Mr. Speaker, it is indeed a pleasure to be here to speak to Bill C-32 after toiling for a year in committee on the bill. It is great to have it back in the House and to have the opportunity to debate it in a public forum.
As has been mentioned by some members, it has been quite a process. The bill was first tabled in the House on March 12, 1998. We are now 14 months to the day from the time it was first read in the House. We have had witnesses from all aspects of Canadian society. We have had industry, people from the environmental groups and people speaking to us about children. We should listen to everybody in Canada because pollution prevention is everybody's job and everybody's problem.
We dealt with 400 or 500 amendments at committee and now we have 230-some more. This just goes on and on. We debated at length many aspects of pollution prevention in committee. Certain members of the committee wanted to take the bill in one direction and some wanted to take it in another. Quite frankly, we felt fairly comfortable with the bill that was presented in the first place.
It is one thing to try to take a piece of legislation to the nth degree to command and control absolutely everything, but if we do that, I believe we would lose some of the people involved in the process. The bill will limit the use of toxins in our society and in the way we do business. If we are going to alienate the people in the country who are involved in the use of those and take the bill to a point where it is not manageable or not workable, then I believe we are doing more harm to the environment than if we come up with something reasonable.
Balance is a word we have heard a lot of and will continue to hear as we debate the bill. We must have the proper balance. We cannot go too far one way and we certainly cannot go too far the other way. We have to stand back and look at what we are doing on occasion to see if there is a little bit of common sense in what is going on. Canada has to stay in tune with the rest of the world. We have to fulfil some of the international obligations that we have been part of. We also have to be a leader and, in many aspects, we can be.
Over the months that this was at committee, the hardest working person on the Hill was the whip of the Liberal Party. We had people sit and vote in committee who, quite frankly, I had never seen before. They certainly did not know the issues but they did vote. It was an interesting scenario to live through. We saw people at the committee who were talking on telephones, reading newspapers and whatnot. It was unfortunate that had to happen. Our party attended as many meetings as we could. If we look back at the record, we attended most. We were there and took part in the debate.
The Reform Party originally put forward very few amendments because we felt it was a bill that had balance, that could work, and that it was a piece of legislation that would help Canadians.
I will read a little from the preamble to bring back into focus what the bill is intended to do. The bill is an act respecting pollution prevention and the protection of the environment and human health in order to contribute to sustainable development. We can all agree with that because it does not split up sections of the environment or sections of human life. It says “the environment” in total and “human health” in total.
My colleague from Macleod, being a medical doctor, knows that human health applies to human life no matter what age or form. Some people may try to indicate that some aspects of our population are more at risk than others, but the bill addresses human health in total. Its declaration and preamble states in part:
It is hereby declared that the protection of the environment is essential to the well-being of Canadians and that the primary purpose of this act is to contribute to sustainable development through pollution prevention.
Sustainable development is an important part of any environmental bill.
Whereas the Government of Canada seeks to achieve sustainable development that is based on an ecologically efficient use of natural, social and economic resources and acknowledges the need to integrate environmental, economic and social factors in the making of all decisions by government and private entities;
That is something we firmly believe in. We have to take into effect the social and economic aspects of any piece of legislation as it goes forward. If we make it too restrictive, then we are going to lose some of the players in the game.
Whereas the Government of Canada is committed to implementing the precautionary principle that, where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation;
We have to remember these issues as we talk about the bill, what is and is not in it and the amendments that are brought forward. It is going to take us a while to get through them all. It gets a little complex as we try to bring in a bill that has some reason and some scope.
One aspect we are dealing with in this group of motions is the use of toxic substances. The government has consistently focused on managing releases of toxic substances and not their uses. Our proposals ensure that the bill is consistent with the relevant toxic management strategies incorporated in the UNCED's Agenda 21, keeping us in step with the rest of the world. This agenda is generally pursued by the international community in its risk reduction activities.
Amendments brought forward by some of the committee members alter this approach by expanding the scope of CEPA from its current focus on emissions to the use of toxic substances. There are 23,000 substances in use; 12 have been classed as toxic. These substances are going to be used. They need to be used. It is the control and keeping them under control and stopping the release that this bill has to focus on. It is not the use that is a cause for concern; it is the improper management and the release of these substances that cause the adverse effects.
Motions Nos. 1 and 13 deal with the use of toxic substances and address these concerns. Motion No. 1 proposes that lines 19 to 21 of the preamble be returned to the original text. That would take the bill back to where it started which was something we were quite comfortable with. The government and the Bloc have proposed motions similar to Motion No. 1 which effectively accomplish the same thing. We have general support to move in the same direction.
Government Motion No. 14 only partially addresses concerns regarding the management of toxic substances. Our Motion No. 13 is preferable to Motion No. 14 which is not adequate and is only a marginal improvement. It is critical that we do not consider use of toxic substances separately from the release of toxic substances as this derogates from the risk based principles that are intended to be the foundation of this bill.
It is going to be quite interesting as we go through all of this. Motions from three different parties which are worded somewhat differently could eventually work out to be the same thing. It is important how the groupings take place.
The other issue is inherent toxicity. Amendments put forward by the Reform Party and the government also address this issue. Inherent toxicity has been left undefined in this bill as a result of the committee amendments. If inherent toxicity is left undefined, it could lead to substances being proposed for virtual elimination without their going through the traditional risk assessment. Our proposals address this.
Our Motion No. 87 ensures that substances that have been determined to be toxic by risk assessment, not by the minister, can go to virtual elimination. Motion No. 87 ensures that the decision making is scientific rather than political. Government Motion No. 88 addresses the same concern. However its amendment does not go far enough.
I will end here because we will have other opportunities to speak as we go through this process. We have eight groupings so we can speak eight times to the issue.