Mr. Speaker, the bill before us today is the reincarnation of legislation that was passed in the last Parliament but which the government did not see as important enough to get through the Senate before it called the election.
However, whenever I talk about the bill, the one number that always sticks out with me and is the number 300,000, which is the number of birds killed by this type of pollution off the east coast, and only off the east coast, every year. The number is a low estimate, according to the Fisheries and Oceans people or the environmentalists on the east coast. These are the ones they can actually identify as having died, so the figure is much larger than that.
In spite of the comment that we heard from the last Liberal speaker, the reality is that a number of the species that are being affected by this type of pollution are endangered. It is a hole in the endangered species legislation that went through the last Parliament that has not allowed the scientists who are studying these bird populations to get them on the endangered species list.
The legislation before us today is way overdue. I say that with a great deal of conviction because our U.S. neighbours have had this type of legislation in place now for close to 15 years. The result of that has been this scheming by some of the international shippers to sail into Canadian waters. They cross the Atlantic, come into Canadian waters, dump their bilge and then move into the U.S. port, which is their ultimate destination. However we have been the recipient of their pollution and garbage for way too long and the government has sat on this legislation way too long.
The effect has been, because of the U.S. legislation, that they have done a great deal to clean up this type of activity by rogue ships that dump their garbage in international waters or national waters, as is happening now in Canada.
The other thing that the U.S. has done, which we have not done and which this legislation does not do, is put our money where our mouths are. We will pass the legislation but no additional resources will be put in place for additional surveillance by the Coast Guard, by Fisheries and Oceans or the federal Department of the Environment. None of them will receive additional dollars to do anything to make sure the legislation will function.
Although we have increased the fines, which I applaud the government for doing, as it is something it should have done over a decade ago, the reality is that we may not have any ability to enforce the legislation unless we get serious about funding the Coast Guard, in particular, but also Fisheries and Oceans and the Department of the Environment.
There is another issue that has not been addressed by the legislation or the government. There were a series of reports where charges had been laid under the existing legislation but there were no convictions. The reason for that has been conflict between the Departments of Fisheries and Oceans and the Environment. Again I see nothing in the role that the government has played in the last few months since it has been in a minority government situation to clean that up.
Will we again be faced with departments not cooperating with each other or thwarting the actions of one or the other because of territorial empire building, resulting in the consequence that, although the legislation is in place, we perhaps may identify the culprits but because of shoddy work or work being thwarted by one department over the other the convictions do not get registered in court because the evidence has not been properly prepared? I warn the government that is something it has to work on. It has to clean up that territorial infighting and make sure that it never occurs again.
Another point about the lack of legislation is the issue of the deductibility of these fines. The government is extolling the fact that it has increased the fines. Again, I applaud it for doing that. However, it is rather hypocritical to say that it has done this when, under the existing circumstances in our income tax laws, in a good number of cases those fines end up being deductible from a corporation's income tax. The downside of that is, as individual taxpayers, we end up in effect paying as much as 50% of that fine.
We as a party have lobbied the government repeatedly to ban the deductibility of fines that are related to environmental crimes. It is a simple point. The government and I believe all political parties talk about polluters paying. Let us get serious about that. If we are to follow that principle, if we are to insist that people who commit crimes against the environment must pay for it, we should not turn to the taxpayers and say that they will pay half of it. We have no responsibility here. We are not guilty of that dumping. The shippers are guilty of it. They are killing those 300,000 plus birds every year just off the east coast.
As a country, we should in no way be subsidizing that type of conduct. We must change our income tax laws to make it absolutely foolproof that an individual who commits a crime against the natural environment will pay the full amount of that fine. That the principal polluter pays a bit of the fine is an hypocrisy. It is something we badly have to do.
Following on some of the comments made by my colleague from the Bloc Québécois, I cannot finish without raising the reality of the Prime Minister's role in this. The reality is his family still owns a major shipping line and we still do not have that change in our income tax law. I suggest that is one of the reasons. This Parliament has to stand up and say that we will do this. We have to say to the Prime Minister that we are sorry to his family and CSL, but CSL will have to come in line with the obligations that it faces elsewhere in the world. If it is going to commit that kind of an infringement of our law, that kind of a crime against the environment, we are no longer going to subsidize it. I point out that CSL has already been convicted once under the existing law and was ordered to pay a paltry fine of $25,000.
It is time for this Parliament to bring our laws into the 21st century with regard to polluters paying. We should no longer subsidize this type of infringement, in spite of the obvious conflict by the Prime Minister and his family. We should push hard on this issue. Until we do, this legislation becomes much less effective. It is time for us to stand up and say that we will protect our migratory birds, we will stop the slaughter of the birds off the east and west coasts and we will make the person who perpetrated that crime pay to the fullest extent of the law.