Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I appreciate the opportunity to debate and discuss this. This might appear in various other legislative statutes around the world, but we're not talking about those statutes in other parts of the world; we're talking about this particular statute becoming law here in Canada. I have to tell you, the addition of subclause 9(4) here, as proposed by Mr. Kennedy, does cause me some concern.
My concern primarily is that this puts an individual onus on every Canadian to protect the environment, but it doesn't clearly define what the responsibility of protecting the environment actually is. We have definitions about what a “healthy and ecologically balanced environment” is, but nobody can even agree on that. And it's not so much that there's any specified penalty section or anything like that in this particular statute, but there is the entire section that deals with civil liability. It is my fear that if we put this clause in and this bill does become law at some point in time, every single Canadian who doesn't do something in accordance with what some other Canadian's perceived notion is of a healthy and balanced environment, if anybody does anything contrary to that....
I'll give you an example, Mr. Chairman. I'm a fisherman and I'm a hunter. I have a permit under the Fisheries Act, which is given to the Province of Alberta to manage that particular case. I could go fishing. Somebody who doesn't agree with fishing can say, you know what, this guy's ruining my environment, driving a boat on the lake. If I've got a licence to do so, he can say I'm wrecking his environment. He doesn't want these boats on his little private lake. He has a cottage here. This is what he can do.
I'm a hunter; I have a permit that says I can go hunting. We already talked at length, ad nauseam actually, about the fact that this bill gives judges the right to stop any permit, stop any authorized activity in its tracks. But I'm really concerned. Does “every person in Canada” mean every Canadian citizen? Does it mean every person who happens to be in Canada? Are we talking about residents?
So many parts of this bill talk about that. They talk about who's a resident. This particular clause actually talks about residents. What is the definition of “residency”? Well, we can talk about that. So there's “every person in Canada”, there's “residency”.... We'll talk about the residency clause that's here. For residency status in Canada, a person can be deemed a resident within one calendar year if she or he holds Canadian citizenship or she or he is deemed a resident due to his or her physical presence in Canada for at least 183 days. Now, does that mean every person who has been in Canada for 183 days, under section 4, or does it just mean every resident in Canada? Does it mean every Canadian citizen in Canada? Does it mean any entity? There are clauses in the bill, Mr. Chair, that actually speak to any entity being able to take action. So this clause is actually inconsistent with some of the other clauses when we specifically look at the civil action clauses, which I believe are in clause 23.... Help me out, colleagues. I've been away for a week.
So it is clause 23; that's where I thought it was.
I have some concerns about this:
Every person in Canada has the obligation to protect the environment.
It doesn't actually do anything to address how the right to a healthy and ecologically balanced environment is to be balanced with competing interests, such as social and economic goals.
So I would ask you, Mr. Chair.... Every person in Canada has an obligation to protect the environment, but it also says that every Canadian has a right to an ecologically and healthy balanced environment. Well, if someone has a job working for a company that is building an oil sands upgrader, how do you think that person is going to identify their healthy ecologically balanced environment--putting food on the table, being able to heat their home? These are the kinds of questions this bill basically raises and brings to question.
Mr. Chair, I have to recommend to my colleagues that we just can't proceed with this particular clause. It has too many broad connotations in its scope. It puts what I would consider to be an undue onus on every Canadian citizen to protect the environment when we don't even know what the determination is. Who's going to decide that? Who's going to determine if the environment is healthy or not? Who's going to make that determination? Is it going to be a judge?
If we take a look at the other clauses in the bill that this supposedly is going to be working with, subclause 9(1), which we've already taken a look at, and subclause 9(2), which we've already discussed in an amendment, and the amendment was defeated....
Every resident of Canada has a right to a healthy and ecologically balanced environment.
Take a look at the scope of that. What scope is that? Are we looking at the health of the environment from the perspective of a biome or an ecozone? There are 15 terrestrial ecozones in Canada and there are five aquatic ecozones. Are we talking about looking at it from a healthy and ecologically balanced environment, from the perspective of a micro-climate? Who's going to decide that? None of this information is defined in this legislation. That is fundamentally the problem with this particular piece of legislation.
I know this is in response to what Dr. David Boyd brought forward. He says in his recommendation:
Bill C-469 should include a provision establishing that Canadians have a responsibility to protect the environment. The provision would be hortatory rather than enforceable, but would make the point that rights and responsibilities are integrally related. As noted earlier, 80 nations....
I'm basically repeating what Mr. Kennedy said when he addressed this bill.
This is one individual who came before the committee. He basically testified that this should be brought forward. As I say, we can put it in there. If it's not going to be enforceable, why would we even bother to put it in there? I do have some very significant concerns, but not so much from the enforceability when it comes to the liability sections that we've seen in clause 18 of the bill. I think this clause would have wide-ranging and deep impacts on the legislation when it pertains to clause 23, which is the civil liability section. I can see individuals suing other individuals, whether it's something petty over lakefront property issues or whatever the case might be, protecting what they deem to be their ecologically healthy environment.
I can't, in good conscience, support this particular amendment, Mr. Chairman. I would encourage all members of the committee to defeat it.
