Mr. Speaker, in 1992, Canada played a leading role in Rio, to promote the development of the Convention on Biological Diversity. As a matter of fact, Canada was the first industrialized nation to ratify this convention after the Principality of Monaco.
One of the underlying elements of the convention is precisely the enactment of legislation to protect species at risk. The convention requires that the member States pass such an act.
The Liberal government made many promises in that regard, including the one made in the red book and confirmed in the 1997 election and those made in the Speech from the Throne for 1996 and that for 1999.
I am pleased that we brought before the House Bill C-33, which we are debating today, to protect species at risk. This bill is succeeding to Bill C-65, which died on the order paper in 1997, when the election was called.
The purpose of the second reading of a bill is to try to establish the limits and the criteria that we, as members of Parliament, have set to improve the bill when it is sent to committee. I think that this bill will require some fundamental amendments.
We start with listing. Listings are made initially by a committee called COSEWIC, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada. It has been working for something like two decades. It has identified 339 species at risk over that time. Instead of using the existing list of 339 species and incorporating it into the new act, we are going ahead as if the list does not exist. We are starting with an initial list of zero. Instead of being recognized as being the final list produced by scientists of the highest repute who have worked tirelessly over the last two decades, the list will now be subject to the discretion of cabinet. I find that terribly ironic.
Putting myself in the place of a cabinet member—and I used to belong to cabinet—I am supposed to rule on a list produced by scientists who have been studying the subject for years and who are well aware of what they speak. We are supposed to accept the discretion of cabinet ministers, most of whom are completely unfamiliar with the subject and who will have the discretion to list species at risk or decide not to, and the political considerations of course will rule. The minister of agriculture will say one thing, the industry minister will say another, the minister of natural resources and so forth and so on. The minister of the environment will have to fight for his territory to say it is worth listing a certain species.
We are not even starting with the roll of the list of the 339 species identified by COSEWIC. That is a glaring fault in the law. Without a listing there cannot be protection.
The protection of habitat and the listing are synonymous. They are twins. One cannot go without the other. If we wait for cabinet decisions, which take endless time to come forward, we will not have any listing for a long time.
Now we come to habitat. All scientists, all people in general, all Canadians realize that habitat and species go together. If we do not have habitat we will not have species. If we destroy or damage habitat, we destroy or damage species. It is very obvious. Yet in regard to habitat, which is a critical element of any law for the protection of endangered species, we have made habitat again discretionary. It will be cabinet that will decide whether habitat protection may or may not be included in the act. It is even a retreat from the previous bill, Bill C-65, which never left the discretion in the hands of cabinet. In Bill C-65 the provision was to the effect that cabinet shall list and protect habitat when there is good cause to do so. Now it may. It is another glaring omission.
In this context it is worth citing certain provincial laws. Very often we criticize the provinces for not having definite laws, but I would like to quote a few of them.
The New Brunswick Endangered Species Act of 1996 states: “No person shall wilfully or knowingly destroy, disturb or interfere with the critical habitat of a member of an endangered species”.
The P.E.I. Wildlife Conservation Act states: “No person shall destroy, disturb or interfere with, or attempt to destroy, disturb or interfere with the habitat of an endangered or threatened species”.
The Ontario Endangered Species Act states: “No person shall wilfully destroy or interfere with or attempt to destroy or interfere with the habitat of any species or flora or fauna declared in the regulations to be threatened with extinction”.
The Manitoba law states: “No person shall destroy, disturb or interfere with the habitat of an endangered or threatened species”.
Our neighbours to the south have had an endangered species law for many years, since 1973. It states: “With respect to endangered species of fish and wildlife listed pursuant to this act, it is unlawful for any person to—take such species within the United States”. It also explicitly prohibits habitat destruction in areas of federal jurisdiction.
The big difference is that in the case of all these laws that I cited, the onus of proof is clearly a very important and onerous burden on the person who destroys habitat. He or she is judged to be guilty unless he or she proves otherwise. Whereas in our new law, we would have to wait for cabinet to decide whether it may or may not protect habitat and incorporate it within the act. We fail completely compared to the laws that I have cited.
We then must view the question of federal jurisdiction and the safety net. In our own areas of jurisdiction we are again so timid as to apply discretion all over the place. There is an opinion from Justice La Forest, whose reputation and stature do not need to be underlined. He has said that Canada, the federal government, has complete jurisdiction over birds that migrate and also over cross-border species. We do not need to be timid, but even then we have applied discretion.
We have applied all kinds of discretion, so that in effect we would have to consult with everybody, consult with cabinet ministers, one to the other, and consult with the provinces before we even make a decision regarding the habitat of species that is clearly within our jurisdiction.
When I was in Quebec, I had the honour of tabling the Quebec legislation on threatened species. I know what it is all about. At the department, we had worked with one of the experts, Lionel Gaudreau, to whom I would like to pay tribute today. He had explained to me why the habitat and the list of threatened species had to be considered for automatic protection. Unfortunately, this protection has been restricted and tainted lately. I hope that the act will be maintained.
Once again, what we need here is to pass clear, convincing and, above all, decisive legislation, as the United States and some provinces did.
This is why I urge my colleagues that, once this bill is referred to the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development, we improve on all its major principles. Otherwise, the bill will be too weak.
It is essential that we improve the bill and strengthen it when it is referred to the committee. This is the wish that I want to express out loud to all the members in the House.