Bill C-3 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act

This enactment amends the definition “arctic waters” in the Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act to extend the geographic application of the Act to the outer limit of the exclusive economic zone of Canada north of the 60th parallel of north latitude.

Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague and let him know that I agree with his point of view. Perhaps we should consider what happened on the other side of the planet at the south pole in Antarctica.

Antarctica is an international place that belongs to all of humanity. That might solve the problem, but the situation is more complicated at the north pole, in the Arctic, because of greed and people's financial needs. We have to avoid making that the crux of the debate. My colleague is right: to avoid having that happen, we need diplomacy along with territorial development and occupation. Canada's solution is not militarization, because Canada cannot stand up to other world powers that have laid claim.

I hope that things will not go beyond studies to figure out where the continent ends. Have people occupied the territory since time immemorial? Yes, the Inuit have been there for a long time. They were there long before European civilization in America, and I think that argument bolsters our claim. We have to avoid militarizing the issue because we would lose in the end.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it gives me some measure of pleasure to speak to Bill C-3, an act to amend the Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act. The bill would increase the environmental protection of the Canadian Arctic, which is consistent with the New Democrats' position on Arctic sovereignty.

Specifically, the bill would extend the geographic application of the Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act to the outer limit of the exclusive economic zone of Canada north of the 60th parallel. The NDP's position has been and remains that Canada needs to increase its claim to the waters of the Arctic islands and beyond through the increased enforcement of environmental protection laws. This bill would expand the area covered by the Canadian environmental protection law, which is stronger than that afforded under international law.

Other nations may dispute the increase of this protection. However, support of Canada's position is expected to be strong in the international community. I would also note that Canada's action is consistent with article 234 of the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea.

We also have had occasion to discuss the bill with notable Canadian experts in the field, in particular, Mr. Michael Byers, who is an internationally renowned expert in Arctic sovereignty issues. Dr. Byers has examined this bill and recommends that it be passed as is.

The bill specifically amends the definition of Arctic waters from 100 to 200 nautical miles to help ensure that ships do not pollute Canadian waters. That is an important step.

The bill raises the very critical issues in our country of the Arctic, our claim to sovereignty over the Arctic and the importance of that region to Canada's history, heritage and development. Also, and not tangentially in any respect, it raises the issue of the critical importance of the environment and the pressing need to get control of the greenhouse gas emissions in this country. I will be talking a little bit about that in a few moments.

I will read from the government's press release in which it announced this amendment. One thing that does concern me is a quote by Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities where he says:

Our government is taking action to promote economic development while demanding environmental responsibility in Canada's North.

What concerns me is the reference to promoting economic development. Canadians are concerned that the Arctic not be used and exploited for its natural resources. Rather, Canadians want this area protected in pristine condition and not to be used as just another area of exploitation by international oil and gas companies.

Global warming is nowhere more evident than in our Arctic. I think it is common knowledge among all members of the House, and certainly on the conscience of Canadians, that our polar bears are experiencing habitat threat of grave concern. If we talk to the indigenous peoples who populate all of the regions of the Arctic, they will tell us and have told us that there are serious climate change issues going on in the Arctic and that these are harbingers that ought to be of grave concern.

The fact that global warming is causing a retraction in the iceberg and ice floe levels in the Arctic does not give us an opportunity to rush in and start developing oil and gas deposits and exploit mineral deposits. Rather, this should cause us great pause. It should force us to look at the underlying cause of this problem, which is that greenhouse gas emissions are causing climate change that is of grave peril, not only to Canada and our people but to the entire world.

I am happy to hear that the government now speaks in terms of protecting the environment, which is a good thing and it should be applauded. However, intention is everything and if the intention to preserve our Arctic is simply to allow more economic exploitation as opposed to protecting the environment, then I believe the bill and the government will be misguided.

I want to speak a little about the environment and about other steps the government has either taken or failed to take, steps that are actually imperilling our climate and our environment in the Arctic region.

I noticed in the last budget that the government cancelled the eco-rebate for alternative clean energy production. This was a program that delivered one cent per kilowatt hour to producers of new green energy. What did the government do? It cancelled the program.

The government cancelled or failed to renew the ecoauto rebate program for hybrid and electric cars. This was an incredibly successful and very effective program whereby Canadian consumers could purchase hybrid cars and cars that are more energy-efficient, which has an incredibly positive effect on our environment. What did the government do? It failed to renew the program.

The New Democratic Party campaigned very hard on the environment in the last federal election. One of the major planks of our platform was the immediate implementation of a hard cap and trade system.

I know that in 2002 the Prime Minister was calling the Kyoto accord a socialist plot. I am happy to see that he is a recent convert to what scientists around the globe have been telling us for years, which is that we need to get control of greenhouse gas emissions now.

I am still not sure that the Prime Minister understands exactly how important this is, because he is still speaking in terms of intensity emissions as a substitute for hard caps. Those are two very different concepts, with very compelling and different results. It is only by having hard caps on the emissions of greenhouse gases in this world that we are actually going to have a hope of controlling rising temperatures and climate change.

I noticed in the budget that the government has defined “clean energy” to include coal-fired and nuclear facilities. I think that is why the government is investing so much money into carbon capture and storage, the so-called carbon sequestration programs. It is because it still believes we can use dirty oil and coal and can continue to burn these fossil fuels, if only we can find a way to take the carbon dioxide that is emitted and somehow control it. I think this is misguided.

I note that of the approximately $2 billion allocated in the budget to so-called green programs, half of that, $1 billion, is going to carbon capture and trade systems and experiments and to subsidies to the nuclear industry.

It is very telling that the budget allocates less than 1% of the total stimulus package to the investment in clean energy production. This is to be contrasted with the United States, where the American stimulus package is spending four times the per capita investment amount in clean energy production.

These things are important because one cannot speak about the Arctic, about the need to preserve and protect that vital piece of Canada, without talking inevitably about protecting the environment.

I also want to talk a little about sovereignty. I will applaud the government for any moves and measures it takes that will allow Canada to assert our national autonomy over this area. Of course other countries are rapaciously circling the area and have similar designs on getting their hands on minerals and oil and gas deposits in that region in order to exploit those resources instead of protecting this vital part of our planet.

I note that Denmark and Greenland have been reported to be intending to exploit certain islands in the area, specifically the vast icefields. Greenland intends to harvest these icebergs and sell them to a world that is as thirsty for water as it is for oil.

The Danish government for its part is pouring millions of dollars into a comprehensive map showing the geological features of the Arctic Ocean, and its map runs from a shelf that is underneath its country all the way along so that it can claim part of the North Pole itself.

I do not have to remind members of the House that both the United States and Russia are countries that seem to be holding similar designs on this area. Therefore, it is vitally important that our government take all the measures it can to assert and retain our sovereignty in the area.

We cannot get too bold on this because Canadian companies and Canadian politicians have similar designs. They view the Arctic as just another economic area to be exploited, as opposed to a national environmental treasure that plays a vital role in the globe's climate system.

I note that EnCana, a Canadian company, has a current strategy to sell off its holdings in dangerous parts of the world and focus instead on developing sources of natural gas in North America, primarily under the sea floor near Davis Strait. The first and biggest licensee of resources in this area is EnCana Corporation, a transnational company with a head office in Calgary, Alberta.

I do want to caution all members of the House to make sure that the intentions behind the bill match the reality.

There are other concerns we ought to keep in mind when we are talking about the Arctic, such as the cultural aspects of the people who live in the north. We must always remember that this is not a vast unpopulated area. Rather, the Arctic is populated by many people with thousands of years of ties to these lands. We must pay attention to ensure that their needs, their aspirations, their ways of life are protected and preserved. We cannot turn back the clock on the erosion of the indigenous people's way of life once we have altered it irremediably.

In terms of the historical importance of the Arctic, and my hon. colleague from the Arctic spoke to this earlier, it is important that we pay attention to economic development and the social welfare of the people of that region.

New Democrats believe that this area of our country is in urgent need of financial support, particularly from the federal government. These people require schools, community centres and assistance with health care. I am hopeful that the Minister of Health will see to it that the appalling treatment of indigenous people, particularly in the north, and the ignoring of their health needs that has gone on for decades, and arguably centuries, is addressed by the government.

I would be happy to see a bill introduced by the government that would spend money and invest funds in the protection and enhancement of the health of the people of the Arctic. This is not just about ensuring that ships can travel untrammelled in the Arctic, but it is important for us to take a moment and ensure that the people of the Arctic are able to travel with equal freedom. In order to do that--

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

I need to interrupt the member at this time. When we resume debate on this matter the member will have six minutes remaining in his presentation.

The House resumed from February 23 consideration of the motion that Bill C-3, An Act to amend the Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Peter Milliken]

When the matter was last under debate before the House, the hon. member for Vancouver Kingsway had the floor, and there are six minutes remaining in the time allotted for his remarks.

I therefore call upon the hon. member for Vancouver Kingsway.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege to have the opportunity to continue my comments on this important legislation.

Before I do, I want to commend the excellent work of my colleague, the hon. member for Western Arctic, for his incisive analysis and wonderful commitment both to the territorial integrity, our environment as well as the welfare of the people of the north.

The bill highlights a number of issues and policies of great importance to Canadians. Canadians care deeply about protecting our sovereignty, about defending the territorial integrity of our boundaries, of protecting our waters and the rich life that dwells within them.

Canadians care deeply about our pristine Arctic and the need to keep this precious part of our country preserved for generations to come.

Last but not least Canadians care profoundly about our environment and the need for prompt and effective action to combat climate change.

The bill also highlights the need for Canada to pursue a course that respects international co-operation and diplomacy, to resolve co-operatively with all the countries that have claims and interests around the Arctic and to resolve any and all territorial issues that may arise.

First and foremost on our minds and in all our relations with all other countries must be the need to protect and preserve the Arctic, not only as an important piece of our climate but also as an important piece of land that has been occupied for thousands and thousands of years by the first nations of our country.

I want to speak a little about climate change and the environment. We are seeing dramatic effects of worldwide climate change, in particular on the Arctic. We are seeing melting ice and threatened species. We are threatened on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis with rising sea levels.

Most important, and alarmingly, the effects of climate change on the Arctic is a signal of worldwide climate catastrophe. However, I want to speak a little about solutions.

In the south, where the vast majority of Canadians live, where the vast majority of people of the world live and, most important, where the problems that cause climate change are primarily created, we have the tools and means available to us to deal with this problem and help preserve the Arctic.

We need to support all development, all industry, all jobs and all technology that will help create solar power and wind power, which will start to harness the tidal forces on both coasts of our country and, in fact, in the north. We need to harness geothermal heat as an important source of heating our northern country.

The New Democrat caucus is firmly committed to pursuing a new economy that supports green technologies, green industries and green jobs. We need to find ways to reduce and to price carbon effectively. Our party campaigned very strongly and effectively on establishing a cap and trade system, a system that would have hard caps, one that would start to slow down and reverse the emission of greenhouse gases, which are such a prime cause of worldwide climate warming.

President Obama gets it. The United States is starting to control its levels of greenhouse gas emissions better than Canada is.

Therefore, I urge all members of the House to join with the New Democrats in helping to protect our Arctic, and this can only be done by protecting our environment. It is important we protect our borders and this can be only done by protecting our coastlines.

Last, it is so important that we protect Canadian sovereignty and this can only be done by acting with intelligence, co-operation and diplomacy on the world stage.

I urge all members of the House to join with New Democrats and continue to fight hard to protect our environment, to enhance Canadian sovereignty and to act strongly and fairly on behalf of all Canadians and on the world stage.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, in talking about the Arctic and the protection of the Arctic, it cannot be extricated from the notion of climate change. We have seen this time and again. In fact, studies that had been done in Canada's Arctic were one of the first and earliest warning signs of the effects of climate change and what they could possibly be.

Despite those warnings, despite the alarm bells sounding year after year, we have seen successive Canadian governments choose to look away. We have seen successive Canadian governments put the very fabric of the Arctic's ecosystem at risk by simply not making decisions that were required to wrestle to the ground this challenge around greenhouse gas emissions.

During the recent visit of the President of the United States to Canada, in the one public moment that the president and Prime Minister had, the Prime Minister alluded to the idea that a cap and trade system was equal if we were to measure greenhouse gas emissions both by intensity, which is being suggested here and only here in Canada by the government, and a hard cap, that those were somehow interchangeable and that the market could operate together, that the Canadian system, the Conservative system of intensity targets, which, frankly, nobody in the world uses that we have been able to find, were somehow interchangeable and we could now allow Canadian companies access to the market that will be established in the U.S.

In the real case of the legislation working its way through congress right now, it uses an entirely different system of measuring greenhouse gas emissions and proposes an entirely different system of actually dealing with investments around climate change. One is actually in sync with the European Union, with the Kyoto process and our partner countries.

I wonder if the member could comment on this strange dysfunction that our Prime Minister seems to have when trying to get the idea of how this thing will work and how we will deal with climate change.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley and commend him for his long work on the environmental file. He is respected among all members of this House and by the Canadian public for his diligent and long-standing effort on behalf of the environment.

It is worth reminding all Canadians that the New Democratic Party was the first party to use the words “climate change” in this House of Commons in the early 1980s. At that time, of course, many people on the other side of the House in the Liberal and Conservative Parties actually ridiculed us for that. They called us alarmists and tree-huggers. In fact, as late as 2002 the Prime Minister was still calling Kyoto a socialist plot.

I think all Canadians now know that this is no game. Climate change is here, it is real and it must be dealt with.

My hon. colleague asked about emission intensity versus hard caps. He raises an excellent point. Establishing a cap and trade system that is based on emission intensity is untried and untested. It is simply not accepted by the vast majority of respected scientists in this world. I do not even think it is accepted by the industries that are expected to implement it.

What we need in this country is a system of hard caps. If we are serious about combatting climate change and bringing down greenhouse gases, we need to set aggressive levels and bring them down in a studied and measured annual and five year allotted time zone so we can bring them down in a controlled fashion. This is the system that I understand was used successfully to deal with the acid rain problem that afflicted the Great Lakes. It was a cap and trade system that was used effectively by industry, by business and by joint cooperation between the United States and Canada to effectively tackle that problem.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to ask my colleague a question on probably the sidebar of the impacts of the changing environment on the Arctic, and that is Arctic research.

There was a story in the press today containing commentary by the executive director of the International Polar Year. He spoke about the excellent work that had been done by scientists in accumulating data over the past year under an International Polar Year convention but went on to say that it was in some jeopardy because there was no further funding to do the analysis, to do the research and to carry on with the collection of data.

This is a moving target in the Arctic and we cannot be satisfied with one year. We must continue the programs of research and development, research in the Arctic and the development of strategies to combat the changing climate conditions there.

How does my colleague see, within the Conservative mentality within the budget that we are seeing now, the required direction to researchers to continue the very important work that is going on now and was going on in the past in the Arctic?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, in a nutshell, I do not see it. This bill would extend the territorial waters of our north by, I believe, another 100 kilometres, which is an important development, but expanding the territorial integrity of our country without protecting and preserving the environmental, social and cultural health of what lies within those borders is folly.

One of the main failings of this budget before us is that it simply does not do enough in terms of scientific research. While there are some positive measures in the budget in that respect, we need to go much farther and much faster in this regard.

The hon. member for Western Arctic spoke about polar bears. What is most alarming about the threats to this species is that it exists at the highest level of the food chain. If we have problems at that level of higher order mammals, that is a harbinger of deep problems environmentally in the north.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his excellent, cogent and clear remarks on the bill. It is an important bill and I commend the government for bringing it forward. We need to extend the ambit of our responsibilities over the Arctic and extend those protections.

What is unfortunate is that the government did not bring forward at the same time measures to protect the coastal regions. Those who work in the area of marine law and marine protection fully understand that it is not enough to simply protect the ocean as it is. What is even more important is to protect the areas of land that are on the edge of those waters because there may be deleterious substances and a lot of activities, erosion and so forth, that can affect the fishery, the wildlife and the clarity of the water.

It is one thing to table a strong law but it is another thing to have the leadership to actually bring forward the resources and the strategy to enforce it. The commissioner for sustainable development, when he tabled his report in the last couple of weeks, raised a litany of problems and failures of the government to actually enforce the law.

The former minister of the environment, in the mid-1980s when the government first tabled the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, said, “A law is hollow without an enforcement strategy”.

Does the hon. member think it is important to also bring forward a strategy on enforcing this law and actually putting it into effect?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, once again, it is my pleasure to commend the hon. member for Edmonton—Strathcona who also, through decades of effective work in the environmental movement, is respected by Canadians from coast to coast to coast.

She is absolutely dead on in pointing out that enforcement is an incredibly important component of this bill and, in fact, all environmental measures.

I also want to take this opportunity to commend the government on this bill. As we have said already, we do support the bill and we will work with the government to improve it in any respect that we can.

I want to conclude my remarks on this bill by pointing out that Canadians want effective environmental legislation. The concern about this bill is that we would be expanding our sovereignty and protecting our territory for the purpose of exploiting natural resources and minerals in the area. If that is the case, then we would be doing a disservice to Canadians because Canadians value the Arctic. What is priceless to them is to have a pristine area of our country and an incredibly important aspect of the world climate system preserved for generations to come.

We owe that debt to our children and grandchildren and to the citizens of the world, and the New Democrats will work toward that goal.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

Is the House ready for the question?

[Some hon. members]

Question.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

The question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?