moved for leave to introduce Bill C-305, an act to amend the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act (inventory of brownfields).
Mr. Speaker, I consider it a privilege to introduce a bill, which is the first step of what I intend to be a three stage process, aimed at identifying, assessing and remediating what are known as brownfields. The term brownfields refers to industrial properties which lie vacant or neglected due to concerns of environmental contamination.
The bill will amend the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act to expand the existing registry so that any member of the public can report suspected contaminated sites with the express purpose of building an easily accessible national registry of brownfields.
The bill would also allow the federal government, together with provincial, municipal and private partnerships, to assist with the often prohibitive costs of environmental assessments.
To solve a problem one first has to identify the problem. Ultimately, I see this is as a three stage process: identification, assessment and remediation. The bill addresses the first two stages directly. First, we identify the extent of the brownfields nationally. Once we know where these sites are, we can begin to assess the costs of the clean up.
Having this information open and available to all levels of government and private enterprise will foster co-operative and innovative solutions. The advantages of the remediation of brownfields are obvious: job growth, revitalization of our downtown cores and reversal of urban sprawl, as well as the clean up of potentially environmental hazardous sites right in our own back yards.
The bill is a small but crucial step toward reclaiming these commercially useful sites, revitalizing our city centres and combating urban sprawl.
(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)