Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to speak this morning on Bill S-8 which, as my colleague said, is a bill that has been before this House previously.
I have some questions about this bill, and one in particular. Bill S-8 allows municipalities to deal directly with the federal government in order to modify regulations governing the lakes and rivers in Quebec, and the other provinces, while the current procedures allow Quebec's Ministère des Affaires municipales, du Sport et du Loisir to make regulations governing the use of personal watercraft on our lakes and rivers.
That is my first question, because, in fact, the bill charges right into an area of provincial jurisdiction.
Finally, we should ask ourselves a fundamental question, which is perhaps the most important one. If we gave the federal government the responsibility of monitoring the use of personal watercraft on all the lakes of Quebec and Canada, how could the Coast Guard implement these regulations, given its current means? I think the answer is obvious.
It seems impossible to me that, right now, the Coast Guard could be the body or the agency in charge of implementing this legislation alone. Therefore, it would have to delegate its power to local authorities, which would be in a position to monitor the use of personal watercraft. This bill is about personal watercraft, but there are all kinds of other boats and craft.
Today, the popularity of personal watercraft is somewhat reminiscent of that of snowmobiles. When snowmobiles first appeared in the late sixties, if my memory serves me correctly—perhaps I was too young to remember the exact time; I wonder if the hon. member for Champlain could tell us the exact time—there were, of course, no regulations and no way to monitor the use of snowmobiles. This resulted in abuse and accidents. People used to drive snowmobiles on farmland and this had a harmful impact, particularly on the environment. Moreover, a significant number of deaths occurred before governments took action and made attempts to monitor the use of snowmobiles.
But let us get back to personal watercraft. In my opinion, there are not only personal watercraft out there, and this is very important. Nowadays, there are some very powerful boats. Those who live along the St. Lawrence River can see other types of boats that are used by people and that travel at incredible speeds. We should deal not only with personal watercraft, but with all types of boats and craft, particularly on waterways such as the St. Lawrence River or the Great Lakes.
The Bloc Quebecois' position is that there are solutions other than the bill before us to deal with this issue. This bill charges right into a provincial jurisdiction. Consequently, we simply cannot approve such a bill, which, in any case, appears to be totally useless in its present form.
Currently, there is a mechanism whereby municipalities can amend boating regulations. Applications to that effect are submitted to Quebec's department of municipal affairs, sport and recreation, which then transmits them to Fisheries and Oceans Canada.
We think that changing the nature of the mechanism at this time, so that municipalities are dealing directly with the federal government, is an intrusion by the federal government into a provincial jurisdiction, Quebec's in particular.
To achieve the desired objective, that is, to restrict the use of personal watercraft, federal regulations could be changed without bypassing the Government of Quebec. At this time, it would simply be a matter of changing federal regulations. The federal government could then delegate to the Quebec authorities, who could work together with local authorities to resolve what I consider to be specific problems.
We know there are a great many bodies of water in Quebec and this situation does not apply to all of them. Each one has to be treated individually, with the two sets of authorities, those for local matters and those for the body of water, as is the case when it comes to the environment and catchment areas such as for rivers. A local committee manages all the pollution in the catchment areas. Decisions are made by a local committee and are backed by the Government of Quebec. This works very well.
I do not see the point in centralizing Canada-wide a problem that can be resolved by Quebec, by provincial and local authorities. Of course, the federal regulations would have to be adjusted. As I was saying, it is not necessary to have a bill. It is simply a question of adjusting the federal regulations in order to allow Quebec and provincial authorities to take appropriate action.
There is another problem with Bill S-8. To arrive at a solution, all types of watercraft would have to be banned. The current wording of the bill is problematic. Do we want to ban only personal watercraft or all watercraft that might make noise or harm the environment?
This is far from clear in Bill S-8 at the present time. Not only not clear, but also, for a community or a municipality to be able to ban personal watercraft, all motorboats would have to be banned from the waters in question. There cannot be a ban of just one type of watercraft and not other types which may produce an equal amount of noise and pollution and cause as much damage. So there is a legal problem concerning the bill before us here.
For bodies of water where there is no alternative road access, it would strike me as extremely difficult to ban the use of motorboats of any kind. People need to use them to get to cottages with no road access, or to where they want to hunt and fish or engage in some other activity. This is another problem with Bill S-8.
My colleague for Lac-Saint-Louis, having been Quebec's environment minister, may recall that, when we first discussed personal watercraft use, we addressed another problem not covered by Bill S-8: not noise but environmental damage, specifically the spread of invasive exotic species by this type of watercraft. PWCs can be readily moved from one body of water to another.
For example, at this time the zebra mussel costs our economy $7 billion to $13 billion yearly. Watercraft of this type are the main reason for the spread of such invasive species from one body of water to another, and this is a major environmental problem.
We must go further with this. We must see that federal responsibility goes beyond the protection of water to focus more on species protection. That is the approach this bill ought perhaps to have taken.
We are well aware that the use of personal watercraft may seriously disturb the quiet enjoyment of some people along the shores of waterways. In its present form, however, this bill strikes us as impossible to enforce.