Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Right off the bat, I want to say, Mr. Chair, that I intend to support the motion moved by the parliamentary secretary, Mark Warawa. It is an extremely important motion.
It is true, Mr. Chair, that I am looking at the bill with new eyes, because I had the opportunity to be present when the bill was introduced and when the witnesses had their say. And that involvement has led me to throw my full support behind Mr. Warawa's motion. I am now genuinely and deeply convinced that this bill goes against Quebec's best interests and threatens one of the cornerstones of its energy sector: hydroelectric development.
Mr. Chair, we have heard from a number of witnesses. I do not mean to harp on what my colleagues have already made very clear, but we have heard that this bill could have extremely serious economic ramifications for the maritime provinces. My colleague, Blaine Calkins, who has been on the environment committee since 2006, if I am not mistaken, also took an objective look at the bill with the noble intention of getting it through.
But the fact of the matter is that amendments are not what is in order. Instead, this bill should be scrapped for the sake of Canada's environmental regime.
Mr. Chair, the House of Commons document that was given to us at the very beginning talks about Bill C-469, An Act to establish a Canadian Environmental Bill of Rights. It also talks about the bill's two key elements, one of which is the substantive right stipulating that every Canadian resident has the right to a healthy and ecologically balanced environment. That, in itself, is a commendable principle.
However, various Supreme Court of Canada decisions also refer to the substantive right to a healthy environment, which may mean that certain aspects of the substantive right to environmental quality have already made their way into Canadian law.
So the bill and its substantive right component are, to a certain extent, redundant, if you take Canada's existing body of environmental authority into account.
But where things really get complicated is in terms of procedural rights. And, in fact, we heard from a number of witnesses who were most opposed to that aspect of the bill. I have here an excerpt from the brief submitted by the Shipping Federation of Canada regarding Bill C-469, which was submitted to the committee on October 21:
[...] we are concerned that Bill C-469 would enable anyone to challenge any regulatory standard at any time, thereby trumping the existing regulatory process and creating regulatory unpredictability.
So I would ask the honourable members of this committee, through you, of course, Mr. Chair, the following question: Are we here to create unpredictability—