Coming soon . . . — Obstructionist tool

For the past several decades, politicians, bureaucrats and environmentalists have engaged in a country-wide effort to expand Canada’s network of parks and wilderness spaces. In British Columbia, where the “save-the-last-remaining-wilderness” land-grab reached mammoth proportions, forestry and mining were nearly drummed out of business. The economy went into a tumble, but we were told it was a small price to pay for the protection of millions of hectares of wildlife habitat.

As it turns out, that small price — a ravaged economy — was only a down payment. The federal government now wants to extend the exercise of protecting habitat for endangered species on to private land. If Environment Minister David Anderson gets his way, it will soon be a crime to build a house or do anything else on private property if it interferes with the habitat of an endangered plant, toad, bird or insect.

Urbanites won’t have to worry much about the new law, not if they live in downtown Toronto, Moncton or Kelowna. But those who own land in remote areas should worry, for somewhere in the bowels of Ottawa, bureaucrats are drawing up regulations that will give them unprecedented control over what happens on private property — any private property. That could mean the lakeside frontage you hope to retire on outside Kelowna, your grandfather’s farm in Saskatchewan, or your uncle’s wood lot in northern Ontario. As the government sees it, this land is their land, from Nova Scotia to Vancouver Island.

The proposal has serious ramifications for resource developers. It will provide anti-development preservationists with a new obstructionist tool. Environmentalists will be able to stall — perhaps even de-rail — any new mine project if so much as one endangered plant, bird, mammal or insect is found in the region.

As it stands, land-use decisions are largely matters of local and provincial jurisdiction. But Anderson’s proposal will change all that by giving the federal government unprecedented power to stall, block or prohibit development on both publicly and privately owned land anywhere in the nation.

Don’t get us wrong. We love wilderness and wildlife as much as any coffee-swilling greenie on Vancouver’s chic Robson Street. But we like country folk and a strong economy too. We also believe that resource development and wildlife can co-exist, even though environmentalists preach the opposite. Caribou herds are still trekking across the Lac de Gras region of Canada’s Northwest Territories, as they always have, even though one diamond mine is in production and several others are on the drawing boards.

The issue is a serious one and we’re not scare-mongering. Just ask American resource developers about the abuses they’ve endured because of the government’s Endangered Species Act. Homeowners have been prosecuted for bulldozing firebreaks around their homes during a California bush fire because they destroyed the habitat of an endangered mouse. Farmers have not been allowed to farm because bureaucrats classified their irrigated land as wetlands. The files are miles high with government high-handedness against property-owners.

The Canadian government will say such excesses won’t happen here, that compensation will be paid if humans are not allowed to develop private property in order to preserve the habitat of some endangered bug or plant. But government promises aren’t worth much in the real world.

Anderson’s proposals are a potential assault on those who make their living off the land, or those who develop properties and create badly needed jobs in rural or wilderness areas. Northerners and rural Canadians are about to be bushwhacked yet again by politicians, bureaucrats and environmentalists.

If you don’t like the proposed law, make your opposition known to your federal representative before it’s too late. Do what environmentalists do: rant, rave and vent. Write a letter to David Anderson, minister of the environment, in Ottawa. Write a letter to his boss, Prime Minister Jean Chretien. For those so inclined, threaten to vote Reform in the next election. Then write Opposition Leader Preston Manning and his feisty sidekick, Deborah Gray. Write your local member of parliament. Express yourself boldly. If it works for environmentalists, it might work for you.

The alternative is to do and say nothing and allow the anti-development preservationists to win again.