Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in this debate on Bill C-31. I would like to ask a few questions and to express, as the hon. member for the Bloc Quebecois has, opposition to this bill for certain reasons.
It is a good opportunity for us to talk about the broad issues of international trade and human rights in the context of the bill. I want to put on record the concerns of the New Democratic Party with respect to Bill C-31 and to explain why we are opposed to it. We also have some recommendations on how to improve the legislation.
As my colleague from the Bloc who just spoke indicated, Bill C-31 has missed the mark. We have an opportunity before us today to address some very significant issues with respect to the environment and human rights from an international perspective, and an opportunity to convey and carry forward our sentiments and values to the international scene. We have failed to do that in the bill.
The government failed to heed the recommendations of a number of organizations and members of parliament who have pressed hard for a strong piece of legislation in this regard. It is by all accounts a weak bill and a missed opportunity in terms of international trade.
Time and time again in the House and outside the House it has been said that we have an opportunity now before us with the bill to develop and pursue Canadian trade in a manner consistent with Canada's obligations to protect the environment and human rights. That seems to be the essence of the task at hand and the very purpose of the bill.
It is legislation that has been reviewed for three years. It was intended to address major concerns with respect to Canada's role in trade on the international scene. It was to ensure consistency with trade and our need to deal on an economic basis with other nations vis-à-vis our longstanding traditions and commitments with respect to human rights and the environment.
The bill is also partly in response to recommendations made by the auditor general in May 2001 and should be seen from the perspective of whether or not it meets the test of answering the criticisms of the auditor general made at that time.
We have heard from many speakers today about the weaknesses of the bill. I will reiterate some of those from the perspective of the New Democratic Party. Our criticisms are best summed up by a statement issued a week or so ago by a coalition of organizations that has been monitoring the legislation over a period of time and has developed considerable expertise in the area.
I am referring to the coalition of 17 non-governmental organizations that proposed some very significant suggestions around the Export Development Act and that today are expressing grave concerns about the failure of the bill to take into account those concerns and those suggestions.
On September 21 the coalition of NGOs reacted with very grave concern and disappointment that the concerns it had put forward regarding Bill C-31 were not taken into account. The coalition co-ordinator of the NGO working group, Émilie Revil, said:
We need to amend the Act to make sure the Export Development Corporation upholds Canada's commitments to protect the environment, human rights and the public right to basic information. The changes presented yesterday will have negligible impact on the daily operations of the Corporation. They leave a proven bad driver behind the wheel.
That says it all in terms of the expectations around the bill and why it falls short in terms of obligations and responsibilities. It was an opportune moment to address those very concerns. There were suggestions made about how that could have been done.
It is not too late to do just that. There are changes that could be made to the bill to address those concerns and show good faith with respect to the community that has been working so long and hard on good legislation. Canada must continue to play a leadership role when it comes to international trade and to our export development corporation. We must ensure that we are always mindful and respectful of our obligations to preserve and protect the environment and to enhance and uphold human rights.
The three areas that the NGO community recognized as shortcomings in the bill are the same as those enunciated by hon. members from the Bloc and ones that the New Democratic Party also feels strongly about.
The first concern is with respect to the environment and whether the bill actually has a meaningful mechanism in place to carry out proper environmental assessments of any projects undertaken by the Export Development Corporation. The answer by all accounts is no. The bill does the opposite of what one would expect to be a reasonable course of action in terms of ensuring an independent environmental assessment.
It proposes to keep it as an in house function of the Export Development Corporation as opposed to making it subject to a complete review under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. That is a fundamental point in the debate and there is no reasonable explanation of why the bill does not ensure that path is followed.
There is absolutely no question about the need for Canada and for the Export Development Corporation's environmental review framework to follow this long established tradition. This framework is not new or unique. It is a model that is used by other jurisdictions. I think specifically of the export credit institutions in the United States and Japan which follow the idea of an environmental review based on an independent environmental analysis.
The issue of how Canada pursues the path of environmental protection in terms of all activities by the EDC is critical and needs to be addressed by the government through the bill. That was one of the concerns raised by the auditor general in his report of May 2001. It behoves us to try to incorporate that constructive criticism into legislation before us today. The organizations that have spoken out about that point say this very succinctly and clearly.
The NGO coalition calls for the Export Development Corporation's environmental framework to be regulated under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. It calls for the mandate of the Export Development Corporation to be changed to ensure that Canada supports and develops Canadian trade in a manner consistent with our own standards and obligations pertaining to the protection of the environment.
My second point has to do with human rights. The coalition of non-government organizations has spoken loudly and clearly on this matter. Others in the House have done the same. We have done it in the Chamber as recently as this past Thursday when my leader, the member for Halifax, raised a question pertaining to a very serious situation known as the Bulyanhulu case, which has been referenced in this debate as well.
Serious allegations have been made in that case where employees of the Kahama Mining Corporation, a subsidiary of Suttion Resources which is now owned by Barrick Gold, in conjunction with the Tanzanian police, buried over 50 artisanal miners by bulldozing over the entrance to the shafts in which they worked.
There is some question around these allegations. As reported in the press there are also those who refute those allegations despite having reports from Amnesty International and other organizations that witnessed developments in this regard.
What is clear in this case is that these allegations must be investigated. There needs to be a full scale independent inquiry into Tanzania to determine what happened, why it happened and what our international obligations are as a result of these developments.
It begs the larger question of what we are doing through the legislation to ensure that human rights are respected and enhanced in all activities of international trade, specifically pursuant to the Export Development Corporation. It has been our expectation, as I assume is the case among other parliamentarians and many Canadians across the country, that the bill should first and foremost stand up in terms of our role and responsibility for the protection of human rights.
The bill does not take those concerns seriously and does not ensure that there are mechanisms entrenched in it to provide for that kind of leadership by the Canadian government to ensure that all avenues are pursued in terms of human rights violations.
The third point, which was also part of the auditor general's criticism of the Export Development Corporation, pertains to transparency and public disclosure. This has been a very important part of our deliberations in parliament of late as more and more Canadians show a concern about democratic traditions being upheld in parliament and in every legislature of the land.
It is important that we take these concerns very seriously and do whatever we can to ensure that the bill before us respects the commitment we make to the Canadian people to be prepared at all times to be fully transparent in our work and ready to disclose in a full and open way the policies, practices, and programs pertaining to the Government of Canada.
It is absolutely clear from various analyses that Bill C-31 fails to entrench the absolute maximum in terms of public disclosure. Despite calls for the Export Development Corporation to be more open in its decision-making process, Bill C-31 places no new requirements on EDC to disclose vital information to the public. In the mid-1980s the Export Development Corporation stopped releasing project related information. I acknowledge that while the corporation is currently drafting its own disclosure policy, potentially allowing for greater transparency, there are no changes proposed under Bill C-31.
Just as I have mentioned with respect to the flawed environmental review framework and just as I have mentioned with respect to the failure to address stringent mechanisms around human rights, there is no mechanism in the bill for dealing with the fundamental question of transparency and public disclosure.
There is also no reason for the government to go slow, to be hesitant in this regard. Public sentiment is with us. People want us to do everything we can on this front. They want us to ensure fair public access in terms of any kind of government program, crown corporation and legislation. It is just a basic fundamental task for us today to try to convince the government to ensure that the legislation respects that principle and to require the Export Development Corporation to disclose basic information. Surely that is not too much to expect.
Those are the three concerns we have. I repeat them once more just by way of summarizing and by way of making a plea to the government to hear these concerns and to act before this debate proceeds much further.
The first is that we have in the bill a clear mechanism for independent environmental assessment so that the workings, the activities, of our Export Development Corporation are consistent with the principles that we all share around preserving and protecting our environment.
The second, and again we make the strongest call possible, is for an enforceable human rights review framework to be included, incorporated and integrated as a part of Bill C-31.
Finally, we in the NDP call upon the government to ensure increased transparency and public disclosure policies as an integral part of Bill C-31. We feel that all these recommendations are supported by the work of the NGO community, by the work of parliamentarians and by the report of the auditor general. The evidence is there for action in those three areas. The bill could be a very important, strong, leading edge piece of legislation if we have the will to make those changes now.
As some of my colleagues said earlier, the bill tends in fact to reduce our policies to the lowest common denominator in terms of such basic issues as environmental preservation and protection and human rights protections as well. Why do we keep doing that in this day and age? Why lower our standards to the lowest common denominator? Why not instead become a world leader in these areas, set the stage and raise the bar on such basic fundamental issues as the environment, human rights and public disclosure? They are fundamental to the values of Canadians today. They are fundamental to the whole democratic process. We urge the government to consider these comments as constructive criticism with the hope that changes can be made to the bill before we go much further.