Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure today to speak on Bill C-83, an act to amend the Auditor General Act to create a commissioner of environment and sustainable development in the auditor general's office.
I completely agree with the intent and purpose of the bill to audit and to examine groups, individuals and ministries with respect to the environmental sector. However, I must ask the question why.
Why are we creating another aspect of bureaucracy to do that which the auditor general and the Minister of the Environment should by all rights do within the framework of their job descriptions.
Is it not the responsibility of the Ministry of the Environment to actually monitor these things? We are creating another level of bureaucracy at a cost of over $5 million to the Canadian taxpayer. Why are we doing this?
The bill is a metaphor for government. When we have a problem, and most hardworking members of Parliament will agree, we study it, we observe it, we report on it but do we act? Rarely. If we do, it is usually nibbling around the edges. We have what I call studyitis. Instead of acting on a problem, instead of addressing a problem, instead of getting the best solutions the country has to offer for a problem and implementing those, if only on a pilot project, we study it, we observe it and we report on it. That is what we are doing here.
The purpose of that is to give the illusion we are actually doing something. When we are engaging in these studies and reports we give the illusion we are actually addressing a problem. In reality we are putting off the actual decision making processes for another time. It has been one of the most frustrating aspects of being in the House. I know that frustration is shared by many of my colleagues. That to a large extent is what the bill represents. We are creating something new to do what should already be done by existing structures within the government.
Therefore we expose this aspect of bureaucratic expansionism at the expense of the taxpayer's pocket and should put the responsibility of these activities squarely back on the ministry's door and also back on the auditor general.
Apart from that I have some constructive suggestions the ministry can devote its time to. Instead of spending another $5 million of the taxpayer's money to do something that should already be done, let us look at some constructive ways the ministry can apply what it already has to some very pressing environmental problems that exist within our midst.
There are at least 48 identified high risk areas that are contaminated within the country. As of March 1995, 11 were deemed necessary for remediation. The moneys were put forth to remediate these areas. At the end of 1996 only 13 further sites will be marked for remediation.
That leaves a total of 24 sites of high risk to our country, particularly to the people who live around them, and to the environment. I cannot emphasize strongly enough these are high risk sites that demand attention for the people who live in the area and for the surrounding environment now-not next year, not five years from now but now. This would be a good thing for the ministry to look at.
Furthermore there is absolutely no plan whatsoever to deal with these 24 remaining sites. Where is the money coming from? When will they be dealt with? I challenge the ministry to look at this now.
To give members an example of how we are trying to offset the decision making process, in March 1989, $250 million was set aside to clean up contaminated sites. As of March 1995, how many were dealt with? Absolutely none. Furthermore there was no plan whatsoever to put this money to good use to clean up contaminated sites. It has only taken six years to get to the same state of affairs we were in six years ago.
No plans exist to identify contaminated sites in Canada. We cannot address pressing environmental issues, areas that are contaminated, unless we identify those sites first. We have not even done that. That is the first step in addressing severely contaminated sites.
For those sites that are identified, there is absolutely no idea how much it will cost to address the clean up of these sites.
The federal PCB destruction program ended in March 1995. There is no plan now to deal with sites contaminated with PCBs and there are sites right now that pose a significant risk to Canadians living in their vicinity.
Canada is a major producer of waste. We produce over 30 million tonnes of waste a year or more than a tonne per person. We recycle about 10 per cent of that. That is not bad but it is not nearly what we could be doing. It is interesting to look at some European countries that have done a remarkable job in expanding their recycling programs to become more inclusive and to involve a
larger segment of their population so their waste levels at landfills and land sites are greatly reduced.
The ministry should also, instead of reinventing the wheel, look at countries that are doing a good job and see where we can be more aggressive with our recycling.
Current landfill sites are filling up and it is becoming increasingly difficult to find sites for our waste products. Landfill sites we have are leaking contaminants to surrounding areas, a significant hazard again to those people and to the flora and fauna in the vicinity.
It is interesting also to look at the costs. We want to spend $5 million for the auditor general to do a job that should already be done. The costs for a clean up in Canada are in the order of $4.5 billion per year, and it is expanding every year.
Given the current fiscal restraints of the government and successive governments in the future, we ought to pay careful heed as to how we will be dealing with the wastes we are producing now and will be in the future. It will be a common, current and pervasive problem for all of us in this country.
I speak from personal experience in my riding when I say the ministry has shown a deplorable inability to identify, prosecute and penalize individuals and industries that are right now contaminating our environment.
If we are to deal with this problem we have to start immediately to stop the wilful neglect to the environment and the wilful dumping of hazardous wastes occurring as we speak. It is very important the ministry do this. I do not know why it is not taking a more aggressive stance with industries and individuals who continue to do this. Time and time again local communities have complained at length to the ministry. It is not being able to investigate these individuals and it is not prosecuting them as they, day in and day out, dump waste into our waterways and on to our land.
The ministry also needs to be more aggressive in recovering costs where the polluter has been identified. It has not been nearly as forthcoming as it should be in trying to recoup this money. It could be very important not only to save money for the Canadian taxpayer but also give a very clear and distinct message to polluters that it is unacceptable for them to engage in this behaviour and if they do they will be penalized and forced to engage in the full cost recovery of cleaning up the sites they have polluted.
I suggest the ministry look at the environment and sustainable growth in a global context. It is essential to understand that the amount of destruction we see to our environment is intimately and directly associated with human activity both in numbers of people and in the behaviour of those people.
Right now there are over 5.5 billion people on this planet. By the year 2000 we will have 7 billion. By the year 2020 or 2030 we will have 10 billion to 11 billion people. The doubling time for our population has gone from thousands of years to the order of 25 to 30 years. It has dropped down a decade.
If we reflect on that for a minute we will see how important this issue is; our burgeoning population and the effect that will have on our dwindling resources. We simply cannot speak about sustainable development without addressing the problem of rampant population growth and human activity and the affect that has on our environment.
It is also interesting to see that the gap is actually widening between population and the ability to provide the basic necessities for that population. When populations are unable to provide for their basic necessities we have a population under stress. When we have a population under stress it leads to conflict, population migration and a destruction of the local environment where those conflicts take place. If we want to speak self-centredly, it impacts on our defence budgets, our foreign aid and development budgets and it potentially costs Canadian lives. It also impacts on the resources we use here for our social programs and services to provide for refugees who have come to our country from areas of conflict to seek refuge and succour.
I hope the ministry will look at this in the context of other ministries and also in international venues because nobody is speaking about this. If we start to speak about the subject we get accused of being neo-Malthusian. What a lot of rubbish that is. We have to be blind not to see that with a population expanding geometrically and the ability for our resources which are flattening out and in effect declining this gap which is widening will have a huge impact not only on countries half a world away but on our own. For the sake of us, our children and our grandchildren it is not only important but our responsibility to address these problems.
Our environment is our world. What we do to our world and to our environment we do to ourselves. I hope the ministry will take it upon itself that rather than repeating what should already be done, rather than creating new bureaucracies and creating more opportunities to study and report on a problem, to develop some good solutions to these problems.
Let us work with the people within our country and with our neighbours in other countries. Our environment is shared with all of our neighbours within our country and outside of our borders. What happens outside and within our borders is our business.
I believe we as a country can take a leadership role in addressing some of the large and pressing problems with our environment.