Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to Bill C-32. After what I have heard today I must say the government is falling far short of the commitments it has made. I bring to the attention of the House numerous studies on the abysmal activities of the government on the environment.
Unfortunately I only have 10 minutes so I will get to the heart of the matter. The Department of the Environment has been an utter failure in the enforcement, monitoring and control of the environmental policies it has enacted. I will divide the environment into two sections: domestic and international.
The Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development put forth a very concise and specific report with specific solutions on how to revamp and improve the environment within our country and our activities abroad. After all, as we know, the environment is transboundary. It affects not only ourselves but other countries in the world.
In the first part, managing toxic substances, over 23,000 substances have been approved. Many of them were approved before 1960, which means we really do not know the effects of these substances on human health. We need to re-examine that.
One of the greatest obstacles toward a sustainable environmental program is the lack of co-ordination between departments and within departments. Turf wars, lack of co-ordination, lack of common vision, lack of agreement and lack of a dispute resolution mechanism on agreements have ensured that the agreements reached are unenforceable, are not being listened to, and are simply in many cases not worth the paper they are written on.
That is an issue of public service, public management and the failure of management in many of the ministries today. There is the lack of monitoring and the unfulfilled commitments. Commitments are made but not adhered to.
How can we have a sustainable environmental policy when the government's own departments are simply not listening to what they have been told to adhere to? Furthermore, no one is monitoring them and no one is saying that if two departments are not agreeing on something an independent dispute mechanism will be put in place to ensure that they do. If that were to happen it would go a long way to fulfilling the commitments we have made on the environment.
There is no common vision and there is a lack of consensus among departments. The commissioner said that the single greatest impediment to a sustainable environmental policy was the lack of departmental co-ordination which exists today.
On the issue of federal-provincial agreements there is no ongoing analysis of whether the federal and provincial governments are actually fulfilling the commitments they have made. No one is watching them. There are no dispute resolution mechanisms among provinces or between the federal government and the provinces.
Commitments are made and no concrete action is taken. Only 11% of the commitments made by departments have been fulfilled. Some 89% have not been fulfilled. There is a lack of co-ordination among departments and inadequate review is endemic.
We need to turn talk into action. The federal government has 64,000 buildings, 25,000 vehicles, and disposes of 95,000 tonnes of waste every year. The commissioner said that if the government were to adhere to the principles that have been put forth it would save taxpayers some $300 million over the next 30 years, not to mention making our streets, our air and our land a lot safer for everyone.
We do not need to reinvent the wheel. We can look at what is happening in other countries. In the Netherlands and Denmark the agricultural sector has done an outstanding job of putting together concise environmental plans. The World Bank is starting to do it. South Africa has done an outstanding job with respect to its endangered species legislation and in terms of garnering, improving and expanding habitat.
With the consent of the House I will be sharing my time with the member for Elk Island.
Internationally we have to look at what will happen in the future. There is an increasing population growth rate. Currently our world population is 6 billion people. In the middle of the next century the world population will hit 11 billion. How will we make sure that we have an environment that is liveable with a population of 11 billion? People will strive for an improved standard of living.
The largest democracy in the world, India, has an incredibly expanding middle class that will number over 300 million people in the next century. Approximately 300 million people, 10 times the population of Canada, will be demanding the same standard of living as we have. That will put an extraordinary demand upon not only renewable, but also non-renewable resources. If we do not institute sustainable environmental policies and adhere to those policies we will have a degraded environment in which it will simply not be worth living.
Some, such as Tad Homer Dixon from the University of Toronto Institute of Conflict Studies, have claimed that the diminishing of non-renewable resources will result in conflict. We can see as an example the water situation in the Middle East and how this is an issue on which wars may be fought. It is something that we need to look at and, indeed, the countries in the area need to look at very carefully.
On the issue of endangered species the government's behaviour is abysmal. This issue affects not only the federal government, but also the provinces. Because of the balkanization of our country, how things have been divided between the federal government and the provinces, there is an enormous amount of overlap between those two levels of government, as well as the municipalities, and endangered species are not being protected.
The federal government's great tome to endangered species is to protect less than 5% of the land in this country. That is nothing. Species rely upon land to survive. The degradation of land, damage to the environment and the shrinkage of their habitat are the greatest threats to these species.
I know there are members across the way who feel very passionately about this. The federal government clearly needs to work with the provinces in developing a strategy that will involve a much larger area of land over which the federal government or the provinces, one or the other, will have distinct control so that laws can be applied, people will adhere to them and the laws will be enforced.
There are two topics I would like to broach. One is co-ordination between government and the private sector. Not enough has been done about that. Again I bring up the subject of South Africa. The people of the province of KwaZulu/Natal have done an outstanding job of marrying the needs of the private sector and the public sector. Co-operation between the private and the public sectors has led to a huge increase in habitat and has greatly improved the safety of the flora and fauna. It is the last repository for large mammals in that area of the world. If it was not for what has been done in that province, many of these mammals would have been extinct a long time ago, as well as much of the flora.
I ask the government to look at the innovative ways in which South Africa has engaged in public-private partnerships and conservancies and how the parks and habitat have been used to benefit the people in the surrounding area. This has done a great deal for the sustainable environment program, which has benefited people as well as the flora and fauna and the environment.
The government needs to turn talk into action. It needs to implement the strategies. It needs to monitor the strategies. It needs to establish clear targets. It needs to develop interdepartmental co-ordination, not the hodge-podge situation we have now, with the infighting which is making the environmental policy of the government a pox on its house.