Mr. Speaker, such a bill would have made it possible to support and implement several recommendations from the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade but my speech will show how this bill has sidestepped the question.
The Export Development Corporation is a crown corporation, with special status. It is not subject to the Access to Information Act nor to the Environmental Assessment Act. This could have afforded an opportunity to apply it.
It is not regulated by the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions. It pays no income tax. It is not required to pay dividends and may borrow at preferential rates because of the credit enjoyed by the Government of Canada.
What is this bill all about? What can be seen first, and is immediately obvious, is that there is an environmental problem. This bill is trying to establish an environmental frame of reference that is created by the EDC itself, by its managers.
We had the option of including the Environmental Assessment Act. The government sidestepped an opportunity to do something very simple and to establish criteria and not so-called international standards set by leaders based on things that do or do not exist. We could have had really well established criteria.
The auditor general was given the mandate to assess the environmental frames of reference of the EDC. During this assessment, 25 projects were considered. Of these, 23 were badly done or had not anticipated their impact on the environmental process. Later, I will give examples relating to these projects.
Let us look at the first report criticized, which we looked at in committee in 1999. At that time, following meetings between the various parties in committee, we said this corporation was not transparent, open or accountable to the people of Canada and Quebec. In addition, there had been sustainable environmental development, which we will see more precisely during the course of my speech on this bill later and this afternoon.
In addition, there was reference to human rights. We see no sign of them in the bill. What should we think of a corporation that has as its objective to fund exports and to help companies without regard for human rights? There are a number of places on earth where there are problems with this issue. There may be very specific places where there are human rights problems. Why did the government not comply with our international commitments on this?
The bill does not even make any mention of this issue. Yet, that was one of the committee's recommendations in its conclusions. The auditor general, who tabled her report in May 2001, also referred to this issue. Here are some of the elements included in the conclusions and recommendations of that report:
There are important gaps in public consultation and disclosure. There are significant differences between the framework's design and its operation. The framework's objectives are not clear. The framework's environmental standards are not specified.
There are gaps at each stage of the environmental review process. Screening tools are not applied adequately to identify potential environmental risk. There is no methodology to determine if adverse environmental risks can be justified.
The report of the auditor general tabled in May 2001 highlights some very important elements, particularly as regards transparency, disclosure, the environment and, of course, human rights. If we look at the environment, what is the framework? The objective would be to have specific criteria or standards to apply.
Regarding the framework, the auditor general says that there is none, which creates a grey area. Why? Because instead of having a framework based on an act such as the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, instead of having criteria to conduct impact studies and develop processes from the beginning before approving a financial project, so far we have relied on a review by the host country. As we know, there are a number of host countries whose environmental standards or criteria are really lower than those in Quebec and in Canada.
If we have no methodology, no implementation criteria, what are our chances of getting something reliable? Let us not forget that the lack of disclosure and transparency raises the following question: Is the EDC truly credible? Is it doing its homework properly? If we cannot have access to this information under the Access to Information Act, as we know—