Environment Committee on Nov. 1st, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

All right.

Go ahead, Ms. Pauzé.

[Monique Pauzé, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank the honourable member, Ms. May, and Ms. McArthur for being here.

Ms. May, I'm glad to have this opportunity to speak with you about the bill at greater length and about how we, in the Bloc Québécois, see it.

You and I have spoken a few times about protecting health and the environment, and we agree on a lot of things.

The first iteration of Bill C-230 had elements that were at odds with Quebec's interests. The Liberals who were on the committee at the time corrected those issues. I'm glad you took into account the concerns stemming from the first version of Bill C‑230. I commend you for taking the bill and fixing some of its problems. Nevertheless, we feel that some major problems remain. Since you won't be here Friday, I'll tell you what we plan to address in the amendments we're proposing.

In your opening remarks, you said the bill wasn't about window dressing, but I don't think the bill, as currently written, will make the least bit of difference in the lives of those who experience environmental injustice, whether it be indigenous communities, vulnerable populations, the economically disadvantaged or immigrant communities.

In other words, the intent is there, but the bill's content is not strong enough to bring about social change. The amendments I'll be proposing to the committee are designed to strengthen the bill. I'm eager for you to see them, but I will gladly tell you now how we plan to improve the bill with our amendments.

First, the focus has to be on the idea of environmental justice. The bill fits into the broader context of introducing environmental rights. The purpose is to address injustices associated with the environment, injustices that tend to be experienced by minorities, regardless of their colour, if I can put it that way. Since the purpose is to address injustices, it only makes sense to set out a positive principle, namely, stronger environmental justice. That's what one of our amendments seeks to do.

Second, everyone needs protection, and it has to be provided to all citizens fairly and without discrimination. I realize that the intent of the bill is to protect minority communities mainly, and I completely agree with that. The strategy has to target vulnerable populations, including visible minorities. That is why the ministers' strategy must take into account all the vulnerability factors that can lead to environmental injustices. Another one of our amendments seeks to broaden the scope of application to include the origin, socio-economic situation, heritage and history of affected communities.

Take, for instance, the Horne smelter situation in Rouyn‑Noranda. It was under the spotlight all summer long and during the election campaign in Quebec. I'm sure you read the very powerful piece written by one of Quebec's great poets, Richard Desjardins. The piece illustrates how the problem has been going on for decades, for generations, and how successive generations have had to deal with the effects of the pollution caused by the smelter. Those people shouldn't be excluded from the bill's protection, but your bill seems to do just that: exclude them. The government should help them and right the wrongs of the past. That's what yet another one of our amendments seeks to do.

You talked about funding. We will be proposing an amendment to have the government set aside funding, under the strategy, to provide tangible support to communities who face inequalities because of their relationship with the environment. We want to make sure the bill has teeth and doesn't end up on a shelf collecting dust once it is passed. I realize you couldn't include such a provision in your bill because it would have been deemed out of order. The bill requires royal assent. If all of us here can agree to such an amendment, it could very well pass.

Those are the things I am looking for. If the Liberal government is serious about advancing environmental justice, then the government should prove it by supporting these amendments.

The Bloc Québécois is extending its hand in co‑operation. I urge you to ask every member of the committee to support our amendments, to make this bill better and advance environmental justice.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Can you answer in under 45 seconds?

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

All right.

I'd like to thank the honourable member.

I haven't read the Bloc Québécois's amendments, and it's not up to me since I'm not a voting member of the committee. I do, however, hope that everyone supports the bill. In the Green Party, we believe the best way to make decisions is through consensus.

This private member's bill does not exclude anyone. The definitions do not leave any community out. For example, the bill refers to “communities located in proximity to environmental hazards”, with no other conditions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you, Ms. May.

Next we have Ms. Collins. Go ahead.

[Laurel Collins, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank Ms. May, in particular, for bringing forward this bill—for bringing it back after Lenore Zann brought it forward in our last Parliament.

Thank you so much, Ms. McArthur, for being here and lending your support, expertise and knowledge to this.

I have to say that I'm concerned about some of the comments from my Conservative and Bloc colleagues. The issue of environmental racism is such a serious one in Canada, and the idea that.... When the previous version of this bill was before Parliament, the last time, it was amended to add the concept of environmental justice. I support the urgent need to address and advance environmental justice in all its forms, but it's also very clear that Canada has a historic and ongoing problem with environmental racism.

Therefore, I'm hoping that each of you can speak to the importance of addressing environmental racism, specifically, and the need for race-based data.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Thank you.

Jane, you go first, as I want to make sure we all have more time for questions.

[Dr. Jane E. McArthur]

Thank you, Ms. Collins.

Thank you, Ms. May.

I'd like to point back to something Dr. Waldron said when she was speaking in the debate on Bill C-230. One thing she said around that problem, at that time, was that she felt we needed to do more education about what racism is and what environmental racism is, because she was concerned there is a real lack of understanding about this phenomenon being a reality. She pointed to the fact that, in Canada, we like to think that no racism exists here, which she said is "ridiculous”, in her words.

It does exist. Racism often exists in subtle and in very overt ways. We're seeing that in the mapping done and the health impacts being experienced. I think that, when we talk about different intersections and vulnerabilities, we're capable of recognizing oppression and that certain people are vulnerablized. With that lens, it shouldn't be so difficult for us to understand that racism and environmental racism exist in Canada.

We're in a moment where we're reconciling, or supposed to be reconciling, with our past and the ongoing present legacy of colonization of first nations people who live on these lands today. We need to be very concertedly acknowledging this. That's our first step—to acknowledge that this is a reality. Within that reality, we need to take steps to remediate that.

Part of this strategy, as Ms. May pointed out, is the inclusion of the affected people in rolling out the strategy in this bill. Consultation, and free, prior and informed consent, as have already been mentioned.... The communities affected are often not understood through traditional research lenses and methodologies of gathering information. This is, in part, because we're not asking the right questions about what their experiences are. The invisibilization of racism is part of the problem of not being able to gather the right kinds of information to show us the problem.

I think that, really and truly, if we lack some of this understanding and education.... This is an important part of what this bill will do: highlight the fact that this is a reality. We're not necessarily looking in the right places for the right pieces of data, or listening to the right people for the information we need and for evidence that shows this is a problem.

[Laurel Collins, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Thank you so much.

I was really struck by some of the research out of the United States, where they were looking at where toxic dumps are placed, and the greatest factor that they found in that data was race. That was far beyond economic status, which was a surprise, I think, to the researchers. We don't have that same kind of data here in Canada. I'm also thinking about other environmental issues like the climate crisis.

To Ms. May—we don't have a ton of time for you to answer this—in the case of the environmental racism national strategy, are there some ways we could ensure that we're really getting at some of these new threats when it comes to the climate crisis?

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

If we're looking in terms of climate crisis or exposure to environmental pollution that threatens human health, there's no question that there are class issues. We don't like to talk about class in Canada because I think we are kind of a classless society. People can be upwardly mobile and all of that, but the reality of it is that, if you are low on the economic totem pole, you are low on political power.

If you want to look at who died, the over 600—I think 700—people who died in four days from the heat dome in British Columbia, in that lens you'll find primarily people who are low income. You can slice it again. I'm not arguing that, when you look at the data, environmental racism is a clear factor, but so, too, is the intersectionality around being low income. Low income means less political power, which means that the government decided not to open cooling centres or do things to save lives. I can't imagine why not, but I sometimes refer to the heat dome impact as being the neutron bomb of climate change.

Neutron bombs, as you will recall, destroy people but leave the buildings standing. A heat dome kills people but the buildings are still standing. Hurricane Fiona and atmospheric rivers of the climate crisis kill people and destroy infrastructure. Heat domes just kill people.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

Go ahead, Mr. Deltell.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Dear committee members, what a pleasure it is to see you again, in particular Ms. May, our colleague from British Columbia.

I must congratulate you, Ms. May. It is always wonderful to see you and discuss things in person.

First nations topics are dear to my heart, and with good reason. I have had the privilege of being an elected official for nearly 14 years now: I was a member of the Legislative Assembly of Quebec for 7 years and have been sitting in the House of Commons for another 7 years. I have always had the great honour of representing the Wendake community. It is indeed a great privilege, and I am very lucky, because my parents moved in 1962 to a site barely a mile from the Wendake community. I grew up with these people. I know them and I love them. They love me back, too, and I most grateful.

I am proud to represent this community, which I think is the best. You can see that I am not impartial here. These people have always been proud and I think that we have succeeded in living in harmony together in the Quebec region. This is inspirational for me, but we must not forget the major concerns that we all have for first nations.

The bill before us brings into focus a human tragedy that, unfortunately, is not only occurring in our country. I am talking about discrimination towards first nations. We will always remember that poignant moment on June 11, 2008, when the Prime Minister apologized on behalf of Canada to first nations for the tragedy that was the residential schools. We should remember that this was the only time in the history of Canada that a first nations grand chief spoke to all parliamentarians. We cannot allow ourselves to forget.

As I stated, I have been lucky to live with hard-working people in Wendake. It is a community of 2,000 souls which has more than 200 private businesses, and therefore many entrepreneurs. Since I was very little, I have noticed that the people of my community have always been partners in prosperity, and I am a proud 58-year-old. They expect nothing from anyone, they are independent and they establish partnerships with people around them.

Ms. May, my question is for you.

We cannot undo history, but we can hope to shape the future differently.

Do you think that first nations must be partners in any of the big projects that are currently underway, whatever they may be, if they have a direct impact on indigenous territories?

I think that first nations should be partners in these projects and partners in prosperity to eliminate as much as possible any sign of racism, whether overt or covert, even though it might be impossible to completely eradicate racist thoughts in some people.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

To start with, I would like to congratulate my dear colleague for being appointed Official Opposition critic for Environment and Climate Change.

My colleague has spoken of his wonderful experience and talked about true partners who work for the well-being of all. That is the ideal. However, this is not the experience of the majority of first nations in Canada. As Ms. Taylor Roy asked, does the right to informed consent really exist?

This is not the experience of the vast majority of first nations in Canada, especially in my province, where there are pipelines. First nations such as the Squamish, the Tsleil-Waututh and the Musqueam are still against this big project which is now the property of all Canadian citizens. You speak of an ideal, but it is not the experience of the vast majority.

The bill does not target communities that are not experiencing problems.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

One of those projects was cancelled, much to the ire of many indigenous communities. I'm referring to the Northern Gateway that was stopped in 2016. A strong majority of indigenous peoples favoured the project, but the government pulled the plug on it.

Allow me to quote Mr. Elmer Ghostkeeper of the Buffalo Lake Métis Settlement:

Their expectations were really raised with the promise of $2 billion set aside in business and employment opportunities.... Equity was offered to aboriginal communities, and with the change in government that was all taken away. We are very disappointed [with this] government.

He also said this:

We have to partner with the oil and gas industry and be treated as equals, not as token, because any natural resource project that is going to take place on traditional lands has to be given free, informed, prior consent now. The old ways of doing business doesn't cut it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you, Mr. Deltell.

Your time has run out.

Ms. Thompson, you have the floor.

[Joanne Thompson, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Ms. May and Dr. McArthur.

I really appreciated your comments around the intersectionality of environmental racism and environmental justice and health, particularly for vulnerable persons.

Dr. McArthur, understanding this intersectionality, could you expand on how we can assist in expanding health care professional trainees in their exposure to climate and sustainability topics during their studies?

[Dr. Jane E. McArthur]

Thank you so much for the question.

This will give me an opportunity to speak a bit about what the organization I work for, which as I said earlier is the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, is doing. CAPE is a physician-led organization with the mission of bettering human health by protecting the planet. Our board is mostly physicians, and we have regional committees across the lands called Canada that are led predominantly by physicians but also other health care professionals.

Much of our work is about educating and empowering physicians and other health professionals to know and understand what the health impacts are, in particular for vulnerable people and racialized and indigenous people. A lot of that knowledge actually comes from the physicians within CAPE, who recognize these problems from working with and treating their patients and want to do something about it.

Building in that empowerment piece, CAPE has been advocating, through medical schools, for training and research that continues to address some of these issues. It's designing research studies and training medical students and other health care providers on these intersectional problems of racism and the social determinants of health, as they're known.

There is an appetite and a very real need on the part of the health care community and health professionals to address these problems. I think we're seeing that happen more and more, particularly as young trainees are living in this world where we're seeing evidence of these problems.

[Joanne Thompson, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you.

What are some of the long-term health and environmental outcomes of racial injustice policies that concern you, and how do we start to undo these effects?

That's for Dr. McArthur or Ms. May.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

I would like to jump in and say that, when you experience doing the epidemiology in terms of population level of health effects, you see it. You see over and over again that people living next to toxic waste sites are going to have higher cancer rates. People living under highways with diesel trucks going by all of the time are going to have respiratory impacts. You're going to have learning disability issues.

With a lot of these toxic chemicals that people are exposed to disproportionately in communities of people of colour and indigenous people, you're going to have more birth defects. These are toxic chemicals that pass through the placenta. We should not be exposing anyone in Canada. There is another piece of legislation that's on its way to the committee as well, S-5, and I won't trespass into what I want to work on because I have to make it better, but no Canadian should be exposed to levels of environmental contamination, pollution and toxic chemicals that affect their health.

That's a short description of the kinds of things you see more in communities that are exposed to environmental racism.

[Joanne Thompson, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you.

Dr. McArthur...?

[Dr. Jane E. McArthur]

I'll reinforce what Ms. May just said, but I would also like to provide another example. One of the projects that we've been working on as a collaboration of organizations has to do with this intersection of racism and exposure to toxins. One of the things that we know—and this is documented in both epidemiological and medical literature and also in literature in the social sciences—is that products that contain higher levels of toxins are often targeted, advertised, to racialized people.

For example, we see racialized women, particularly Black women, using products to straighten their hair and to bleach their skin in an effort to conform to western beauty ideals, and these are leading to higher rates of breast cancer, cysts, other reproductive harms, respiratory problems and skin sensitization.

There are different ways we see this problem, and it's not just in the external environments we're living in and the pollutants we're exposed to, but also in these more subtle ways that exposures happen by particular populations.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

Ms. Pauzé, you have the floor.

[Monique Pauzé, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Thank you.

I have some questions for you, Ms. McArthur.

You indicated that these communities often don't have any political clout, and I am absolutely in agreement with you, especially when I think of the way that Canada has treated indigenous peoples in the past. We continue to believe that all vulnerability factors must be considered. I don't know if you are aware of what happened with the Horne Smelter, which is in Rouyn, where the population is mostly white. There is also the Charl-Pol factory in La Baie. Would that be considered environmental racism when the toxicity of the air has an impact on employees?

I could also talk to you about the red dust that settles on Limoilou, or the air quality in the eastern part of Montreal, where the population is mostly francophone, white and economically disadvantaged, and they're the ones suffering from all these factors.

We believe that businesses aren't really concerned about race; what they're after is profit. They don't care about their employees or the people living nearby. For some businesses, it is the desire to make a buck that generates all this toxicity.

Ms. Waldron had mentioned certain factors, such as education, weak political representation and precarious socioeconomic conditions, amongst others. I absolutely agree with her. Actually, she gave an excellent critique of neoliberalism.

The Bloc québécois believes that we could have a bill that does the job. The Horne Smelter is a good example, and we hope that all MPs from all parties will support our suggestions to improve the bill, strengthen it and give it teeth, so that the law protects everyone and ensures equality for all when it comes to health. We would like the enforcement of this bill to take into account the origins and socioeconomic conditions of these communities, as well as their history and development.

Would you support such an amendment to strengthen the bill?

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Please be brief.

[Dr. Jane E. McArthur]

Thank you, Ms. Pauzé.

I do think these factors are included in the way that this bill is laid out. It does not exclude, as Ms. May said earlier.