Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I'm glad the topic of the definition of “significant environmental harm” has come up, because it's something that needs to be defined and discussed. I don't approach this as a lawyer; I approach it as a biologist and a farmer, and a person who lives in a rural area.
I think it's a truism in law--and my colleague to the right of me confirmed the phrase--that hard cases make bad law. It's easy to divine environmental harm if you define it as a hard case, like Ms. Murray did with the destruction of a salmon spawning area or direct dumping of a toxic substance into a lake or a stream. Those are easy ones. But too often environmental change and environmental harm are conflated. What is one person's environmental change, well within the bounds of sustainability, is another person's harm.
A whole number of examples, especially in rural communities and rural resource communities, spring to mind. For example, in Manitoba and Saskatchewan we have very large reservoirs that have been constructed for flood control, recreation, irrigation, and so on. There has been, in those cases, a significant environmental change, but I would argue very strongly that in many of those cases the ecosystem has adjusted to the new reality. We have a new kind of environment out there, where ecosystem processes have reconfigured themselves and are operating very well, and can do so in perpetuity.
For example, when I look at the definition of a “healthy and ecologically balanced environment”--and I'm reading from the bill itself--it means
an environment of a quality that protects human and cultural dignity, health and well-being and in which essential ecological processes are preserved for their own sake, as well as for the benefit of present and future generations.
Just as an aside, as a biologist I'd like somebody to define for me what's a non-essential ecological process. I think all ecological processes are essential. I think the focus on ecological process is what's important.
For example, in many forest communities across the country what happens is that an older forest, through forest management and forest practices, is changed to a younger forest with all of its essential ecological processes intact. Again, this particular bill has the potential...well, it definitely will allow groups and organizations that happen to have a different value set compared to, for example, the rural forestry community in Quebec, where people happen to like a young forest and understand how environments can change positively because of human interaction.... What will happen is those rural communities will be attacked by this particular act, by people and organizations using this act.
I represent a rural resource community. I think we all have to be reminded that it's the natural resource industries that are carrying this entire country right now, whether it's the oil sands, whether it's forestry, whether it's agriculture, whether it's natural gas development. What those natural resource industries contribute to the country basically keeps all of our social programs going. Too often, people who never venture into natural resource areas do not have an understanding of what kinds of processes go on out there and what we, as farmers and loggers, actually do. Unless you understand that, you cannot appreciate that environmental change is not necessarily a bad thing.
In terms of clause 18, I also look at the precautionary principle. I understand that the precautionary principle is already recognized and entrenched in several federal laws, like the Federal Sustainable Development Act and the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. Again, as listed in these acts, the lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective action to protect the environment. The word “cost-effective” doesn't show up in the definition in this particular bill.
Actually, there are a lot of problems with the precautionary principle. If you look at how environmental assessments are carried out, you'll see they're really risk assessments, where you make a judgment based on the development at hand and then decide whether the change to the environment is within the bounds of sustainability. The problem with the precautionary principle taken to its illogical extreme is that then you would never do anything, because you would be too afraid of doing some kind of environmental harm.
I should make the point that in terms of environmental assessment, science must guide all decision-making, and I have a very simple three-word rule for how I approach the environment: Do the math. The math of the environment is often forgotten as we wrangle about process and legal issues and so on.
I would urge the committee, concerning clause 18, to take a really good look at the doors this particular clause opens from a litigation standpoint, as well as to strongly consider that rural resource communities and the natural resource industries that I pointed out before are basically carrying the entire country.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.