Madam Speaker, the environment as a topic currently is not the headline grabber that it once was. However, the worrisome fundamental trends for our planet remain.
The real problem is to determine what are wise actions for governments to take to protect the environment in view of science, economics and politics. Often it is the apparently obvious quick fix that is tried and then eventually realized as no real solution. In addition there is always the politics of balancing and reconciling the vectors that pull in different directions. It seems in this case that the vectors or forces of politics win over the policy vectors indicated by science.
With this bill we have a political headstrong approach that is characteristic of governments that think they are high in the polls, believe their own press releases and have an arrogance that only they have the divine right to govern. My how the tone has changed from when these Liberal members were in opposition. Back then they howled like coyotes when the other old arrogant members, the Conservatives, used closure. The Liberals were outraged when closure was used. Now that they are in power they do the same thing.
Voters have to remember this and resolve that such breaking of faith with the community should not be rewarded in the next election with support and a vote for any Liberal. What is being done today reveals the inner heart of what drives Liberals in government. It is a prime example of why federal politicians are rated no higher than insincere used car salesmen. It is understandable that Canadians turn off on politics.
Before us we have a bill which is anti free trade and which is supposed to help the environment but it is not supported by credible scientific evidence. This bill should have died on the Order Paper but now we have it back again under the closure rules.
I despair that we will ever see a Liberal Minister of the Environment who will be content with the best that science has to offer for environmental policy. The quest for short term political payoff is evidenced in this bill to ban the importation and trade of MMT in gasoline.
We were not even close to having a realistic minister when the member from Hamilton had the job. She had a manner of finding her own departmental officials two steps behind her on nearly every erratic policy course change in her quest for the heroin fix of the political hit. Unfortunately now with the new minister, Canadians are getting little improvement on the MMT score.
In the environment portfolio there has not been an abundance of legislation. Since the Liberals took power in 1993 there have been only six bills brought forward by the Minister of the Environment. It is a stark comparison to the active Department of Justice which has introduced 30 bills. With extra time to consult and consider,
one would think that environment would only produce wise and quality law. How wrong to surmise.
In May 1995 the former minister introduced a bill that would ban the interprovincial trade and importation of the gasoline additive MMT. Bill C-94 which is now Bill C-29 has easily become one of the most starkly divided issues during this Parliament. No legislation during the 35th Parliament has lasted this long in the House. The reason is that the so-called science is in conflict. Ways and means do not match up in this bill. When a basic idea is flawed, the resultant legislation is bad. It does not deserve to be passed.
However the former minister and her political friends at the Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association had a half baked idea that went too far. The MVMA wanted MMT to be removed from unleaded gasoline in Canada because it claimed that the additive which is used to boost octane and reduce pollution was creating havoc with the new onboard diagnostic pollution sensors in late model automobiles.
There were only two ways to get MMT out of Canadian gasoline. One would have been for the MVMA to conclude negotiations with the stakeholders including Ethyl Corporation which manufactures MMT as well as the petroleum companies and conduct independent third party tests that would conclusively demonstrate if MMT was harmful. The other was the strong arm approach to directly legislate with the government trying to scare Canadians, claiming that if MMT was not out of fuel, automobile manufacturing plants could close and the price of cars would dramatically increase. Those latter arguments put forward by the government proved to be false.
The weighing of the policy options must have taken at least two minutes for the minister to decide as the choice was so poor. The choices were politics or science, and the minister chose politics.
The Canadian Environmental Protection Act, CEPA, was designed to create environmental protection and among other things to ban substances that are harmful to the public health and the environment. The former minister wanted to put MMT on CEPA's toxic list but Health Canada did not find it harmful to our health. Unfortunately for Canada's most unenvironmental environment minister, Health Canada had already proved that MMT in its present manner of use presented no harm to health and it later stood by their conclusion on the record.
With the new minister, Environment Canada has been no better off with this bill. He had his chance to put Bill C-94 on a permanent shelf to collect dust. One wonders who is really in charge of legislative initiatives with his department as it was brought forward again in full view of the bill's discredit. The mistake of this bill will certainly remain as a legacy to Liberal environmental legislation.
Reformers have opposed this bill without pressure from lobby groups because the inherent nature of the original idea was bad. Thorough and rigorous independent testing is the only way to resolve the regulatory question of whether we should have MMT in gasoline.
At present MMT helps cars run cleaner with better distance to fuel consumption ratios so that less gas is burned which helps the global warming agenda. I am told that MMT in gasoline is significantly better for gas mileage than reformulated gasoline. Further, we should carefully test some of the proposed alternatives to reformulated gasoline as they may not be inherently as environmentally friendly as first thought. Choices turn out that way when politicians seek the short term rewards of political success over what science may show as the long term public interest.
We also have to look at the taxpayer subsidies the Liberals are pouring into ethanol production which may be an uneconomical choice that in total in the big picture may not be very environmentally friendly. The issue of MMT and why the government does not like it I suspect has a lot to do with money and who pays rather than doing the right thing for the environment.
Above all, the use of closure as a principle in Parliament on this type of bill is disrespectful to members of the House. It is an example of how old line system defenders, the Liberals in this case, continue in their traditional ways and reinforce public cynicism about representative government versus responsible and accountable government to the people.
The bill is bad. Its methods are perverse. Now we have the final insult of it being driven by closure. I hope Canadians will remember this in the next election.