An Act to amend the Fisheries Act (prohibition — deposit of raw sewage)

This bill was last introduced in the 43rd Parliament, 2nd Session, which ended in August 2021.

Sponsor

Andrew Scheer  Conservative

Introduced as a private member’s bill. (These don’t often become law.)

Status

Defeated, as of June 23, 2021
(This bill did not become law.)

Summary

This is from the published bill. The Library of Parliament often publishes better independent summaries.

This enactment amends the Fisheries Act in order to exclude raw sewage from the definition of deleterious substance so as to entirely prohibit its deposit in water.

Elsewhere

All sorts of information on this bill is available at LEGISinfo, an excellent resource from the Library of Parliament. You can also read the full text of the bill.

Votes

June 23, 2021 Failed 2nd reading of Bill C-269, An Act to amend the Fisheries Act (prohibition — deposit of raw sewage)

Fisheries ActPrivate Members' Business

May 10th, 2021 / 11 a.m.


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Conservative

Andrew Scheer Conservative Regina—Qu'Appelle, SK

moved that Bill C-269, An Act to amend the Fisheries Act (prohibition — deposit of raw sewage), be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour for me to rise today to introduce my third private member's bill as the member of Parliament for Regina—Qu'Appelle.

The environment, like so many issues, is a subject on which the Liberals are all talk and no real substance. This Prime Minister has become world famous for this. In 2015, he ran on a very thin environmental platform. It was just a few paragraphs long with very few details and no modelling or costing, and was, of course, centred around a carbon tax. We now know that the carbon tax is not revenue neutral and is not actually working. Emissions pre-pandemic went up every year the government was in office.

It is not just on greenhouse gas emissions that the government has failed. The environment goes far beyond climate change. That is why in the last election, the Conservatives ran on a platform that included real action on a whole host of issues, including a very important plank that focused on cleaning up our lakes and rivers.

What do I mean by that? When it comes to the environment, the very first thing the Prime Minister did after taking office was to grant permission to the City of Montreal to dump billions of litres of raw sewage into the St. Lawrence River. The hypocrisy was astounding. The Prime Minister was very successful at portraying himself as someone who was serious about the environment. However, at the very first opportunity, he literally flushed that down the toilet by allowing Montreal, instead of treating that waste water and protecting our precious natural environment, to dump it, untreated and full of all the dangerous substances that were contained within it, into a vital water artery. The current infrastructure minister was the environment minister at the time, and she was directly involved in granting that permission as well. While she was trying to create the illusion that she was some kind of real-life captain planet, she was signing off on one of the biggest dumps of raw sewage in Canadian history.

That is a bit of background on why I have brought forward this bill today. This is a very simple bill, and I probably do not even need my full 15 minutes today to explain it and to talk about the details of it.

Under current legislation, there are various regulatory frameworks and laws that protect our water systems and fish habitat. My bill would amend the Fisheries Act to define raw sewage as what is called, under the act, a deleterious substance. Basically, any kind of substance that would harm fish habitats is prohibited from being emitted into our waterways. Given the background I have just gone over, that legislation also empowers the government to grant exemptions to authorize or issue permits, so to speak, to municipalities that need to emit those types of substances into our rivers, lakes and oceans.

My bill does things. First, it defines raw sewage as a certain type of deleterious substance. Second, it would amend the section that authorizes the government to issue these kinds of permissions and would exclude raw sewage from the list of exemptions. In essence, that means future governments would not be allowed to grant that permission. The bill is basically saying that of all the substances that one municipality or another may seek approval for, untreated waste water would not be allowed to be emitted.

It is a very simple fix. It is a very short bill, and it is very straightforward. I am hoping I can get all parties to support it, especially members of the Liberal Party in the back benches, who are probably frustrated at their own party's record on the environment.

We just have to look at a few examples where the Prime Minister has been all talk and no action. Do they remember the famous billion trees promise in the last election? Here we are, over a year and a half from the 2019 election, and not a single tree has been planted. I know that members of Parliament who come from municipalities where towns and cities have been forced, or feel like they have no choice, to emit these types of substances into the waterways are frustrated not only that municipalities are being allowed to do it but that the federal government has not been responding to the infrastructure needs of those communities. That is something else I would like to talk about for a few moments here.

I recognize that many towns and cities are dealing with an incredible challenge when it comes to their existing infrastructure needs. This new bill would obviously impose a requirement that municipalities have the capacity to deal with unexpected events, whether it is a weather event that adds a tremendous amount of unexpected water flowing through the system or aging and decaying infrastructure that needs to be replaced. This bill, by preventing future dumps of untreated waste water into our water systems, would impose a burden on municipalities.

We have done two things with the bill: One thing is in the bill and one is a future commitment. I have written in a five-year coming-into-force date. That means once the bill receives royal assent, towns and cities across the country would have five years to plan, invest and upgrade their water systems. This timeline is long enough that they would have time to do the necessary work, and is short enough that we can take real action on protecting the environment in the here and now, not just punt the ball years and years down the field.

There is a recent media report indicating that the current environment minister has given a 20-year timeline to municipalities before they even start talking about ending this practice. Of course, a lot of damage can be done to our natural environment in 20 years. That is why the five-year timeline that I have suggested in this bill is much more realistic and effective.

I probably do not need to go into a tremendous amount of detail as to why this bill is necessary and why it is necessary that we stop the practice of dumping untreated water into our water systems. I could cite numerous studies in which scientists and researchers have studied the impact on fish habitat, the depletion of stocks and the types of dangerous trace elements that have been discovered in fish whose habitat is near where the water is emitted.

This happens all across Canada; it is not just unique to the city of Montreal. There was a study done in Toronto in 2018 by an advocacy group called Swim Drink Fish. It had this to say about the state of Toronto waste water back in 2018: Regardless of rainfall, “there isn’t a day that we’ve gone to the harbour that we haven’t been able to find some evidence of sewage contamination.” Also, there were instances in Vancouver in 2016 where over 45 million cubic metres of raw sewage was leaked or otherwise dumped into nearby waterways.

We can all appreciate the importance of protecting our fish habitat. Canadians love our natural environment. It is part of our culture, part of our history and part of our social fabric. Taking all my kids fishing whenever I get the chance is something we really enjoy as a family. My daughters are probably better than I am and my two boys are asking for fishing gear for Christmas and birthdays.

I am very fortunate to represent the Qu'Appelle lakes in my riding, a wonderful area in the Qu'Appelle Valley, but unfortunately in recent years, incidents in Regina have led to the emission of waste water into the Qu'Appelle system. That has had a negative effect on the water quality in the Qu'Appelle Valley. Some of the best moments I have had with my family have been from taking the them to the Qu'Appelle lakes and going out for the day fishing.

I do not need to tell members who represent coastal communities how important the fishing industry is economically and culturally for indigenous populations as well. I missed out on having the benefits of being taken salmon fishing in British Columbia. The timing just did not work out, but of course my British Columbia colleagues in the Conservative caucus are passionate advocates for doing more to protect fish habitat and helping the stocks throughout British Columbia grow again. We all know the importance that the salmon fishing industry has recreationally, for tourism and of course commercially.

The same is true in literally every corner of the country. The ability to fish for fun, for sport, for food or for our livelihoods is incredibly important for all Canadians in every single province and every single community. It is something the government promised to take action on, but like so many promises during the last election, it has completely failed to do it. That is why this private member's bill is necessary.

I am proud to have the support of my Conservative colleagues. This is one more concrete example of where Conservatives take real, tangible and achievable action on the environment. If members look back throughout the history of our party, they will see John Diefenbaker's work on establishing parks and the amount of work the previous Conservative government put into the Clean Air Act, which is legislation that put in meaningful reduction targets. We can also look at the Conservative government in the 1980s, under former prime minister Mulroney, and its work on the acid rain issues. In all the work that Conservative governments have done, we take real, practical action on the environment.

The Liberals say a lot of things during elections, but when they have the opportunity to act, they never seem to do so. That is why this bill is necessary, and I am hoping that all parties will give it quick passage so that it can get to committee and we can take real action on protecting our rivers, lakes and oceans.

Fisheries ActPrivate Members' Business

May 10th, 2021 / 11:10 a.m.


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Winnipeg North Manitoba

Liberal

Kevin Lamoureux LiberalParliamentary Secretary to the President of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada and Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs and to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons

Madam Speaker, I am wondering if the former leader of the Conservative Party has any regrets over Stephen Harper's investments in infrastructure for cleaning up the waterways. This government has done more in five years to invest in infrastructure for cleaner water than Harper did in twice that period of time. Maybe the member could provide some thoughts on that.

Also, as the member criticizes the Liberals on the environment, maybe the former leader of the Conservative Party can explain why he campaigned, literally and adamantly, against the price on pollution when today we see the new leader with a new position. Can he provide his thoughts on the new leader of the Conservative Party's position on the price on pollution?

Fisheries ActPrivate Members' Business

May 10th, 2021 / 11:10 a.m.


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Conservative

Andrew Scheer Conservative Regina—Qu'Appelle, SK

Mr. Speaker, on the first point, the parliamentary secretary could not be more wrong. We have had testimony on this at committee, with the Auditor General just slamming the government's record on infrastructure. The infrastructure department under the Prime Minister has absolutely no ability to track the effectiveness of its own programs. We have heard from mayors across this country that they are being told their projects are not eligible for funding because they do not fit into the narrow boxes that the government has defined. The Parliamentary Budget Officer has been extremely critical as well.

The most important thing, perhaps, is the fact that the government has lapsed more than $8 billion in infrastructure programs. This means there are municipalities out there that have put in applications and are being told no, or their applications have been sitting on a desk and the money does not get spent.

A Conservative government would deliver real action on infrastructure and take the important step to ban the—

Fisheries ActPrivate Members' Business

May 10th, 2021 / 11:15 a.m.


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Liberal

The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès) Liberal Alexandra Mendes

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Repentigny.

Fisheries ActPrivate Members' Business

May 10th, 2021 / 11:15 a.m.


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Bloc

Monique Pauzé Bloc Repentigny, QC

Madam Speaker, everyone knows that water is important, that water is life. However, the bill does not prohibit the dumping of pesticides, petroleum products, chemicals or insecticides.

How can my colleague tell me that, in order to improve the health of our waterways, we should continue to allow the dumping of these products but prevent the dumping of untreated waste water?

Fisheries ActPrivate Members' Business

May 10th, 2021 / 11:15 a.m.


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Conservative

Andrew Scheer Conservative Regina—Qu'Appelle, SK

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for her question.

Obviously, there are other things in the law that the government could do something about. I decided to focus on one specific issue in this bill.

It makes sense to focus on one specific issue, and the government can do things hand in hand. We can ban the practice of dumping untreated waste water, but at the same time, a Conservative government would commit to making the necessary upgrades for municipalities, focusing on the important infrastructure.

The current government categorizes many things as infrastructure that have never been categorized that way before. Money is not flowing to the much-needed improvements in these types of water systems, and that is why I focused on one particular issue.

Fisheries ActPrivate Members' Business

May 10th, 2021 / 11:15 a.m.


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NDP

Gord Johns NDP Courtenay—Alberni, BC

Madam Speaker, I think we can all agree that every community across the country wants to have state-of-the-art waste-water treatment systems. However, they desperately need a federal partner to help them get there.

The bill has a lot of implications for municipalities, commercial fishers and boaters. What would the member say to the small, rural and remote communities, from Vancouver Island to Newfoundland, that simply cannot afford new waste-water systems, or the commercial fishers who could be punished under the terms of the bill? Can the member commit that the Conservative Party would support filling all the gaps for communities that cannot afford to implement waste-water treatment systems and would support the timing of that?

Fisheries ActPrivate Members' Business

May 10th, 2021 / 11:15 a.m.


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Conservative

Andrew Scheer Conservative Regina—Qu'Appelle, SK

Madam Speaker, that is a very important question. Obviously, this will require partnership, but it is important to do. We cannot use the different excuses of the lack of coordination between different governments as an excuse to continue this harmful environmental practice. I would say that absolutely a Conservative government will commit to being that partner at the table.

We can look at where this government has lapsed money: $8 billion lapsed in the first year of the government's infrastructure program alone; $35 billion to an infrastructure bank that has completed nothing; $250 million to the Asian Infrastructure Bank. The government has put a lot of money out there into infrastructure that is not going to address the needs of Canadians and Canadian municipalities.

That is what a Conservative government will do. We will be that partner.

Fisheries ActPrivate Members' Business

May 10th, 2021 / 11:15 a.m.


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Liberal

Francis Scarpaleggia Liberal Lac-Saint-Louis, QC

Madam Speaker, I would like to begin with a few questions, especially about Conservatives taking real, practical actions.

First of all, why now? Why did the Conservatives not propose this in, say, 2012, when they were drafting and gazetting the waste-water systems effluent regulations? Were they guilty of an oversight at that time? Second, why did the member not introduce his private member's bill in 2015, after he was no longer the Speaker? Third, why four years later, when the member was the leader of his party, did he not include this proposal in the 2019—

Fisheries ActPrivate Members' Business

May 10th, 2021 / 11:15 a.m.


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Liberal

The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès) Liberal Alexandra Mendes

Order. The member for Trois-Rivières on a point of order.

Fisheries ActPrivate Members' Business

May 10th, 2021 / 11:15 a.m.


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Bloc

Louise Charbonneau Bloc Trois-Rivières, QC

Madam Speaker, there is no French interpretation.

Fisheries ActPrivate Members' Business

May 10th, 2021 / 11:20 a.m.


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Liberal

The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès) Liberal Alexandra Mendes

Just a moment, I have another point of order.

The hon. member for Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston.

Fisheries ActPrivate Members' Business

May 10th, 2021 / 11:20 a.m.


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Conservative

Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON

Madam Speaker, I am just very worried that the way this is working out, the member for Lac-Saint-Louis will have his list of enumerated questions and there will be no time for the member to respond. That would be unfair, so I ask you to exercise a bit of discretion.

Fisheries ActPrivate Members' Business

May 10th, 2021 / 11:20 a.m.


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Liberal

The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès) Liberal Alexandra Mendes

This is just a speech, with no responses.

The hon. member for Lac-Saint-Louis.

Fisheries ActPrivate Members' Business

May 10th, 2021 / 11:20 a.m.


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Liberal

Francis Scarpaleggia Liberal Lac-Saint-Louis, QC

Madam Speaker, I would like to begin with a few questions, especially about Conservatives taking real, practical actions.

First of all, why now? Why did the Conservatives not propose this in, say, 2012, when they were drafting and gazetting the waste-water systems effluent regulations? Were they guilty of an oversight at that time? Second, why did the member not introduce his private member's bill in 2015, after he was no longer Speaker. Third, why, four years later, when the member was leader of his party, did he not include this proposal in the 2019 Conservative election platform?

The Fisheries Act already prohibits the deposit of deleterious substances, including sewage, into fish-bearing waters, unless expressly allowed by regulation. The fact is that the Harper government's waste-water regulations gave a de facto exemption to municipalities under the Fisheries Act to deposit a deleterious substance, namely waste water, into fish-bearing waters. This exemption was not carte blanche, however. It came with limits on how much of a regulated substance can be released into the environment. The waste-water regulations also impose deadlines on municipalities for building and upgrading their systems to meet the standards of secondary treatment, a biological process that can remove up to 95% of contaminants.

By way of background, six billion cubic metres of waste water are discharged into marine and freshwater ecosystems in Canada every year. Of this amount, approximately 72% is treated to the level of at least secondary treatment, 25% is under-treated and the remaining 3% is untreated, coming from continuous discharges in communities without a waste-water plant, from releases from combined sewer systems where waste water and storm water flow together in the same pipe and can overflow during heavy rainfalls, from spills due to equipment failure and negligence, and finally, from occasional planned releases deemed necessary to allow for system construction or maintenance.

I would be remiss if I did not point out the Harper government's bungling of the 2015 waste-water release in Montreal, which caught the government off guard in the middle of an election campaign. The planned release was needed to allow maintenance on a key interceptor in the city's waste-water system. It should be noted that Montreal has a single massive waste-water plant, the largest in North America and the third largest in the world, providing primary and secondary waste-water treatment. The city is introducing ozonation, which will allow it to achieve tertiary treatment by 2023, at which time the city will have the largest ozone waste-water plant in the world.

A belt of sewers runs around the island. The whole system is on a slope from west to east, with the treatment plant located at the eastern tip of the island. Gravity draws sewage from all around the island to the plant, reducing the need for energy-consuming pumping stations along the route. There are no alternative waste-water plants on the island, no safety valves, as it were. If the plant gets damaged, that's a huge problem for the city and communities downstream.

In 2015, the city applied to the province for a permit for a planned release and obtained Quebec's authorization to do so. The city also contacted Environment Canada twice, in September 2014 and September 2015, but, as I understand it, was met with radio silence. The Conservative government only realized there was an issue when the story hit the headlines, in Canada and internationally, at which point it cleverly punted the matter until after the election.

On November 9, 2015, the new Liberal government issued a ministerial order under section 37 of the Fisheries Act to require Montreal to make adjustments to its initial release plan. These adjustments were based on the recommendations of an expert panel. It should be noted that the Liberal government did not authorize the release, even though the province had. Section 37 of the act, while not giving the federal government the power to authorize a release like Montreal's, allows the minister to “require any modifications or additions to the work, undertaking or activity or any modifications to any plans, specifications, procedures or schedules relating to it that the Minister considers necessary in the circumstances”. That is what the new minister, the member for Ottawa Centre, did. She ordered changes to the plan to minimize impacts based on the recommendations of an expert panel.

Environment and Climate Change Canada is holding consultations with a view to making improvements to the temporary bypass provisions in sections 43 to 49 of the waste-water systems effluent regulations. Currently under the regulations, a bypass authorization for a release of untreated waste water can only be given for maintenance work that is being done at a waste-water plant, that is, at a final point of discharge, not at other points along the system.

The objective of upcoming amendments to the regulations is to allow the government to provide bypass authorizations for work being done beyond the plant itself, thereby creating a regulatory framework that would encourage better planning of emergency releases such as the one that occurred in Montreal.

Enter Bill C-269, which seeks to make it an offence to proceed with any releases of raw sewage into fish-bearing waters. It sounds great, but as is often the case with private members' bills, they are not drafted with the benefit of appropriate expertise and are often designed more for political effect than to achieve a constructive objective.

If passed, Bill C-269 could have serious unintended consequences for the environment.

First, the proposed prohibition would apply to waste water that is already treated to a high standard. This is because even effluents that are subject to advanced levels of treatment still contain contaminants from raw sewage that have not been separated and removed, as required by the bill. Therefore, all communities across Canada would be in potential violation of the proposed law, notwithstanding their high degree of waste-water treatment in most cases. In effect, they would have to shut down their waste-water plants.

Second, the definition of raw sewage in Bill C-269 is ambiguous and likely to include more than just effluent from human or domestic sources. The bill's definition could include industrial, commercial and institutional effluents that contain low or manageable levels of such sewage. The bill could therefore interfere with the development and implementation of regulations to control industrial effluents. For example, the bill could impede the ongoing process of updating the pulp and paper regulations, a process aimed at, among other things, capturing facilities producing non-traditional products from wood and other plant material, and also aimed at lowering current effluent limits as well as adding limits for additional substances.

Third, the bill would exempt the north, where, to all intents and purposes, the Fisheries Act prohibition against depositing deleterious substances into fish-bearing waters applies wholesale, absent the existence of a bilateral agreement with the federal government for creating an equivalent regulatory framework to the waste-water systems effluent regulations. This means that whatever pollution safeguards and monitoring mechanisms exist today in the north by virtue of a bilateral agreement with the federal government would be thrown into question if this bill passes.

There are many examples of how proposed measures like those in Bill C-269 that are intuitively appealing at first glance are, upon deeper reflection, clearly not the best way forward for either the environment or human health. As a case in point, I would like to refer to the late Dr. David Schindler's work at the Experimental Lakes Area, a real-life freshwater laboratory that garnered a great deal of national attention a few years back when the Harper government tried to close it down.

The conventional wisdom at one point was that nitrogen from waste water was likely causing algal blooms in lakes, suggesting the need for multi-billion dollar investments to alter waste-water treatment plants. However, a 37-year real-time, real-life experiment at the Experimental Lakes Area found that this was not the case and that the culprit was rather phosphorous. This subsequently led to the elimination of phosphates in detergents and avoided massively expensive yet futile investments to upgrade waste-water treatment plants across the country to deal with nitrogen.

In the end, I regret to say that, in reality, this bill may well be more a public relations exercise on a subject that deserves much more serious and well-informed attention.