Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise this afternoon to speak to Bill C-32. However, I am sad at the same time, because we need only think—and I know whereof I speak—of the federal government's miserable performance at managing the environment for many years now.
I can give you striking examples from my riding. I was a municipal councillor for four terms over a period of 14 years, and God knows how many times we had to deal with the federal government, on the matter of the erosion of river banks for example.
In the town where I served as councillor, there are four beaches and I can name them for you: going from west to east there are the Monagan, Ferguson, Routhier and Lévesque beaches.
They are fine beaches and have a fine shoreline. People worked very hard building houses, clearing an area where they could enjoy life and resorts would flourish. Through dredging and other operations by the federal government, by rockfilling, they affected the tide. It destroyed roads, infrastructures and houses.
There is another fact I remember very clearly. In the fall 1994, I asked for a meeting with officials from Environment Canada and representatives of the Sept-Îles airport, which was held at the airport. At that point, I warned the airport authorities that the product used to de-ice airport runways was noxious and contaminating the soil. There were serious consequences.
The airport is on a cliff. The Routhier and Lévesque beaches lie just below. I warned them that they were polluting the water table. Four years later, after various tests were done, the Department of Transport acknowledged that, by using the material they spread on the runways to de-ice them, they had polluted the soil, that they were responsible. They contaminated the water table, they contaminated the sources of drinking water the public had invested in, had created.
For the last two years, the solution has been to provide people with bottled water. I personally asked questions in the House to hurry the Minister of Transport into finding an appropriate solution. Indeed, the solution is quite simply to extend the Sept-Îles pipeline to bring drinking water from downtown to that population.
I have met with Health Canada officials and a medical officer of the Quebec health ministry, who have told me that the most dangerous thing is not to drink water, since our body can eliminate it. Actually, the most dangerous thing is to take a shower or a bath in contaminated water because skin pores cannot eliminate it. Mothers are forced to bath their babies in bottled water, which is totally ridiculous.
We ask the Minister of Transport and the Minister of the Environment to take action. Public health is at stake. This is an environmental issue. It seems as though this government could not care less about the health of people, allowing issues as important as this one to go unresolved.
Here is another example. During the night of March 22 to 23, an ore carrier, the Gordon C. Leitch , collided with a wharf at Havre-Saint-Pierre and spilled more than 40,000 tons of fuel in the waters of one of the most prized attractions of my riding, the Mingan Archipelago National Park Reserve.
Hundreds of birds were contaminated and nearly 80% had to be put down. New traces of fuel are now showing up as ice melts. Incalculable damage has been caused to this extremely fragile ecosystem.
Ridiculous as it may seem, the environment minister never made any commitment to the people of the Minganie area concerning what she could do or should have done most urgently, despite the representations and letters from the people. She had the responsibility to reassure the residents of the archipelago, these pioneers who have worked so hard over the years. She should have done something then to protect the archipelago in which they have put so much work because it is a unique tourist attraction.
When we talk about the people in the Minganie area, we talk about the Mingan archipelago. We also talk about the people in Havre-Saint-Pierre, Sheldrake, Rivière-Saint-Jean, Rivière-au-Tonnerre, Baie-Johan-Beetz, Aguanish, and Natashquan.
All these people have been working very hard to develop this archipelago of which they are so proud, and which is also an economic asset because it is a great tourist attraction. The minister never did anything. She never bothered taking serious measures to solve the problem and clean up the oil slick that was spilled on that night in March.
Let me remind the House that the Bloc Quebecois moved the following motions at report stage. One was to remove the paragraph in the preamble dealing with the establishment of national environmental standards, and environmental quality guidelines and codes of practice. Without those changes, since the environment is not an exclusively federal jurisdiction, this sub-clause was unacceptable to us.
We also want to remove the paragraph of the preamble where reference is made to the presence of toxic substances, which is a matter of national interest. Once again, the federal government is looking for an excuse to meddle in the environment from coast to coast.
The Bloc Quebecois is therefore calling upon the federal government to amend the preamble so that Quebec may speak for itself internationally when its interests are at stake, particularly in the areas of culture, education, health and the environment. The federal government boasts about recognizing Quebec's distinct nature. It should let us speak for ourselves when our interests are at stake.
In clause 2, we wish to delete the words “endeavour to” in reference to the federal government's acting in co-operation with the provinces. In our opinion, the federal government must always act in co-operation with the provinces, and with their approval. The use of “endeavour to” gives the federal government a loophole we do not wish it to have.
We are calling on the federal government to do away with the matter of uniform environmental standards from coast to coast, because this ignores our specific situation. Here again, we want the words “endeavour to” deleted in order to have assurance that the federal government will act within the spirit of the intergovernmental agreements on the environment concluded with the provinces. This amendment eliminates the federal loophole.
Finally, I would point out that we are proposing the same amendment several times, requiring the federal government to obtain provincial approval when assigning the power to adopt regulations and implement legislation. The federal government must obtain provincial approval when adopting regulations relating to the environment.
For all of these reasons, the Bloc Quebecois, including the member for Manicouagan of course, will be voting against Bill C-32.