Bill C-30 (Historical)

Canada's Clean Air Act

An Act to amend the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, the Energy Efficiency Act and the Motor Vehicle Fuel Consumption Standards Act (Canada's Clean Air Act)

Part 1 of this enactment amends the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999 to promote the reduction of air pollution and the quality of outdoor and indoor air. It enables the Government of Canada to regulate air pollutants and greenhouse gases, including establishing emission-trading programs, and expands its authority to collect information about substances that contribute or are capable of contributing to air pollution. Part 1 also enacts requirements that the Ministers of the Environment and Health establish air quality objectives and publicly report on the attainment of those objectives and on the effectiveness of the measures taken to achieve them.
Part 2 of this enactment amends the Energy Efficiency Act to
(a) clarify that classes of energy-using products may be established based on their common energy-consuming characteristics, the intended use of the products or the conditions under which the products are normally used;
(b) require that all interprovincial shipments of energy-using products meet the requirements of that Act;
(c) require dealers to provide prescribed information respecting the shipment or importation of energy-using products to the Minister responsible for that Act;
(d) provide for the authority to prescribe as energy-using products manufactured products, or classes of manufactured products, that affect or control energy consumption; and
(e) broaden the scope of the labelling provisions.
Part 3 of this enactment amends the Motor Vehicle Fuel Consumption Standards Act to clarify its regulation-making powers with respect to the establishment of standards for the fuel consumption of new motor vehicles sold in Canada and to modernize certain aspects of that Act.

Resumption of debate on Address in Reply

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Leader of the Opposition]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured, as leader of Her Majesty's official opposition, to rise today and lead the Liberal Party of Canada in responding to the Speech from the Throne to open the second session of the 39th Parliament of Canada.

I would like to begin by congratulating the Governor General for the elegance with which she delivered the Speech from the Throne. Unfortunately, my congratulations will almost have to stop there. The meagre Speech from the Throne delivered yesterday is so vague, so full of holes and raises so many concerns that it warrants little praise.

Yet, somehow, in thinking about this a lot, I may find something relatively positive to say about the speech. It is not as bad as the one we would have heard from the Conservative Party if it had been a majority government.

As the Prime Minister's most trusted political adviser, Professor Tom Flanagan, recently described, if the Conservatives form a majority government, rural economies would be threatened by a fatal assault on supply management and the Canadian Wheat Board. Health care would be subject to an agenda of Conservative “radical reform”. One may imagine what that means.

The work of our police officers and the safety of our citizens would be threatened by the absolute dismantling of the gun registry and our environment would be neglected by those who believe that, to quote Mr. Flanagan's incredibly irresponsible statement, “global warming may threaten the planet, but it actually improves the weather in Canada”.

Canadians can count on the Liberal Party. The Conservative Party will never form a majority.

The throne speech we heard yesterday, with all of its weaknesses, has to be assessed in light of the fact that Canadians do not want another election right now. They want Parliament to do its job.

Three general elections in three and a half years, not to mention the provincial elections held recently or to be held shortly, would be too much in the eyes of Canadians.

The Prime Minister and his government may be increasingly frustrated by an opposition that prevents them from implementing their ultra-Conservative program; but we, the official opposition, are determined to make Parliament work. That is what Canadians want.

Let us look at the more positive aspects of the Speech from the Throne. It is encouraging to see that the government intends to expand the scope of the Action Plan for Official Languages, which linguistic minorities are in the bad habit of calling the Dion plan. We hope the government will keep this promise and table a robust plan that it will not have to call the Dion plan II.

But why stop there? Why not revive the court challenges program that has done so much to protect minority rights? And why not reinstate the bilingual requirement for officers of the Canadian Forces?

We are pleased to see that the government has finally decided to offer an official apology to the victims of the Indian residential schools. This does not in any way discharge the government of its obligation to right the terrible wrongs caused by its rejection of the Kelowna Accord, which delayed urgently needed measures in education, health and infrastructure, and by its refusal to sign the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

We are also pleased with the government's interest in Canada's North and we support its intention to set up a world-class research station there. However, we would like to know the location of the site, the budget and the deadlines for achieving this plan.

It was high time for the government to keep its promise of mapping the Arctic seabed. It made that promise 18 months ago. We would like to know how the government intends to respect the crucial 2013 deadline to show that the continental shelf falls within Canadian territory, which our country is required to do since it ratified the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

The government also talked about expanding aerial surveillance in the North, but then why not deploy fixed-wing search and rescue aircraft, as the previous Liberal government planned to do?

One may also ask why the government makes no mention of the building of small craft harbours in the Arctic, when such a measure could create jobs and increase trade and tourism in northern Canada.

And why not take a collaborative diplomatic approach to assert our interests with the Arctic Council, the only international organization of circumpolar countries, which can deal with major Arctic issues, and within which Canada must still play a leadership role?

Finally, to conclude on the North, how can one talk about the North without talking about enhancing the quality of life of its inhabitants, the quality of life of the Inuit people and services that are provided to them, particularly at a time when global warming has such a profound effect on their way of life?

In another positive point in the Speech from the Throne, we were pleased to learn that the government was committed to supporting our veterans. However, the throne speech does not contain any provision to enhance the quality of life of active members of our armed forces and their families, particularly to help them overcome the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder that often follow their deployment overseas.

We take note of the government's intention to modernize the Canadian armed forces. However, we have some concerns about the way that it wants to do so. Will the government continue with its troubling reliance on contracting without tender? Contracts of $30 billion have already been awarded in this manner.

It is good to learn that the government has decided to make a commitment toward Haiti, but it remains vague on the exact nature of this commitment. Is it financial aid for basic health care? Is it funds for reforestation? We still do not know.

Of course we applaud the decision to grant Burmese dissident Aung San Suu Kyi honorary Canadian citizenship. This is an idea that we fully support and that our colleague from the Yukon has been promoting for months.

Let me now turn my attention to the more problematic sections of the speech, starting with the absurd expression that the Prime Minister keeps repeating. Let me tell the Prime Minister that when he argues that “Canada is back” he diminishes the fine tradition of Canadian peacekeeping and international leadership that long preceded the Conservative government's election to office.

And for that, Canadians must wonder where the Prime Minister was back when Canada obtained an international treaty banning landmines; when Canada was a main architect of the International Criminal Court; when Canadian armed forces airplanes were the only ones operating an airlift in and out of Kigali during the Rwanda genocide; when our soldiers fought to protect Bosnia's civilian population; or when Canada hosted the world in Montreal and rallied it around the Kyoto protocol.

The government's continued ambiguity on the mission in Afghanistan is also disconcerting. The government is being deliberately ambiguous about the length of the mission in Kandahar. In fact, it does not want to mention the word Kandahar. Nor does it mention the words “combat mission”. It refuses to call the Canadian mission in Kandahar what it is: a counter-insurgency combat mission in which our troops are required to proactively seek out and engage the Taliban.

The Prime Minister now wants Canadians to believe that this combat mission is a training mission. It is not. If the government wants to transform it into a training mission after February 2009, that could be an acceptable option, one that we have advocated for since last February and one that the blue ribbon panel on Afghanistan has been instructed to consider.

Still, the government should immediately notify NATO and the government of Afghanistan that our combat mission in Kandahar will end in February 2009. By refusing to do so, the government makes it more difficult to replace our troops and to prepare a new Canadian mission.

There is another question on Afghanistan. Why has the government asked the Manley panel to look at four options while the throne speech already chooses one of the four options: accelerated training of the Afghan army and police? Perhaps the Prime Minister should inform the panel that its work is done.

The mission in Afghanistan is an important one, but we cannot remain silent, as the throne speech does, on our other responsibilities around the world. Why has the Prime Minister turned his back on Africa? And what does the government intend to do in Darfur?

Beyond these international issues, we also have important domestic challenges to address. I would like to discuss the important issue of our federation, which has recently been affected by the Prime Minister's breach of trust with so many provinces.

The throne speech states that “the constitutional jurisdiction of each order of government should be respected”, but the Prime Minister should start by respecting premiers. It is inconceivable that after 19 months in office the Prime Minister of Canada has refused to call a first ministers meeting with the premiers. This is not open federalism. It is simply “my door is closed” federalism.

Hence, the Prime Minister wants to go ahead with his unilateral reform of the Senate despite the fact that many provinces have expressed serious disagreement with his proposals.

Now he is announcing that he will introduce legislation to formally limit the federal spending power. The Prime Minister should understand, however, that he must convene the premiers to discuss this most important issue. Otherwise, he would simply be guilty of more closed-door federalism.

Could I humbly suggest that the Prime Minister consult me on the issue of the federal spending power just as he consulted me before introducing the motion on the Quebec nation within Canada?

When he does, I will tell him that the federal spending power as he described it in the throne speech falls short of the present limits to that power that I myself, under the leadership of former Prime Minister Chrétien, introduced in the throne speech of 1996. More importantly, the proposed limits fall short of the social union agreement of which I was the architect.

To continue with my exercise in humility, I will add that no federal politician placed greater limits on the federal spending power than I did, but I did so without reducing its usefulness.

Let us hope that the Prime Minister's objective conforms with the spirit of the social union framework agreement; that is, to use the federal spending power as a tool both for social progress and for partnership between the governments of our great federation.

In Canada federal spending power has been instrumental in building the Canada-wide social programs that all Canadians value, such as medicare. It has been essential in promoting equality of opportunity for all Canadians, helping to ensure access to social programs and services to Canadians wherever they are in Canada.

The social union framework agreement, SUFA, recently helped to successfully negotiate the early learning and child care agreements with the provinces and territories. These agreements have, sadly, been cancelled by the Conservatives, depriving millions of children and families of billions of dollars in funding to improve their early childhood development opportunities.

We Liberals will make sure that the initiatives of the Conservative government do not in any way diminish the value of the federal spending power as a tool to promote social progress for Canadians and good partnerships between governments. We will not allow the Prime Minister to build a federalism of firewalls.

Let me also remind the government that today in Canada more than half a million of our senior citizens live in poverty. The men and women who built this country deserve better.

Today in Canada, more than one million children live in poverty. We cannot waste a generation. All of our children deserve to share in the bounty of our nation.

A plan to fight poverty is urgent and, let me tell everyone, it will be at the heart of our Liberal agenda.

Earlier, I mentioned our health care plan, which is the result of a wise use of the federal spending power. In the throne speech, the government congratulates itself—not really honestly, I might add—for the progress it made in shortening wait times. Unfortunately, we do not see any such progress. In fact, according to a recent report by the Fraser Institute, the average wait time for surgery in Canada now stands at 18.3 weeks, the longest it has ever been.

Now, I come to the economy. The Conservative government inherited an unprecedented economic dynamism thanks to the efforts of Canadians and to a decade of sound financial management by the previous Liberal government. The economy has not been in such good shape since Confederation. This is the longest growth period in decades. We have the highest growth rate of all G-8 countries with major job creation, balanced budgets, a trade surplus and a reduction of our national debt. Our country is the only one to have succeeded in putting its pension plan on a solid footing for the long term.

Over the past 19 months, the Conservative government has been content with just riding on this strong economy without having any plans or convincing scheme to enhance our economy's potential. That is what I call being near-sighted. Let us not delude ourselves into thinking that there will be no end to the current growth. The fact is that this government has done more harm than good in terms of Canada's international competitiveness. It is about to allocate $12 billion per year to cut the GST by two points, a measure that will not allow Canadians to bring more money home, does nothing to combat poverty and does not make our economy more competitive in any way.

The Conservatives' interest deductibility proposal is a frontal attack on the competitiveness of Canadian companies and has been denounced as the worst tax policy in 35 years. It will cost Canadian companies billions and will serve mainly to enrich foreign governments. The Prime Minister has not listened to common sense, but it is not too late for him to do so.

It is not the time to make such mistakes. The parity of our currency with the U.S. dollar, the uncertainty of the U.S. market, the high cost of energy, and the new powerhouses of India and China are all putting pressure on our economy and on the exporters and manufacturers that generate the jobs upon which we depend to maintain our high standard of living. Nearly 80,000 workers have lost their jobs in the manufacturing sector this year alone.

To maintain these jobs, and to enhance this standard of living well into the future, we must find ways to improve the innovation, competiveness and productivity of our businesses and workers.

The throne speech mentions infrastructure. It mentions post-secondary education. It mentions science and technology. It mentions the manufacturing, forestry, fisheries, mining, resources, tourism and agriculture sectors. But a mention is no substitute for a plan. We hope that the fall economic and fiscal update will provide clarity on how the government will improve Canada's competitiveness.

The throne speech promises tax cuts, but the government actually raised income tax rates in the lowest bracket from 15% to 15.5%. This decision costs Canadians over a billion dollars every year.

On international trade, the government did not explain why it closed consulates in key markets such as St. Petersburg, Osaka and Milan.

The government went to lengths to hide the flawed softwood lumber agreement, an agreement that cost the Canadian industry at least $1 billion, which is being put in the hands of those now using the money to sue our companies.

On the matter of criminal justice and security for Canadians, the government laments that much of its legislation did not pass. What the government always fails to mention is that for months it systematically refused Liberal offers to fast track the majority of its legislation. Of the six bills the government wants to reintroduce as part of the tackling violent crime bill, we already support five.

It is the government that obstructed the passage of these bills, causing them to die on the order paper at prorogation, and it did so to the detriment of the security of Canadians. Hopefully the government will be more cooperative in the coming session. We urge the government to stop playing politics with the Criminal Code and to stop putting partisan politics ahead of the safety of Canadians.

Further, with respect to the tackling violent crime bill, we obviously want to see exactly what the legislation will say. We could support it if includes measures that would make Canadians safer. We Liberals are tough on crime and we are tough on the causes of crime.

As for the Anti-terrorism Act, the government has not indicated what changes we can expect. We hope that this time it will be informed by the 100 recommendations made by the House and the Senate in their recent reports and that it will not renew its attempts to play politics with such an important issue.

This brings me to the most disappointing aspect of the Speech from the Throne: extremely weak environmental protection measures.

Once again, the government missed an opportunity to meet the challenge of fighting global warming, the most serious environmental threat facing humanity today.

In this Speech from the Throne, the government said that Canada's greenhouse gas emissions could not be reduced to the level required under the Kyoto protocol for the first phase of implementation, that is between 2008 and 2012. One thing is sure, with this government's so-called plan, greenhouse gas emissions are bound to continue increasing in Canada.

Let me outline the damages the Prime Minister and his government have caused to Canada.

All I need to do is sum up the Sierra Club of Canada's Kyoto report card for 2007. It explains that last year the Conservatives cut over $5 billion worth of investment in environment and climate change programs. The Sierra Club said:

Federal programs were slashed, and the importance of addressing global warming was downplayed.

An entire year was lost.

The Sierra Club goes on to say:

--Canada had a plan for reaching its Kyoto targets. This plan, Project Green...had provided a foundation for action upon which new Conservative initiatives could have been built.... Instead of improving Project Green, the new government shredded it along with its programs and its institutions, in March 2006.

This is what the government has been doing to Canada. It has spent all of 2007 trying to reannounce the programs it scrapped in 2006, changing their names and their logos with less money, less commitment, no coherence and incompetence in implementation.

This is what the Conservatives have done to Canada. Now look at what they have done to the world.

Let me again quote the Sierra Club:

The current government also inherited the presidency of the International Climate negotiations, which had been led by former environment minister [the Leader of the Opposition]. The Canadian government’s efforts at the international climate change conference in Montreal won Canada international praise.

Under the new Conservative government, Canada quickly went from hero to zero. At an international conference in Bonn, Canada attempted to sabotage the Kyoto Protocol.

It is what the Prime Minister means when he says that Canada is back.

In contrast, in 2007, the official opposition proposed an enhanced climate change plan to conquer our industrial emissions, the carbon budget. When we launched this carbon budget in March 2007, the Pembina Institute said:

This is the strongest proposal for regulating industrial greenhouse gas pollution made by any political party in Canada.

--it sets the right targets and the right timelines....

The Climate Action Network said:

This is great. It's hard to ask for much more

It is important to recognize that the other two opposition parties agreed to include this regulatory plan in Bill C-30 on air quality and climate change.

On August 23, I wrote to the Prime Minister to ask him not to scrap Bill C-30 after proroguing the House. The Prime Minister did not even deign to reply. On reading the throne speech, we can see why.

The Conservatives will only bring forward the minor parts of the clean air and climate change act, the ones they allow their members to support. As a result, the regulatory framework to cut and bring down gas emissions is gone. The regulatory framework to improve air quality is gone. The autonomous emissions standards are gone. This is a step backwards in the face of a major global challenge.

What are we left with? We are left with a government plan that has been panned by all credible experts in Canada and abroad, a climate change plan that has been panned by all the experts, like the new Nobel Prize winner, Al Gore, who called the Prime Minister's plan “a complete and total fraud, designed to mislead the Canadian people”.

The Pembina Institute, that once rated Project Green, the Liberal plan killed by the Conservatives, would have delivered almost seven times more reduction than the government's current approach.

The Deutsche Bank said, “We think that the Canadian government has materially overstated the cost of complying with Kyoto. Under current policies, we would expect Canada's industrial gas emissions to continue rising over 2006-2020".

According to the C.D. Howe Institute, with the government plan, “overall emissions in Canada are unlikely to fall below current levels” until 2050 and beyond.

The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research said:

--targets set by your government are so easy to meet that oil companies could end up with a windfall of $400 million worth of easy credits.

Under the Conservative plan polluters do not pay; polluters get paid.

I could also quote the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, which also harshly criticized the government's plan.

The throne speech states that national regulations to reduce emissions will be implemented this year. We do not know what the government is talking about, since its own regulations will not see the light before 2010 at the earliest. Does this mean that the government has changed its mind and will assign a monetary value to carbon in 2008?

Let us hope that the government understands that it must significantly strengthen all its initiatives to protect the environment and fight climate change.

Canadians can count on the official opposition to press the government to take action and be accountable. The government must understand that any deadline set for meeting our targets for the first phase of implementation of the Kyoto protocol, which ends in 2012, can be corrected during the second phase, after 2012. But to do that, we have to start today. That is why the government has to significantly toughen its measures to fight climate change.

The official opposition will cooperate fully with the government to help it reach real targets. Canada must remain a party to the Kyoto protocol, the only international accord to fight what is a global threat.

The official opposition certainly remains very critical of the throne speech but never before has a federal government fallen on the basis of a throne speech.

Canadians can count on the official opposition to do everything it can to make this Parliament work. To that end, we will propose amendments and we will not make the government fall on its throne speech, which would cause a third general election in four years, something Canadians have clearly shown they do not want.

The amendments we are putting forward would enable us to support the throne speech. If they are rejected, we will do as the NDP when it decided on October 16, 2006 to abstain on the vote on the softwood lumber agreement in order to avoid causing an election.

As another leader of the official opposition said some years ago, “I believe it's not in the national interest to have an election now. What has become apparent is that the Bloc Québécois and the NDP will grandstand on these things but it is up to us, our caucus, to decide whether the time has come to have an election. In our judgment and I think in Canadians' judgment it is not that time”.

Everybody will have guessed that this leader of the opposition, quoted on March 10, 2005, is our current Prime Minister when he was explaining his party's dissension to the 2005 budget.

I will now move an amendment that could even allow the official opposition to support the throne speech if it met with the approval of the House. I move:

That the motion be amended by adding the following:

and this House calls upon the government to recognize that any shortfall in meeting our 2012 Kyoto commitments would be a result of their decision to kill the previous government's innovative Project Green plan, followed by 18 months of inaction, and the government must replace its weak approach with real action to create the momentum required for Canada to catch-up in the second phase of Kyoto;

to announce now that the Canadian combat mission in Kandahar will end in February 2009 in order to facilitate a replacement, and begin discussions with NATO and the Government of Afghanistan on what non-combat role Canada can play afterwards to aid in the reconstruction of Afghanistan;

to end 18 months of inaction in the fight against poverty in Canada by building on the good work of the previous Liberal government that funded such initiatives as the Canada Child Tax Benefit, affordable housing, literacy, the Supporting Communities Partnership Initiative (SCPI) and the Working Income Tax Benefit; and

to stop taking for granted the unprecedented strong economy and fiscal success inherited by this government from its predecessor and bring forward proposals to reduce corporate taxes and other measures that will improve the economy of Canada, especially in sectors such as manufacturing and agriculture, and lessen the impact of the government's egregious mistakes on income trusts and interest deductibility.

Motions in Amendment

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise today in this debate on air safety. There is reason, though, to wonder why the government wants to rush this bill through despite its many flaws. I think that Canadians are right to be concerned. They should be seriously concerned about this bill.

It seems that people can say anything these days and get anything passed so long as it will reduce government involvement, as if that were a good thing in itself, without any care for the consequences. In this case, the consequences are very serious because public safety is at stake. That is something the government has apparently forgotten. It would rather worry about the profits of the big corporations than the safety of the general public. We should wonder, though, what the effects will be on public safety.

Canada has often been recognized—as other hon. members have said—as a leader in the field of public safety. There is an expression that when something is finally perfect, people often want to start changing it. In this case too, I have the feeling that the changes are for the worse.

This morning, my hon. colleague, our transport critic, who has done a lot of work on this, compared what happened in the railway system with what could happen in the airline industry if the government’s proposed amendments are passed.

In British Columbia where I come from, there have been many accidents, sometimes virtually weekly, on the railways. We know that these accidents started to increase after the safety system was simply handed over to the companies. The government more or less just offloaded its responsibilities.

The law that is proposed in Bill C-6 contains many flaws. The policy issue that is important to note is that this will have impact on Canadians who travel by air. The financial bottom lines of Air Canada, WestJet and others have been preferred and that is going to be the factor in setting safety levels in the sky.

Transport Canada will be relegated to a more distant role as a general overseer of safety management systems. That is why I asked, with the government saying it is going to reduce government intervention, is that in itself a good thing when public security is being sidelined for commercial interests?

Let us talk a bit about the impacts of Bill C-6. It seems to enshrine the safety management systems which allow industries to decide the level of risk they are willing to accept, tolerable levels of risk in their operations, rather than abide by the level of safety established by the minister acting in the public interest. Safety management systems allow the government to transfer increasing responsibility to the industry itself to set and enforce its own safety standards.

The government seems to think that because it says something it makes it true. We have seen that all too often in the way the government has acted on accountability and in the way it has acted on Bill C-30 in tackling environmental issues. The government takes half measures and proclaims it has acted in the interest of public. Canadians are not fooled by this kind of talk.

The bill does not exempt whistleblowers. A worker who identifies a problem, for example, a loose wing nut, and I will not talk about the kinds of wing nuts, reports it and no action is taken, he or she will be silenced. That is a problem with what the government has proposed.

Furthermore, the government would like us to think that companies will automatically report any problems to the public. Any of us who have negotiated with the private sector knows there are many financial interests to protect. The private sector is very guarded in anything that will affect its financial bottom line. I fear very much for transparency, for what Canadians will find out about some of the problems that can occur.

While the NDP agreed to an amendment in the transportation committee, which emphasizes reduction of risk to the lowest possible level rather than tolerating risk, we are still concerned about the delegation of safety to corporations. Acting in the public interest is still, as I see it, the responsibility of the government. It is not the responsibility of corporations. Their responsibility is to make money. By giving that responsibility over to corporations, the government is abdicating its own responsibilities.

Adequate safety costs money. Safety management systems will foster a tendency to cut corners in a very competitive aviation market racked with high fuel prices. What will happen to safety when the need to make a profit and save money is paramount? I do not think the bill adds to that and it does not answer that question adequately.

I will close by asking one last question. What happened to the government's responsibility to protect public interest?

Afghanistan

[Jack Layton, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we can no longer have confidence in this Prime Minister or his government.

There has been no transparency about the prisoners in Afghanistan; there has been no action on Bill C-30 and climate change; there has been nothing done about ATM fees and the banks continue to rake in profits; the Accountability Act is meaningless when we have ministers concealing their travelling expenses; and the Minister for la Francophonie and Official Languages now has her very own sponsorship scandal.

How can Canadians have confidence in this government now?

The Environment

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the minister reminds me of a school child who gets caught cheating on an exam.

Four reputable organizations, four independent reports, confirmed that the minister is deceiving Canadians. Even the government's own officials cannot back up his claims.

This ecofraud means consumers will pay billions of dollars for no real environmental or health benefits.

Why does the minister not just stop the charade and the schoolyard antics and bring Bill C-30 back to the House for a vote?

Extension of Sitting Hours

[John Godfrey, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I take as our primary duty as legislators to consider pieces of legislation that have actually been put together through the work of people like the member for Edmonton Centre as the chair of that committee which logged all of those long hours.

It seems to me that our first duty as parliamentarians is to consider government bills that the government has asked us to rewrite after second reading. I acknowledge once more the skilful work of the member for Edmonton Centre. It seems to me that ought to be our top priority, to bring back Bill C-30.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

It was my understanding that the member asked for unanimous consent that Bill C-30 be added to the extra hours of debate.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I spent time with my hon. colleague from Don Valley West on the committee that dealt with Bill C-30 and we got along quite well. I came to the conclusion a long time ago that an expert is someone who agrees with one's beliefs and if that person does not agree, the person is obviously not an expert.

Why did all the leaders in the G-8 have so much praise for our Prime Minister and Canada's position of leadership and the only people who seem not to be able to praise it are the people on the opposite side of the House?

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member was talking about extending the hours and we are prepared to stay as long as it takes to debate those issues, including Bill C-30 that he was talking about, but there are also many other important pieces of legislation at hand here.

If we clear the slate the way the Conservative government wants to, the government is under no obligation to honour and respect the bills on Kyoto and Kelowna. We know the government has difficulties with honour and respect. As we saw with the Atlantic accord, the words trust and integrity mean so little to the government.

I would ask the hon. member this. Does he feel there are other single pieces of legislation that Canadians should be concerned about, given the government's stubborn, bullheaded approach to governing?

[John Godfrey, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, let me do two things.

First of all, let me respond to the hon. member. I heard no members present in Berlin, from other legislatures, say anything of the sort about the Canadian plan. First of all they did not understand it. Second, they did not ask. Third, everybody who has looked at it and has understood it says it is a fraud, so we got no such international endorsement from other legislatures at all. I think what we got was disappointment that Canada has not been more ambitious.

Second, let me take advantage of this moment to ask the House for unanimous consent to put forward a motion that in view of the interest in Bill C-30, that within the hours that will be extended, the House consider Bill C-30.

[John Godfrey, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am quite inspired by the speech by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of the Environment. We support extending the hours of Parliament, because that will give us an opportunity to consider Bill C-30, Canada's Clean Air Act. I want to pick up on what the member for Wascana said. The time has come to consider the debacle of the Prime Minister's speech at the G-8 meeting last week in Heiligendamm. Extending the hours will give us an opportunity to correct the situation. Now we may finally have time to study Bill C-30.

In the wake of the G-8 meeting, Canada's problem is the lack of consistency between the Prime Minister's international statements on climate change and the reality of the domestic regulations on industry proposed by the government about six weeks ago to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Bill C-30 has had a curious history. It was originally proposed by the government in October, with a series of regulations. Then, it was attacked from all sides: by NGOs, the media, economists and all three opposition parties. The government withdrew the bill. Then it was sent after first reading to a legislative committee chaired by the member for Edmonton Centre.

To everyone's astonishment, the process worked very well in the case of BIll C-30 and produced an extensively amended bill that was stronger, more coherent and more ambitious. What has happened? Once again, the government is refusing to present Bill C-30 and is instead substituting weak, empty regulations under the existing legislation, the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.

The parliamentary secretary has spoken several times today about the importance of taking the work of parliamentarians seriously. He was suggesting that one of the arguments in support of prolonging the hours of Parliament was to allow a report to be made concerning the activities of a group of parliamentarians, of which I was one, when they took part in a meeting before Heilingendam in Berlin of legislators from the G-8 plus five countries.

However, as I indicated in a previous intervention, while that is important work and while the results of that visit are worth knowing and those discussions should be referenced, how can that compare with the work which many of us, including the parliamentary secretary, put in on Bill C-30?

The hours and hours of debate, the hearings, the extra sitting hours into the evening and all of the work which went into it with the highly successful result under the skilful leadership of the member for Edmonton Centre, to whom we must give credit for helping to get this much improved clean air and climate change bill through.

Surely, the member for Edmonton Centre, even though he is on the government side, would love to see the fruit of his work honoured after putting all that effort into it.

This is a good reason to extend the House sitting hours. The government has now twice failed to bring forward a meaningful climate change plan. The regulations that were proposed instead under CEPA, the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, are a complete ecofraud. There are, as the Pembina Institute has pointed out in a very thoughtful piece of analysis, at least 20 loopholes in the entire package that undermine any claim that can be made about greenhouse gas reductions. Until these loopholes are plugged, I can give but a brief example. Pembina says:

In reality, the regulatory framework’s effect on emissions cannot be known with any certainty, because (i) its targets are expressed in terms of emissions intensity, not actual emissions; (ii) we do not yet know how targets will be defined for new facilities; (iii) “fixed process emissions” are exempted but have not been fully defined; and (iv) some of the “compliance options” that companies can use to meet targets will not result in immediate emission reductions, and some may not result in any real emission reductions at all.

That is simply an example of some of the 20 loopholes. The government has misrepresented to Canadians about what this plan will actually achieve. There will be and can be no absolute reductions by 2012 and no absolute reductions by 2020. Not a single government official, when summoned before the environment committee, could guarantee that the so-called plan's claims could be met and it is clear that little analysis has been done. The analysis that has been done was shrouded in secrecy and not a single, independent expert has been called in to verify the so-called plans claims.

Indeed, a leading German investment bank, Deutsche Bank, has produced an extensive report on the subject and it comes to exactly the same conclusion. It says in plain language:

We do not think the Government's alternative plan will succeed. Setting aside the Kyoto target of an absolute reduction of 6% in emissions over 2008-12 against the base year of 1990, the Canadian Government has published a plan that re-defines its GHG emissions-reduction targets.

The turning the corner plan takes 2006 as the base year instead of 1990 and imposes reductions in the intensity of Canadian industry's emissions rather than reductions in the absolute level of emissions.

That means that the redefined targets are much less ambitious than the Kyoto targets. Yet, because the turning the corner plan allows for the offsetting of emissions at what we think is too low in price to incentify investments in new low carbon technologies, we think that even these much less ambitious targets will probably not be achieved. In short, under current policies we would expect Canada's industrial greenhouse gas emissions to continue rising over 2006 to 2020.

The point is further reinforced by a document from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research entitled “Climate Change Policy and Canada's Oil Sand Resources: An Update and Appraisal of Canada's New Regulatory Framework for Air Emissions”, with the same conclusions. Tomorrow, just to put the final and fourth nail in the coffin, the C.D. Howe Institute will be releasing a detailed and critical analysis of the turning the corner plan.

In other words, four major studies continually make the same point that the plan that is on the table now will not do the job and that we need to get back to Bill C-30.

What do we have after 16 months? We have something that is worse than nothing at all, because we have created tremendous uncertainty that will prevent industry from making the rational, long term investments that are necessary for deep greenhouse gas reductions. After 16 months, all we have on the table is a shell, not a single regulation and no promise of regulations for up to 18 months for greenhouse gas reductions, and nothing until sometime in 2010 for smog.

The former government's project green, as has been noted by the Deutsche Bank, not only would have created certainty for industry, but it would have produced almost seven times the reductions proposed by the current government's plan.

Certainly, we need a better plan in place before we break for the summer. Therefore, government should bring Bill C-30 back to the House, so that we can get on with it.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

As my colleague from Acadie--Bathurst has said, this is about slashing the court challenges program and any number of really good programs that the government has taken an axe to, both in this budget and in previous policy decisions.

We started hearing last week that the government members were in a panic, that they had to get Bill C-52 through the House. Wait a minute, we said, the government has had well over three months to work this through. My colleague from Vancouver, our House leader, has detailed this. The government has had a number of opportunities to bring the bill forward for full debate at second reading, report stage and third reading. This is the budget. This is the biggest item for any Parliament to deal with.

What did the Conservatives do? They just kept putting it off. They brought forward other bills. This was completely within their control. They brought forward 11 other bills and said the House would deal with them first. Now we are going to deal with this one, they said, and then we are going to deal with that one. They brought forward 11 different items on 11 different days when they could have brought forward Bill C-52. Now it is panic time for the Conservatives and they are saying they have to get the bill through.

I want to address what seems to be a suggestion that somehow these programs are all going to collapse, along with this new funding, if the bill does not get passed in the next 24 hours. That is just not true. This money will be spent when Bill C-52 finally gets through the House. The flow of that money may be postponed by several days or several weeks, but it will get spent because obviously both the government and the Bloc Québécois have indicated that they are going to support the bill and they have the numbers in the House to get it passed.

Constitutionally, the government again putting around the panic that the Senate somehow is going to block this bill. That is not going to happen. It may be delayed a bit, but the Senate does not have the constitutional authority to block a money bill. Specifically, it has no authority to turn down a budget. That is not going to happen either.

What this is really about is the fact that the Conservative government is tired, it does not have a program, and it wants to get out of here. If they can get away with it, Conservative members are going to move adjournment of this House as soon as they get Bill C-52 through.

We do not have a problem with debating Bill C-52. I have here about 20 items that I would just love to be able to get into. If I did, I could be here for many hours showing the flaws in this budget. That is not what this is about. This is not about this opposition party or, quite frankly, the other opposition parties being shy about debating the contents of Bill C-52 and all that it lacks.

What this is about is the government's unwillingness to face, in a realistic fashion, what is going on in the country. It continuously gets beat up, whether it is on the climate change file or whether it is on Afghanistan. We can go down the list. The government is just tired of being here.

I could not help but think of the hypocrisy of some of the statements coming out of the mouth of the House leader when he addressed this motion earlier this afternoon. He said that we should believe the Conservatives because they did not intend to have an election. Of course he did not address the fact that their airplane was lined up, with a contract for it, and their campaign office was open and substantially staffed. They were ready to go to an election. Quite frankly, if the Canadian people and the opinion polls had not made it clear what was going to happen if they took the country to an election at that time, we would have been in an election now.

What has happened is that the Conservatives did not have a fallback position. They did not know what they were going to do if they did not have an election. They do not have an agenda as to how they are going to deal with it. They want to get out of here so they can regroup and see what they might do when we come back in the fall. They want to get out of here as fast as possible. That is what the motion is really about.

I want to say very clearly on the record that the NDP has no problems whatsoever with staying here until June 22, which is what is scheduled. Quite frankly, we have no problem with extended hours. What my party and I are concerned about is that Standing Order 56.1 will get used probably as early as Wednesday and the House will adjourn.

I know that most Canadians do not fully appreciate the amount of important work that happens outside this chamber and particularly in committee. Again, in many incompetent ways, the government kept pushing crime bills through the justice committee, through the two special legislative committees it set up, and also in some work that we have been doing in the public safety and national security committee. There is a lot of work going on, both in terms of bills that have come from the government itself and in terms of a large number of private members' bills on specific crime issues, which we have been dealing with.

A number of those, probably three, four or five, and both private members' bills and government bills, would be dealt with and completed if we stayed sitting in committee until June 22. If in fact we adjourn earlier than that, all of this work will be postponed into the fall. As well, depending on whether the government actually prorogues sometime through the early fall and comes back with a new session of Parliament, which is the rumour is floating around, some of those bills may be ended completely and never will see the light of day.

Thus, it is quite important for the House to continue to sit. We in the NDP understand that. We as the NDP are quite prepared to sit here. We as the NDP will do whatever we can to thwart the government's attempt to adjourn the House early.

The motion, though, is misleading for the public when it tries to let the public know that the government really wants to work longer hours. That is not what it is about. We believe very clearly that if we do not stop the Conservatives the House will adjourn in the next few days.

Specifically with regard to Bill C-30, it is one of the bills that badly needs to get in front of the House. All three opposition parties are supportive. They have gone to great lengths and have done a great amount of very good work in amending the bill into a form that in fact will allow the country to deal with the crisis we are confronted with as far as global warming and climate change are concerned.

In that respect, we would very much like the government to commit this week or next week to bring that bill forward for a fulsome debate at report stage and third reading. It is ready to go. All the background work has been done. In that regard I am proposing at this time to move an amendment to the motion before the House which would read as follows: “That the motion be amended to add immediately after 10 p.m. the following: 'and if the government calls Bill C-30 at any time, the House shall continue to sit until the bill has been decided at all stages'”.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I was happy to allow the House leader for the Bloc to go ahead of me in the usual order.

I will be sharing my time with the member for Windsor—Tecumseh.

I want to spend a few minutes laying out what is going on here.

First, we are all aware, as members of the House, that we receive a calendar every year. The calendar is very clear in that the House is intended to sit until June 22. We all agreed to this, all parties, through the whips. It is something with which we are all familiar.

We also are aware that on this day the government can, as it has done, move a motion for the extension of hours. We are debating a motion now as to whether the hours should be extended from June 13 to June 21 to 10 p.m. every night. The question that is really before us is this. Is this a warranted measure? After hearing the government House leader, this is a crisis that the government has manufactured.

Let us be very clear about what has taken place. This is happening because of the incompetence of the government in the management of its legislative agenda, its lack of consultation with opposition parties and its lack of calling its own bills. For example, we heard the government House leader talk about the budget bill, Bill C-52. He has said that he wants to get it through. There were 11 days when the Conservatives could have called the bill for second reading and they failed to do so. Instead they brought in all kinds of other bills that were quite inconsequential. If the budget were so important, they had ample opportunity to bring the bill forward for second reading.

I point out on the record that once it went through second reading, when the Conservatives finally brought it forward into the House and it went to the finance committee, the finance committee met for four sessions only to hear witnesses. It in effect fast-tracked that bill. It heard witnesses very quickly on a budget bill, which is core to our whole reason for being here. Then it was brought back to the House. We had one day of debate on the report stage. Now we are now debating third reading.

When we look at what has happened, it is clearly a manipulation by the government itself on its own agenda. I think what is happening is the Conservatives have brought forward this motion today for extension, even though they are saying the extended hours would go to June 21, so they can cut a deal to get out of here early. If we get out of here early and they get their budget bill, which we know they want, there will be no committees, no question period and no debate on other bills. That clearly needs to be put on the record.

In terms of management of other business, we have heard the government House leader say today that all these justice bills have to come forward. If we look at the agenda of the justice committee, the government made it a priority to deal with private members' business. It has taken up the valuable time of the committee to deal with private members' bills. Now we are being told it has all these other bills that it wants to get through. It really does not cut it. It does not make sense.

I really appreciate the position you took on Friday, Mr. Speaker. At the very last moment on Friday, the government tried to bring in a very rare Standing Order, used for emergency debates, to deal with Bill C-52 and extend the hours to rush the bill through. To your credit, you listened to what members in the House had to say and you made the correct decision in the end. I want to thank you for that. These things are really important. We have to play in a way that is open and transparent, and I do not believe the government is doing that at this point. Therefore, we are very suspicious and skeptical about the agenda.

Again, another irony is the Conservatives are saying that they want to extend the hours of debate. Yet we have never seen the light of day for Bill C-30, the clean air and climate change bill that came out of committee. The bill was amended by the opposition. It is a bill that would work, and it has the support of the majority of members in the House. However, the government itself is refusing to call it forward. We will stay here for as long as it takes to debate that bill. We consider it is an urgent matter that Canadians want us to address.

We will stay here for as long as it takes to debate that bill. We consider it is an urgent matter, which Canadians want us to address. It is a priority that goes beyond all partisanship, but I did not hear the government House leader mention that bill.

The Conservatives would rather get out of here, not having to bear the public scrutiny in question period and committees and not debate all the other bills. They just want to get the budget through. I fear they have made a deal with the official opposition. I do not know that, but I can almost guarantee, even though these extended hours will be approved, in a couple of days, maybe Wednesday, they will find a way to adjourn the House. That is really their agenda.

As the Bloc House leader has mentioned, one bill that we believe must be brought forward is the ways and means motion. It used to be called Bill C-55, which was the wage earner protection bill protecting workers from bankruptcy. This has been an outstanding matter.

The government, again, has not engaged in adequate consultation with the opposition parties, which want to get this bill through. It was passed in a previous Parliament, but was never given royal assent. It is an absolute injustice that today workers still do not have protection from bankruptcy. Millions of dollars have been lost, legitimately earned and deserved wages of workers because they have not had the protection of that bill.

I want to put on the record today that this attempt by the government to bring in extended hours is really about adjourning the House. It wants to get a very bad budget bill through. It looks like the official opposition is now complicit in getting through a budget bill, which, as we have seen, is a disaster in Atlantic Canada in that it has broken the accord. It is a disaster in terms of so many other areas, whether it is housing and homelessness, student summer programs or the environment.

We know the government wants to get the budget passed and that is all it cares about. I am very concerned we are facilitating its agenda under the guise of extending hours when really what it will do is rush to adjourn the House. We know it does not want to be accountable or go through question period.

Let us not forget that the Conservatives were filibustering in the committees. The Conservative members were making the committees dysfunctional. Why? Because they did not want business to go ahead in committees.

We found out about their 200 page playbook, a handbook for all the tactics that its members and chairs could use in the committees. This is further evidence that the Conservatives real game plan is not to deal with all the legislation about which the government House leader spoke. They want to rush through a bad budget bill that has barely been debated.

Nobody is holding up the budget bill, by the way. There are no tactics being employed by the opposition to hold it up. We want to have an adequate debate. We want to ensure that people can say, on the record, what they think about the budget because we have a lot of criticisms about it.

Let us be very clear. The motion today is under the guise that government members are ready to work and extend the hours of the House until 10 p.m. every night. Really it is about getting out of here, for the Conservatives to get beyond public scrutiny, to shut down the House, committees and question period once the budget bill is passed. That is what we will see happen.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I agree with the member for Joliette's comments about Catherine, who works in the lobby for the Bloc Québécois. I would like to say that she really worked professionally with all the political parties. I would like to wish her good luck.

I have a question for the Bloc Québécois. The House Leader of the Bloc Québécois talked about many important bills. I know that the budget is very important to him since he is voting with the Conservatives on it. This is very important for the Bloc members. But my question is about the other bills, such as Bill C-30.

I know that the member for Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie worked very hard on environmental issues. The government could introduce a motion to adjourn the House before June 22. Even though the calendar shows that the House can sit until June 22, it could be done pursuant to Standing Order 56.1. We need to have 25 members here. Since the Bloc Québécois is very disciplined, it will have no problem keeping 25 members in Ottawa. Will the Bloc members work with the other parties to ensure that there will be 25 members in the House of Commons so the Conservatives will not be able to adjourn before June 22?

It is all well and good to extend the number of hours per day, but if we adjourn on Wednesday, it will not do any good. Bill C-30 will be gone, Bill C-59 as well, and Bill C-29 will no longer be there. There is also the bill for workers.

Can we have a guarantee from the Bloc Québécois that they will keep 25 people in the House of Commons to ensure that it will not adjourn?

[John Godfrey, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, further to the question by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of the Environment, I want to ask the hon. member the question.

As far as extending sitting hours is concerned, given the choice between discussing the trip to Berlin by the legislative group—which I was a part of with other members—and discussing Bill C-30, which would take an incredible amount of parliamentary work and countless hours of sessions, how would he prioritize these two choices?

[Pierre Paquette, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I know that my colleague from Brome—Missisquoi was a member of the Berlin mission and really appreciated the work that was done there. However, with respect to the report, I do not see the problem. Nevertheless, we must not evade the issue. We are not very proud of our Prime Minister's performance at the G-8 with respect to achieving phases I and II of the Kyoto targets.

As such, I think that all of the parties agree that the government should bring Bill C-30 back to the House as soon as possible. This bill was amended by the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development. We have to continue the debate on this issue because the government has no allies in this House when it comes to environmental issues.

If we take a serious look at the proposals made by the Minister of the Environment, by the Prime Minister at the G-8, and by the Minister of Finance in this House, we will find that they do not meet the Kyoto targets. Furthermore, they do not include the territorial approach that would enable Quebec to take into account its efforts in past years in order to meet the Kyoto target of 6% below 1990 levels.

As we all know, the Prime Minister said at the G-8 meeting that he found the European community's territorial, country by country approach to negotiating targets very interesting. Despite the parliamentary secretary's question, I think that this issue must be addressed. The problem is that the government's approach is no good. It has not agreed to a territorial approach; it has no absolute intensity targets; and it is allowing greenhouse gas emissions to rise.

There has also been talk of opening a carbon exchange in Montreal to trade derivatives and take care of this economic and environmental aspect that would help our manufacturing industry. That said, in order to have a carbon exchange, we need absolute targets. The government does not seem to have understood that yet.