The question is on the amendment. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the amendment?
An Act to amend the Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act, 1992
This bill is from the 40th Parliament, 2nd session, which ended in December 2009.
This bill is from the 40th Parliament, 2nd session, which ended in December 2009.
John Baird Conservative
This bill has received Royal Assent and is now law.
This is from the published bill. The Library of Parliament has also written a full legislative summary of the bill.
This enactment amends the Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act, 1992, in order to enhance public safety — the safety of human life and health and of property and the environment.
The main amendments fall into two categories: new security requirements and safety amendments. These amendments include the following:
(a) requirements for security plans and security training;
(b) a requirement that prescribed persons must hold transportation security clearances to transport dangerous goods, and the establishment of regulatory authority in relation to appeals and reviews of any decision in respect of those clearances;
(c) the creation of a choice of instruments — regulations, security measures and interim orders — to govern security in relation to dangerous goods;
(d) the use of industry emergency response assistance plans approved by Transport Canada to respond to an actual or apprehended release of dangerous goods during their transportation;
(e) the establishment of regulatory authority to require that dangerous goods be tracked during transport or reported if lost or stolen;
(f) clarification of the Act to ensure that it is applicable uniformly throughout Canada, including to local works and undertakings;
(g) reinforcement and strengthening of the Emergency Response Assistance Plan Program; and
(h) authority for inspectors to inspect any place in which standardized means of containment are being manufactured, repaired or tested.
All sorts of information on this bill is available at LEGISinfo, an excellent resource from Parliament. You can also read the full text of the bill.
Bill numbers are reused for different bills each new session. Perhaps you were looking for one of these other C-9s:
Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act, 1992Government Orders
The Acting Speaker Barry Devolin
The question is on the amendment. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the amendment?
Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act, 1992Government Orders
Some hon. members
Agreed.
No.
Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act, 1992Government Orders
Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act, 1992Government Orders
Some hon. members
Yea.
Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act, 1992Government Orders
Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act, 1992Government Orders
Some hon. members
Nay.
Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act, 1992Government Orders
The Acting Speaker Barry Devolin
In my opinion the nays have it.
And five or more members having risen:
Call in the members.
And the bells having rung:
The vote stands deferred until the end of government orders today.
The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-9, An Act to amend the Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act, 1992, be read the third time and passed, and of the amendment.
Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act, 1992Government Orders
The Speaker Peter Milliken
The House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the amendment to the motion at third reading of Bill C-9.
Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act, 1992Government Orders
The House resumed from March 23 consideration of the motion that Bill C-9, An Act to amend the Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act, 1992, be read the third time and passed.
Don Davies NDP Vancouver Kingsway, BC
Mr. Speaker, it gives me pleasure to rise today to speak to this bill. I want to mention the fine work that has been done by all members of the House but in particular by the hon. member for Western Arctic.
The NDP supports the general aim of this bill, which in short, aims to provide made in Canada regulations concerning the transportation and handling of dangerous goods. The New Democrats believe it is important to ensure the safety of the public, workers, and indeed all those involved in the transportation of dangerous goods. Once again, this bill brings to Canada an updated and made in Canada set of regulations to achieve that goal.
I also want to point out the excellent work done by several industry advocates and those knowledgeable about the transportation of dangerous goods, including those in the Teamsters union, who met extensively with members of the House to give their expert views in the area.
In the NDP's view, there is one major and serious flaw with the bill, which is that the bill requires everyone in Canada who handles dangerous goods to obtain a security clearance, the details of which unfortunately are not spelled out in the text of the statute. Instead, the criteria that would go into a security clearance are left undefined and are left to regulations. In other words, these are matters that will not be debated and passed in the House and Parliament. We have no idea what these criteria will be.
In the NDP's respectful view, it means the criteria that go into deciding whether someone in the country obtains a security clearance, which will be necessary for the individual to obtain and maybe retain his or her employment, are left to the discretion of the minister and are subject to change. That leads to a very real concern. The criteria that ultimately will be discerned and applied in the security clearance certificates will violate Canadians' long-standing privacy and constitutional rights.
Because of this flaw, the NDP tried to refer the bill back to committee, to get the committee to work on the matter to improve the bill and put it in a position that would address our party's concerns. Unfortunately, that has not been the will of the House. I want to elaborate on why we think this is such an important feature of an otherwise sound bill.
Prior to being elected, I worked for 16 years with a union that represented many workers involved in the transportation industry, many of whom were involved in the transportation and handling of dangerous goods.
I also did a lot of research on the drive to inculcate security requirements in this field. In particular, I became aware of the security and prosperity partnership process which began in 2005 under the previous Liberal government and championed by then Prime Minister Paul Martin. This process was carried on by Prime Minister Harper, and continues to this day.
Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act, 1992Government Orders
The Acting Speaker Barry Devolin
Order. I would remind the member that he is not to use the given names of members of the House of Commons.
Don Davies NDP Vancouver Kingsway, BC
Mr. Speaker, I will gladly strike those references and refer to them as the previous Liberal prime minister and the current Prime Minister.
The SPP essentially comprised executive level and bureaucratic discussions among Canada, the United States and Mexico. These discussions have been conducted outside Parliament and have been conducted in secret. We have found that in these discussions over 300 separate areas of government involvement have been under discussion with a view to harmonizing these standards, things that involve food safety, consumer protection, water. Almost every aspect of our country's sovereignty has been up for discussion in these talks.
One of our concerns is regarding the essence of the matter before the House right now and of which I am speaking, which is, the criteria that go into security clearance for workers. The United States has imposed draconian requirements upon workers in the United States ever since 9/11. Many of these violate long-standing principles of Canadian jurisprudence and law, including our human rights, our rights to privacy and our rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
For example, in the United States it is considered lawful and there is legislation to require workers who are not only involved in the transportation and handling of dangerous goods but in all sorts of areas to provide things like biometric information, retinal scans, fingerprints, hand shapes, and DNA samples. They have been asked and, at the risk of losing their jobs, are required to provide invasive information, such as their sexual orientation, the ports of entry when they immigrated, notwithstanding that they may have been citizens for decades, criminal records, marital status, and educational institutions they attended. This information has also been required of their spouses.
In the United States this information is not only required of these workers but they are required to sign forms that authorize the United States to share that information with any other country in the world. In many countries these workers do not have the same protection and many countries do not have the same respect for human rights that Canada has.
Those of us who have been following the SPP talks for the last three years are very concerned that Canada has tacitly agreed to follow the standards set by the United States in these areas. Because the criteria that will go into the granting of a security clearance are not specified in the legislation, we have grave concerns that these criteria will drop to those invasive standards that have been imposed by the United States.
One might ask what the difference is, that this is about the transportation and handling of dangerous goods, and people who have to cross the border into the United States should be subject to these standards. Here is where there is a major problem. It may be justifiable for these standards to be imposed on workers who transport dangerous goods across the border. That may be reasonable, but it is not reasonable to impose those standards on workers who never leave this country, those workers who work in warehouses and storage facilities in the body of our country. For them to be subjected to the extraterritorial application of American law when they may choose never to leave our country is wrong. It leads to concerns about people's democratic rights where Canadian citizens are subjected essentially to American-made requirements when they have no democratic right or means to influence those standards.
There have been cases where workers in the United States have lost their jobs when they decided to enforce their privacy rights, or they have lost their jobs when some aspect of the information that they have provided has caused concern.
If this were to happen in Canada, if someone were denied a security clearance certificate, how would the individual be able to challenge that?
In this case, we in the New Democratic Party are concerned. Canadian workers should have their right to privacy and their human rights respected.
We do not, in any manner, dispute the requirement to impose standards that ensure Canadians are safe and that the transportation of dangerous goods is conducted by people to protect the safety of the public. However, I would point out that there has not been one instance, not one in this country, where anybody who has transported goods in the transportation industry has been charged with any offence.
It is a great price to pay for Canadian workers to subject collectively the potential loss of their civil liberties when there has not been demonstrated in even one instance across this land, a need for same.
We must jealously and sedulously guard our civil rights at all times. It is easy in a time of peace to stand up for those rights, but it is harder when we are under threat. It becomes even more incumbent upon us as parliamentarians, I would respectfully submit, to stand up for those civil rights, those rights that our forefathers have fought for and that people are currently fighting for across this globe, to make sure that our rights are protected at all times and are only deprived of those rights for good and sufficient reason.
The bill would be an excellent bill, were it to include in the legislation, now debated in the House for all parliamentarians to see, the criteria Canadian workers would have to satisfy in order to get security clearance. Unfortunately, once again, the bill does not have that measure, and therefore, we are unable to support the bill because of that one aspect.
I would encourage and implore the members opposite who have done fine work on the bill, in many aspects, to look at this section. I am sure it is not their intent to violate the privacy and civil rights of Canadian workers, but they should be vigilant to ensure that the bill does not have that effect, even inadvertently.
I want to congratulate the fine work of my colleague from Western Arctic who has been such a strong supporter and protector of Canadian workers, and vigilant in making sure that their rights are taken into account, so that we can ensure not only the safety of dangerous goods in this country, and the transportation and storing of same, but also the civil and privacy rights of Canadian workers.