Environment Committee on March 5th, 2008

[Maurice Vellacott, Conservative, Saskatoon—Wanuskewin, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

We again see this attempt by the NDP to shut down and ram things through here, when in fact we need considerably more time to expose some of the flaws in the bill, the hypocrisy of the NDP--and I'll add the Liberals--in their support of this bill, the BQ less so. I think they're attempting to--

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

I have a point of order.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Mr. Warawa, go ahead.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Excuse me for interrupting, Mr. Vellacott, but is Mr. Cullen, the mover of the bill, not here? I think it's important that he listen to the arguments. He's the one who moved a restriction on talking times, and then he leaves the room.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

That's really not a point of order. He has his assistants here, and I believe they'll relay to him the points that are being made by Mr. Vellacott. I can't really forbid someone from using the washroom.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[An hon. member]

He's back, he's back.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Mr. Vellacott, carry on, please. You now have Mr. Cullen's undivided attention.

[Maurice Vellacott, Conservative, Saskatoon—Wanuskewin, SK]

Great. We were just waiting for Mr. Cullen of the NDP. He was out of the room, in the bathroom, or with the media, or something.

We wanted to take a little more time, Nathan. This requires more time than what you're suggesting. You may be of the view that it does not, and maybe there could be an amendment to that effect. But we need more time to point out some of the flaws of the bill before us.

You would probably want to take this back to your leader, too. It was a very poorly written bill, as you know, since you've even had to introduce a bunch of amendments to your very own bill. It's uncustomary, I think you know from your time around this place, to introduce such significant amendments to your own bill. It's uncommon and uncustomary. People normally bring forward a good bill. They research it well before introducing it. They've had access to the Library of Parliament. Especially the leader of an official opposition party, you would think, would get it right the first time, because he has a major research bureau as well. If they're not prepared to do the work in advance, the careful research on something so important to Canada and to our environment, then it falls to us to do our duty and take the time. To be cutting us off in a five-minute span of time flies in the face of democracy. It flies in the face of due diligence. We have a duty to get these bills right.

Even the NDP leader admitted in committee that he hadn't bothered to find out how much the bill would cost Canadians in increased gas and energy prices. That's why we need more time. The mere five minutes allotted here doesn't give us time for that. We need to bring forward some costing issues, some constitutional issues. This needs to be done because others are not prepared to honour their responsibility to address some of these very significant things.

So five minutes per clause per speaker is very inadequate to the task.

We've had a number of witnesses before the committee, and some have made it clear that the bill was too badly written to proceed. This came from the mouths of witnesses before this august body. So I think this is the bounden duty, the task, the obligation, the responsibility of each individual member. We all come here representing tens of thousands of individuals. I myself represent some 80,000 people, and I would dare not shirk the responsibility entrusted to me to look at this bill. We need much longer than the five-minute look proposed here.

Mr. Cullen keeps darting in and out of this committee, and he's the one who proposed the motion. Nevertheless, he finds it convenient to be out elsewhere—on the phone or whatever—ignoring a good deal of the recent debate, the very arguments and rebuttals that might well persuade him to amend his own motion. This is not uncommon. It wouldn't surprise us to see the NDP subamending their own amendments. They've done it in respect of this particular bill, and I think they might well choose to do more of it if only they were to listen to some of the recent debate in the committee.

Witnesses attest to the bill being so badly written that it does not deserve to proceed. Mr. McGuinty, Mr. Godfrey, Mr. Regan, Francis, Bernard, and Marcel, Mr. Cullen—all have had adequate time to get it corrected. Francis is a friend and we're on a first-name basis, and that's why I address him in this familiar manner. I know he and others would take up the slack for the NDP. When you get Mr. McGuinty on a roll, bringing forward substantive things, talking eloquently, as he can do, about nothing, then we know we need more time than just five minutes. Five minutes is clearly inadequate. Mr. Godfrey, the esteemed scholar, will also need more time.

I ask you all to bear in mind that we've had a respected constitutional scholar, Mr. Hogg, tell the committee that this bill could reach into every area of Canadian economic and even social life, and that such a sweeping grant of authority to the executive, being unprecedented outside of wartime, should be a matter of political concern.

To my knowledge, Mr. Chairman, and through you to the other members, wartime is not upon us. Sometimes this committee denigrates or lowers itself so it might almost appear we're in that state, but really this is not war in the normal sense, if you will.

If Parliament were to enact a bill like this, it would be struck down by the Supreme Court of Canada, he says. And I know that would greatly distress my friends across the way, Mr. Chairman.

I know the Bloc members laboured diligently and are in fact doing research even as I speak in respect to ways they could turn and salvage this bill in some fashion to make it constitutionally acceptable, because it reaches right into Quebec life and intrudes into the provincial authority in a very significant way there.

So I know they are exercised about it. I know they are concerned about it. And for that reason as well, we need to take considerable time, more than the scant five minutes that's allowed, which is so inadequate for the task.

Mr. Cullen is back in the room again. He's back on the scene here, and he's listening carefully to these very considered, reasoned points that one makes in respect to his bill.

When he was out of the room I was inviting Mr. Cullen to consider maybe subamending his own motion. He would probably not find that a stretch, and he's in a mode to possibly do that.

André Turmel, from the Canadian Bar Association, said, in reference to targets.... And I think it's pretty important to hear what he has to say. He says that “targets should be linked to and coherent with targets set out in existing international law”. He said the targets in this bill are not. Very clearly, these targets do not have any coherent link with existing international law.

That's again reason, Mr. Chairman, why we need to have the more fulsome discussion, if you will, because these individuals have said there is not that level of detail, there's no possible linkage or coherence of these targets with targets set out in international law.

Because of that, you would expect that other members here would have something of an issue with that, something of concern to express to us in respect to that. Maybe the NDP, again, would be wise enough--one could only hope--to amend their bill even in respect to that, setting some targets coherent with international law.

I think it's important to know that when the NDP tried to write the same targets from this bill by Jack Layton, the NDP leader, and they tried to write those into the Clean Air Act, formerly Bill C-30, the Liberals across the way....

I'm not sure if Mr. Scarpaleggia was there. I think he was, actually. Mr. Regan, Mr. Godfrey, Mr. McGuinty, I think, Mr. Chairman, were probably there. They voted them down because they were unrealistic. And I think that stellar performance by Mr. McGuinty and Mr. Godfrey and Geoff Regan and Mr. Scarpaleggia on that night will go down in history as a notable and important thing to have done for our country, and so it should. The Liberals voted them down because they were clearly unrealistic, and months later, they now apparently--and I don't know what the change of mind is about here--have supported those targets.

That's why the time of five minutes, Mr. Chair.... I prevail upon you, I prevail--as a possible amendment of his own motion--on Mr. Cullen, because this is not adequate time to discuss the very meaty and weighty issue of the matter of the targets here.

As the Liberals knew and as they contended previously, they are unrealistic targets. I'm not sure what they might want to divulge to us, reveal to us, disclose to us, what particular research it is, what's got into their head now that they would support it, when in fact they were so very strongly against it. They opposed it unequivocally before, and now they're for it.

Five minutes is hardly enough time to understand something like that change of thinking and to get at why the Liberals would change their minds on that issue. To get into the head of a Liberal is a difficult thing, I suppose, in some circumstances. But that's what we would hope to do and draw out here, as members back and forth trying to bring about a good bill, if possible. That's a pretty high order in this case because of the significant flaws throughout Jack Layton's bill.

Mr. Cullen, who's been advocating for it, has again escaped the room. I'm not sure where he is. The NDP might want to send somebody else in here to do--

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

He's in the back, Mr. Vellacott. He's right there.

[Maurice Vellacott, Conservative, Saskatoon—Wanuskewin, SK]

Oh, I guess he is here. He's not at his table. I guess he is listening at this point. He's looking backwards this way.

The government is moving forward with its Turning the Corner plan, and we've tried to explain some of that. Five minutes simply does not allow an adequate timeframe to indicate where these issues are already covered off, and that we have a plan to regulate the big polluters with an absolute reduction of 20% in greenhouse gases by 2020.

All of that and many more things besides are reasons why five minutes is a mere shadow of time and inadequate to the nth degree in what we need as individual members. Five minutes is hardly enough time to open your mouth to say something of importance on some of these crucial things before us.

Because of the hypocrisy of the NDP on this poorly written bill and the collaboration, to some degree, with the Liberals.... And Mr. McGuinty respectfully listens here. It's a badly written bill from stem to stern, and they have to introduce many amendments of their own, so we need more than five minutes.

Would 10 minutes be enough? I dare say probably not. I offer to the member that 20 or 30 would probably not be enough, because I know some of my esteemed colleagues here have significant, sufficient.... They've studied this bill at great length and need lots of time. Certainly five minutes does not do justice to what needs to be put on the record and stated here, what needs to be said for the Canadian public and others here for posterity. Others along the way will be looking back, scratching their heads, and may even be quite angry and upset that we did not give this bill due deliberation and proper consideration--proper examination in the analysis of this bill. They will be greatly concerned about that.

We need sufficient time. I ask the members opposite, would 10 minutes be enough per member? I doubt it. We need 20, 30, 40, possibly more.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

The answer is that we conclude Mr. Cullen's--

[Maurice Vellacott, Conservative, Saskatoon—Wanuskewin, SK]

In any event, I think that question can only be answered as we proceed, which is to say the member's right needs to be protected with respect to what he wants to say, what he needs to say.

It's hard to measure that in terms of time, to set precise caps and limits on it. I would feel bad if, at the very moment when my honourable colleague Mr. Mark Warawa has to conclude something and cut it off because his time.... And it may be that he's gone on for 20 minutes or more, and you cut him off mid-stride with some important information he's got to share.

He's very knowledgeable on this bill, I suggest to you, Mr. Chair, because he has much knowledge and much learning on this matter. I've been with him in meetings. I know he spends some weekends here away from his constituents and friends and the good people of his riding so he can get his head around some of this crucial stuff.

So to cut him off, or to cut off Mr. Luc Harvey at some arbitrarily assigned period of time, when, in representing Quebec and the people of his riding, the good French-speaking people there.... He needs adequate time because he's an eloquent speaker. He has a very expansive vocabulary in French and in English as well. The other day he taught me some French. I was taken aback in terms of some of those tidbits, language, “man in the street” stuff. Believe me, my colleague has much to say in both languages. And he impressed me the other day, at least he attempted to, with his knowledge, his figurative speech in French, and how he could make you laugh and cry at the same moment, and at other points disgust you because of the figurative language and illusions he was using.

And then Mr. Watson, a hard-working man who worked with CBC, who worked on the line in the auto plants, he's got a very “cut to the chase”, frank way of speaking. Would I want to cut off this gentlemen, this good, fine colleague of mine, in terms of some arbitrarily assigned period of time, 10, 20, 30, 40, when he might be mid-flow, midstream, in terms of laying before us on the record something profound and significant and moving and stirring for posterity that we would all need to hear?

So this is something that would strike us to the core in terms of depriving members of privilege.

I could go on to speak of the members across the way. I've served in committee with them. Mr. Godfrey is going on to his reward, so to speak, going on to another role in which I'm sure he'll serve very well. It has been impressive, it has been delightful at points to serve with him and to have some of his profound and choice bits of information ring in my ears.

I have much more to say, but at some point we need to allow other members to take the floor.

Should I move at this point? I'm not sure if you'll give me the floor to resume at the point we started to get at. I don't know how that works, because we're not going by any rules, committee or House or whatever; we just make it up on the fly.

[An hon. member]

Move to adjourn.

[Maurice Vellacott, Conservative, Saskatoon—Wanuskewin, SK]

So I'll move to adjourn, with the hope that, by so doing, we can have some upside-down ruling so I could have the floor at the next committee hearing.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

We have a motion to adjourn so we can all go and vote 13 times.

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

I'll think about my vote each time, Chair. I want to give notice to the committee that I want to pause.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Anyway, we have a motion to adjourn. Those in favour?

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

How long do we think about this?

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

The bells are going to start ringing.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Let's wait for the bells. We need to think about this, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

Do they ring in here?

[Some hon. member]

Oh yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Mills]

We're adjourning or we're suspending? There's quite a difference.

The motion is to adjourn. This motion can be reintroduced.

Those in favour of adjourning the meeting today?

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

That's as opposed to what?