Madam Speaker, it is my honour to rise today to speak to Bill S-5. This is a bill coming out of the Senate, but it is a government bill nonetheless, and it contains some amendments to the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.
I would like to talk a little about the history of environmental protection and some of the good work governments have done over the years in environmental protection. Members may know that I am an auto mechanic by trade, and from that I learned that the government has put its fingers in the mix of what it means to build an automobile, both in emissions regulations and safety. I would like to talk a bit today about how, over the years, there have been changes to automobiles that have led to improvements in our environment.
Long before I was born, there was a thing called the hole in the ozone layer, and that was deemed to have been caused by things called chlorofluorocarbons, which were used in air conditioning systems. Before I was born, governments from around the world worked on that to say that we needed to stop using this product and find a different product.
Air conditioning systems of older cars are filled up with a product called R-12. Sometime in the eighties, or it might actually be in the nineties, we switched over to a product called R-134a. Ozone is a particular product in the air way up in the atmosphere. Over a generation, the hole in the ozone layer down by the South Pole was monitored. We watched that slowly close over time. That was deemed to be because of actions governments took. Governments from around the world worked together to ensure this product would not be used as much, and definitely not in the automotive sector.
We have seen vehicles be converted. If one's air conditioning leaked out, one could not buy R-12 anymore and had to convert it to R-134a. When I became an auto mechanic, I was taught on how to switch them over, and also what R-134a was.
More recently, we have gone from R-134a and moved into the new R-1234. That came in about 2013 or 2014, and I was elected in 2015, so I do not have a lot of experience with R-1234. However, I do know governments worked hard on fixing the hole in the ozone layer, and the automotive industry was impacted immensely just with air conditioning. That is one area where governments have done good work in ensuring we could fix the hole in the ozone layer.
The other area, which is probably more tangible to folks, is the area of acid rain. I do not know if the Chair ever experienced acid rain, but again, this was something that governments took action on long before I was born. They worked to ensure automobiles were not producing the substances that create acid rain. We have actually seen a reduction in fuel mileage and horsepower because of these requirements, but we watched the air of every major city in North America improve dramatically. Today, we have not heard about acid rain for a generation, maybe longer, and the air in most cities is tolerable.
More recently, in 2003-04, we moved from worry about those emissions in gas powered vehicles to those of diesel vehicles. We may have heard consternation from diesel pickup owners in our ridings about some of the emissions controls, but those are targeting the acid rain producing materials that come out of internal combustion engines.
NOx and SOx are what they are called, and they are formed when the combustion temperature inside a combustion chamber is too high. Rather than the hydrogen in our hydrocarbon fuels and our carbon combining with oxygen to create water and CO2, the high temperature causes the sulphur that might be in the fuel to combine with oxygen, causing sulphur oxides. For the nitrogen in our air, which is 78% nitrogen, the high temperature causes nitrogen to join with oxygen so that we get nitrous oxides. Those come out of the tailpipe and cause the smell when we drive behind an old vehicle on the highway and it stinks. We often forget this, but when a carburetor vehicle from the sixties smells bad, it is the NOx and SOx we are smelling.
They are what was causing brown rings around the big cities. The air was actually visibly brown. When we see picture of places like Shanghai and China, the brown air we see is from the NOx and SOx. Industrial emitters produce a lot of NOx and SOx as well, but automobiles, particularly from the sixties, are really bad for that.
Governments worked on ending acid rain and reducing the NOx and SOx coming out of engines by using EGR valves, exhaust gas recirculation valves. They came in because manufacturers had to reduce the amount of emissions coming out of engines. They rerouted the exhaust back into the front end of the engine and that lowered the combustion chamber temperature, which then did not allow for nitrogen and sulphur to combine with oxygen to make those things.
Today we have more cars on the road in our major cities than probably ever before, yet acid rain is not something we hear about. Smog is sometimes a bit of an issue, but it has been dramatically reduced from where it was in the sixties. These were the actions that governments took back in the sixties, and in the nineties with respect to diesel engines, to reduce emissions. We are seeing the benefits of those actions, so I applaud them.
I think there is a role to be played by government action when protecting the environment, but I would like the problem and solutions to be clearly defined. I find it a bit frustrating that this bill does not target some of those things.
One of the issues I heard come up from across the way was the term “reproductive toxicity”. I do not know about members, but it is showing up on my radar with respect to infertility rates. Some folks are struggling to conceive children, and it seems to be an increasing problem in the world. Just like we tackled the hole in the ozone layer and the smog and acid rain situations of the sixties and maybe the nineties, it would seem to me that we should perhaps tackle some of these things on more of a case-by-case basis, rather than with a boil-the-ocean kind of environmental protection. Let us get to the bottom of some of these problems we see in the world.
The member from across the way mentioned reproductive toxicity. I am glad that it is in the bill and is being talked about, but there does not seem to be anything in the bill that says we are going to make it a priority and try to get the bottom of it. Is this actually a problem? What is going on here? We seem to insinuate that it is a problem, but we do not really seem to be focused on how to fix it.
This is an ongoing frustration of mine with the government, particularly of late, and I seem to share it with my NDP colleagues. The Liberals come in with a piece of paper that says “Housing Strategy” or “Environmental Protection Act” on the top of it. Then they pass on that blank piece of paper and ask what we are complaining about because they have an environmental protection act. They say, “Don't you see the words on the paper?” Well, we say it does nothing.
It is kind of the same thing with this right to a clean environment. I am glad we put on a piece of paper that we have this right, but what does it mean? I do not know what it means. Then they say they will work on it. Well, the Liberals have been in government for seven years. This is lazy governing. If they are going to just put words on a blank piece of paper and say they are going to fill it in after the fact, what was the point of bringing forward that particular piece of legislation?
Again, we see that here. It is hard to argue against the right to a clean environment. Those are very nice words, but what does that mean? I do not know what that means, because it is going to be filled in with regulations after the fact. We will do consultations and fill that in.
I am increasingly frustrated by this laying on the table of a piece of paper that says good things on it but does not actually mean a whole bunch. I asked the previous Liberal member what it means. It is a positive right in some sense.
Maybe I should explain a bit about the difference between negative and positive rights. A negative right is like the right to not have property taken away. The government may not impede property rights. That is a kind of negative right, and I do not see a problem there. A positive right is like the right to housing. It is great to have a right to housing, but how do we enforce it? What does that mean? Does the government then have to provide us with housing? Who must it take it from? That is the challenge sometimes with positive and negative rights.
The right against illegal search and seizure is a so-called negative right, as the government cannot impinge upon one's person. I think that is a good thing, but the right to a job, for example, is maybe more difficult to enforce and is also not necessarily something the government has to give. It does not have to provide us with a job. Who will the government force to hire us, essentially? These are positive rights versus negative rights.
The right to a clean environment strikes me as one of the so-called positive rights that I would have liked to see in the bill. I would like to see the government lay out what it means by that. What does the right to a clean environment mean? If someone does not have a clean environment, must the government move them across the country to a place where there is a clean environment? If we do not feel that the environment is clean, can we sue the government to clean it up? If we do not feel that we are living in a clean environment, what does that mean? That is essentially what I am looking for in this particular bill.
I would say that Conservatives over the years have had a very strong record in tackling some of the very issues that have come toward us, such as acid rain, the hole in the ozone layer and the NOx and SOx issues. Also, generally, given the word “conservative”, we are about conserving things. We have a great record in Canada of conservation efforts around wildlife, for example, and getting our hunting and angling communities to ensure that there are people out on the land monitoring all of these things. We work together to ensure that we manage our wildlife and I think that is important.
We have probably, over the last 200 years, improved wildlife numbers in Canada dramatically. The Canada goose was, at one point, on the brink of extinction. If we ask anybody about that today, it is definitely not a problem. We can go to any public park anywhere, and I am sure that the Canada goose being nearly extinct is not something anybody is concerned about anymore. The beaver, which is on our nickel, was near the brink of extinction at the turn of the century. In 1899, it had been nearly trapped to extinction for the fur trade. Today, the beavers are winning the battles against our highway crews in many places along Highway 88 in northern Alberta. I do believe the railway to Churchill was taken out by the beavers in 2017. The beavers are winning these wars. Why? It is because there are millions of them in Canada. These are success stories of conservation that we have had here.
These are stereotypes, and I often get accused of trading in stereotypes. Nonetheless, one of the differences between so-called progressives and Conservatives is the idea of trade-offs versus solutions. Conservatives are typically thinking in terms of the trade-offs of different policy proposals, whereas often the progressives are talking in terms of solutions to things. When they see a problem, they say the carbon tax will be the solution to climate change, and that is their argument to make. However, we would say that there are trade-offs to be made.
Think about the plastic straw, for example. We see that the plastic straw is being banned all around the world, including here in Canada, and we are bringing in paper straws. There is a case to be made for the plastic straw ending up in the oceans, but are the plastic straws that end up in the ocean coming from Canada? Well, we can clearly make the case that this is not happening. In general, the plastic in Canada is ending up in the garbage. It is being recycled, being put in a landfill or being used to create electricity, so that is generally not the case.
We can say that the trade-off between a paper straw and a plastic straw is that paper straws do not work. I do not know if members have gone to McDonald's for a milkshake and tried to used a paper straw, but it is terrible. The plastic straws work better. We can make the trade-off and say that while plastic straws might be a problem in parts of the world, they are not a problem here, so let us use plastic straws.
The other thing is the trade-offs between the CO2 emissions of things and the reality of other products. We are concerned about plastic ending up in our environment, and that is a valid concern, but we have to balance that against CO2 emissions. In many cases, plastic reduces our CO2 emissions dramatically. For CO2 emissions, the difference between using a plastic straw and using a paper straw is dramatic. The CO2 emissions per straw are something like 10 times lower for the plastic straw versus the paper straw.
If we think about that a little, it is great that the paper straw is decomposable. Maybe it does not work but it is decomposable, whereas a plastic straw is not and we have to make sure that it gets to the appropriate recycling department. However, the CO2 trade-off is that the plastic straw has 10 times fewer CO2 emissions over the lifetime of the straw.
It is the same with plastic bags versus paper bags. We could transport 1,000 plastic bags for the same effort as transporting 10 paper bags. We should think about that when going to the grocery store and using paper bags versus plastic bags, and about the amount of energy that it takes to haul paper bags to the store versus plastic bags. As for the CO2 emissions between a paper bag and a plastic bag, the difference is 100 times just in the transportation costs. There is a trade-off to be made there. There is a trade-off to be made between ensuring that plastic does not end up in our environment and addressing CO2 emissions.
As Conservatives, we understand that all of the decisions governments make are generally trade-offs. We are trying to find a balance between two extremes. Are we more concerned about plastic ending up in our environment? Are we more concerned about CO2 emissions? We made that trade-off extensively when it came to PPE. We have all come through this pandemic, but suddenly single-use disposable plastics did not seem to be as big of an issue anymore when we were concerned about fighting a pandemic around the world.
I remember going to get a test for COVID and there was a single-use apron, face shield and mask. They tested me and I watched them throw it all in the garbage and repeat it for the next person. For single-use plastics, suddenly we made that trade-off. We said that our fight against the pandemic was worth more than our concerns around plastic.
I am excited to see where this bill goes. I am hopeful that the government will clarify the right to a clean environment, and I am happy to take some questions.
