Bill C-377 (Historical)

Climate Change Accountability Act

An Act to ensure Canada assumes its responsibilities in preventing dangerous climate change

The purpose of this enactment is to ensure that
Canada meets its global climate change obligations
under the United Nations Framework Convention
on Climate Change by committing to a long-term
target to reduce Canadian greenhouse gas emissions
to a level that is 80% below the 1990 level by
the year 2050, and by establishing interim targets for the
period 2015 to 2045. It creates an obligation on
the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable
Development to review proposed measures to meet the
targets and submit a report to Parliament.
It also sets out the duties of the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy.

[Jeff Watson, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm not going to belabour the point on this one, but I'm looking at clause 10. The mention of “spending or fiscal incentives, including a just transition fund for industry”--I think I know where that comes from. I think it comes from a Canadian Labour Congress proposal. But there's not a lot there that discusses what the just transition fund in fact will be, what it will look like, how it will be used. I do recall that it was a just transition fund for workers, not for industry specifically as well, so the language is exclusive to that.

At our meeting of Wednesday, February 6, we had economists here. We not only had the Canadian Council of Chief Executives represented, but the Canadian Gas Association was here. The one who was actually an economist, Mr. David Sawyer with EnviroEconomics, talked about significant economic dislocations, and he modelled some costs for the benefit of the committee. I think he said that Bill C-377 would be somewhere around $200 a tonne in terms of the price of carbon.

I did ask some questions about some of the fiscal incentives, though, some of the other things that were not present in the economic analysis. I asked about income replacement costs, which is what I suspect the just transition fund is all about, and whether or not the cost of that was addressed in the carbon price he had set. He said, “We don't have numbers for lost income, but you could look at the burden on households, and you could look at the burden on the various income strata”, and then policy could be used to address that.

I just want a clarification. Is the just transition fund intended to address income replacement? Is it for capital investment? I'm not entirely sure what he means by “just transition fund”. It's the only one of the fiscal incentives that's actually specifically mentioned. I'd like him to be specific about what that would entail with respect to the government. It's more of a question than a....

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

I believe the NDP had six amendments. Basically what we have seen in the amendments is a rewriting of the bill. It reads:

(c) the level of Canadian greenhouse gas emissions in each of the following ten years to be used as a baseline to quantify the reductions referred to in paragraph (b).

I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this, but I think it's important that we focus on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We heard from the witnesses that there's not enough policy attached to this that will actually see reductions. There's no mechanism to make sure this is happening, and I don't believe Bill C-377--and this is just one part of it--will accomplish this. In the end, Canada needs a plan that will actually see reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

We also need to cost the plan. We have that in Canada's Turning the Corner plan. We don't see that in Bill C-377, and we heard that from witness after witness.

So that will end my comments on this amendment. Again, I have some serious concerns about Bill C-377. Canada has a plan, and Bill C-377 will not accomplish anything. We heard that from the witnesses too.

I will not be supporting this amendment.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

We will proceed with Bill C-377. Just to bring us up to date, I believe we are on clause 10.

Mr. Cullen, I think you moved NDP amendment 5 on page 16.

Is there any further debate on Mr. Cullen's motion, NDP-5?

Mr. Cullen.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

I too found the meeting very productive, which was a pleasant surprise. I appreciated the willingness of everyone at that meeting to work together to come up with an agenda.

From that meeting, the Minutes of Proceedings that we each have lists a recommended schedule of meetings, and today's listing there is completing clause-by-clause of Bill C-377. Then starting April 2, this Wednesday, we'd be starting on Bill C-474. It would be nice if we could do it that quickly. I'm not optimistic that we will be able to complete Bill C-377 today. Now, if we do, that would be great, but at this point it might be a little bit of a tight push.

We could possibly have April 2 also for clause-by-clause on Bill C-377 and then, starting April 7, beginning the process of Bill C-474. So that would just be moving everything back one meeting, and I hope there would be agreement by committee to do that. We'd just delay everything by one meeting, so we would start Bill C-474 on April 7, and today and on April 2 we would have clause-by-clause for Bill C-377.

That's my suggestion, and I hope there will be acceptance of that.

Opposition Motion--Climate Change

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to the speeches presented by both the leader of the NDP and the party's environment critic and what is interesting about their comments is that they are both confused.

On the one hand, the leader of the NDP is actively seeking the cooperation of the Liberal Party and the Bloc Québécois at committee to pass his bill, Bill C-377, which cannot pass without the support of the Liberal Party of Canada.

On the other hand, he refers to Bill C-30, the backbone of which is the Liberal Party of Canada's balancing our budget plan. As the leader of the NDP puts it, the bill was originally punted to a legislative committee because he had a special deal with the Prime Minister. Then he realized that the Prime Minister was not serious whatsoever in seeing that legislative committee bring the clean air act to any successful completion and we brought forward the balancing, our department budget program and plan.

I am confused because one of the longest serving NDP MPs, the member for Winnipeg Centre, believes differently than his own leader. He says that the federal New Democratic Party may need to enter into some kind of informal coalition with the Liberals or risk, in his words, “political obscurity”. That statement came from a veteran NDP MP, one of the top and longest serving MPs in that caucus.

What exactly is the NDP's position here today? In the case of--

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

It is not a good bill. Only the Liberals would think Bill C-377 is a good bill. The bill is not good, and we've heard from all the witnesses. So the only way to deal with Bill C-377 is to send it back, rewrite it, bring it back in its new written form, and have it re-critiqued, have the witnesses called back, and then maybe we can decide intellectually whether or not Bill C-377 is good.

But what we see to this point is not good. To limit our discussion to five minutes is unbelievably poor. I'm very disappointed in a motion like that, Mr. Cullen.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

It appears they are in a hurry to get nowhere with a bad bill, and that's probably why Madame Gélinas said that she expected the federal government would have conducted economic, social, and environmental risk analyses in support of its decision to sign Kyoto in 1998. We found that little economic analysis had been completed, and the government was unable to provide evidence of detailed social, environmental, and risk analyses.

No wonder they didn't get it done. No wonder Bill C-377 will never accomplish what they're saying it will accomplish, because it's an empty bill. They only want us to talk for five minutes and then cut us off. They want to change the rules, as we've just seen, and have a recorded vote showing they are voting against the Standing Orders. They're voting against Marleau and Montpetit, and it has to be done in five minutes.

Chair, it's not democratic. It's not right. It's caused a huge problem within this committee, and each of us on this committee, as Mr. Cullen rightly pointed out, is sent here to represent our community. In my community the environment is very important. I've been very disappointed with the tactics of the opposition in changing the rules. Now their latest tactic is to limit debate. It's not right.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

I probably will be making some amendments, Chair, but what we've seen is a tactic by the opposition, led by the NDP, on Bill C-377, a poorly written bill. They have tried to cut off any critique, any opportunity to improve the bill and then have witnesses come back and critique the amended bill.

As I said right from the beginning, Madam Gélinas' commented on how important it is to have ingredients in the bill for it to be successful. So the tactic now is to limit the amount of time we have to five minutes.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

I appreciate the comments from Mr. Cullen. The problems we've seen over the last few days at committee have been because Bill C-377 is such a poorly written bill. If it were a good bill this committee would be united in supporting it, but we heard not just a few witnesses, Chair, we heard from witness after witness after witness that Bill C-377 is a poorly written bill.

We've seen tactics from the opposition to try to stop input, Chair, and share our concern--

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Chair, the Criminal Code is a classic case of criminal law in which the act itself contains prohibitions of various kinds of conduct. Those include theft, assault, murder, and so on.

This is in the brief of Dr. Peter Hogg to the environment committee:

These prohibitions can be self-applied by citizens who, if they offend, will then be subject to punishment by the criminal courts. For the great bulk of offences, there is no role for an administrative body or official to make regulations or to exercise discretion. A regulatory law, on the other hand, is one that achieves its purposes by more sophisticated means than a simple prohibition and penalty, typically vesting discretionary powers in an administrative body or official and often relying on regulations made by the executive.

I think you can see the relevance that Peter Hogg is making here.

Even if the regulatory scheme is ultimately subject to the sanction of a prohibition and penalty (as is the case with most laws), those are not the leading characteristics of the law: the prohibition and penalty originate in a regulatory scheme. On this basis, federal laws attempting to regulate competition through an administrative body and to regulate the insurance industry through a licensing scheme have been struck down as falling outside the criminal law power.

Again, that is further evidence that clause 10 is not relevant.

Chair, I want to just read his conclusion. It's quite a lengthy document, and in the spirit of cooperation I do not want to bore the committee, but he did give an example. I'll quickly skip through....

Actually, there was a very interesting case that he referred to, R. v. Hydro-Québec. My colleague to my right would remember that case quite well:

...the Supreme Court of Canada upheld the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (a 1988 version of the current federal statute) as criminal law, despite the fact that the Act's prohibition of the emission of “toxic” substances was preceded by an administrative process to determine whether a particular substance should be classified as “toxic”. The Court split five-four on the issue with the dissenting judges saying that “it would be an odd crime whose definition was made entirely dependent on the discretion of the executive”, and holding that “the Act's true nature is regulatory, not criminal”. But the majority held that the intervention of some administrative discretion did not rob the law of its criminal character. At the end of the day, there was a prohibition and a penalty for the release of toxic substances.

Speaking for the majority, Judge La Forest said:

What Parliament is doing...is making provision for carefully tailoring the prohibited action to specified substances used or dealt with in specific circumstances. This type of tailoring is obviously necessary in defining the scope of a criminal prohibition, and is, of course, within Parliament's power.

Chair, again I mention the importance for the process for meeting targets to be measured against the actual emissions reported in the National Inventory Report, rather than what's being proposed in Bill C-377.

Chair, it is very important that we have something that's going to work. What we have now in the Turning the Corner plan is a program that absolutely does work.

We heard from Professor John Stone. This is what he said, and I think it's also relevant to clause 10. He said:

I certainly have been very encouraged by the words I've heard from the present government, Mr. Warawa, of their intentions to tackle this issue.

He is referring to the targets and how they will be determined. He went on to say:

Of course, we need to cost whatever plans they have from whatever party we have and in whichever country we're talking about. That's only good public policy. I will just have to assume that whatever plans are presented to Parliament and to the Government of Canada and to Canadians are properly costed. Yes, I agree with you.

Now, this is again very relevant to clause 10. Again, it's very relevant to the importance of using targets based on the actual reported emissions in the National Inventory Report.

Dr. Stone went on to say that of course you need to cost whatever plans they have. We heard also that Bill C-377 was not costed. Chair, that was the common theme with Bill C-377. It has to be based on science and it has to be based on targets that are real. It has to be based on impact statements. He went on to say we need the cost; whatever party we have needs to cost them. He said he didn't see that in Bill C-377, and that, I'm sure, raised a concern with everybody in this room.

He said:

I don't see that Bill C-377 is necessarily inconsistent with where our present government is going, nor indeed with the aspirational statements I've heard from the other parties.

My sense is that slowly--and I emphasize slowly--we seem to be coming to a consensus amongst parties in Canada that in fact this is an issue we cannot afford not to tackle.

Well, Chair, when we're talking about targets based on a National Inventory Report, this is what I'm talking about. It's our Turning the Corner plan. Our Turning the Corner plan, as I shared, has the toughest targets in Canadian history. They are some of the toughest in the world.

Chair, Canada's new government launched a concrete and realistic agenda to protect the health of Canadians, to improve the environmental quality, and to position Canada as a clean energy superpower. Canada has historically relied on a variety of non-compulsory measures to reduce emissions. That was what the Liberals did. It was voluntary. It didn't work. However, those have not proven sufficient to reduce the--

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

Just so we have this in context, I would like to read clause 10:

10. (1) On or before May 31 of each year, the Minister shall prepare a statement setting out

(a) the measures taken by the Government of Canada to ensure that its commitment under section 5 and the targets set out in the target plan are being met, including measures taken in respect of

(i) regulated emission limits and performance standards,

(ii) market-based mechanisms such as emissions trading or offsets,

(iii) spending or fiscal incentives, including a just transition fund for industry, and

(iv) cooperation or agreements with provinces, territories or other governments; and

(b) the Canadian greenhouse gas emission reductions that are reasonably expected to result from each of those measures in each of the next ten years.

Then we have this amendment from Mr. Cullen:

(c) the level of Canadian greenhouse gas emissions in each of the following ten years to be used as a baseline to quantify the reductions referred to in paragraph (b).

We've seen, Chair, eight amendments from the NDP, three from the Bloc, and six from the Liberals. I reckon back to a comment made by the Bloc. When we heard the testimony of, I think, the last group of witnesses, I think it was Mr. Bigras--he can correct me if I'm wrong--who said that maybe this bill should be rewritten.

We heard testimony from Mr. Layton that basically he had help writing the bill, but he was basically setting targets. We heard clearly that there was no policy attached to it, that there was no plan, no costing; it was just wishful thinking to deal with greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.

What we've seen resulting from that is witnesses testifying that there are some very serious constitutional issues with Bill C-377 and that it wouldn't stand up. We've heard that it would not achieve anything. Mr. Layton equated it to the impossible dream. He didn't break into song, but I was ready to join him if he did.

In all seriousness, through all the groups of witnesses we heard a common theme: the necessity of an impact analysis. What I shared at our last meeting was the commissioner's statement about how important it is--that in order to have successful action by government, you need to have conducted an economic, social, environmental, and risk analysis. That's all missing.

What I wish we would have heard from the NDP is an admission of what we heard through all the testimony from every group of witnesses, and from what I believe was the vast majority of the witnesses: that Bill C-377 is not going to accomplish what it says it would like to see, which is a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

What I was hoping I would hear from Mr. Cullen is that he would.... With all these amendments--eight of them from the NDP--the bill is basically being rewritten. We don't know the results of the end product that we'll have. It doesn't have any critique other than debate around this table. I think it's important that it be critiqued.

I was hoping the bill would have been withdrawn, rewritten, and presented again to Parliament, because it was so badly written and so faulty. Now the same people who wrote the first draft are writing the second draft of amendments, with the assistance of the Bloc and the Liberals. I don't mean any disrespect, but neither one of those groups has a tremendous history in providing good action on the environment. We heard that also.

The committee has a responsibility to make sure the legislation that leaves here is good and that it's been critiqued. I don't want to repeat myself, but as I've mentioned, we've heard time and time again that it's very important that we have legislation that will take action.

The Government of Canada, with its Turning the Corner plan, has the toughest targets in Canadian history. It calls for 20% in absolute reductions by 2020 and 60% to 70% by 2050. Those are the toughest in Canadian history. What I particularly like about the Turning the Corner plan is that for the health of Canadians it also includes the quality of air that we breathe, both inside and outside. One Canadian death in 12 is directly related to the environment, to environmental causes, so we have a responsibility as parliamentarians to make sure the air we breathe is of good quality; otherwise, it means billions of dollars in health care costs. We also have a responsibility as parliamentarians to make sure we are doing our part globally to attack the issue of a warming climate, and this government is very committed to that.

That's why I take it so passionately that we need to have legislation coming out of this committee and going back to the House that is good. And Chair, because of the testimony we heard, I don't believe Bill C-377 is good.

I had just begun to share some of the concerns that I heard during the testimony yesterday. One of the people who shared at the committee was Mr. Peter Hogg. He was sharing with the committee the importance of the constitutional legitimacy of Bill C-377 and whether it would stand up to a challenge. He shared that he didn't believe it would. He shared that the Constitution Act of 1867 confers on the Parliament of Canada the power to make laws in relation to criminal law. The Supreme Court of Canada has held that a law will be classified as a criminal law if it has a valid criminal purpose backed by a prohibition and a penalty. As far as the valid criminal purpose is concerned, the court has held that the protection of the environment counts as a valid criminal purpose.

The purpose of Bill C-377 therefore qualifies as a valid criminal purpose. As far as the prohibition and a penalty are concerned, the question is whether Bill C-377 contains a prohibition and a penalty as those terms have been understood in the case of law. The courts have traditionally distinguished between criminal law and regulatory law, and the Criminal Code is a classic case of criminal law in that the act itself contains--

Environment and Sustainable Development

[Bob Mills, Conservative, Red Deer, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the second report of the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development. The committee requests an extension of 30 sitting days under Standing Order 97.1 to consider Bill C-377, An Act to ensure Canada assumes its responsibilities in preventing dangerous climate change.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Chair, the interruption from the member shows the seriousness. He said this meeting has something to do with carbon dioxide. Well, Chair, I'm not sure what committee he's just come from, but this is the environment committee. We're talking about Bill C-377, and that's exactly what this is about. It's reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Carbon dioxide is one of those.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Chair, I appreciate the patience of the committee and I will try to conclude as quickly as I can.

A point of privilege is very important, and I want to share a couple more quotes before I conclude. James Hughes said:

We think there needs to be an international agreement that includes all countries, including all the major emitters as well.

We heard, Chair, how important it is that we have all the major emitters involved, and we heard that right now under the Kyoto agreement we have 30% of the emitters who are part of the solution. We were told how important it is to have everybody involved, and particularly with the G-8 plus five--remember that?--the idea was, if we had the G-8 plus five committing to accept those reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, we'd have 80% of the major emitters involved with reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Without having a commitment from all the major emitters, we will not have a solution of reduced greenhouse gas emissions.

We advocate an important role for municipalities, provincial governments, and the federal government. We do our work in that way because different scales of effort matter in different issues. This is certainly one of those areas where that is true, where efforts by some of Canada's big municipalities are important, as well as the efforts of provincial and federal governments.

Chair, I want to take this opportunity to share with the committee what's happening in my riding. I've tried to share that before, but it's very important. In my riding of Langley we have two local governments--the Langley city and the Langley township. The township bought a new building, and it was a building that was only half or three-quarters completed. They put geothermal heating into it. The operational cost for heating and lighting this beautiful new municipal building is incredible.

Each of us can do that. I've made that commitment personally, Chair, to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases our riding office uses, and it's quite interesting. We have fluorescent lighting that we see in this office here, but these are 40-watt light bulbs. You can reduce energy dramatically by changing four light bulbs into the 32-watt--the new technology. And it's been a wonderful privilege to reduce my carbon footprint. Also, the electricity bill for my riding office has dropped dramatically; it costs fewer taxpayers' dollars to heat and light that office. So it's exciting.

We also heard the constitutional problem with Bill C-377 is that it leaves the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions solely to the regulation-making power vested in the executive. That is a big concern. The only direction given to the Governor in Council as to the nature of the regulations is that they must be to carry out the purpose and provisions of this act and to ensure that Canada fully meets its commitment under section 5 targets for 2020, and there are later targets as well.

This extraordinarily broad and sweeping regulation-making power purports to authorize any regulation that would have the effect of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Such regulations could potentially reach into every area of Canadian economic and social life. The bill enacts no restrictions as to the kinds of laws that are contemplated or the kinds of activities that can be regulated. Such a sweeping grant of authority to the executive is unprecedented outside of wartime and should be a matter of political concern quite apart from the constitutional issues. Who said that? That was Professor Peter Hogg. I was very, very surprised that this privilege of sharing with the committee, how concerned I was that the Bloc--

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Yes, on page 896 we have the private members' bills broken into two categories, both public and private, and it goes on. And it gives the process. As we move through Marleau and Montpetit, it has to provide guidance on private members' bills, as referenced on page 896—breaking them into two categories. It then follows in giving the process to deal with the private bills. Under private members' bills, there are public bills and private bills, and it gives guidance. What I was referring to on page 948 was how the private private members' bills are dealt with—the procedure. So what I had read into the record is referring to the private private members' bills. It's going to be one or the other.

So the process I'm reading is relevant, and it is a relevant point of order, Chair.

It happened previously in the choices of the witnesses. The government was not given an opportunity to speak and choose the witnesses. We've had a tactic of trying to keep the government from having an opportunity. We've now seen the NDP trying to cut out any criticism, and the end result is C-377. They're trying to move it forward and come up at the end of the day with an empty, hollow, phony bill that will not reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We've heard that from every witness.

So that's my point of order, Chair. I would ask, through you, for the clerk to just comment on that connect on page 896, how that process that is mentioned on page 948.... I think it is relevant.