Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill C-32 at report stage.
Given the number of amendments, one might well wonder why, in the face of so much criticism, the government is bent on getting the bill through before the House rises for the summer, something which is scheduled for mid-June.
There is something improvized about all this, despite the drawn-out process, because the federal government has long wanted to extend its jurisdiction over the environment.
On the face of it, no one will contest the fact that we must take an interest in matters affecting the environment. Climatic conditions that are changing quickly and the number of devastating events related to different environmental conditions raise questions about the causes of these phenomena and particularly about what we must do to make up for all the damage we have caused in recent years.
I am well placed to speak about this. In my riding, in Rouyn-Noranda, we have made a signal change, and a good thing, because living conditions were deteriorating very rapidly until one day people decided to fight to improve their environmental quality of life.
At the time, many stakeholders said that Noranda would shut down but, today, on the contrary, it is alive and very well, and the quality of life in Rouyn-Noranda has changed dramatically in 10 or 15 years.
We can therefore meet this environmental challenge if we roll up our sleeves. Our businesses are also capable of adapting and developing environmental technology before others do.
In areas where some employers now have a tendency to take undue advantage of easy operating conditions, with very low environmental standards, people will also, sooner or later, take matters in their hands and demand better living conditions. Obviously, there will be upward pressure on environmental standards.
Since people's concern about this debate is increasing, the federal government, which is suddenly acting more like a business, sees in this some sort of opportunity to extend its action into people's lives, ignoring the other actors that are already there. In this case, the provinces have an important and crucial role to play in the environment, which the federal government seems to be ignoring increasingly, and very likely with the consent of many provinces.
This is not the case for all the provinces, particularly Quebec, which has greater aspirations than to remain a mere province. Several provinces are abdicating their responsibility, but this is not the case with Quebec, which aspires to much more.
In this bill, as in many other intrusions, the federal government is extending its jurisdiction little by little. It had the opportunity and has already done so many times in the Criminal Code with respect to the environment, but it wants to carry this even a little further with standards, objectives and mostly, the need to honour international agreements or international commitments made by Canada.
This illustrates a problem that was in the media in the last few months for the provinces, and particularly for Quebec. It is extremely frustrating to have someone speak and make commitments on our behalf at the international level and then ask us to fulfil them, when in many cases, Quebec and other provinces were not allowed to take part as much as they would have liked in the setting of the goals Canada has been promoting at the world level.
The provinces were unable to directly take part in the discussions or the negotiations, but in practice they are the ones that have to manage the new initiatives without having had the opportunity to set the parameters and the goals and to develop an environmental strategy.
A lot of my constituents work in the pulp and paper and the mining industries, two areas where environmental regulation is extremely important. Meeting goals is not the main problem these people have. They are faced with two kinds of problems. They often have two sets of goals to meet. It is not always easy to determine which set of regulations, the federal or the provincial, takes precedence.
On the one hand, these people have to adjust to an environmental context or to environmental standards that vary from one level of government to the other, because there is always some kind of overlap, whatever the substances involved.
On the other hand, when we tell them how they can meet those standards, it annoys them tremendously. We can tell them not to go over so many parts per million of a given chemical, but they should have sufficient latitude and flexibility to be able to adapt approaches in the most competitive way possible.
We often see now Environment Canada or other departments go in the field to tell people how to go about it, showing how one way is better that the other, and all that slows the process down a lot.
There is yet another greater danger to not taking care of the environment. There is a danger of over bureaucratizing our actions in that sector, making them slow and ineffective most of the time.
The danger is often greater because in most of the provinces, there will be two levels of bureaucracy that will try and expand their role in the environment sector. We will eventually have to face many rules, standards, and ways to meet them, a great deal of confusion and difficulty for the businesses in meeting them, and all sorts of legal challenges.
All this does not seem to bother the federal government too much. The federal government no longer cares about respecting jurisdictions. All that matters is that the commitments and goals it will make and negotiate on the international scene be met.
By the way, Canada has not taken a strong leadership on environmental issues in recent years. It has not acted as a leader in that area. Though it has taken an active part in negotiations, this government cannot be considered as having acted as a true leader in respect of environmental standards. The same holds true for human rights.
Commercial interests took precedence over numerous concerns of this government, which had taken the opposite stand when it was on this side of the House, when the Progressive Conservatives were in power. Ironically, there is a remarkable continuity on some aspects of international trade: the positions held by one party were adopted by the other as soon as it was elected.
What concerns me is the issue for which I am responsible, federal-provincial relations. We see here what we have seen on several other issues. The recent framework agreement on social union was in the same vein: provinces, in exchange for money that would allow them to administer programs—which have nothing to do with the environment in that case, but deal with health and other areas—accepted to let the federal government play a greater part as a planner for the whole of Canada.
It is also true for the environment, as we can see. Several provinces are being very discrete, they say nothing, often because their respective populations consider the federal government as the true national government and wish to see it fulfil that role. In Quebec, we have a completely different view.
For Quebecers, be they federalists or sovereignists, the most important government is the provincial one. It is the one closest to them. It is the one they monitor the most; this has its advantages and disadvantages, but it is good for democracy that people keep a close eye on their government, and the people of Quebec do exactly that.
This habit, this capacity to influence decisions are probably greater there than they are here. It is a framework that stakeholders know better. That government is much closer to the people and can better satisfy its environmental needs and expectations.
This trend will bring the federal government to play a greater role. And this is only the beginning. The federal government has one great quality, it is very patient. Whenever it invades another jurisdiction, it does so very progressively, but irreversibly. In the end, we see there is not much provincial jurisdiction left.
In the environmental area, there is a great risk of the federal government becoming the sole player because it is the one acting on the international scene; it will implement international agreements and commitments, it will define the regulations developed by cabinet. These will not necessarily be passed by the members, but rather by cabinet.
For all those reasons, we must oppose this bill, unless it is substantially amended as my colleague proposed. Otherwise, we will have to vote against this bill.