Bill C-383 (Historical)

Transboundary Waters Protection Act

An Act to amend the International Boundary Waters Treaty Act and the International River Improvements Act

This enactment amends the International Boundary Waters Treaty Act to prohibit the bulk removal of transboundary waters. Some definitions and exceptions that are currently found in regulations are transferred to the Act. The enactment also provides for measures to administer and enforce the Act. Lastly, it also makes a consequential amendment to the International River Improvements Act.

[The Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

I have the honour to inform the House that when the House did attend His Excellency the Governor General in the Senate chamber, His Excellency was pleased to give, in Her Majesty's name, the royal assent to certain bills:

C-321, An Act to amend the Canada Post Corporation Act (library materials)—Chapter 10, 2013.

C-37, An Act to amend the Criminal Code—Chapter 11, 2013.

C-383, An Act to amend the International Boundary Waters Treaty Act and the International River Improvements Act—Chapter 12, 2013.

S-9, An Act to amend the Criminal Code—Chapter 13, 2013.

C-47, An Act to enact the Nunavut Planning and Project Assessment Act and the Northwest Territories Surface Rights Board Act and to make related and consequential amendments to other Acts—Chapter 14, 2013.

C-309, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (concealment of identity)—Chapter 15, 2013.

C-43, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act—Chapter 16, 2013.

S-213, An Act respecting a national day of remembrance to honour Canadian veterans of the Korean War—Chapter 17, 2013.

C-42, An Act to amend the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Act and to make related and consequential amendments to other Acts—Chapter 18, 2013.

S-209, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (prize fights)—Chapter 19, 2013.

S-2, An Act respecting family homes situated on First Nation reserves and matrimonial interests or rights in or to structures and lands situated on those reserves—Chapter 20, 2013.

S-8, An Act respecting the safety of drinking water on First Nation lands—Chapter 21, 2013.

C-63, An Act for granting to Her Majesty certain sums of money for the federal public administration for the financial year ending March 31, 2014—Chapter 22, 2013.

C-64, An Act for granting to Her Majesty certain sums of money for the federal public administration for the financial year ending March 31, 2014—Chapter 23, 2013.

C-15, An Act to amend the National Defence Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts—Chapter 24, 2013.

C-62, An Act to give effect to the Yale First Nation Final Agreement and to make consequential amendments to other Acts—Chapter 25, 2013.

S-14, An Act to amend the Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act—Chapter 26, 2013.

S-17, An Act to implement conventions, protocols, agreements and a supplementary convention, concluded between Canada and Namibia, Serbia, Poland, Hong Kong, Luxembourg and Switzerland, for the avoidance of double taxation and the prevention of fiscal evasion with respect to taxes—Chapter 27, 2013.

S-15, An Act to amend the Canada National Parks Act and the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Resources Accord Implementation Act and to make consequential amendments to the Canada Shipping Act, 2001—Chapter 28, 2013.

It being 4:24 p.m., the House stands adjourned until Monday, September 16, 2013, at 11 a.m., pursuant to Standing Orders 28(2) and 24(1).

(The House adjourned at 4:24 p.m.)

The first session of the 41st Parliament was prorogued by royal proclamation on September 13, 2013.

Foreign Affairs

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Mr. Speaker, a little order here would be good.

Today the House will vote at third reading on my private member's bill, the Transboundary Waters Protection Act. Through all stages, the bill has received overwhelming support from all members of the House, and I am very grateful for that support. I am hopeful that we will soon see it enacted.

I know the bill is very important to my constituents of Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound. Would the Minister of Foreign Affairs please tell the House why Bill C-383 is so important and whether he will be supporting it?

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Bonjour, monsieur le Président.

Today the House will vote on third reading on my private member's bill, Bill C-383, the Transboundary Waters Protection Act.

Foreign Affairs and International Development

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West—Glanbrook, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the fifth report of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development in relation to Bill C-383, An Act to amend the International Boundary Waters Treaty Act and the International River Improvements Act.

The committee has studied the bill and has agreed to report the bill back to the House with amendments.

Jobs and Growth Act, 2012

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member mentioned briefly that he thinks there is something missing in private member's Bill C-383. I am curious to know what he thinks is missing from that bill because I am looking forward to its passage to ban bulk water exports.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me this morning to rise once again in the House to debate a 2012 budget implementation bill. This is the second round of debate on the 2012 budget. I would like to start by taking my colleagues back 20 years in time, to 1993 and 1994, when three events took place that I believe are relevant to the debate today in the House.

The first event was the election of a Liberal majority government headed by Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, which set Canada, the state, the federal government, on the road to sound economic and fiscal management. The Liberal government bequeathed to the Conservative government a budget surplus that was extraordinary and unprecedented in Canada's history and that could have been used to maintain economic prosperity. In the end, that did not happen.

The second event occurred in the House of Commons before I was elected. However, I was on the Hill at the time. I remember the arrival of about 50 Reform members, including today's Prime Minister, who was the member for Calgary at the time. As I recall, he arrived in the House with 49 Reform Party colleagues.

The third event I will mention has to do with the Liberal government of the day, under Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. That government introduced Bill C-17, its budget implementation bill. I would like to remind the House of the length of that budget implementation bill. Mr. Speaker, you and my other colleagues in this House might be surprised to hear that, in total, Bill C-17 was 21 pages long and amended a total of 11 pieces of Canadian legislation.

Let us compare that to the current situation. Last fall, we debated a budget implementation bill that was about 500 pages long and amended about 70 pieces of Canadian legislation. Today we are debating Bill C-45, which is 443 pages long and amends 60 Canadian acts. In less than 12 months, we have debated two bills that together total about 900 pages and amend about 130 Canadian acts. We have come a long way since 1993.

What is interesting is that even the short, 21-page budget implementation bill that I just mentioned, that modest bill, triggered a strong reaction from the member from Calgary who is now the Prime Minister of Canada. He said, and I quote:

The particular bill before us, Bill C-17, is of an omnibus nature. I put it to you, Mr. Speaker, that you should rule it out of order and it should not be considered by the House in the form in which it has been presented....

I would argue that the subject matter of the bill is so diverse that a single vote on the content would put members in conflict with their own principles.

If people were outraged at the time, in 1994, regarding a budget implementation bill that was 21 pages long and amended 11 Canadian acts, well then they should be 45 times more outraged today.

What we have seen recently in the House is about 45 times worse than what went on in 1994 with Bill C-17. This should put things into perspective a little bit.

It is interesting that we heard the member opposite speak about family. That is an important point. It is important that every now and then we bring things back to the perspective of the communities and families we represent here in the House.

Sometimes things get a little too complicated here. They get too broad and complicated, layer upon layer, to the point where parliamentarians have a hard time seeing things clearly. Imagine how hard it is for our constituents, who are not engaged in this House every day, who are going about their business, earning their living, bringing up their kids, to wrap their minds around what is going on in this House, especially around a budget?

Let us look at what a family does when they create a budget. Let us say, hypothetically, that a family sits down, the parents and the kids, to discuss the family budget. What would they discuss? They would discuss the revenues they expect for the coming year, what they expect to spend and how they perhaps expect to lower their debt levels. That is what they need to talk about, if they are to have a good budget. If they start to talk about junior's hockey schedule or how much time the son or daughter should be allowed to watch TV per week, and so on and so forth, they would go astray from the subject at hand. They are not going to be as effective in managing the household economy essentially, the household budget.

I would suggest that the fact that we keep bringing in complex pieces of legislation, such as these two budget implementation acts, may be distracting the government's focus and not allowing it to be as effective as it might be.

I have seen two bills, which are unrelated to this bill, come before the House, and they had glaring holes in them. One was Bill C-383, and I do not understand how it got by the lawyers in the trade department, quite frankly. We saw another bill last week, the nuclear terrorism act, which my colleague said omitted a very important and central piece.

We should simplify things a bit and not spread ourselves too thinly, so that we can do our work properly as parliamentarians and the government can achieve some focus and get some results.

On that theme, the budget implementation act obviously does include measures which should be in a budget implementation act. That goes without saying. Even if we disagree with what the government is doing with the SR and ED, the scientific research and development tax credit, it belongs in a budget; it is a budgetary matter.

I would add that I think it may be dangerous that the government is getting away from a kind of broad-based program to stimulate innovation in this country in every small- and medium-sized business across the land, to an approach whereby the government would be giving subsidies instead of tax credits for research. It would be giving subsidies to a few bigger players in an attempt to pick winners and losers in the 21st century economy. We have issues with that, but I would agree that it belongs in a budget bill.

However, there are some things that do not belong in a budget bill. One is rewriting laws that protect Canada's waterways. I do not know what that is doing in a budget bill. Another is redefining the definition of aboriginal fisheries. What is that doing in a budget bill? Eliminating the Hazardous Materials Information Review Commission is about human health and public safety. That is not about revenues and expenditures and debt levels and so on.

I have an issue, like many of my colleagues in the House, with the budget going astray and including all kinds of extraneous elements.

However, to get a subject that is of great interest to me, I would concur with my colleague from Saanich—Gulf Islands that when the Fisheries Act was passed and the Navigable Waters Protection Act was passed, the word “environment” did not exist. If we are to be literal, as the government likes to be, let us go back to the quote that I just read from the then Reform Party member and now Prime Minister, who said that 21 pages amending 11 acts is too long.

Transboundary Waters Protection Act

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Mr. Speaker, earlier today I was pleased to join with my colleague, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, as he confirmed the government's support for my private member's bill on bulk water removal.

Bill C-383 proposes stronger measures to prevent the bulk removal of water from Canada and strengthens enforcement provisions and penalties. It also delivers on a long-standing government commitment. My bill would reaffirm the Prime Minister's commitment to sovereignty over our water. Canadians need to know that our water is not for sale, and Bill C-383 would achieve that.

I have spoken to some opposition members who have expressed their support for this bill. I hope there will be continued support for it as it is debated more in the House.

The bill respects provincial sovereignty when it comes to water issues. We will continue to work with our provincial and territorial partners to ensure that Canada's fresh water is protected.

I am very happy to have such great support for the bill. I hope all members will support Bill C-383 when it comes up for debate next month.

Private Members' Business

[The Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

The Chair would like to take a moment to provide some information to the House regarding the management of private members' business.

As members know, after the order of precedence is replenished, the Chair reviews the new items so as to alert the House to bills which at first glance appear to impinge on the financial prerogative of the Crown. This allows members the opportunity to intervene in a timely fashion to present their views about the need for those bills to be accompanied by a royal recommendation.

Accordingly, following the February 16, 2012 replenishment of the order of precedence with 15 new items, I wish to inform the House that there is one bill that gives the Chair some concern as to the spending provisions it contemplates. It is Bill C-383, An Act to amend the International Boundary Waters Treaty Act and the International River Improvements Act, standing in the name of the member for Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound.

I would encourage hon. members who would like to make arguments regarding the need for a royal recommendation for this bill, or any other bills now on the order of precedence, to do so at an early opportunity.

I thank hon. members for their attention.

Canada Water Preservation Act

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the issue today is critical. Fresh water is the source of all forms of life on earth. The protection and conservation of fresh water are political issues of the 21st century. Seen from space, Canada has one of the largest supplies of water in the world, but on the ground the situation is very different. Our water consumption is concentrated in a specific geographic area: 60% of our watercourses flow to the north of the country, but over 90% of the population is concentrated along the southern border.

As custodians of 9% of the planet’s renewable water resources, we have a moral obligation to preserve them for our generation and future generations. Thank God this is an issue on which there is consensus. For example, in the throne speech of November 19, 2008, the government said: “To ensure protection of our vital resources, our Government will bring in legislation to ban all bulk water transfers or exports from Canadian freshwater basins.”

We had that commitment before. I spoke of the Speech from the Throne in 2008.

When I worked many years ago, as part of the previous government of Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, that was the last time Canada took a comprehensive look at our water resources. The federal water policy, which remains the only federal water policy passed to this date, was passed in 1987. The Government of Canada committed to a federal water policy, which included that we would ban bulk water exports. Yet we stand here, more than 20 years later, without that prohibition.

I am very grateful to my friend for the introduction of Bill C-267, which ascribes in every respect to the best possible approach to how to ban the transfer of bulk water from one basin to another. I am aware, and I thank my friend, the member for Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, for a similar bill, Bill C-383. I would wish we had the ability to blend the two. However, there is no question that Bill C-267 responds to the issue in a way in which it must be responded.

The bill respecting the preservation of Canada's water resources before us this evening deals with the issue in terms of the inter-basin transfer of water. There are five major drainage basins for all of the water of Canada. If we think about it, it is very logical and intuitive. All our water drains toward larger areas. The five major drainage basins are the Arctic Ocean, Hudson Bay, the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean and even the Gulf of Mexico from which our Great Lakes drain toward the south. These are the five major drainage basins and it is to these drainage basins that Bill C-267 speaks by prohibiting the inter-basin transfer of water, prohibiting the massive transfer of water in bulk.

This is critical because Bill C-383 is quite similar to a previous government legislation, Bill C-26. It dealt only with boundary and transboundary water. It is important for us to remember that when we are looking at boundary and transboundary water, we are looking at 10% of Canada's water resources. In other words, 90% of Canada's water resources are found in basins that could not be defined as boundary or transboundary water. As such, the acts we will be looking at later in this session, the International Boundary Waters Treaty Act and the International River Improvement Act, are certainly laudable, but fall far short of what we need, which is why if it were possible to include the provisions of both bills together, we would have stronger legislation.

I do not have quite the same concern as the hon. member for Nickel Belt about the fact that it is left to regulations to describe a drainage basin. There is no question, however, since there really are five drainage basins for Canada and they are well known and are a matter of scientific fact, that it certainly would be wise to include them when the bill goes to committee and comes to amendment. That would leave no wiggle room for some sort of political fix that would deny the hydrogeology of Canada's land mass to try to say that there was something other than five major drainage basins. It is a scientific fact that is what there is.

We have always had the threat when we look at the transfer of basin water from one to the other. The most grandiose of these schemes was put forward repeatedly in the early 1980s. The grand canal scheme was the idea that we would move water from one basin, the Hudson Bay drainage basin, and put it into pipelines to ship down to the U.S. That grand canal scheme would not be at all affected by private member's Bill C-383, which deals with boundary and transboundary water. However, it would be completely caught by Bill C-267, which speaks to the key issue, and that is the removal of water in bulk.

Under the interpretation and definition section of the bill, it states, “removal of water in bulk” means the removal of water, whether it has been treated or not, from the major drainage basin in which the water is located by any means of diversion that includes a pipeline, canal, tunnel, aqueduct or channel”, which is a perfect way of ensuring the grand canal scheme never happens, “or by any other means of diversion by which more than 50,000 litres of water per day is removed from major drainage basin”.

This speaks to ecological realities. It is not a political statement of a boundary. It speaks to the key issue, which is how do we ensure that we do not commit a serious and egregious error in which Canada's water is moved from one basin to another. We think we are a water-rich nation, but the reality is we only have 9% of the world's renewable water, the U.S. has 6%. We are roughly in the same territory. For all the water we have, what we have is precious and we have to protect it.

The other reason for this legislation does not come from an ecological threat. It comes from the reality of NAFTA. We have a situation where under the North American Free Trade Agreement, should we allow a single transaction of the shipment of water in bulk from one drainage basin to the other, particularly from one drainage basin in Canada for sale in the United States, we would then have turned a tap on and would be simply impossible under the terms of NAFTA to turn off.

The reason one could say that water is not covered under NAFTA is that water in its natural state in natural water bodies and water courses is not a good in trade. The minute we make that a good in trade, then the taps are open everywhere.

It is critical that Canada protects our water sources by prohibiting the transfer of water in bulk, prohibiting its sale, prohibiting water in its natural state from ever being seen as a good in commerce.

One last reason why the legislation is essential is we may feel awash in water, but the impact of the climate crisis, as the previous member has mentioned, will have its primary initial impact on reducing our access to water, its quality and its quantity. That is why I am so very proud to stand as the member of Parliament for Saanich—Gulf Islands and as the leader of the Green Party of Canada to speak, to plead that the House lives up to the commitments that were made in 1987 in the federal water policy and to the commitment of the current Prime Minister in the Speech from the Throne of 2008 to ban bulk water exports.

We need to take precautionary measures now. I plead with all members of the House to ensure that Bill C-267 lives up to the promises of generations to protect our fresh water in our country.