Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise and speak to Bill C-5. My sentiments on the various incarnations of endangered species bills have been aired many times in this House. I will address a few particulars of this legislation, but as one who has followed this issue closely for many years, I would like to begin with some broader thought.
To set a context for my comments, I will borrow a few words from Wendell Berry, the noted farmer, poet and writer. In an essay entitled “The Conservation of Nature and the Preservation of Humanity” he tells us:
When we include ourselves as parts of belongings of the world we are trying to preserve, then obviously we can no longer think of the world as “the environment”—something out there around us. We can see that our relation to the world surpasses mere connection and verges on identity. And we can see that our right to live in this world, whose parts we are, is a right that is strictly conditioned. There is simply nothing in Creation that does not matter. Our tradition instructs us that this is so, and it is being proved to be so, every day, by our experience. We cannot be improved—in fact, we cannot help but be damaged—by our useless or greedy or merely ignorant destruction of anything.
This small quotation touches upon a number of important themes in the debate around the protection of endangered species. First, it emphasizes that we all too often and conveniently view ourselves as disparate from the natural world. What possible relationship can we have with nature, one might ask, as we hurtle along a superhighway wrapped in an SUV with our ear pressed to a cellphone? If we cannot see nature and we cannot hear it and we cannot feel it, then it becomes easy to believe that it is something that is not us, something that we engage in on our terms perhaps when driving through a national park gate.
I believe that intrinsically most of us know that this is not so. We are not so far removed from an age when we were more aware of being of nature. This awareness has been buried deep within us by the mechanism of modernity. The challenge therefore becomes one of how can we reanimate this? How can we bring ourselves to a place where the world ceases to be defined in our minds as that which we have created, to a place where the term environment is no longer a category, a compartment, a file but instead includes us as part of this broader natural world? Such a reanimation would help us to abandon the current focus on, as Berry put it, our connection with the world and lead us to an emphasis on our identical identity. Were we to identify with nature rather than objectify it, who knows what wonders we might achieve.
Second, Berry wisely asserts that because we are of this world there are conditions to our participation in it. The conditions of every other species' participation are determined by the laws of nature. We alone among species get to set many of our own rules. For example, we can kill any species, anywhere at any time. We can kill for fun. We can kill deliberately or we can kill accidentally. We can kill quickly and efficiently through direct action or we can kill a species over a long timeframe by altering the conditions that it requires for survival. We can even kill from great distances.
Surely some responsibilities come with such apparent exceptions to the rule of nature. Most fundamentally, if we are in nature and nature is in us, then the unconditional application of our authority is nothing less than its unconditional application against ourselves.
That brings me to Berry's third point, that our destruction of anything in nature, whether intentional or through ignorance, damages us. Actually, he puts it better: “We cannot be improved” through such behaviour. The superficial and immediate rewards of destruction may tempt but by other measurements we are poisoning our own larder. By way of example, let me ask the human focused critics; which of our present species of plants would prove to contain ingredients essential to future medicines, vaccines and cures? We cannot know this now, hence we must accept as a condition of our participation in the world that we not eradicate them.
When I spoke on the previous version of this bill last June, I noted that on an issue of such fundamental importance to Canadians as the environment, when those concerned with its preservation and restoration rise to speak, few are really ready to listen. Many in this place say they care and many make fine speeches themselves, but words are a poor substitute for action. All of the rhetoric in the world will not save a river, a fish, a forest, nor will it protect a child from a hazardous contaminant.
Our words will not protect species at risk; only our actions can. Discretionary authorities to act may be political deal makers but they risk becoming convenient barriers to action in the hands of those who do not recognize a duty to protect the common. When we respect nature we can begin to understand the incredible services it provides. For those who must, putting a monetary value on nature's services is difficult for many reasons. What price can be assigned to the last drop of water or the last gasp of air?
On the task at hand, Bill C-5, let me first commend the Minister of the Environment for implementing several changes to the bill since its last appearance as Bill C-33. Most notably, the decision to recognize the current COSEWIC list as a scientific list of species at risk in Canada is laudable. However, in order to trigger action, the species must be legally listed. Currently the decision for legal listing resides solely with governor in council. Canadians from all walks of life, including industries, scientists, conservationists and environmentalists are concerned that this will therefore be a political and not a scientific decision.
The political listing approach has proven to be ineffective in other jurisdictions. The proposed round table meetings every two years to discuss species at risk are a welcome addition to the bill, as are changes to what will placed in the public registry.
The safety net provisions in Bill C-5 allow the federal government to step in if a province fails to protect species. However, the safety net is also subject to cabinet discretion. In other words, even if a province fails to protect species there is no duty for the federal government to act.
While the scope of the safety net provisions in a former endangered species legislation, Bill C-65, were more narrow than in Bill C-5, they contained a mandatory requirement for the federal government to act to protect species if provinces failed to do so.
One of the things that makes the public debate around the bill vastly different from those around other so called environmental bills is that a coalition of industry, environment and conservation groups have come together and worked for years on the legislation. I cannot tell the House how unusual this is. I congratulate them for their efforts in this area. The group is known as the species at risk working group.
Along with many other Canadians, the working group has raised concerns that the bill does not go far enough to protect species. It will be the role of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development to hear from this group and from a wide range of Canadians on how we can improve the bill.
We will do nothing to protect species at risk unless the bill leaves committee as a good, effective piece of legislation. The House must support legislation that is strong, fair, effective and makes biological sense. It must be enforceable and it must be enforced.
Let me close with a few more words from Wendell Berry:
In taking care of fellow creatures, we acknowledge that they are not ours; we acknowledge that they belong to an order and a harmony of which we ourselves are parts. To answer to the perpetual crisis of our presence in this abounding and dangerous world, we have only the perpetual obligation of care.
I call on all members of the House to care about species at risk.