Evidence of meeting #112 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was agency.
A recording is available from Parliament.
5:50 p.m.
Liberal
5:50 p.m.
Conservative
Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC
The votes are being called too quickly to provide an opportunity....
5:50 p.m.
Liberal
5:50 p.m.
NDP
Linda Duncan NDP Edmonton Strathcona, AB
—but I have a question that the legal people might want to take away for furthering the bill.
5:50 p.m.
Liberal
Mike Bossio Liberal Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON
Even so, we cannot continue to do this every time the vote is called.
5:50 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte
I hear you, and I will be stricter as we move forward.
Go ahead, Linda. What's the issue?
5:50 p.m.
NDP
Linda Duncan NDP Edmonton Strathcona, AB
If you call for comments first, that would be helpful, instead of calling the vote.
I want to thank you, Churence, for this amendment because it raises this issue.
My concern is that the bill as written simply says “comments received from the public”. This is a question that has arisen to me in this bill. Who is the public? There are a lot of places in this bill where we talk about the public, but we're assuming that it includes indigenous people.
If you specify this here, I'd just like to give a red flag that we need to be careful throughout the bill where we need to specify indigenous people. Are they public?
You, obviously, had picked up on this.
5:50 p.m.
Liberal
5:50 p.m.
NDP
Linda Duncan NDP Edmonton Strathcona, AB
I'm agreeing with you. I'm not disagreeing, but you are qualifying, okay? You're saying that it's more than public, so.... I think it's something that we need to be careful with throughout the bill.
5:50 p.m.
Liberal
5:50 p.m.
Conservative
Ed Fast Conservative Abbotsford, BC
A recorded vote.
(Amendment agreed to: yeas 8; nays 0 [See Minutes of Proceedings])
5:50 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte
Okay. Where's PV-19.1? I don't have it. I'm missing it. Does anybody have a spare PV-19.1?
Go ahead, Ms. May.
5:55 p.m.
Green
Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
Madam Chair, for the short-form understanding of everyone in the room, this amendment of mine attempts to insert:
(2.1) For the purposes of subsection (1), a project involving any of the following decisions requires an assessment: (a) a decision of the Minister of Fisheries under the Fisheries Act to permit any temporary or permanent alteration to, or destruction of, fish habitat; (b) a decision of the Minister of Transport under the Canadian Navigable Waters Act to issue a permit pertaining to navigable waters whether or not these are listed in the schedule; and
I want to flag this one for you, because this will save a lot of trouble in understanding the Navigable Waters Act later. We may not have time to amend the Navigable Waters Act later or pay attention to it, given the time constraints the committee is under, but this will deal with the issue of “on or off” the schedule and the impact of that for environmental assessment. This is a very helpful amendment.
Then it continues:
(c) a decision of the Minister of Environment under the Species at Risk Act to permit activities that pose a threat to a listed species.
Those three—
5:55 p.m.
An hon. member
Slow down.
5:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Deb Schulte
I'm noticing that a lot of people are confused. They don't seem to have PV-19.1 in their book.
5:55 p.m.
An hon. member
It's not in our package.
