedly, “Jim, if we are polluting the rivers, please provide the evidence. Please tell us where the point source emission is.” We were accused of polluting the river with E. coli. T

Environment committee  No. The land in Pickering...and you know we've had successive governments with short-term leases. There's lots of land out there that's being farmed. Yes, there is land that's sitting idle, but it's sitting idle because of the short-term lease issue. As I said earlier, if there