Honourable senators, I do not have a prepared speech, but I do have a few notes on this bill that I want to share with you. Bill S-221 is the bill proposing to make the Canada jay the national bird of Canada, and I guess it’s only appropriate that I speak today since I find myself in my summer plumage.

In 2017, the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, or RCGS, asked Canadians to vote on their choice for Canada’s national bird. Well, I’m a fellow of the RCGS, and I voted. They gave us five choices: the Canada goose, the common loon, the Canada jay, the black-capped chickadee and the snowy owl.

They are all fine options, and I will speak to these in a few moments, but I was pleased that the Canada jay won because I voted for the Canada jay.

They are all great options, but many other birds were not considered for various reasons. I want to touch upon that for a few seconds. For example, the gyrfalcon, which I think is a magnificent hunting bird, covers practically the entire breadth and depth of Canada. It doesn’t go much below the southern border. The gyrfalcon is the largest falcon in the world. It’s a magnificent hunter, and it’s been the bird of royalty for centuries. It’s a very intelligent animal and easy to train.

I remember that in 2018, I took my son to Carnoustie, Scotland, for the British Open. Everything took place along the water. Over the five days, about 150,000 people went through the turnstiles for the golf tournament. There were gulls everywhere, but they didn’t light; they didn’t show up. There was lots of garbage, but the gulls didn’t show up because there were two falconers going around with these falcons. The gulls were smart enough not to fool with these falcons. They are a beautiful bird.

The gyrfalcon is the national bird of Iceland and also the official bird of the Northwest Territories. It is also the official mascot of the U.S. Air Force Academy. None of them will want to give up this particular bird, and we want something that’s distinctive.

Another magnificent choice is the osprey or, as we call it in Atlantic Canada, the fish hawk. I’ve witnessed fish hawks my entire life. Growing up, my house in Louisbourg was a couple of hundred yards from the harbour, and they were always hovering above the harbour, up about 400 or 500 feet high. You would see them hovering, and then they would go still and drop like a stone. They would rarely come up without a fish in their claws. They are magnificent hunters, but they’re also the official bird of Nova Scotia, and we’re not giving that up. We’re keeping that.

There are some birds that weren’t even considered, like the Arctic tern. What a unique bird that is. In our summers, it lives on the northern extremities of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut; then it winters in the southern extremities of the globe down in Antarctica. It has the greatest migration in the world. It travels about 50,000 miles a year.

There are so many unique birds in this country that could be considered, but the tern, of course, is somewhat obscure — out of sight, out of mind.

Some would argue that we should choose a bird that no longer exists in order to commemorate it. We’ve seen the commemoration of animals that no longer exist. The flag of California features the California bear, which has been extinct for a long time. There is an argument for that.

We have had three great extinctions in Canada that no one talks about. One we shared with the Americans was the extinction of the passenger pigeon, a wild pigeon which was at one time the most abundant animal in the world. There were 3 to 5 billion of these pigeons in the early 19th century. They were slaughtered for food.

In 1866, there was a recorded observation of these birds migrating to the southeastern U.S. in the early fall. This migration, they estimated, involved over 1 billion birds in a flock. This was in southwestern Ontario. The flock took 14.5 hours to pass overhead. It blocked out the sun for the entire day. They estimated it was about 150 to 175 miles long and about 3 miles wide. Imagine what a sight that must have been. It’s a sight we’ll never see again on the Earth.

The destruction of animals is something I abhor, and that’s quite an example of destruction.

There were two other great destructions in this country that we should reflect upon. One is on the East Coast, which was the great auk, or garefowl, which was the original penguin, the only flightless bird in the northern hemisphere. It was a beautiful colony animal which spent most of the year in the water and only came out to nest and breed.

It spanned all across the North Atlantic to Greenland, the Scandinavian countries and the Mediterranean, but it bred on small islands off the north coast of Great Britain, as well as in Iceland, Greenland, Newfoundland and the Maritimes.

It was slaughtered in the 18th and 19th centuries. Its beautiful feathers were used for the down in feather pillows. They were great eating birds; their eggs were a delicacy. By 1840, they had all been slaughtered. The penguins of the south are not related to this bird, but these were the original penguins. The name was taken from the north and adapted to the birds in the south. This was the original penguin, and we killed it — we destroyed it.

The other one was destroyed in our lifetime. We don’t reflect on this much. It was the Eskimo curlew. It was a short bird, like a sandpiper, which existed in the millions and summered in the northwest extremity of the Northwest Territories and the northern coast of Alaska. It had a magnificent migration, all the way to the Pampas in Australia. The way it migrated is interesting. In the late summer, it flew straight across Canada until it got to Labrador, then down through the Americas and all the way to Argentina and the southern Pampas where it wintered.

In 1492, when Columbus was sailing the ocean blue and about to discover America, he knew he was getting close to land when he saw an enormous flock of birds going south over the ocean. You can rest assured that the birds he witnessed were Eskimo curlews. The last time it was photographed was in the 1960s, in Galveston, Texas. There were some sightings again in the 1980s. It hasn’t been determined to be extinct, but it probably is.

There are a lot of reasons to commemorate certain birds.

I return to the five options that the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, or RCGS, proposed. The Canada goose was in trouble in the 1960s. Its numbers were greatly depleted, but great efforts were made to revive it. These geese adapt very well to urban environments, and I think we gave 20 or 30 mating pairs to the King and Queen back in the 1960s. Now it is an enormous pest in Britain because they adapt so well to urban environments.

Even though it’s a great bird, it’s considered a real pest. I don’t want people to kill it anymore, but maybe we should avoid making it the national bird.

Who doesn’t recognize the sound of the common loon? I don’t think there is as Canadian a sound as the sound of the loon over the water. But the loon, of course, is the official bird of Ontario. They’re not going to give it up.

The snowy owl was proposed. It is a beautiful bird, widely distributed in Canada, as are the great horned owl and the great grey owl. However, they are, respectively, the official birds of Quebec, Alberta and Manitoba, so they are out of the running.

The black-capped chickadee is also widely distributed. Like the grey jay, it does not migrate, but its overall range is less northern. It is also the official bird of New Brunswick, so that’s out of the question.

This takes us to the Canada jay. The Canada jay is ubiquitous. It’s everywhere in the woods of this country. It’s not a backyard or garden-variety bird. It’s a bird of the boreal forest, and we have one of the largest boreal forests in the world. The Canada jay loves spruce trees, and we have no shortage of those in Canada. They love black spruce and white spruce trees.

No bird in Canada has required such a variety of nicknames and monikers: the Canada jay, the grey jay, the camp robber, the moosebird and the whisky jack. I’ve also heard it called whisky-john. I think the French name roughly translates to “the chickadee jay” or “the chick jay.”

Of course, in Cape Breton, and in places in this country where Scottish Gaelic used to be spoken, it was called the gorby, which means, appropriately, “the glutton,” because this bird never stops eating. It’s continually eating and storing food because it stays here all winter. It even lays its eggs in the winter, when it’s minus 25 or minus 30 degrees Celsius.

It has a uniquely Canadian distribution. It doesn’t migrate, and it nests in the winter. They’re very gregarious and social. You have to enter the woods to see them. Once you do, they’re everywhere.

I would love to get this bill to committee, which is why I wanted to speak to this today, in case we come back next week and only deal with government business.

I encourage everyone to support this and to get it to committee. I think it’s time Canada had a national bird. Thank you.

Yes.

I didn’t know it had two official birds, but I do know that Labrador duck was another bird that is now extinct. It had much smaller numbers. It lived from the top of Labrador all the way to the Carolinas. It was around in the mid-1800s, but it disappeared unfortunately. I didn’t know that Labrador had two official birds.

Yes.

No, but I know the ptarmigan is the official bird of, I believe, Nunavut.