I do have an issue. We need to look at what we mean by “environmental justice”.
I really appreciate my colleague's amendment. I am broadly supportive of her amendment.
Madam Pauzé and I agree on this issue around smelters.
I raised the example last time of the Italian immigrants who came to Trail. I'm well-connected with the grandchildren who grew up without grandfathers because they chose to work in a smelter where the air inside was toxic. That air was often released at night. If a dog went out in the street in Trail in the nighttime, it would die. When people were inside, the toxic air was released. It is broadly considered one of the most toxic places in North America as a result.
A number of immigrants, primarily Italian immigrants, made their journey to Canada and got jobs in Trail. I imagine it's the same in many towns across the country that are primarily outside of our major centres. People made the decision to work in these less than desirable facilities and paid the price accordingly.
As I said before, women lived to the age of 80 in Trail, and their husbands all died in their forties. It's a shame.
As much as this addresses what we talked about as far as the inequities are concerned, I want to also talk about environmental justice. I don't think it's well defined anywhere here. I want to understand exactly what we're talking about before it's interpreted for us by somebody else.
That somebody else, of course—Ms. May, the proponent of the bill puts out—will be determined in a court of law by a judge without any direction about how this actually happens.
I would like to know that meaning, about how we come up with environmental justice. Is that justice for the environment and reparations to the environment? Is it reparations to the people who have suffered because they live on lands that have been exposed to more pollution because those lands have waste from our urban development shipped out to areas where there are fewer people?
What I want to find out is that we're not putting a definition on what environmental justice is that somebody else is going to interpret for us. If we could move forward with a clear understanding of what environmental justice is, it would serve this bill very well.
I'm going to pause there and leave it for maybe one of the officials to talk about how they see that unfolding in the mid-term, only two years or so before this is in place. I'd like to hear that, please.