Mr. Speaker, it is indeed a pleasure to have the opportunity to speak to Bill C-32, the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, at report stage. When the member for Davenport talked about this piece of legislation, he referred to it as “a very pioneering bill. It is Canada's principal bill with respect to the controlled use of toxins in the environment.
It was a very pioneering bill that was first established by the Progressive Conservative Party in 1988 by the hon. Tom McMillan and spearheaded by the former environment minister, the hon. Jean J. Charest. It is in that light that I take great pride in trying to augment this particular bill as we went through the clause by clause process at committee level.
Alarm bells should go off for Canadians when they hear that the bill had over 400 amendments at the clause by clause process and now we are facing over 200 amendments. That is almost 700 amendments. I believe this shows that the bill is flawed in its own right.
After speaking to my colleague for Richmond—Arthabaska, I know he is not all that surprised by this. This is a government, after all, which has not passed one piece of environmental legislation despite the fact that it has been in office for six years. It did pass the MMT bill but that cost Canadian taxpayers $16.5 million because it was not banned under CEPA, which is what the government should have done in the first place.
The fact that we are cleaning up the government's work should not come as a surprise to Canadians when it comes to the environment.
I will refer to a couple of issues that fall in Group No. 1, particularly the issue of virtual elimination. We were satisfied that the original definition contained in the bill before it went to committee was workable. It provided for the reduction of releases to a quantity of concentration below a measurable amount that was at or approaching the lowest level of quantification.
We supported regulations to control the release of substances to define virtually eliminated amount. We also supported the bill's power under section 93 to totally, partially or conditionally prohibit the manufacture, use and processing of toxic substances. We believe that if the government intended on eliminating use of a substance, it should use the provision. Otherwise, if it intends to virtually eliminate a substance then it should be able to set levels of release by regulation that are virtually negligible.
I would like to mention something that is almost unprecedented in my short time here in the House and, as I understand it, for a lot of people who have been here for quite some time. We are about to make an amendment to an amendment.
The government had a definition in Bill C-32 of virtual elimination before it went into the clause by clause process. The parliamentary secretary tabled an amendment which passed. He is now tabling another amendment admitting the government goofed not once, but twice. I think the government had it right the first time, but at least it had the sense to recognize that. It tabled an amendment just the other day after we had already put in the amendment that corrected it.
We now have two levels of virtual elimination to establish and achieve. It is unclear as currently written which one would be deemed the operable amount. There is first a supreme goal of virtual elimination defined as the ultimate reduction of the quantity or concentration of the substance in the release below the level of quantification specified by the minister in the virtual elimination list.
Level quantification is defined as the lowest possible measured amount. The ultimate goal is to get below that amount.
Then there is this process to help us gradually get there and it is called “achieving virtual elimination”. In this section, the minister prescribes a quantity or concentration of a substance that may be released into the environment. This is very different from “below a level of quantification, which is the lowest concentration that can be accurately measured”. Instead it is a realistic level that industry is required to attain when aiming for elimination.
If the government's intentions were to make the level set under achieving virtual elimination the objective industry is to pursue, then it should be made clear. My amendments, the amendments of the Progressive Conservative Party, make this process clear. They clean up the change the government and the Reform Party supported in committee.
I would like to emphasize that this mistake was actually supported by not one party but two parties at the clause by clause level: the government and the Reform. However, both parties have recognized that the original wording was the right way to go.
The government's amended committee language creates uncertainty. This is because there is a gap between a level that is a step below the lowest measurable quantity and a level that achieves virtual elimination by targeting a release amount prescribed under subclause 65(3) which considers social, economic and technical matters. This means there would be a gap between what the law prescribes we achieve and what we actually enforce.
Based on the voting pattern document I received this morning, my amendments on this clause will be put before similar ones introduced by Reform, the Bloc and the government. As a result, given that we want to proceed in a very time effective way, I would be very shocked if the government were to vote against our amendment because it would be voting against its own amendment in a very different way. I would also be shocked if Reform did the same and somewhat shocked if the Bloc did as well.
The definition of virtual elimination, as originally tabled in Bill C-32 before it went to clause by clause, is a better way to go and that is what the Progressive Conservative Party will be doing with its amendment in terms of trying to clean up the government's error.
The bill that was sent to committee included a clause 2.2, which called for the avoidance of duplication and overlap in legislation regulation in areas that involve the protection of the environment and human health. It proposed to resolve any potential disputes by having the Minister of the Environment, the Minister of Health and the minister responsible for the other act jointly decide whether measures that can be taken under the act are appropriate and sufficient to address the matter.
This was removed from the act during the committee review in favour of introducing separate clauses in appropriate sections of the bill where the potential for overlap and duplication existed.
The new clauses shifted the power to decide which law would prevail to cabinet from the three ministers, except in the case of biotechnology where the Minister of Health and the Minister of the Environment make the decision.
Members may actually agree that my amendment makes more sense. My amendment would actually have the Minister of the Environment, the Minister of Health and the applicable other minister make a collaborative decision. Those are the ministers who would know their acts the most. It would provide Canadians with political accountability about who is making decisions, as opposed to sending it to some murky area known as the cabinet.
I have a lot of respect for the Minister of Human Resources Development and the Minister of National Revenue. These are individuals who know their portfolios quite well. However, why would we ask them to make an intervention in a piece of legislation that, quite honestly, they do not study on a day to day basis. That is why I believe it is more prudent for us to have it done by the Minister of Health, the Minister of the Environment and one other. My amendment tries to do that in this very section.
I would also like to point out a couple of other motions that the Progressive Conservative Party intends to support. The first one is the NDP Motion No. 26. It attempts to further entrench the precautionary principle in the administrative duties section of the act. We supported this inclusion of the principle at committee stage and we support this motion which defines what the precautionary principle means for the purposes of this section.
NDP Motion No. 83 attempts to do the same, except this time it defines the reference to precautionary principle referred to in the section dealing with screening and assessment of toxic substances.
There is one motion, which I am a little bit troubled by and which I think Canadians should be very concerned about. It is Motion No. 206 tabled by the Reform Party. This motion, dealing with emergency planning, refers to one of the most severe toxins in existence being slated as a schedule 1 toxin. Once a substance has been slated as being toxic, the government can then ask a particular industry or company to provide a pollution prevention plan. This motion will not allow that. Once a toxin has been slated for fast-tracking to a schedule 1 toxin, the Reform Party wants to wait to have it approved by cabinet.
What concerns me is that the Reform Party believes that cabinet may actually say, “Well, we know this is a very harmful substance, but, gosh, maybe we should not do it anyway”. I think the Minister of the Environment and the Minister of Health should be able to make that call. If it is toxic, it is toxic and it requires a pollution prevention plan.
I know industry is not that concerned about that particular amendment. I would think that if we are protecting human health and the environment, then that would be the right thing to do.
Given that I do not have enough time to speak about the large number of amendments that we have, I am very pleased with the position we have taken in terms of virtual elimination, as it is a workable definition. Given that our motion will be up first, I trust that the Reform Party, the government and the Bloc, which have similar motions that accomplish the same objective, will vote for our motion as opposed to voting for another for purely partisan purposes.