Mr. Speaker, the debate on this bill today is of historical importance for its significance and also because it coincides almost to the day with the seventh anniversary of the presentation of the Brundtland report, Our Common Future , to the United Nations General Assembly where it was extensively discussed and received unanimous support.
The words sustainable development re-emerged as a result of that event. It is very heartening to see that the Minister of Industry has inserted the term sustainable development in clause 5 of his bill. It is also heartening because when the minister was in opposition he urged the government of the day to use the term sustainable development when a bill was introduced at that time for the formation of the previous ministry. Unfortunately those pressures fell on deaf ears.
In this respect the minister has shown that he has carried out in government what he had spoken about while in the opposition. That is very reassuring for anyone who believes that our political system is alive and kicking and in good health.
What does the term sustainable development mean? It is the key phrase in clause 5 of this bill. Does it mean a growth in which the environment and the economy are seen in conflict? Does it mean a philosophy of imposing limits to growth? Does it mean returning the planet to a hypothetical natural state? Evidently the answer to these questions is no.
Sustainable development means integrating the economy with the environment. This is not a relationship of conflict. The environment and the economy are mutually reinforcing. The terminology recognizes this fact.
Sustainable development means learning to recognize and live within the limits of physical impact beyond which degradation of the ecosystems, of resources and of human condition becomes inevitable and progressive.
Some limits are imposed by the impact of existing technologies and social organization and by the size of the planet but many limiting factors can be expanded through technological changes, modes of decision making, changes in domestic and international policies, and through investment in human capital.
Since the 1987 Brundtland report there has been a lively debate over the specific conditions of sustainability. At this point we can say that sustainability is as much a social goal as it is an economic and environmental goal. It resembles other worldly, widely accepted and conceptually difficult social goals such as democracy, justice and public health.
Since the 1992 earth summit in Rio the global community finds itself in a state of transition from unsustainable to the search for sustainable forms of development. With this bill we are now beginning to come around the corner, so to speak. The fact that the Minister of Industry decided to insert sustainable development as a main objective of his department is very heartening. He should be congratulated.
What are the principles that the officials in this new department should adopt in order to reach the objective of sustainable development? One, as I mentioned briefly, it is the fact that the environment and the economy must be integrated in the decision making process. This is probably the most important condition for sustainable development and also the most challenging.
Too often policies are directly against the requirements of sustainability.
The environment is introduced into the decision making only after a problem has developed. At that late date options are usually limited to investments for end of pipe technologies to recapture emissions from waste streams and put them somewhere else.
This leads to the still dominant mentality that a conflict exists between a healthy environment and a healthy economy. It is a false perception of course. We must make both mutually reinforcing, namely a healthy environment with a healthy economy. Integrated decisions have to be made at the front end of the development when goals and policies are being set, not at the end where costs are staggering, as in the case of acid rain abatement and as in the case of a number of other issues. However now is not the proper time or place to list these. Therefore, to conclude this point a fundamental reorganization of economic policies and priorities is needed.
Second, energy. In North America and in most OECD countries conventional energy sources, namely coal, oil, nuclear, gas, attract large subsidies. Total energy subsidies in the United States alone have been estimated at more than $40 billion annually. In Canada the last time we conducted an estimate on this item the figure came close to almost $5 billion in subsidies.
End of pipe technologies to improve the safety and reduce emissions where available cannot even begin to compete with the opposite efforts of these huge and indirect subsidies. Energy is a key policy field in order to achieve sustainable development.
Third, agriculture. Taxpayers and consumers of OECD countries spend well over $250 billion a year on agricultural subsidies. They not only encourage farmers to expend their basic farm capital; namely soil, water, trees, they also promote over production. This gives rise to demands for trade protection and export subsidies to enable those food products to be dumped in developing countries, thus in turn undermining their agriculture
as well. Here again end of pipe measures for soil and water conservation programs are too weak to compete with these subsidies.
Fourth, the nature of production. If high rates of growth are to be achieved and maintained a significant and rapid reduction in the energy and raw materials content of every unit of production is necessary. A healthy economy will no longer be one that uses increasing amounts of energy, materials, and resources to produce more goods, more jobs, more income.
This assumption still dominates policies in energy, agriculture, and other resource sectors unfortunately. It is a leftover from the mass economy of the industrial age marked by a steady expansion in the production of energy, depletion of resources and degradation of the environment.
The link between growth and its impact on the environment can be severed. The sustainable development economy, the new economy, is more efficient, uses less energy, less resources for every unit of production, uses more information, uses more intelligence.
Industry, if driven by the principles of sustainable development, is discovering a number of things. For instance it can redesign industrial processes which require less and more flexible capital plant. It can recycle and reuse by-products. It can invent products that use lighter and more durable materials and that require less energy to produce.
Industry is discovering that with reduced energy and material content, it can save an overall cost per unit of production and reduce environmental emissions and wastes. This is a far more effective way of reducing emissions than expensive end of pipe technologies that serve no other purpose. In addition resource reduction and recycling lead back to the beginning of the production cycle. They result in decreased mining and mining wastes, decreased water consumption and pollution, decreased deforestation and erosion.
Moving from unsustainable to sustainable development requires a shift in the government's agenda, a shift not only in the Department of Industry but also in the Department of Natural Resources, of trade, transport, agriculture, public works, external affairs, in our procurement policies, in the production of energy.
The Minister of Industry is leading in this respect but he cannot do it alone. A clear indication of whether a government is shifting its agenda to address sustainability seriously is its budget.
A budget establishes economic and fiscal incentives, as we all know, and also the disincentives, including forms of taxes within which farmers, consumers and business make their decisions. A budget is the most important environmental policy statement because it determines how the nation's environment will be degraded or enhanced, how its stock of ecological capital will be increased or reduced. Actually the budget should be regarded as an environmental statement.
It was with these considerations in mind, with a clear intent of keeping an election promise, with a commitment to the need to shift to sustainability that in May of this year the committee on the environment and sustainable development recommended to the government the creation of a commissioner of the environment and sustainable development. This individual would report to Parliament. He would report on progress made in the shift from unsustainable to sustainable policies, on programs, on budgets. We did this drawing from chapter IV of the election campaign red book. We were motivated at the same time by the conclusions of the earth summit in Rio, namely the understanding and belief that Canada must move toward a sustainable development agenda for the 21st century.
The minister and his department are off to a good start by making sustainable development the main goal of this new department in clause 5. The minister is saying that economic development is dependent and goes hand in hand with ecological capital; that the depletion of one leads to the weakening and depletion of the other.
The wording in this bill is a milestone toward establishing in law the interdependence between two values of tremendous importance to humanity. Already the recognition of sustainable development has clearly emerged in the policies of the minister of fisheries through the conservation he has introduced. This was somehow imposed on us by circumstances that have developed over the last 20 years.
Another positive development on this road toward sustainable development is the appointment in early July of a task force to study the baseline expenditures of government that may be in conflict with sustainability and environmental protection. This task force will report to the Minister of Finance next November and is keeping a promise made in the campaign red book.
Another positive development came last Thursday when both the Minister of Industry and the Minister of the Environment announced a strategy for the Canadian environmental industry. It is the realization at the political level, the highest level, that there is an enormous potential, enormous scope for the development of a new industry that draws its strength from the realization that we are entering a new phase in growth, a new phase in development and the linking of the two concepts of the economy and the environment being integrated in a rational manner.
Yet to come are the changes in other departments. We still have a long way to go but the beginning is good and promising. I want to applaud the minister for his initiative.