Thank you very much.
My name is Warren Everson. I'm the senior vice-president of the Chamber of Commerce.
As you know, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce is the organization that is the most representative of business people in Canada. Thanks to our network of more than 400 local chambers of commerce, we speak on behalf of 192,000 businesses of all sizes, active throughout the country.
Bill C-469 would create a Canadian environmental bill of rights. The intention of the bill is to safeguard the right of present and future Canadians to a healthy and ecologically balanced environment. That's a laudable goal, but this bill is not the correct approach. In our view, it would fundamentally change the nature of environmental protection in Canada, increase uncertainty, invite litigation, and create a new barrier to investment.
We oppose Bill C-469 in principle and we have numerous specific concerns with the bill. In particular, the principle is that Bill C-469 dismisses decades of work done by parliamentarians to establish national agencies to protect the environment. It proposes to replace a predictable process, whereby the provinces and the federal government are responsible for environmental regulation, with an endless litigation process brought by private parties. It would in effect turn the Federal Court into an environmental protection agency.
The new rights afforded to the bill do not have to be exercised for environmental purpose. They could be used for commercial benefit. They could be used to impose a private agenda onto a large population's agenda.
Currently, the federal government has broad discretion to balance the needs of environment with other societal concerns. This bill would take away that discretion and permit the courts to continuously challenge the decisions made by government or even by Parliament. Not very many people would want to invest in a situation in which any resident or entity could take them to court even if they were following all the rules.
Mr. Chairman, as I mentioned to you, I have a brief and a whole series of specific issues with the bill, but in light of the fact that I was able to persuade one of the members of the Chamber of Commerce who has direct involvement with these matters to testify, I'd like to just very briefly conclude and then submit my brief to the committee for its use and introduce my colleague.
It will come as no surprise to the committee that my conclusion is that Bill C-469 should be set aside. People can certainly take issue with environmental laws and they can say we don't have enough of them or that we're not enforcing them adequately, but if that's the case, then citizens should be dealing with Parliament, not going around the legislative process to the courts.
The bill before you today seems to us to be a statement of frustration with current process. What it is not is a working law. It's a blank cheque and it asks the Federal Court to fill in the blanks. Courts have said over and over again in the past that it's not the job of the court to make policy, and you politicians have said many, many times that it is not the prerogative of judges to make law in Parliament's place.
Thank you very much.