Bill C-30 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) Committee on March 26th, 2007

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

I'll go to Mr. McGuinty. He had his hand up.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

I have a question, Mr. Chair, for Mr. Moffet. Can you help us understand why, in the first instance, Bill C-30 has replacement wording for paragraph 46(1)(g) of CEPA? What was the import of doing so?

If you follow me, paragraph 46(1)(g) of the existing CEPA talks about “substances or fuels that may contribute significantly to air pollution”. Bill C-30 then strips away “substances”, talks about “fuels”, but then adds again “substances” and then adds the word “activities”. What is this trying to catch? Do you know?

[John Moffet]

We made these changes for very technical legal reasons, to correlate to some existing statutory language in the existing act. I'll ask our counsel, Michel Ares, to explain.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Monsieur Ares, could you please answer? When I first read this--and in fact, every time I read it--including the amendment put forward by the Bloc, I was wondering why the notion of activities was added here. Are we missing something here? Is there a new power your department is seeking, or is there something that's not caught with this long list of information gathering under section 46 of CEPA itself?

[Michel Ares, Counsel, Department of Justice Canada]

Mr. McGuinty, Mr. Chair, I will let Mr. Moffet talk to that issue of activities and why it was added. I can explain why proposed paragraphs (g) and (g.1) have been added.

As John Moffet explained, these are for very technical reasons. Since substances and activities needed to be added there from a policy point of view, we wanted fuels to keep in line with the regime that is set up for them in division 5 of part 7, which has its own tests, which are totally different from what you find in part 5 or the proposed part 5.1.

Proposed paragraph (g.1) follows exactly the kind of tests that you find in part 5 or in the proposed part 5.1. In other words, these sections were rejigged that way to make sure we're not creating any different tests from what already exists. It's a question of consistency throughout the act.

John, would you like to speak to that?

[John Moffet]

Maybe I can elaborate. As Monsieur Ares explained, the test for fuels is “contribute significantly to air pollution”. So we have similarly limited the power to gather information about fuels to fuels that may contribute significantly to air pollution. But we didn't want to have that “contribute significantly to” as a qualifier for our authority to gather information about other sources of air pollution. Hence proposed paragraphs (g) and (g.1), the separation of the two.

That's part of your question. The second part is, why did we go to “substances or activities” instead of just sticking to substances?

As you know, the original CEPA, or certainly part 5, was focused on individual substances and the impacts of substances. When you get into air pollution, and more particularly when you get into greenhouse gas, in order to regulate effectively we believe it would be useful to have the authority to understand better the nature of the activities that are under way in Canada that are contributing to air pollution and not have to tie our information-gathering authorities to individual substances that we designate. So for example, this would let us look at and request information from fossil-fuel-fired, electricity-generating activities as opposed to designating the substances that are coming out of the stack and limiting our information-gathering authorities to those substances.

Does that help?

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

It does help. I'm just wondering, does “activities” go as far as embracing what could be described as economic activities? How much information gathering can go on under this expanded definition?

Can you go to an emitter and say you'd like to collect more information on the economics of the operation? Can you go to an emitter and say you'd like more information under this? Under the rubric of activities, could you ask about economic activities, investment activities, or are you talking more in terms of the physical plant and so on?

[John Moffet]

Good question.

The limitation is that the activity would have to contribute to air pollution. To be candid, we haven't thought through exactly how we would circumscribe that, except that it would be focused on air pollution.

Also, I draw your attention to the fact that there are considerable authorities in the act that are given to the targets of information collection to either argue that the information shouldn't be collected or to argue that the information constitutes confidential business information. We're not proposing to change or weaken those provisions in any way.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Thank you.

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

Mr. Bigras, I think you had something to add before this all started.

[Bernard Bigras, Bloc, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

First of all, I want to respond to Mr. Jean's friendly amendment. He's proposing that we substitute “climate change” for “global warming”. We don't have a problem with this friendly amendment. Why? Because fundamentally, we're simply asking that as much information as possible be collected to facility research and a better understanding of the state of the environment. Basically, with this amendment, we're asking that as much information as possible be compiled, on substances as well as on activities, to further our understanding of the state of the environment. That is the gist of our motion and therefore, we're prepared to go along with Mr. Jean's friendly amendment.

[John Moffet]

Mr. Chair, may I take the opportunity to reiterate the officials' concern. Our concern is not at all with the objective of trying to maximize the ability to gather information about climate change. Our concern is with the actual impact of these three words, “or climate change”, which would read down or distinguish from “air pollution”.

We've written Bill C-30 with the words “air pollution” throughout, with the intention that those two words include climate change. As soon as you distinguish the two, then you come back to Mr. Cullen's point: you have to go back and add them everywhere or else you have this dichotomy that maybe air pollution doesn't include climate change.

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

Mr. McGuinty.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

I appreciate that explanation, but isn't that precisely what the government is trying to do here in this bill? Hasn't the government, in Bill C-30, been telling Canadians that we want to distinguish between air pollution and greenhouse gases?

I'm sorry, I'm getting mixed signals. You're saying that the officials are concerned about the bifurcation of air pollution and greenhouse gases. Yet I thought that what we've heard for months and months, in testimony from the government members, in communications, speeches, and the media, is that Bill C-30 is reframing for Canadians the entire question of air pollution and greenhouse gases. Do I have that wrong? The message incoming from the parliamentary secretary, the minister, and the Prime Minister is that we need something new that in fact bifurcates and splits the two, because the government has been saying that there's an air quality component and a greenhouse gas component.

Do I have something wrong here? Are the officials concerned about that entire split?

[John Moffet]

No, and I'm not here to replace the parliamentary secretary, but the words we're focusing on are “air pollution”, “air pollutants”, “climate change”, and “greenhouse gases”. What we're saying is that for legal purposes, for the purposes of the statute, air pollution includes the effects of air pollutants—smog, acidification of lakes, eutrophication of lakes, and so on—and the effects of greenhouse gas emissions, namely climate change.

So it's a statutory interpretation issue. What I'm saying is that the way the bill was written was to have the term “air pollution” be as broad as possible to encompass all those effects.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

I really don't want to belabour the point, but I'm looking at the definition of air pollution under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. Perhaps somebody on the government side could help us understand that, and maybe we could come to a more successful conclusion.

When you look at the definition of air pollution under CEPA as it's presently written, there's not a reference to climate change or greenhouse gases. In fact, the closest thing that comes to the definition of air pollution, in the definitional section, which would substantiate the official's concern, is that:

“air pollution” means a condition of the air, arising wholly or partly from the presence in the air of any substance, that directly or indirectly— (e) degrades or alters, or forms part of a process of degradation or alteration of, an ecosystem to an extent that is detrimental to its use by humans, animals or plants.

If climate change and greenhouse gases are inherent in your definition of air pollution, how come they're not here in the entire definition of air pollution under CEPA, and how come they're not amended in Bill C-30?

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

I think you're getting a little argumentative—

[John Moffet]

If I could, I'll just explain it. It's our view that they are—

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Is that argumentative, Mr. Chair? I'm just trying to get clarification.

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

[Inaudible--Editor]...discussion.

Mr. Moffet, go ahead.

[John Moffet]

To reiterate, it's our view that the adverse impacts of GHG emissions are encompassed in the definition of air pollution in paragraphs (a) through (e).

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

That is the department's position.

We'll have Mr. Cullen, and then we'll perhaps move on.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

I'm going to direct this towards the government benches, and maybe the parliamentary secretary can clarify it.

I've heard—and this is going to mystify Canadians—that air pollution is a broad definition that includes things like air pollutants and greenhouse gases.

To the parliamentary secretary, were there any considerations taken by the government, when drafting Bill C-30, that this opened up the potential to not be able to apply CEPA to counteract any business or anybody emitting greenhouse gas emissions?

It's a good point. There should almost be a “do no harm” policy in the things we're doing with our clauses. When the government put Bill C-30 together, we believe there was some harm done to the effectiveness of CEPA. We'll get back to those. We have stayed a lot of those amendments. We're going to remove them.

Is it the government's position that this amendment by Mr. Bigras does harm to the effectiveness of the government to carry it out under these two very similar but very different definitions: one, air pollution being a broad category; and two, air pollutants being something under that in conjunction with greenhouse gases?

I take Mr. Moffet's position. If you add on “climate change or greenhouse gases”, it seems you'd almost have to amend the whole bill. That does more harm than the value of including this amendment. I'm still trying to understand what the value really is.

Did the government consider any of the legal implications of starting to change some of these definitions, which they did, in Bill C-30 ? If they did, what did they consider in terms of Mr. Bigras' amendment?

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Actually, it was a government member who came forward with the friendly amendment. We think it defines more specifically what we're trying to address with this bill: one is on air pollutants, which deals with people in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver; and the other is on climate change, which deals with the people of our north. We want to be sensitive to that and make sure we collect data on both fronts.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

So “air pollutants” and “climate change or greenhouse gases” are two different things for the government in terms of working definitions?