Mr. Speaker, I had the privilege of working with the committee that revised the Canadian Environmental Protection Act in 1994. We spent something like 18 months listening to witnesses from all segments of society and all parts of Canada.
We travelled from one end of Canada to the other, including the Arctic regions. If today we are proposing certain underlying principles in the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, this is precisely because of what we heard from many Canadians across the country.
Those underlying principles are as follows:
First there is pollution prevention, the idea that instead of curing we have to prevent; that if we can stop toxic waste which is the biggest assault on the environment before it happens then all of us are healthier.
There is the precautionary principle that we should always act as careful, prudent citizens, managers of the common weal. In that case I refer to one of my colleagues from the Reform Party who talked a lot about sound science. Let us wait until science is proven before we act. I would remind him that when Rachel Carson wrote her famous book, Silent Spring , DDT was being used all over the place. She did not wait for sound science to send warning signals.
When lead was being used in our gasoline, more recently, we acted to ban MMT because of the threat of manganese to the environment and to human health. In other words, we have to be precautionary. We cannot wait for proven science to act. We cannot wait until it is too late. That is why the thrust of our report has been to reverse the onus of proof.
Instead of us having to prove that a toxic substance is harmful to human health and the environment, it would be for the user of that toxic waste to prove that it was not harmful to the environment and human health. This is why we believe in the principle that the polluter must always pay, must always bear the burden. This is why we have also enshrined the principle of virtual elimination of the most hazardous toxic substances released into the environment so that there will be a burden on the polluter, on the user of toxic substances, to avoid using them if there is any notion at all that they could be harmful to health and the environment.
I was the Quebec Minister of the Environment when the first Environmental Protection Act was passed in 1988. I can state without fear of being contradicted that my repeated interventions to the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment are responsible for the inclusion of an equivalency clause in the act at that time, and I strongly believe in this clause.
The equivalency clause means the following: if a province has an equivalent regulation or act dealing with any issue covered by the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, and if that province also has a complaint investigation system similar to that provided in the CEPA, the provincial regulation applies rather than the Canadian legislation.
This clause completely demolishes the argument of my Bloc Quebecois colleagues that this act was completely exclusive. It is up to the provinces to establish regulations and a similar complaint investigation system. Then their act would apply.
There is an important role for the federal government in the entire environmental area. Today the Bloc Quebecois spoke as if the Constitution prevented the federal government from dealing with environmental matters. Yet all the Constitution says about the environment is that all levels of government have a role to play.
As the government, the legal entity that represents us at the international level, the federal government has a predominant role to play in the environment. Moreover, this is what the Supreme Court stated in a ruling on the CEPA.
Therefore I think we should look at the present myth that there is no place for federal authority in environmental protection, that the federal authority should be lessened and reduced, or that the federal government should hide, should not be a leader, should not take leadership along with the provinces, municipalities and all other Canadians. We need a system whereby all of us are involved. The record shows that no one jurisdiction is strong enough to take care of the environment.
I have spoken to many environmentalists in Quebec, in Ontario, in Alberta and elsewhere who have signified to me that they need that safety net and that they need as many jurisdictions as possible to be involved in the environment because at the moment the environment has never been looked after as sadly as today. Everybody is devolving. Everybody is cutting back staff. Certainly the provinces are the major culprits in that case.
There was a case for instance in 1996 in Ontario, our largest province, our largest industrial base, when the minister invited industry to let her know what environmental regulations it would want to see in place so that they could do better business, more progressive business.
There was a deluge of answers from the mining industry that wanted to be absolved from regulations on toxicity and effluence. There was an instant answer from the chemical industry that said it wanted to be absolved of regulations concerning illegal dumping of hazardous waste. There were answers from this industry and that industry that said to get rid of regulations, that they would look after themselves.
There brings me to the second myth, that regulations are bad for us, that they are a hindrance to progress and advancement, and that suddenly we should get rid of them. Regulations have not been a hindrance to society's progress. They have been one of the major catalysts for creativity, for inventions and for progress in society.
The examples are around us in multiple form: the seatbelts that we use in our cars, the catalytic converters that we use in our cars, airline safety, registration of medical drugs, registration of pesticides and the control of toxic wastes.
Where would we be without these regulations? Where would we be without a regulation that says we stop at a red light? There would be chaos on our streets.
Today we have the myth that regulation is bad for us, that we should get rid of it and look after our own territory. This would be a way to chaotic non-enforcement of what really means the goodwill, the public trust and the common weal which government is supposed to look after. Its mission is the value system of looking after human health, protection of the environment and protection of basic values in society. The government is the trustee and guardian of this system. It can only do so if it has a background of laws and regulations which enforce in fairness and with reason.
We need a strong CEPA, an active and dynamic CEPA, and a steadily and ceaselessly enforced CEPA. We need a commitment that is there because Canadians need it and want it very badly.
Of all the issues facing us as we go into the next century, the environmental protection case has to be the most cogent. The environment is the defining issue of the next millennium. We need water. We need fresh air. We need a safe environment so that human health can thrive, so that our society can live in peace, harmony and knowing that tomorrow will be a better day. How can we ensure that if chemicals and toxic wastes are being released into our environment without protection and without regulation?
We need a strong CEPA, a dynamic CEPA, a very strong and effective presence of the federal government in environmental protection.