Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleagues.
In the last 50 years since the end of the war, that is, in the latter part of this century, man has conquered space, broken the sound barrier, walked on the moon and plumbed the depths of the oceans. In a few brief seconds, we can send documents around the world. In our homes, our televisions give us a front row seat to global events.
Truly remarkable, even extraordinary, technological advances have taken place during the second half of this century.
And yet, according to an eminent scientist from Harvard University by the name of Edward Wilson, during this same time span, the earth's environment has suffered the most damage since the dinosaur age.
Each year, 27 million acres of forests, an area twice the size of Nova Scotia, are devastated. Desertification swallows up 15 million acres each year, an area slightly larger the Nova Scotia. Some three billion inhabitants of this planet do not have adequate sanitation facilities. More than one billion people do not have clean drinking water.
In 1930 the world was producing 7 million tonnes of chemicals; in 1950 just after the war, 7 million tonnes of chemicals; in 1970, 63 million tonnes of chemicals; and in 1985, 250 million tonnes of chemicals. In this decade of the 1990s the world will be producing 500 million tonnes of chemicals. According to UNEP statistics this figure is likely to double every decade from now on.
All of us enjoy the benefits of the use of chemicals. Our telephones, our appliances and our homes contain all sorts of products derived from chemicals. What we failed to do as a people, as a society, as all societies around the world, was to assess the impact of the use of chemicals before we started to produce them. The objective of CEPA, the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, is to control the management of toxic substances from their creation right through to elimination. The act is now five years old.
After five years we must address the following questions. Is the act as effective as it could be? What must members of the House and of the Standing Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development recommend and do to eliminate the 11 critical toxic substances flagged by the International Joint Commission as the most harmful and hazardous to human health? What must we do to deal with the hundreds and thousands of other toxic substances that bioaccumulate every day in our streams and ecosystems and that destroy our environment?
I would suggest that we need a two tier approach. First we need to control and to eliminate gradually and as soon as possible existing toxic substances that have accumulated and continue to fester our lakes, our streams, our air and our land. At the same time as these exist, all over our countryside there lies toxic waste at the bottom of our streams and on our land. We have to prevent disasters from arising.
Sadly enough I experienced a disaster in Saint-Basile-le-Grand a few years ago. For three weeks thousands of people had to be moved from their homes because of a PCB fire. We have to make sure that environmental catastrophes arising from toxic substances already produced are controlled and that disasters are avoided.
We must make sure above all not to add to what is already in our ecosystems and in the atmosphere. We must use all our laws in an intelligent way through co-ordinated action. We must use impact assessment clauses intelligently enough to assess our programs, our policies, our activities and our advance planning to arrive together at prevention because prevention is the cure.
We must use the act intelligently so that a national prevention policy takes place that ensures our industries use clean technologies and closed loop technologies in manufacturing processes to prevent toxic substances from reaching the atmosphere and the ecosystems.
Above all, we must have an integrated approach and muster all resources in the system. We must realize that we cannot do anything about the environment without talking about health, we cannot do anything about the economy without talking about the environment and we can do nothing at all without talking about education, since education forms the very basis of any action in our society. All the elements of a societal policy are tied together, and the environment, the functioning of the ecosystems, is at the root of all this. We must therefore have an ecosystemic approach and involve all those concerned, not only the federal, provincial and municipal levels of government but all stakeholders in our society, including industry, academics, environmental groups and the public.
That is why I want to strongly support this initiative of the hon. ministers of health and the environment who are giving us, in the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development, considerable leeway to consult all Canadian stakeholders to upgrade this act which is the basis of our environmental policy regarding toxic substances.
Together, we must work relentlessly to successfully eliminate toxic substances from our environment because the environment knows no political boundaries. This is a golden opportunity for all of us, from the various political parties, to co-operate to achieve a common goal.
The environment after all is a matter of equity.
In closing, I would like to quote the great British theologist, David Attenborough: "As far as we are aware we are the only human beings in the black immensities of the universe. We are alone in space. And the fate of our planet and indeed of all of us is in our own hands".
I suggest that these hands must be caring hands, must be helping hands, must be hands that work very hard to build a society where equity and environmental justice are synonymous, where we build, we conserve, we preserve, we enhance nature, the ecosystems that provide life and living and not destroy them because the environment from start to finish is a matter of living and of quality of life.
We owe it not only to ourselves but especially to generations to follow that we do a very, very positive, concerted job among all of us to reform CEPA in the most effective way possible.