Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to speak to an act respecting pollution. If we stopped at that we would be in great danger.
Pollution in this country was given a free ride for generations and decades. The protection of the environment and human health is the most important part of the act and contributes to sustainable development. That is the weight of this act.
We must respect the toxicity and the dangers pollution poses to our health, our organisms, our plants, our animals, our biodiversity, the air we breath, the water we drink, and the food we eat. Pollution has made its way into our entire being. Therefore we must find strong legislation.
We received a wake-up call in the 1960s when the terms ecology and ecologists came into being, along with the environmental bill of rights for all Canadian citizens, especially our children. That is what CEPA is deemed to be and where it will evolve in the future. It may not have achieved it in this round and it certainly did not achieve it in the first round.
In the first round pollution control was the key word. We tried to control pollution in our air, our water and our soil. Bill C-32 is designed to bring about pollution prevention, to eventually stop pollution.
That is the challenge we faced when we looked at the original draft of Bill C-32 during clause by clause consideration. It was referred to the committee on April 28, 1998. It took us a whole year to review it. Up to now over 800 amendments have been brought forward. This is strong enough message that something was wrong with the basis of the bill.
The committee heard from non-government environmental organizations and health associations across the country. These organizations and countless other groups came before the committee to offer their view that the bill was a biased industry bill designed and drafted for industrial purposes.
Last September committee members asked these organizations how much access they had to the minister. All these health and environmental organizations said that they had limited access to the Minister of Environment. We asked the same question of industry representatives who replied that they had unlimited access to the minister. They were happy with the balance between the environment and the economy as set out in the bill.
Through the whole committee process everybody rolled up their sleeves in a happy forum under the auspices of a good chair. In this democratic process we tackled the bill through thick and thin. Many amendments were lost and won. We felt the bill stood a chance of getting passed in the House. We looked forward to possibly supporting the bill which would ensure good health for our children and our families and clean air, clean water and clean lands.
We endeavoured to look at pollution prevention. We looked at a number of opportunities to enhance it. One of the issues that came out was precautionary principle, one of the highlights of the bill, which included the term cost effective. Through the committee process we were successful in taking the cost out of effective measures. Cost effective did not take into account that there were health matters. If pollution continues to enter our environment and continues to inflict illnesses on our children there are various costs: the health costs, the loss of work costs, the insurance costs, the cost of securing homes, the cost of buying cleaner water, and the cost of ensuring food is well prepared. These costs are not taken into consideration. The cost for our citizens, the cost for Canadians for clean food, clean water and clean air were not the definition of cost effective.
Cost effective was an industrial measure for controlling pollution. It was uppermost in the government's mind. Lo and behold we tossed out cost effective and included measures, that beyond scientific evidence precautionary measures should be taken.
Again cost effective came back into this round of amendments before the House from the government side. Obviously the industry has put its foot down. We would tell all members and all Canadians who are listening that the cost effective measures do not improve environmental measures. They look after the industry's needs and the industry's costs.
Another issue comes into play, that is virtual elimination which is a new term in law. In essence Bill C-32 is a piece of legislation which will be the law of the land. Virtual seems to be a high tech word. It is like virtual reality. It is not quite there. In my interpretation of virtual elimination we do not really want to prohibit or phase out toxic substances. We will try to do it to a point but there will always be a trickle of toxic substances in Canada.
I was quite startled when the minister said that in law we could not measure zero. That was a real awakening call. It will be a challenge to try to find a legal definition of zero. The closest the government has come up with is virtual elimination.
We lived through this phase of virtual elimination. We accepted where it was going. We kind of understood the integrity of the government, that it would try to achieve virtual elimination in the evolution of the bill and carry forward. However a big part of the virtual elimination is in clause 65(3) where the topic is defined as achieved virtual elimination.
Achieving virtual elimination is the task at hand. Members have proposed amendments to remove the achieving of virtual elimination. It is unacceptable. It does not make any sense for it to be taken out of the bill because achieving virtual elimination was the task of Bill C-32.
Another issue, which I will close on, is the phase-out of the generation and use of toxic substances. There are amendments to take out this part of the preamble and replace it with virtual elimination.
Canadians would understand and sleep better at night if they knew that the preamble of the bill was to phase out the generation and use of toxic substances. In essence the government and some of its members want to have virtual elimination in the preamble.