Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to take part in this debate on Bill C-56, an Act to amend the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. This bill will improve some components of the federal environmental assessment process.
I will take a few minutes to describe briefly the object and scope of the amendments before the House and to try and explain the principles behind this reform.
First of all, I would like to emphasize that these amendments reflect the commitments made in the red book, which is the agenda of the Liberal Party of Canada. Our government is determined to keep these commitments which were made during the last election campaign.
In our view the three amendments are not only essential to the effective implementation of the federal environmental assessment process but are also in keeping with the expectations of the main stakeholders.
We introduced a whole chapter in the red book on sustainable development. We committed ourselves to installing an auditor general of the environment and sustainable development. The minister has already introduced reforms in that regard. We committed ourselves to installing a task force on the economic instruments that would favour the environment and sustainable development. The task force is now at work and will present a report to the ministers of finance and of the environment for eventual inclusion of their recommendations into the February budget.
We committed ourselves to an environmental industry strategy. The strategy has now been introduced to try to help environmental technologies develop themselves and improve their strength and efficiency in Canada for the betterment of our sustainable development strategy overall. We committed ourselves to a review of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act which by the way is a statutory requirement. This is now in process.
Perhaps the key element of our sustainable development reforms and resolve is contained in the proclamation of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act to which we committed ourselves. We truly believe and are convinced that environmental assessment is the key element to pollution prevention, to a better environmental standard which leads to quality of life and a sustainable society.
Two of the amendments presented in Bill C-56 are aimed at meeting repeated requests by environmental protection groups from across Canada in recent years. The third amendment is designed to reduce uncertainty and delays in the application of the federal environmental assessment process, a concern which is shared by all stakeholders and certainly by the provinces.
If I could speak to the first amendment which has to do with participant funding, it provides for the legal guarantee of a participant funding program designed to encourage Canadians to take part in public hearings held by environmental assessment review panels.
Participant funding is a major concern of environmental groups and is quite understandable. I should explain that the environmental assessment of major projects that are subject to public hearings is an extremely complex exercise. Generally speaking the environmental assessment of major projects results in several volumes of technical information. For example, in the case of Great Whale several thousands pages of information had to be produced and studied. We cannot expect informed public
participation unless the groups representing the citizens at large who are directly affected by a project have access to funding to state their case.
Participation in the environmental assessment process requires staff, it requires technical resources for analysing reports, drafting a response, preparing briefs and presenting views at public hearings let alone the travel to various points in the land. It is a simple matter of equity.
Some environmental groups and public community groups are faced with tremendous odds when up against huge institutions and corporations which have unlimited funding to present their case. The need for participant funding is not new. It was identified many years ago. The 1987 white paper on the reform of the federal environment review process entitled "Reforming Federal Environmental Assessment" addressed this need and proposed the establishment of a participant funding program.
Following national public consultation carried out as part of the reform, some funding was made available by the previous government. The funds were administered by the Federal Environmental Assessment Review Office, FEARO, and were provided to participants in the activities of federal or joint panels reviewing such projects as, for example, Soligaz in Quebec, the St. Marguerite hydroelectric project in Quebec and the Vancouver airport project.
However, the previous government refused to make a firm commitment or to guarantee participant funding for all the environmental assessments. In this respect the current wording of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act is unsatisfactory for it simply allows a minister to create a participant funding program.
The wording of Bill C-56 goes much further. It creates the obligation to establish a participant funding program in keeping with the Liberal Party's red book commitment which reads:
A Liberal government will amend the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act to legally recognize intervener funding as an integral component of the assessment process.
This is what we are doing by this very important amendment.
The second amendment provides for only one federal assessment per project. It results from the more general commitment made by the government to improve the efficiency of federal government services and to significantly reduce duplication. This amendment will ensure that, to the extent possible, only one federal environmental assessment will be conducted with respect to a project.
In fact, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act already contains many provisions to avoid duplicating similar provincial processes. It provides for delegation of authority where pre-assessments, comprehensive studies and follow-up programs are concerned. It also provides for signing harmonization agreements and creating "single windows" in each of the provinces. The Canadian Environmental Assessment Act also includes provisions to facilitate the work of joint panels.
Several years ago I happened to be minister of the environment for Quebec. At that time I negotiated long and hard with the federal minister of the time, Mr. McMillan, to try and get to the very position we are in today in the act, which is to have some sort of a process whereby the federal government and the provinces would be able to install joint panels. In the case of provincial jurisdictions there would be provincial panels with the federal government sending observers if it had an interest in the project, or vice versa, or sometimes mixed panels.
I remember a case that was under discussion, the airport in Saint-Jean, where unfortunately we were not able to arrive at a conclusion of this process. Now we will be able to.
This amendment has two goals. First, it seeks to co-ordinate information requirements throughout the federal civil service, should a project be subject to more than one study under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act.
For example, when a project funded by the federal government also requires a permit under the regulation, it is theoretically possible that two different assessments will be necessary. In such cases, we want to give the developer the assurance that the assessment will meet the requirements of all the federal authorities involved.
Time is the other aspect of this amendment. Whenever possible, we want the environmental assessment to meet the information needs of federal authorities for the duration of the project. We want to avoid asking the developer to conduct an assessment at the planning stage, another one at the implementation stage, another one when work is temporarily interrupted and another one when equipment is no longer used and activities are permanently shut down.
It is true that the legislation in its present form contains some provisions requiring co-operation among federal authorities. For example, section 12 stipulates that where there are more than one responsible authority in relation to a project, they shall together determine the manner in which to perform their respective duties and functions. Nothing in the existing legislation forces them to require only one assessment for each project. This is totally unacceptable if our goal is to have a coordinated, effective and consistent process, and I am sure it is the goal we are all pursuing.
With this amendment, the federal government is doing its share. The amendment is designed to meet the legitimate expectations of those who are justifiably opposed to conducting more than one environmental assessment for the federal government. Combined with the current harmonization initiative undertaken by the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment, I am hopeful that this amendment will help us reach our ultimate goal, which is to conduct only one environmental assessment with respect to a project, no matter how many authorities are involved.
I am sure the third amendment will contribute to curbing Canadians growing dissatisfaction with government and to restoring parliamentary integrity.
Again I would like to quote the Liberal Party's red book which addresses this particular problem. On page 87 it states:
The people are irritated with governments that do not consult them, or that disregard their views, or that try to conduct key parts of the public business behind closed doors.
The manner in which the previous government dealt with panel recommendations certainly fueled the public's dissatisfaction with Canada's democratic institutions. Indeed, when a major project raised public concerns, the scenario was always the same. A review panel was established. It studied the possible impacts of the project for months and sometimes even for years. It consulted the public affected by the project. It then drafted a detailed report containing specific recommendations.
However, as soon as one of these reports reached a federal minister's desk, unexplainable things would happen. In some cases the minister responsible would examine the report and make a decision without consulting his or her colleagues. In other cases the cabinet would meet to study the recommendations of the panel and would decide, for its own reasons which it did not have to divulge, to ignore the most important ones. In most cases the previous government's decisions were completely out of line with the key recommendations set out in the panel's reports.
Under certain circumstances I agree that this may be perfectly justified. Unlike panel members, who are appointed and who are not accountable to the public, the members of government are elected to make decisions.
This said, it is in our view unacceptable for a government to entrust a panel of experts with a task of examining an issue and with consulting the public and then to turn around and reject their recommendations with no explanation for its decision. Environmental protection groups and the media were very often critical of previous governments' decisions.
In most cases they felt that short term economic and political gains would take precedence over the long term environmental benefits that form the basis of most recommendations made in the panel reports.
If the government systematically ignores the panel's recommendations, it will be difficult to restore the public's confidence in our institutions, be it in regard to the environment or otherwise. In fact the principle of public consultation itself is thus called into question.
It will also be very difficult to convince proponents to comply with the process and to find qualified individuals to serve on the panels. Besides, it will not be easy to convince affected Canadians to take part in the hearings. How can we hope to encourage public participation if the government is completely free to ignore all recommendations and if it is not required to provide the reasons behind its decisions? Under these circumstances, how will the government be able to convince Canadians that it made the right decision in the first place?
The point is not to tie the hands of decision makers and to give non-elected panel members decision making powers, but rather to restore a proper and judicious balance. If the government decides to accept the recommendations of an environmental assessment panel, everyone wins. However, should it decide to accept certain recommendations and to reject others, it will be required to provide explanations. If its explanations are clear, the integrity of the environmental review process will remain intact.
The problem that arises from the desire to strike a balance between ministerial prerogative and the recommendations of environmental assessment panels was addressed in the 1987 white paper to which I have referred before on the reform of the federal assessment process.
The proposed amendment will require the responsible minister to draft a response to the recommendations of an environmental assessment panel. This response will have to be examined and approved by the governor in council, in other words by the cabinet.
This bill meets real needs, and it improves the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. The government's goal is to have only one federal assessment on any given project. The creation of a participant funding program will encourage Canadians to participate in the hearings conducted by review panels.
Finally, the principle of openness in government will apply, because the government will have to respond officially to the recommendations made by review panels. Those amendments will contribute to restore public trust in federal democratic
institutions. The government intends to proclaim the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act in January 1995.
The four required regulations have been published in Part II of the Canada Gazette on October 19. The amendments before us should be passed as soon as possible, because all Canadians stand to gain from their early implementation after the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act has been proclaimed.
The environment knows no boundaries. It is a matter of equity. It is a matter of common sense. It is a matter of a sustainable society for all of us besides the coming generations.
I could not help but find it strange when the critic for the Bloc Quebecois referred to-
-a guardianship being forced on the province of Quebec. The Bloc Quebecois also claims that profound changes have been made since the present Leader of the Opposition introduced the bill a few years ago. The amazing thing is that, since the environment minister made her statement on the proclamation of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, there has not been a single question asked about that so-called jurisdictional calamity. There have been questions on all sorts of things, and countless questions on tobacco. But the environment does not seem to be such an important issue.
In fact, not a single question was asked about such a supposedly important decision as putting the province under guardianship. Indeed, the Leader of the Opposition himself and his party's critic had every opportunity to make any statement they liked on the subject. There were only two, one just before the 1993 election and another on October 13, 1994, to the Gazette , in which he said that he was satisfied with the law and that there was no petty squabble between Mr. Parizeau and him on this subject, because he approved of the law and thought that it was a good one.
We must set our petty squabbles aside and realize that the environment is much larger than all of us, that we must co-operate and have the will to work together. That is what we want to do, on this side of the House, by presenting these amendments. We want to be co-operative, positive and build things for ourselves and future generations.
