The minister is acting when it comes to the implementation framework respecting provincial and territorial jurisdictions. Perhaps there could be a friendly amendment to include the same language that Madame Pauzé sent to the committee, which is just the addition of “respecting provincial and territorial jurisdictions”.
In French, it's written as "dans le respect des compétences des provinces et territoires et ce,"
immediately after “levels specified”.
This is, hopefully, a friendly amendment.
To speak to the issue of singling out these.... As Mr. Weiler pointed out, on average, there are 15,000 people who die because of air quality issues in Canada. That is a staggering number. In 2015, a report by the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment reported 20,000 deaths.
I think it's incredibly important that we single out this issue. CEPA has not been updated for over 20 years, so it is critical that we single out air quality when it is such an important issue. I know we're going to have other amendments that cover this, but I implore the committee to take this up in a meaningful way.