Mr. Speaker, to begin with, I would comment very briefly on a remark by the hon. member for Laurentides, who, when speaking on behalf of the official opposition, accused the minister of partisan politics. I could not help noting the irony of her remark in a debate on an environment bill when she talked about the Quebec referendum and the Ogilvie mills, of her lengthy remarks concerning the Irving Whale and of course of the usual litany on centralizing federalism with all its sins and evils.
Even more ironically, while accusing the minister of partisan politics, she herself admitted that the minister chose the option put
forward by the Bloc Quebecois as the official minority, rather than the option put forward by the Liberal majority.
I believe that Canadians, including Quebecers, want to set aside this sort of unproductive debate. Everyone agrees that environmental concerns transcend political referendum disputes and so-called centralizing federalism. For this reason, I am going to avoid talking about this sort of thing and keep to the subject of Bill C-83.
In 1987, I had the honour of being a member of the Canadian delegation to the United Nations when Prime Minister Brundtland submitted her famous report on the environment and the economy, known today as the Brundtland report. She was followed at the podium by the president of the Maldive Islands, Mr. Abdul Gayoom, who remains the president today.
The Maldives are an archipelago of some 100 islands south of India in the Indian Ocean. Describing his country in the words of the great Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl as jewels on a cushion of blue-the Indian Ocean-he said that his country and its magnificent islands were not hit by storms and adverse weather conditions until the 1980s. They were inundated by enormous waves in 1984 and 1985 and then again in 1986 and 1987-for the first time in their history. These waves became increasingly violent, bringing about distress, destruction and casualties. Everybody there was asking the representatives of industrialized countries: "Do we, innocent people of the Maldives, have to pay the price for the destruction you caused, for the harm you did to the environment, for the greenhouse effect, for all the environmental problems for which we are totally blameless and for the consequences of your actions?"
I submit this is a fundamental problem and that, as a rich country with unparalleled natural resources, we must set an example for the world, especially for the developing countries which have to endure the consequences of the actions taken by industrialized countries. We must show the world that sustainable development is more than just words.
We have to start practising what we preach on the international scene. Sustainable development must never be just a catchword. It must never be that kind of convenient buzz word that makes us escape from the realities of having to integrate economy and environment in a realistic and true fashion.
If the federal government does not practise sustainable development in all its day to day doings in its act of governing the country then how can it expect its citizens to do the same? How can it expect municipalities and provincial governments to practise sustainable development if it does not show the example itself?
This is why in 1993 in the red book the Liberal Party of Canada devoted a total chapter on sustainable development. One of the key parts of that chapter was to install a commissioner of the environment. In the red book the idea was such that it be linked to the office of the auditor general of the environment.
I am very pleased this is becoming a reality with Bill C-83. We will become the second country in the world to install a commissioner of environment and sustainable development after the leading example of New Zealand several years ago.
This new office will have significant powers. Beyond the significant powers of the office, the very existence of the office of a commissioner of environment and sustainable development sends a powerful signal not only within the government itself but beyond the government into the reaches of Canadian society. They now know there will be somebody there, a monitor, an ombudsman, who will devote his or her duties to the environment and sustainable development in making sure the government itself practises what it preaches.
The Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development held hearings for several months on that topic. Our colleague from Davenport really deserves to be congratulated for his sensible and really inspiring leadership. In fact, our committee had recommended that an independent commissioner of the environment and sustainable development be designated, a position similar to that of the Commissioner of Official Languages, but the government went with the suggestion made by the official opposition, to set up a commissioner of the environment and sustainable development within the office of the auditor general.
Despite the fact that the government did not choose the option recommended by the committee, I think-even though I was a member of the committee-that it is a major step forward. Today, with Bill C-83, we are creating this position of commissioner, which becomes irreversible. With the appointment of the commissioner, two years from now each government department will be required by law to table in the House a sustainable development strategy.
These strategies will have to be updated every three years and the revised strategies will also have to be tabled before Parliament. So, Parliament will be accountable to the Canadian people for all these sustainable development strategies in the future.
It is a tremendous departure for the Canadian public that in the future every ministry of government will have not only to produce a strategy of sustainable development but also be responsible to the commissioner for its being monitored, its being followed up very
closely to ensure that it really responds to the reality of truly integrating economy and environment in our governance.
Further, the public can now intervene with the commissioner. The public can send petitions to the commissioner if it does not agree with government policy or government programs relating to environment and sustainable development. The commissioner will transmit the petitions to the ministers and the ministers will be bound by this bill, Bill C-83, to respond to the commissioner within a reasonable delay so that the public at large will feel very truly that in the commissioner for environment and sustainable development it has an ally, an ombudsman, somebody it can turn to at all times and in complete open freedom.
The commissioner will have to table before the House an annual report to Parliament. This annual report will give the status of each department regarding its sustainable development strategy.
Furthermore, the report of the commissioner will have to give details of all the petitions he has received from the Canadian public, what action has been taken, and what response the ministers have given in regard to these petitions.
The key issue here is if this commissioner of environment and sustainable development will be truly independent and have the necessary powers, autonomy, independence to ensure that he or she is listened to and that the public feels that through this office it has a voice and a say.
The best answer to this is that we will now have to amend the law of the auditor general. I think all Canadians are fully satisfied to date about the independence, the autonomy, the openness of the auditor general to freely criticize government when he or she feels that criticism is deserved and that criticism is carried far and wide into the land and the government pays heed. I am convinced that it will be the case with the commissioner for environment and sustainable development and that the commissioner will have the full independence and autonomy that he or she deserves on behalf of the Canadian public.
We have just undergone work on behalf of the committee on the environment and sustainable development under the leadership of the member for Davenport on a massive review of the mainstay of Canadian environmental legislation at the federal level, the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. This review has touched on the various aspects of what must guide the environmental cause in the future: the fact that we cannot govern ourselves now in little compartments, that ecosystems mean that everything is connected with everything else and we human beings are connected with the ecosystems, that without this interconnection, this interdependence of all the elements that form the ecosystems and bioregions, economic development or profit is impossible. You cannot plant trees in a desert. You cannot use water if the stream has dried up.
We who are blessed with natural resources beyond compare have a duty to guide ourselves in the future so that instead of short term we look to what our aboriginal brothers and sisters say: seven generations ahead. We really truly believe, as they do, that a healthy mother earth provides a healthy quality of life but a sick mother earth makes us sick as well.
I believe that the CEPA review, having put out all these new ideas into the realm of the Canadian public today, will see in the office of the commissioner of environment and sustainable development a tremendous opportunity for these ideas gaining ground in actual governance inside the federal system.
I believe the time has come for us to realize that we cannot be the society of waste we have been. We cannot continue to be the society of overuse of energy. We must live differently. We must find new ways of production. We cannot toxify and harm our natural resources forever without suffering the consequences. This is why this bill is so important to all of us today.
I was listening to the official opposition with all its litany of partisan politics about the referendum. I have always believed and my experience has shown me, as a politician in Quebec and also at the federal level, that the environment is the greatest binding thread among people because it knows no colour, it knows no race, no creed, no physical boundary. The environment is all of us. It is life itself. It is whatever sustains life and living. It is a tremendous binding force for good.
I think at this time especially we should reflect on the tremendous binding force the environment can be among Canadians. If we really truly believe in the environmental cause, in quality of life, in the seven generations, then we will back Bill C-83 with great conviction. I am convinced that it will change the way we govern ourselves. It will lead to change in the way we act and live as citizens so that we will look to our natural resources to be there not only when we ourselves grow old but for the generations to come.
It is with great conviction that I will vote for Bill C-83.