Bill C-33 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999

This enactment amends the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999 to provide for the efficient regulation of fuels.
It also provides for a periodic and comprehensive review of the environmental and economic aspects of biofuel production in Canada by a committee of Parliament.

Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member in her speech referred to the NDP as opposing the biofuel bill, but we are speaking to an amendment that would send the bill back to the agriculture committee for more work on these very complex issues surrounding the production of ethanol, the type of feedstock and the type of direction.

Does my hon. colleague have no sense of the need for debate about the direction we take with this policy, when right across the world the United Nations and some of the European Union leaders are saying they need to change policy? Why do you think this policy—

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

Unfortunately, I must tell the hon. member for Western Arctic that I never have any opinion on anything. I am sure he was not addressing his question to me, but if he was addressing the question to the hon. member for York West, he should have done it in the third person. The member has a short period of time to respond.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I think all of us are concerned with these issues and looking for answers that will help us deal with the food shortage. However, I do not believe Bill C-33 would in any way, shape or form hamper that opportunity for us to move forward.

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

Mr. Speaker, what is before us today is a proposed amendment. It states that:

Bill C-33, An Act to amend the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, be not now read a third time but be referred back to the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food for the purpose of reconsidering Clause 2 with a view to making sure that both economic and environmental effects of introducing these regulations do not cause a negative impact on the environment or unduly influence commodity markets.

This bill has had relatively limited debate in committee. It probably has had more debate in the House around the various amendments that have been moved and now this amendment to send it back to committee.

What I believe this debate in the House reflects is a real concern by us in the New Democratic Party, by members of the Bloc to some significant degree, I believe, and even by some members of the Liberal Party, that this bill is being rushed through at a speed that does not take into account some very new realities that have taken place globally around the issue of the use of biofuels. It does not take into account “both economic and environmental effects” of the bill and its consequences if implemented.

I want to be very clear on behalf of my party that we have supported and will continue to support the use of biofuels. That is not really what this debate is or should be about. If properly managed, a biofuels program in Canada can have a positive effect on climate change while also helping farmers.

Members were in their ridings last week. I had the opportunity on a couple of occasions to spend time with producers in the rural part of my riding. The debate is raging there.

The National Farmers Union has come out as very strongly opposed to this legislation. We see that the Federation of Agriculture is generally supporting it, but I can say that within both of those groups, and there are members of both of those associations in my riding, the debate is very real.

The farming community producers very much see the opportunity to increase their production and increase their incomes. Oftentimes it is the same producers who tell me the problem they have is that they are seeing this drive up other costs, such as the cost of feed for a number of fairly substantial poultry operations in the riding. The dairy and pork producers are saying the same thing. They are seeing their costs being driven up just for feed.

Of course, all of them are very concerned about the impact this will have on the cost of fuel, whether it is gasoline produced from biofuels or other parts of the market, particularly carbon based fuels.

That debate is going on. What I think has happened is that the reality, not only in Canada but across the globe, has not been taken into account anywhere near fully enough in the debate that took place in committee. We are very concerned as a party that the government is running roughshod over members and using some bullying tactics to try to force this legislation through, both in committee and now in the House. The full debate that should have taken place has not.

We hear from Conservative members of the House who say that we in the NDP do not really care about the producers or the farming community, and that is absolutely false. Again, when I talk to the members of my farming community in my riding, they are expressing similar reservations. How far do we take the biofuels issue? How much production do we put into it? Do we have absolute quotas that are being suggested and will be phased in under this legislation relatively quickly? Do we have the numbers right? Do we have the amount that we should be putting into other gasolines and other diesel fuels? Do we have the percentages right?

They are not convinced that we have the right answers. They are not necessarily saying that the numbers that are in this bill or that we believe will flow from this government are wrong, but they are certainly not convinced that we know for sure. That is the reason for the motion to send it back to committee and hear more from the producers, hear from the industry generally, and also look at what is happening in experiments going on elsewhere in the world.

In that regard, we have heard from various parts of the globe. There are sincere concerns about biofuels being part of the mechanism that is driving up the price of food dramatically. We are seeing that now. The price of rice in parts of Asia has gone up 73% in less than a few months, in some cases even doubling in a very short period of time. We have seen markets in Asia, again for rice specifically, being closed off.

Countries that had been net exporters are no longer able to do it and are shutting the borders, thus tightening up the markets internationally in countries that do not produce sufficient rice to feed their own populations and that now are not finding access to the markets for rice that is affordable for those communities and countries. We are seeing that.

We have seen the United Nations pass a resolution expressing very real caution about the use of biofuels and how extensively we use them.

If I could digress for a moment, the other part of this legislation that is really troublesome is that other alternatives in terms of creating energy for use generally in the market and also on farms right across this country, perhaps even internationally, have been pushed to the side and backed up. We can point to solar or wind, where the government has done little or nothing to allow those markets to develop and perhaps provide an alternative to the greater use of biofuels.

I know that some of this discussion took place, but I do not believe that it was anywhere near adequate in committee. We can go to the very basics. How much food, if any, do we convert to fuel? That question is still hanging out there.

Again going back to those farmers I spoke to in my community, this very much weighs on their minds. They got into farming to produce food. Their parents and grandparents were in farming to produce food, not to produce fuel. This is a very real new development for them. They are approaching it with an open mind, but they are also approaching it realistically. I cannot say that the government has done the same.

Farmers are very concerned about how much food, if any, we move into the fuel side of the equation. They do not believe that this legislation has had sufficient debate, sufficient analysis and sufficient research to answer those questions at this time. They are not prepared to say that holus-bolus we should just plunge ahead.

We hear from the government that it is time to move ahead, to move forward. That is a simplistic analysis. It is a simplistic approach to what is a very, very complex problem.

I want to be very clear that we understand the other issues that are going on, the other causes that are driving up the cost of fuel. Let me mention those quickly. We know there is some significant speculation going on. It is immoral what is going on in that regard. That is one part of it.

We know that the whole issue of global warming and climate change is contributing to the shortage of foods in certain parts of the world. That is driving up the price.

We know that in areas where before we could continue to expect growth in productivity, we are not seeing any, because we have maxed out the effect of using fertilizers and pesticides, although they are still being used. We are not seeing any further growth. There are those problems.

However, we know as well that the use of biofuels in certain countries in particular has had a negative impact. That impact has resulted in a diversion of crops. We see it in the United States. I am going to use the states as an example because I know, from the area that I come from and how close we are to states like Michigan, Indiana and Ohio, that the amount of production moved from producing food to producing the same crop but producing fuel has been quite phenomenal.

There are areas in those states where as much as 35% of the corn crop now is being used for biofuels. In fact, I can speak very specifically about that, because a good deal of that production is coming into my area. There is an ethanol plant just the next county over. A good deal of the corn that is the source for that biofuel comes out of the United States. We are producing some in our area, both in Essex County and in Kent County, but a good deal of it is coming from the United States. It is part of that huge increase in production.

Up to this point in the United States, the Americans have been able to justify that, but again it begs the question. How much more they can allow it to go to or should they in fact be ramping it back down somewhat and producing more food and less fuel?

We are on the edge of making this decision, but we are not there yet. It does require further debate. It requires us to take a close look at what we are doing.

As well, I want to draw to the House's attention some of the other individuals and organizations that have expressed concern about this legislation and generally about the use of biofuels.

A little less than a year ago, David Suzuki made these comments:

Biofuels have many advantages, but we have to look at all our options and make sure we make the best choices to ensure a more sustainable future.

--attempting to save the planet by wholesale switching to biofuels like ethanol and biodiesel may unintentionally have the opposite effect.

This is the kind of risk that we are faced with. In that regard, I want to draw the House's attention to what we have seen happen in the last two years in Brazil.

After the second world war, Brazil made a very conscious decision to convert a significant proportion of its sugar cane crop to biofuels. Brazil started to do this way back in the late 1940s and early 1950s. In some cases, as much as 50% of the fuel for its vehicles, mostly automobiles and trucks, comes from biofuel sources.

That has worked reasonably well for the Brazilians because of the vast quantity of sugar cane they were able to produce but, starting two years ago in that country, the amount they wanted to produce or allocate to sugar production, if I can put it that way, had to be reduced because of the demand. Their economy had grown so large, so many of their people were driving vehicles and the demand for fuel had gone up so dramatically that they decided they would begin to shift a greater proportion for it.

That has had a very negative impact on their food costs related to the production of sugar. It is a big part of their market and a big part of their food staples. In the last two years, this has had a significant impact on the cost of sugar in their country and therefore on the cost of a number of foods that contain sugar as a staple.

Again, it was an experience that worked quite well. I have looked to the Brazilians in the past and have said that Brazil is a country that thought it through and planned it out. For the better part of four or five decades, it worked very well for the Brazilians. Now it does not.

They are very concerned about what they are going to do. They are looking for alternatives to much of their sugar cane production going into biofuels so that they can shift that balance back more in favour of producing food products rather than fuel. That is just one example.

We can look elsewhere in the world where attempts have been made, and this is one of the other problems that we have with the legislation, in that when we look at what we are trying to do, can we say that we have gotten ahead of ourselves from a technological standpoint? In that regard we know that there are alternatives in food growth to actually using the food product. I am going to use corn again as an example. We know that we are close but we are not quite there in being able to use the cornstalk and perhaps the corncob as opposed to the corn kernel in biofuel production. We know there are other products where we can use chaff, straw and those kinds of items, but we are just not quite there.

I saw a program on one of the national TV networks last week when I was home in my riding. A company, which I believe is based in Quebec, is just beginning to put into production two or three plants and in fact is not using any food product at all. It is using chaff, leftover wood products, a number of products. We could be using those without having to be concerned about using any food products at all, but again, we are not there.

What this bill does is it leaves it wide open for the government to follow what was done in the United States and move huge percentages of production. There are no limits here. Under government regulations, it can simply authorize and in some respects when we look at Bill C-33 closely, can compel the use of biofuels. At the very least it is obvious that by way of financial incentives, it can encourage producers to use food products, when in fact there may be this much better alternative if we do not have to use any food product at all. We would use the corncob and the cornstalk right down to the roots.

We must be careful. I know, having grown up on a farm, that farmers put back the chaff, the roots, the leftover once the crop has been harvested as a way of rejuvenating the soil. Can we safely take 50% of the stalk, grind the rest up and let it go back into the soil and biodegrade and rejuvenate the soil, or can we only put 25% into fuel production and put 75% back into the soil? We do not know the answers to those questions.

This is the reason we brought the motion before the House to send this bill back to the committee to allow us to further pursue these questions. There are all sorts of experiments going on around the globe. This House needs more time and this country needs more time to properly assess it so that we do not make a major mistake.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-33, An Act to amend the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, be read the third time and passed, and of the amendment.

[Guy Lauzon, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food and for the Federal Economic Development Initiative for Northern Ontario]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to my colleague's speech. He made a lot of valid points. To be quite frank, his speech was not confusing, but his party's position is terribly confusing. I have two questions for the member.

I want to make the point that the NDP government in Saskatchewan was the first government in Canada to initiate a biofuel mandate. Its mandate of 7.5% required 131 million litres of ethanol to be used in the year 2006. This is in sharp contrast to its federal cousin which has turned its back now on rural Canada and apparently no longer supports biofuels. I would like to ask the hon. member who he thinks got it wrong, was it the NDP government in Saskatchewan, or was it his current New Democratic Party?

My other question for him is with regard to the NDP government in Manitoba. It now requires that 8.5% of all gasoline sold in the province must contain ethanol. This is in sharp contrast to its federal cousin which has turned its back on rural Canada and apparently no longer supports biofuels.

I would like to ask the hon. member a very similar question. Who does he think got it wrong? Was it the NDP government in Manitoba, or was it his New Democratic Party that is wrong?

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

I think it is the same question, Mr. Speaker, just two different provinces.

The NDP provincial critic has suggested that the figure in Saskatchewan may be too high for producers in that province to take on. The official opposition is also calling for a review as to whether the province should have gone as far as it did, which is exactly our position.

The same is true with Manitoba. Manitoba Premier Doer has made it very clear that he and his government are concerned about how far we go with biofuels. The government in Manitoba is monitoring it very closely at this point. The reality is that it may back down somewhat from it. On the other hand, as new technologies come on stream, the province may back down in terms of the use of food and move to stalk, chaff and other goods that at this point are part of the product of growth.

There really is no inconsistency between ourselves and both of those provinces. We at the federal level are learning from the experience they have had and, as I pointed out, other countries have had. We cannot go holus-bolus into this without thinking it through. Should we be giving much greater incentives to producers who are using the byproducts, if I can put it that way, of their farm fields as opposed to using food? Should we be building that into the legislation at this time? Those are the kinds of programs and policies that we need to be looking at. The federal NDP position is not at all inconsistent with that of our provincial counterparts.

[Louise Thibault, Independent, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would ask my hon. colleague first what he thinks of the vocabulary used. Personally, I am somewhat flabbergasted that, from the beginning, we have been using the term “biofuel”—and its French equivalent—since it would seem to suggest that there is something good about using food, that we have the capacity to feed the population, to produce fuel, although we also know that biofuel itself is often highly polluting.

Of course, our colleague talked about the whole issue of research and production using residues left to us by nature. And that would appear much more responsible. However, at present, when we talk about making ethanol using corn ethanol, for example, we also know how much water is needed for that process. This really makes me think about oil sands production and processing, which I find truly irresponsible.

I would like to hear my colleague's comments. Rather than encouraging innovation and energy efficiency, it seems that this government has decided to focus on an irresponsible course of action, to encourage those forms of energy production that pollute the most and are most harmful, for example—as I mentioned—“thanks to” the oil sands and the production of grains that will ultimately be used as fuel, which I think is absurd.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for her question.

The member is absolutely right about the fear we all have, including most of the farmers I speak with, about using food to produce fuel. In that regard, she used the example of an experiment where too much water would be used or a substantial amount of water would be used in one of these processes. That is a concern.

In terms of a byproduct on the side, the use of manure, there is an engineer just down the road from my office in the city of Windsor who has developed and has patented this process, but he could not deploy it in Canada. We look at that and ask why there were not government resources there. It is phenomenal what this process can do.

We have a large number of greenhouses in Essex County, perhaps the largest coverage on a per capita basis of any place in the world. Most of them are no longer glass houses. They are plastic covered. He developed this process, which he has patented. As the plastic wore out and was no longer functional, the plastic would be thrown into the mix along with the leftover greenery from the greenhouse growth. That would be combined with some enzymes. It would produce heat which would actually heat the greenhouse and produce compost as the end result. Absolutely nothing would be wasted from that greenhouse, including the plastic that was covering it. It would produce that energy and as well, produce compost which could be used to rejuvenate the soil in the greenhouse.

He could not get any coverage for that process in Canada in terms of incentives and ended up having to go to the state of Massachusetts. A very similar process is being used for a huge dairy farm operation there. Several million dollars have been put into the same process, using manure to generate the heat, and again chaff and other leftover product from the fields. It is generating both energy and substantial compost that can be put back into the farm. He is creating that closed circuit. I always say that the key part of any environmental test, sustainability, is that there is a closed circuit. Nothing escapes, everything is used, and it is sustainable on an ongoing permanent basis.

The member is very correct in being concerned about using food at all. This bill does not take into account well enough, we believe, at this point in time, what the realities are in the marketplace. The bill should be sent back to committee.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

The hon. member for Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, a short question.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member made the comment a little earlier about the concern about the soil when we take the whole plant. Those in agriculture know what the organic matter content of the soil is. They test it; they know. I would hope that we would never get to the stage in this House where we would start to tell farmers what they can and cannot take off their farms.

I think the direction in which the member is going is to say to the agriculture industry and community that we want to limit, and in fact we are going to limit, the potential of agriculture to diversify the market. If he is saying that we cannot use food for fuel, that is not just ethanol, it is biofuels, and there is an incredible amount of research done. Does he support the fact that we would start to limit agriculture in its diversification for markets because of the food for fuel?

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

The hon. member has run out the clock, but I will give equal time for the answer.

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

Mr. Speaker, I will try to be quick.

The answer to his question is basically no. What we are much more concerned about, and we have seen this on other occasions, is that we will give incentives to encourage the producers to use food when in fact that is not really what they want to do. That is the concern we have about this legislation.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Yukon. The hon. member for Yukon has 20 minutes, but only 10 minutes today.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I will not be able to get in all the points I wanted to make on Bill C-33, but I will make a couple of salient points that I hope will be helpful today and get them on the record about one urgent crisis in the world that is related to this food shortage.

First, the main concerns about the bill throughout the debate have been related to using agricultural land for fuel and taking away land that could be used for food products, especially at a time when we have a food crisis in the world and prices are dramatically rising.

I would like to explain to people a little about what the bill is and what it is not. This bill in itself is not going to change anything. It is not going to mean that our gas tanks are going to be full of ethanol or that it will be taking farms away and so on. This bill is more of a housekeeping bill which allows the government to regulate what is in fuels, the percentage for export and these types of rules.

Until the government does that the people who have concerns about this do not really have to have those concerns. The concerns come from what type of regulations the government makes once this bill is in place and a number of members have spoken about wanting to be involved in that debate.

The mix of these types of fuels and the mix of what is in gasoline comes after in regulations that this bill will allow governments under which to operate. In general, it makes government more efficient in a sense that it does not have to come to Parliament for every little change in the regulations. It can alter the construct of the fuels. Members have mentioned the elements of that construct which will come when those regulations are made.

People do not totally understand that the bill is simply giving the government the power to make regulations, and the regulations themselves are not being made when the bill is passed.

As has been said by all the other members who have spoken, I share their concerns about taking good farm land and using it for fuel when there are rising prices, although there are many causes for that. Those concerns have been sent to me by a number of people, although I do not have enough time to read all of them, which I will perhaps in my last 10 minutes in a future debate.

Other than items that can be used for food, there are other ways of making ethanol and biodiesels presently available or under development. We will be able to make them from straw, chaff, animal waste, and things like corn husks. Cellulose ethanol can be made from tree waste, bark, sawdust, and switch grass. In fact, even some of the food products, after they are used for ethanol, can be used for feed stocks by putting them back into the agriculture industry.

Therefore, there are ways of reducing greenhouse gases by simply using waste products and not using good food products in the future. I think that is the direction most people are supporting, particularly those who are talking about ethanol in this debate.

As I said earlier, the cost of food is skyrocketing in the world and I will talk about the many causes of that, ethanol only being one. There is also speculation, droughts, a huge increase in world demand, increases in oil prices and so on. I will go through those later if there is time left.

Another member mentioned earlier the problem with rice. There is a huge increase in the price of rice which has risen three times. It has caused a crisis in the refugee camps in Burma and for the Burmese people in Thailand.

Due to the cost of rice having gone up three times, the Thai-Burma Border Consortium executive director Jack Dunford, who deals with this and provides the money from 14 countries, of which Canada is one, is $7.5 million short.

In about two weeks there will be a crisis. The people who normally get 2,100 calories a day from various foods, which is the internationally accepted standard for survival, will only get 944 calories if something is not done, and they will not get five or six types of food. All they will be receiving is rice. We can imagine getting rice every day for every meal and only getting half enough. This will be a disastrous crisis for 150,000 people. It has unfortunately been overlooked. We have asked a number of times that the Canadian government increase its aid by $1 million a year.

That will not cover the $7.5 million, but with Canada's credibility those other 14 countries may increase their amounts and save 150,000 people who are trapped in refugee camps in Thailand.

When Dr. Sein Win, the prime minister in exile, was here a couple of weeks ago he mentioned this to Mr. Harper and Inter Pares, the Canadian NGO that delivers this money--