Evidence of meeting #25 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 43rd Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was health.

A video is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Ingrid Waldron  Associate Professor, School of Nursing, Faculty of Health, Dalhousie University, As an Individual
Clerk of the Committee  Ms. Angela Crandall
Laura Farquharson  Director General, Legislative and Regulatory Affairs, Department of the Environment
David Morin  Director General, Safe Environments Directorate, Healthy Environments and Consumer Safety Branch, Department of Health
Silke Neve  Director, Information and Indicators Division, Strategic Policy Branch, Department of the Environment
Pascal Roberge  Director, Program Integration Division, Science and Technology Branch, Department of the Environment

5:30 p.m.

Liberal

Chris Bittle Liberal St. Catharines, ON

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

5:30 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia

Yes, Mr. Bittle.

5:30 p.m.

Liberal

Chris Bittle Liberal St. Catharines, ON

We're really venturing off relevancy to this bill.

5:30 p.m.

Conservative

Brad Redekopp Conservative Saskatoon West, SK

We're talking about—

5:30 p.m.

Liberal

Chris Bittle Liberal St. Catharines, ON

Mr. Redekopp, I have the floor.

Sorry, Mr. Chair.

5:30 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia

Go ahead, Mr. Bittle. I think I see where you're going with this, but yes, continue for a few more seconds, and then I'll respond.

5:30 p.m.

Liberal

Chris Bittle Liberal St. Catharines, ON

I know Mr. Albas did that at the start, but unless there's a tie-back to this bill, we seem to be avoiding the relevancy, which is the bill at hand. I think Mr. Redekopp should really—

5:30 p.m.

Conservative

Dan Albas Conservative Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair. I'd like to add to the point on relevancy.

5:30 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia

Sure.

5:30 p.m.

Conservative

Dan Albas Conservative Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC

The member herself raised clean air and clean water in her opening statement. Other chairs have ruled that if someone speaks to them in their initial presentation, it is within it. I imagine Mr. Redekopp is going to be getting back to the bill itself, but I do think he deserves the ability to state his case.

5:30 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia

It's a valid point in the sense that indigenous communities have been pushed into areas that don't have the best source water and so on, and it's the whole question of how this funding formula is developed. I think it's all relevant.

I would urge Mr. Redekopp, once he's made the point, to stop there instead of going into a litany of all the ills that he thinks our government has committed, but whatever....

Just go ahead, Mr. Redekopp.

5:30 p.m.

Conservative

Brad Redekopp Conservative Saskatoon West, SK

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I understand how the Liberals do not like to hear these things, but it is the truth. Of course, I would suggest that we've already, through testimony, heard that the indigenous communities are one of the main ones targeted by this legislation. Also, clean air and clean water are the primary things we're talking about with environmental things.

The Auditor General went on to say that many first nations communities are particularly vulnerable to infectious diseases, such as the virus that causes the coronavirus disease, because of social, environmental and economic factors.

The Liberal government has completely failed to keep the environment clean on first nations reserves. How do you think this will change if this legislation happens to get passed?

5:30 p.m.

Liberal

Lenore Zann Liberal Cumberland—Colchester, NS

Thank you to my colleague Mr. Redekopp.

I want to say, first of all, that I know Saskatoon is very fortunate to be situated on the South Saskatchewan River. There's a plentiful supply of water there.

The problem with the first nations water did not start with this government. It started a long time ago. Successive governments have not done enough to try to alleviate this problem. We are doing our very best and in the middle of a global pandemic as well.

We are working on it and we will continue to work on it. We will make sure that the water problems that are unfortunately a problem right now in many of our first nations communities are addressed.

5:30 p.m.

Conservative

Brad Redekopp Conservative Saskatoon West, SK

Certainly the pandemic has been an issue for the last year, but for the first four and a half years there was no pandemic and there were lots of opportunities to get this done—

5:30 p.m.

Liberal

Lenore Zann Liberal Cumberland—Colchester, NS

Yes, and there were 15 years of a Conservative government before that, or 12 years, so why didn't they do something?

5:30 p.m.

Conservative

Brad Redekopp Conservative Saskatoon West, SK

The question for you, then, is this. You've introduced this as a private member's bill. Did you do that because you're concerned that the Liberal government, the way it is, would not address this issue any other way?

5:30 p.m.

Liberal

Lenore Zann Liberal Cumberland—Colchester, NS

No, of course not.

I introduced it because it was a private member's bill that I had introduced in Nova Scotia with the help of Dr. Ingrid Waldron. I believe this is a very important issue.

On my very first day in Ottawa, after being sworn in, I went straight to the legislative department, the lawyers, and asked how I would do a private member's bill about this. I was lucky to win the lottery and be one of the first 25 or so members of Parliament to actually get to introduce a private member's bill. That's how it happened.

5:30 p.m.

Conservative

Brad Redekopp Conservative Saskatoon West, SK

Dr. Waldron, given what we just spoke about with the lack of progress by this government on clean drinking water, should this legislation pass and be implemented, are you concerned that the government would be able to actually implement any of this in a positive way?

5:35 p.m.

Associate Professor, School of Nursing, Faculty of Health, Dalhousie University, As an Individual

Dr. Ingrid Waldron

No, I'm always a hopeful person. That's just my personality.

I think the bill is very pointed. It's obviously just a bill. It's a page long. It's not extremely detailed, but it speaks to all of the issues that are important to me in terms of the collection of data, the intersections of race and socio-economic status.

I feel that in this environment people are willing to listen more. With everything that happened last year, I'm very hopeful there will be movement on this. There is a different understanding about the issue. I think awareness has been raised over the past several years. The environment is right. I think the government is very interested right now in collecting information on systemic racism more broadly.

I just feel there's a right time, and I have a personality that is always really hopeful. I'm so happy that I met Lenore, because she's just like I am. She's persistent and consistent. She is hopeful.

I believe that you attract negativity if you are negative. I am very positive about this. I don't know what the process is like, but I think at some point, this year, hopefully, it's going to move ahead.

I believe in Lenore. I'm here. I don't know whether or not I'm able to support, but I'm here if anybody wants any support or help.

5:35 p.m.

Conservative

Brad Redekopp Conservative Saskatoon West, SK

Well, hope is a wonderful thing, but hope is not a management tool.

5:35 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia

Okay.

We will go now to Mr. Longfield. Maybe he will speak about hope as well.

5:35 p.m.

Liberal

Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON

Hope and hard work; they go together very well.

5:35 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia

Hope and hard work. Yes.

5:35 p.m.

Liberal

Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Dr. Waldron, it's just a thrill to have you at our committee.

Thank you so much, Lenore, for bringing us all together and for bringing this forward.

I was speaking with a class at the University of Guelph last week, Ajay Sharma's POLS 4280 class. I said we were going to be talking about environmental racism and they were excited. They said they don't usually hear governments putting those two things together.

Dr. Waldron, I was thinking as you were speaking about Africville in Halifax and how for several hundred years now it's located by rail tracks. I have visited the original settlement community. There's a garbage dump, industrial site, train tracks; the cheapest dirtiest land you could find to put people on is where the Black community was located.

We have intersections between municipal decisions on zoning, provincial decisions on environmental issues on site, and then possibly some federal guidelines in terms of setting direction for the country on what's acceptable and what's not acceptable in terms of how these locations are determined.

In your work have you been tying in the municipal, provincial and federal, or so far municipal and provincial. How does that look?

5:35 p.m.

Associate Professor, School of Nursing, Faculty of Health, Dalhousie University, As an Individual

Dr. Ingrid Waldron

No. I haven't looked necessarily at the federal, but my work has mostly focused on the provincial and the Department of Environment.

With Africville it was the City of Halifax, of course, which created that problem. It was both a problem of gentrification or urban renewal as well as environmental racism. There has been a focus on provincial, but I am starting to venture more into other areas.

I formed a new coalition late last year, a national coalition, with various environmental and climate change groups. We're hoping to do mapping across Canada. I have done that mapping for Nova Scotia, but I'm trying to look more broadly at Canada.

I would say that for the past nine years it has been very focused on Nova Scotia, but I hope to change that.