Bill C-13 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act, the Hazardous Products Act, the Radiation Emitting Devices Act, the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, the Pest Control Products Act and the Canada Consumer Product Safety Act and to make related amendments to another Act

This enactment enables Canada to implement the Agreement on Trade Facilitation, which was done at Geneva by members of the World Trade Organization, including Canada, on November 27, 2014, as an amendment to Annex 1A of the Marrakesh Agreement Establishing the World Trade Organization.
It amends the Food and Drugs Act, the Hazardous Products Act, the Radiation Emitting Devices Act, the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, the Pest Control Products Act and the Canada Consumer Product Safety Act, to bring them into conformity with Canada’s obligations under the Agreement on Trade Facilitation.
It also makes related amendments to another Act.

Food and Drugs Act

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

This is just a reminder to members to address answers and questions to the chair.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

Madam Speaker, I just want to compliment our colleagues here today in the House, because Canadians are competitive. They have been competitive for decades, centuries. We reinvent ourselves.

I look at my province. We have the best agriculture farmers in the world. Everybody wants our product. Everybody wants a product from Ontario, because we have good workers. We have not talked about that in the House, but Canadians are one of the best in the world at producing, one of the best in the world at manufacturing. I think that is something that we should be proud of in this country. We have not talked enough about it in the House here.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Madam Speaker, I will say through you that the member should not stop there. He should not stop with manufacturing. Let us think about the farmers.

When we did that cross-country tour, I saw what was taking place in Alberta and I saw what was taking place in Saskatchewan and Manitoba. I know what takes place in southwestern Ontario. When I took that trip from Montreal to Quebec and saw the innovation that is taking place there, I saw that we have so much to be proud of. Just spending time in the Maritimes and seeing how our fishing industry is rebounding again, we could go on and on. We have the finest institutions in our education system. We have schools that people from across the world are dying to get into. We have so much to offer. We have nothing to fear. I believe that as a nation, given the chance, when we compete, we will succeed.

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Madam Speaker, I have a quick question that I think my colleague will appreciate.

The member's riding is a riding steeped in trade history. It used to be the home of the Canada Southern Railway, the Cayuga Subdivision, and the CSX from Blenheim to Sarnia. These are all major lines that were very important to southern Ontario.

Could the member address how losing many of these lines has affected trade in his area?

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Madam Speaker, I think most of us would agree that the times they are a-changing. What was once the best mode of transportation is no longer the best mode of transportation.

I sometimes wonder when I travel down the 401, for instance, and I see all of those trucks, if we are doing this the right way. That is what we can do as Canadians. The trucking industry is another one that I failed to mention, and I should have. I once chaired a caucus called the trucking caucus.

We talked about Adam Smith, the unguided hand. This is an area where, and this is the beauty of it, if we are involved in trade that is unfettered, where everyone gets an opportunity, somebody is going to come along with an improvement in trucking or rail. We can start to do those things. That is why I get excited when I think about free trade. That is why I get excited when I go across the country and see the innovation and all the great minds that are involved in this enterprise.

Again I say, we have nothing to fear. We will move forward.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise to debate Bill C-13. As New Democrats, we support getting the bill to committee, but there are some serious questions that need to be addressed at committee.

Over more than a decade, I have seen an almost juvenile debate against trade or for trade. All these things turn off many Canadians, because they understand that trade created this country. Even in terms of the foundation of this country, there were different items that allowed for trade and sale. Some of the most severe, for example, were related to slavery. Canada and the British Empire were one of the first to end that trade practice, despite our neighbours to the south who continued that practice. It is part of the heritage of the area of Windsor West, which was the end of the Underground Railroad, where people came for freedom. They were a commodity.

Trade is ingrained, in a much more social fabric, and is part of our history.

Bill C-13 is very important and we should not underestimate it. Those who think it is just a maintenance bill have to go no further than reading the acts it is amending. The Food and Drugs Act is obviously very important for our health and items related to our food chain.

The Hazardous Products Act is significant. I come from a community where more than 30% of our daily trade with the United States goes along two kilometres of the border, and in that two kilometres, we fight daily to make sure that hazardous material crosses on a ferry system, in full compliance with the law, versus going over a bridge, where there is no way to get fire services to put out a fire in a truck that has chemicals or other things that should not be there. Unfortunately, in that process, some people in trucking institutions change the placard that says that it has dangerous or hazardous materials and has to cross at certain crossings. They will change that placard by taking it off or putting another one on to hide it so they can cross the border. Nobody sees them, at times, until they get to the other side. If there is such a thing as a spill, there is no containment and capture on the Ambassador Bridge. It seeps into our drinking water.

Another act needing amendment is the Radiation Emitting Devices Act. Nuclear waste is a significant issue that we as a country, and many other countries across the globe, have not taken seriously enough. I fought a campaign about four years ago to stop Great Lakes nuclear waste items, which were not emitters themselves but were contaminated from the work they did, from going on ships across the Great Lakes. Exposure would be like standing by the shore and getting an X-ray.

Imagine if there had been any problem with the turbines and they ended up in the Great Lakes. There was no recovery system for them. However, they were then to go all the way across the ocean to Scotland to be worked on, basically to be melted down, to be consolidated in a more solid form and come back across more highly radiated but smaller. We would end that process.

The point I am making is that even during the creation of nuclear waste, these items that we are amending through this process could even involve hospital things, the secondary nuclear waste. This relates to the current campaigning that we are working on right now, because the government has on the table a proposal to store secondary nuclear waste for up to 100 million years right next to the Great Lakes.

This waste material is to be put down a shaft the length of the CN Tower within a kilometre of the Great Lakes for 100 million years, and only three of these in the world. Two are closed in Germany, and the third in New Mexico caught fire a couple of years ago and radiated some of the people working there.

Therefore, the single-source location for this experiment is something that we have opposed. A more progressive and thoroughly exhaustive approach to dealing with this nuclear waste is needed, as opposed to just saying, “Okay, we're going to put here, we'll give you some cash, you guys deal with this. You'll get some jobs, hooray, and we'll leave this for somebody else 100 million years from now to deal with”. Even the most stringent heavy nuclear waste facility could only last 10,000 years at best with the estimates they are making. Therefore, these issues that we can change here with Bill C-13 are very important.

The Canada Consumer Product Safety Act is another issue that would change here. It worries me, with the bill before us, and I want to see some of the testimony that comes forward. The background work that I have done on some of the counterfeit and knock-off items that are coming into Canada and also being used across the world relates to the proposed legislation, which would potentially make it easier for the movement of those materials.

People might think right now that maybe it is just a knock-off of a favourite Marvel t-shirt, sports t-shirt, or whatever it might be. It is not a big deal for them. However, when we look at the data and the research, often the people making those things are children. Instead of going to school, they are being exploited to produce those items.

At one time this parliament had an all-party committee that I co-chaired with Dan McTeague, a Liberal at the time, and we had a Conservative member, James Rajotte, formerly of the Canadian Alliance and then Conservative Party. We had several meetings on the types of items, and it was not just those handbags and t-shirts. There were counterfeit items, like circuit boards, which were in hospitals. They had CBS standards stamped right on them. Therefore, installers, electricians, and others could not determine which were the knock-offs versus the others. We heard about other types of issues, including plane and automotive parts getting into the manufacturing assembly process.

Why, when we look at Bill C-13, is this very important? It is because we are amending some other acts that would increase some of the trade, which can be good for jobs and can be good for some of the processing that we do in this country, but it comes with some risks. How do we mitigate the risks?

What I mean by that is the fact that we only screen about 4% of the containers coming into our ports in this country. We have around 10,000 trucks going through the Windsor-Detroit corridor per day. We have a compliance rate that is one of the best in the world, and an oversight rate that is among the most stringent.

Meanwhile, we only screen 4% of the containers coming in to ports like Halifax, Montreal, and Vancouver. We have heard about a number of different things, as I mentioned, related to knock-offs and counterfeits. In that, we also have drugs, some of them are not just illicit drugs but prescription drugs that are getting across the border. This act also calls for issues related to the Pest Control Products Act, chemicals that are listed in Canada. The act would now make us compliant with the WTO. With all those goods and services coming into Canada, it would give us the provision to do some screening, and I would argue that we would actually have better response. We could send them back, store or keep them, or we could redistribute them.

I have been supportive, to a degree, of that type of thing, and I will give my Conservative colleagues credit on this. I had a bill on invasive carp in the last session of Parliament, and it was passed through regulations. We had a big campaign on it. The bill was about allowing invasive carp that come from the United States into Canada to be seized by CBSA officers. Without waiting for Fisheries and Oceans officials, because in certain areas we do not have those people, the CBSA officers could then send those fish back to the United State right away or destroy them.

Here is a quick lesson for people. Invasive carp stand high when they are stood up. They eat everything so that nothing else gets food. It is an invasive aquatic species that has destroyed the Mississippi River and the heritage there, and it is sold illegally in Canada. It is seen as a delicacy, and there are other types of uses. We have been fighting to keep this out. There is an electrical fence in the Mississippi to try to keep them out of the Great Lakes, but they come across into Canada.

My bill, with some penalty improvements and a number of things, was graciously accepted by the then government and it was implemented. Now we do not have to wait for Fisheries and Oceans officials to come before sending back the invasive carp. As an interesting side issue, the reason it is so important is that the invasive carp, like the Asian carp, can live in packed ice for 48 hours. They have “zombie-like characteristics”. They can be taken out of the ice, thrown into a tank, and they will wake up. The danger is that they are not just getting into the Great Lakes but into Ontario with its thousand-plus lakes, and in other lakes across this country. They are stored in ice to be sold to market, but some people have been releasing them into those lakes. If they happen to be females that are going to give birth, we have a real risk there, and we are seeing this more.

My point is that with this new bill, it will be interesting to see some of those things taking place. However, my concern is about the workers and the obligations of sending illicit products into our country that have a high degree of risk. With this agreement, we would get that type of a benefit, but here is the drawback, and it is a serious one. If Canada is not the point of destination for something that is not approved, we have to allow it to be moved to another point. Someone could be shipping something that, for example, contains mercury that is legal in another country, or perhaps asbestos, which is another banned substance. That has been in everything from drywall to crayons for kids. These materials that are not regulated in Canada then escape our laws here and they move through. That is a best-case scenario.

That is assuming that there is no potential for those products to get further into Canada through our systems, whether by rail, plane, car, truck, or any way whatsoever. We have to rely upon the shipper to do that.

We have talked a bit about trade and competition and other things like that. I saw the Prime Minister in China. I want members to think about this. I have heard the same argument over and over again, that if we could just make sure that we have access to China and other countries, they will change their practices, they will not use children, they will not use cheap awful labour with humanitarian discrepancies, and they will not use the environment basically as a subsidy for production.

One of the things I am most proud of, and I give credit to the Liberals for eventually changing this, is that it used to be legal in Canada for an environmental fine or penalty to be a business-related expense. That is what happened. I arrived in Parliament in 2002-03. I could not believe it. Individuals could get half of their money back from a fine or a penalty. This was a judge's ruling. Say for example that a company poisoned a river and was later fined for doing so. That company could claim up to 50% of the fine as a business-related expense. There were drug cases involving illicit drugs on the market that were marked wrong and were sold to men, women, and children in Canada. Those companies were later fined for marketing infringements. Unbelievably they could claim up to 50% of that fine as a business-related expense. That is unbelievable. It would be like a person receiving a $100 speeding ticket and then getting $50 back because they were on their way to work and it could be put down as a business-related expense. That is the way the law worked when I arrived here.

Think about this. It was a bigger argument than just the injustice of that. It was the injustice to the fair competitor who was doing the right thing, the company that was not draining oil in the auto shop out back, the company that was not processing meats and other products and disposing of them and not making sure viruses were not taking place. It was the farming community that did not use pesticides and other types of operations as a subsidy versus their competitors using illegal activity. They would have to compete against this illegal activity. We still see this behaviour taking place. I give the Liberals credit for this. At that time it was the Canadian Alliance, the precursor Conservative Party. We all finally agreed on a motion that I made at the industry committee. We did not budge from it and it was changed in the budget, so that is no longer the case. It is about fair practices. That is why Bill C-13 is going to be interesting; it relates to fair practices in China and other places.

I will quote from an organized crime research brief. Some people might think that this is a New Democrat conspiracy using a document from Public Safety Canada, a review that it had in our courts on organized crime. The number one methods and techniques used by organized crime groups include smuggling methods and concealment techniques such as the use of shipping containers, concealing contraband among legitimate imported goods by using fraudulent shipping documents, and the use of transit countries and co-operation among different criminal groups. That is the problem. Therein lies some of the challenges in terms of the use of those containers that we currently have a problem on, but only at 4%. They could contain lead toys, materials not approved by Health Canada, or other materials that should not be in our consumption stream.

This is a serious piece of legislation. It is about Canada competing with other countries. It is also about Canada competing with other rules that may or may not sync up with our values.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for a very far-ranging and knowledgeable speech. He comes from Windsor and I know he has done an incredible amount of work on both sides of the border to help facilitate greater understanding between Canada and the United States, and of course in nurturing that very important trade relationship.

I would like to ask my hon. colleague to elaborate on the implications he sees in this legislation for opportunities to enhance Canada's relationship with the United States. We have been talking about the TPP and CETA being other trade arrangements with other countries of the world, but Canada and the United States always will remain the number one trading relationship for our people.

Does he see opportunities or challenges in respect to this legislation with respect to the Canada-U.S. trade relationship?

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Madam Speaker, the question is very important and is one that I did not get a chance to discuss. As we are increasing our trade, which is good, we also require the same investment for our processing and our infrastructure. That is critical, because right now we are deficient on both fronts.

We are trying to build a new border crossing in Windsor, which was supposed to be built in 2013 and now has been delayed for the RFP process because they want to do a public-private partnership indefinitely. That is giving a lot of people cold feet, because the RFP has been sitting in a box, so to speak, for seven months.

We have to invest in those allocated resources necessary for infrastructure, but also CBSA. Our men and women, who are not only checking the devices and the things coming in, but are very important in protecting against organized crime. Put the workers who were laid off back to work. They were doing investigative work with the CIA, the FBI and the RCMP.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

The time for government orders has expired and therefore the member will have approximately eight minutes left for questions and comments when the House takes on the topic again.

The House resumed from September 19 consideration of the motion that Bill C-13, an act to amend the Food and Drugs Act, the Hazardous Products Act, the Radiation Emitting Devices Act, the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, the Pest Control Products Act and the Canada Consumer Product Safety Act and to make related amendments to another Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

The hon. member for Windsor West has eight minutes remaining on debate. Questions and comments.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Madam Speaker, I was here last night and listened to the member's interesting speech about the trade issue.

In this debate, we have been covering a number of different aspects of the trade discussion. I want to ask the member about the issue of consultation on the TPP. One of the criticisms we have heard from the NDP is that this discussion supposedly happened in secret.

I have with me a list of more than 150 different stakeholders who were directly engaged in the conversation throughout the negotiating process. They signed non-disclosure agreements and were able to be part of the discussion. The member knows that.

The reality is that when there are international trade negotiations, those negotiations cannot be held in public because of commercially sensitive information that is discussed. However, there were many different stakeholders involved throughout the process.

Does the member recognize that reality and that bringing many different key Canadian stakeholders into the discussion and doing so in a way that respects the reality of commercial sensitivities is an appropriate way to conduct negotiations?

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Madam Speaker, I actually did not raise the TPP during my speech, but I would be happy to answer.

The concerns the NDP members have raised, and they are concerns brought to us by many stakeholders, not just here in Canada but at the beginning of the discussions on the TPP, were that they were done in private and created an agreement that, basically, we cannot amend right now.

Let us imagine that someone went to buy an automobile—my personal preference, in terms of my riding, would be a Pacifica—and in trying to negotiate the sale was given a contract, with the only option being to sign that contract.

Later on, when there were discussions and hearings, as we are having, we heard concerns that people were not consulted during the creation and have no avenue to deal with the issue.

I would continue to at least look at some of the benefits and some of the challenges we have. On Bill C-13, I have talked a lot about organized crime and the exposure of our ports, with goods and services coming into Canada, which would expand, as would the problems we have with organized crime.

Interestingly, we are going to have a chance in this chamber very soon to deal with a bill on organized crime. It is my private member's bill, Bill C-221, which is up for a vote on Wednesday. That bill alone will end a $10-billion annual benefit, in cash, for organized crime in Canada alone, and $4 billion in Canadian money that goes offshore.

We can affect things right here, right now. This bill, C-13, will have further challenges if we want to tackle organized crime.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, Bill C-13 is about a meeting that took place among the World Trade Organization members. Some 160-plus countries came together, recognizing that there was a need to facilitate an agreement to ensure that the world would be better off in terms of trade.

Two-thirds of those countries need to approve the agreement, signed in December 2013, to ultimately implement it. Since June, just over 80 countries have ratified it.

Bill C-13 is about ratification by Canada so that we accept what is being proposed. My understanding is that the New Democrats will be supporting Bill C-13 going to committee.

Is the member aware of any amendments he might want to share with the House that he believes should be brought forward at the committee stage?

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Madam Speaker, yes, there will be amendments, and there will also be concerns raised with regard to the ports, where the volume of traffic coming into the ports is only checked at 4%. I submitted evidence yesterday, including from the minister's organization, the Public Safety Canada report that talked about how only 4% of containers that come into Canada are checked for contraband or illegal goods and how organized crime uses this as the number one element to get goods into Canada.

Interestingly enough, what was in the government report was the fact that contraband and illegal goods were mixed together, and this is something we will have to deal with. To summarize, we are going to need the proper resources. Instead of the government neglecting and cutting Canada Border Services Agency positions, we need to invest in it to ensure safety for CBSA personnel and for our country.