Mr. Speaker, it seems that information needs to be shared with other members of the House. When I watched some of the early debate on this bill, I was taken a bit by surprise in that the debate by the government was led off by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, followed by the Minister of the Environment. I was taken aback because in my review of the proposed bill the debate should have been led off by the Minister for International Trade, because the bill is not about the preservation of our water system in Canada and the protection of the export of our freshwater resources but just the opposite.
It is supposed to be about protecting the ecosystem that our freshwater feeds into. It should be about protecting our freshwater from the travails we will have with it as climate warming moves ahead. It certainly should be about having available to all Canadians a safe freshwater system. That is not what it is about.
I would like to go back in history for a minute or two and draw to the attention of the House the resolution that was passed on February 9, 1999. That was a resolution introduced to the House by the NDP member for Winnipeg—Transcona. It was a motion that received support from all members of the House, including members of the Liberal government, and ultimately it passed unanimously. I will read the motion to the House. It read as follows:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should, in co-operation with the provinces, place an immediate moratorium on the export of bulk freshwater shipments and interbasin transfers and should introduce legislation to prohibit bulk freshwater exports and interbasin transfers and should not be a party to any international agreement that compels us to export freshwater against our will in order to assert Canada's sovereign right to protect, preserve and conserve our freshwater resources for future generations.
That resolution passed unanimously. I would like to make an additional note about that motion because an important part of it was an amendment which included the phrase I have already read:
—and should not be a party to any international agreement that compels us to export freshwater against our will—
That motion recognized, first of all, the need to pass legislation that would ensure bulk water could not be exported from any source in Canada. Second, it specifically and explicitly recognized that water needed to be exempted from any future trade deals because there is of course a serious issue under the existing trade deals as to whether we have that protection.
It is interesting to note that no one spoke against the motion. No one voted against it, as I already indicated. It passed unanimously. No one stood up and said he or she believed we were wrong and that we should export water. No one said that. No one said our freshwater supply should be included in the next trade deal. None of that was said at that time. Everyone was unanimously of the opinion that we needed to take action on the issue. I think it was obvious to every member of the House at that time that action would be forthcoming from the government and that our freshwater would be protected.
Here we are a little over two years later. What is the situation we are confronted with today? We are debating a bill that any objective observer would say does not realistically address the issue of exporting bulk water. It just does not do it. In fact, it opens the door to the export of water by providing for the licensing in certain circumstances, the licensing that would eventually lead to the export of bulk water.
We are also faced two years down the road, under the FTAA, with another trade deal. Of course we still have not seen the text of the deal. We do not really know what it contains and the government has been less than clear as to what its position is on the trade deal. We do know that the government has refused to make an absolute or unequivocal commitment that the FTAA will prohibit the export of bulk water. It has been adamant about refusing to make that commitment.
I found it interesting last week when the Minister of Foreign Affairs was speaking on the bill. I would like to quote him. He said:
All Canadians recognize that water is a natural resource unlike any other.
We have heard that from other members of the government. It makes sense and we all agree with that. I think all Canadians agree with that. The problem I have when I look at the bill is that the government is in fact not committed to that principle. It in fact does not recognize that water is a natural resource unto itself, unlike any other.
In his remarks, the Minister of Foreign Affairs went on to say this:
Canadians look to all levels of government to take action now to protect Canada's water. We must ensure that our children and grandchildren inherit a Canada in which our freshwater resources are secure.
Again I ask: does he really understand what he is saying? Why will the government not give us that commitment, which was certainly contained in the motion passed over two years ago that was brought forward by my colleague from the NDP? It did not at that time place an immediate moratorium on the export of bulk freshwater and the legislation that has now been introduced in the form of Bill C-6 does not in fact prohibit bulk freshwater exports.
Let me draw the House's attention to proposed section 11 of the bill on licensing. To be fair, there is a separate provision which talks about prohibiting the export of water, never using the term of course. The government knows that if it uses that term it may invoke the trade deals. Again that is something it will not admit in public.
The first part of proposed section 11 states “except in accordance with a licence”. A licence in fact would permit this. The proposed section continues, and this is the important part “no person shall use obstruct or divert boundary waters”.
In reverse that says, and I guess I am wearing my lawyer's hat for a minute, that the Minister of Foreign Affairs who is responsible for this, and that it is interesting too that it is not the Minister of the Environment, could issue a licence that would allow “for the use, either temporarily or permanently” of boundary waters. It is permitted.
The history up to this point of this legislation and the treaty it flows into with the United States, is that nobody has done this. Canada and the United States have not done it. What we hear is the implicit understanding that we will not do it.
Given the more recent history in the last decade with the free trade agreement, NAFTA and now the proposed FTAA, it is obvious that we are very concerned that the water would be treated as a commodity and would be exposed under chapter 11 of the NAFTA.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs said that if we pass the bill, it becomes law and is incorporated into the treaty then all problems would be solved. Anybody reading the proposed section 11 would say that that is not what the bill does. It does just the opposite. It allows some subsequent minister of foreign affairs to licence the export of bulk water.
The other point about the bill is that it is primarily designed to deal with the water in the Great Lakes Basin and the St. Lawrence. It deals with boundary waters across the whole of the country. What it clearly does not do though is prohibit the export of water. It does not deal with the proposal we heard floated from the province of Newfoundland and the export of bulk freshwater from Gisborne Lake. That proposal has not been dealt with at all.
We fall back as we so often do and say that that is the provincial responsibility. That is not good enough for Canadians. If we have what is called a Monroe government, which is prepared to expose the rest of Canada to chapter 11 under NAFTA by going along with the bulk export water scheme, we as a Canadian government have to tell it that it cannot do that, that water is a natural resource which is also a national resource. We have a responsibility to protect all Canadians.
If Gisborne Lake or some other type of hare-brained scheme like that was to go ahead, there would be no protection for the export of bulk water any place in Canada, none whatsoever.
We have a number of legal opinions in the country that accept the proposition I just made as the reality under the NAFTA. If Gisborne Lake or some other scheme like that goes ahead, water becomes a commodity in the whole of the country. We then lose our ability to protect that freshwater resource.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs in his address to the House last week made this comment:
To pretend that one government can solve the issue with a wave of a legislative wand, or that the issue may be simply reduced to one aspect, such as `water export', in the words of some critics, is unrealistic, ineffective and undermines the goal we have.
That is the government's attitude. Obviously what it is trying to do is pass the buck and say that it is not its fault, that it is what the provinces did or did not do and that it did nothing about it.
Reality is that two years ago the government should have implemented a moratorium on the export of bulk water. It should have introduced meaningful legislation to the House that would have prohibited absolutely and unequivocally the bulk export of freshwater right across the country. It would have made a clear and unequivocal commitment that the FTAA would not include any provision that would expose our water to a claim under that treaty, if we ever did do it.
The government could have taken a leadership role but it did not. It needed to follow both the wording and the spirit of the motion that was passed two years ago in the House. What did we hear from the Minister of Foreign Affairs? He said that kind of export ban would undermine the goals we had. One has to question what the government goals are with regard to freshwater and the bulk export of it?
It was interesting to note in the minister's closing comments last week on Bill C-6 when he said that the bill was “consistent with Canada's international trade obligations”. That is so meaningful. Like just about everything else the government does, it is driven by those obligations, not driven by what is in the best interests of the country or its citizens but by these trade deals that the government has entered into.
Would it not have made more sense to have had the Minister for International Trade front this bill because that is really what it is about?
The Minister of the Environment when he spoke to the bill made this comment “the safest and most effective way of protecting Canada's water resources is through an environmental approach, through an approach based on trade”. I agree with that statement. That is the way the government should be conducting its business but it is not in fact the reality.
We still do not have the commitment that the FTAA will not compel us to bulk export. If water is not on the table under the FTAA, then we should be given a commitment. The government is not prepared to give a commitment.
The Minister of the Environment went on to quote from the international joint commission's final report on the issue of water in the Great Lakes Basin, specifically and more generally in transboundary water, which said “that international trade law does not prevent Canada and the United States from taking measures to protect their water resources”.
The Minister of the Environment is conceding that we in fact cannot pass legislation that protects our water resources. Again the question is obvious. Why do we not do that? Simple legislation is required to ban the export of bulk fresh water.
I would like to finish off by talking about the legal position we are in vis-à-vis the trade deals. I will quote from a legal opinion that was commissioned by the Council of Canadians in 1999 referring to the trade conflicts involving export controls on water.
The opinion stated:
—the potential for such conflicts should not delay action by the federal government to ban water exports. Indeed for the reasons noted, delay in doing so is likely to further limit Canada's options.
That was two years ago and we still do not have it.
I was going to quote again from the concern expressed in that legal opinion about the things that have happened under NAFTA and some of the WTO cases, but I see I am almost out of time.
We had promises from the government in the cultural area and in research and development programs that were not covered under NAFTA. In fact we found to our chagrin just the opposite. That is the position we are in today.
The bill is not going to resolve that problem. It does not go far enough. It does not deal with it adequately. It allows for licensing and does not deal with the export of water elsewhere in Canada.
Our position on this legislation will be to oppose it and to continue to press the government for more realistic and adequate legislation that will protect the interests of Canada.