Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to have this opportunity to speak on this bill, which is overall an interesting piece of legislation. It imposes harsher penalties on shipping companies that illegally dump toxic substances at sea. When we get to committee, moreover, we will have to examine the issue very carefully to make sure there are no loopholes. We have already seen the loopholes that were left in Bill C-28, loopholes relating to tax perks for the shipping industry. We need to be sure that the same thing does not happen with this bill, and that there are no possibilities for certain companies to get around the law.
This bill also confers considerable authority on game officers when it becomes necessary to intervene with respect to shipping companies behaving in a manner that may or may not be illegal. Human rights must be protected, however. In committee, we will pay particular attention to these particular aspects of the bill.
Obviously prevention is also important. The focus should be less on the ability to clean up after an oil spill—take the Exxon Valdez for example—and more on imposing conditions to prevent this type of accident from happening. Constraints have to be strong enough to prevent companies from being in a major environmental disaster situation.
Nonetheless, I would have liked this bill to amend the Migratory Birds Convention Act to address other issues as well. In my riding, for instance, the environment minister is currently trying to eliminate sanctuaries for geese that use the banks of the St. Lawrence as a place to stop on their migration north or south, depending on the time of year. The federal government had set up sanctuaries to keep hunters out of certain areas, L'Islet, in particular, where the sanctuary ended up being set up in a schoolyard. Hunters are particularly unwelcome in that setting because reopening the hunt would be dangerous for the children and the entire community.
The same kind of situation exists at Trois-Saumons. Everyone in the field agrees that the sanctuaries should be maintained in the future and that the federal government should withdraw its proposal to make them disappear. At one time, it was said that there were too many snow geese. The new spring hunt has taken place for several years and has brought things into much more reasonable proportions. It is as if the bureaucratic machinery had had the goal, three or four years ago, of using the disappearance of the sanctuaries as a way of decreasing the flocks of snow geese. Today, we no longer need this measure.
I would have liked this bill to give us much more serious guarantees. Of course, there is the question of maritime accidents. Action could be taken, nevertheless, under the bird protection legislation. They move from country to country; they have no borders. Therefore, I think it would have been relevant to have more of an omnibus bill covering other aspects of this field.
The same thing is true of the spring hunt. An experiment has been conducted and the results so far are clear. The pilot project could have turned into a provision in the law. Indeed, it has an interesting economic impact and an interesting ecological impact. The species had truly multiplied too rapidly and that could have created health problems for entire flocks. There is also an impact on the land where the geese stop over—obviously a negative impact—especially on farmland.
In recent years, there have been a number of problem situations. The UPA has had to argue frequently to ensure that, when the geese are migrating, the farmers are compensated for their losses. The explosive growth in the flocks has meant that the geese go farther and farther inland. They land in cultivated fields. In half a day they can easily destroy all possible production in that field. For a farmer, this has a serious economic impact.
There are currently programs to compensate farmers. However, we should have taken the opportunity provided by this bill to improve these programs and to involve farmers in the environmental operation that we are conducting. This could be done in a more concrete fashion and we must ensure that the federal government truly does its share in this regard. Indeed, it is ironic that, while the federal government wants to get involved in many areas in which it has no business, there are other areas—such as migratory birds—in which it is not fulfilling its responsibilities.
Earlier, I gave the examples of the sanctuaries that they are trying to eliminate. This is a bad decision. Incidentally, the whole community in my region shares this view, whether it is people from l'Islet, Saint-Jean-Port-Joli or, more generally, from the l'Islet RCM.
It is the same thing regarding the whole issue of spring hunting. The federal government is not doing enough. It should do more.
This is a bill which, on the whole, is interesting, but it should be much broader in scope, it should be a kind of omnibus bill to improve the Migratory Birds Convention Act.
Also, when the bill is reviewed in committee, we will have to take a closer look at the issue of overlapping jurisdictions. It is important to respect provincial jurisdictions. Incidentally, we are told that the Quebec Liberal Party, which is not a sovereignist party, recognizes the existence of a problem in this regard. A document on the priorities of the Quebec Liberal Party includes a strong commitment to this effect. It says that the provincial government will have to:
Negotiate with the Government of Canada to obtain jurisdiction over Quebec's freshwater bodies (lakes, rivers, bogs, wetlands), which will allow us to better monitor aquatic activities.
This is a jurisdiction where things must be clearly defined. We must ensure that the federal government discharges its responsibilities without encroaching upon Quebec's responsibilities. Therefore, if the measures contained in this bill ever had an impact on areas under Quebec's jurisdiction, there would eventually have to be an agreement on what is acceptable. We must not create a situation where, on the one hand, the federal government legislates and, on the other hand, provincial governments are faced with court cases for something that is not their responsibility in the first place. Obviously, it will be very important to ensure that this kind of legal wrangling does not occur.
It is absolutely essential that we focus on prevention to avoid spills. We must ensure that rules set out to prevent spills, the fines and the various actions that can be taken are so clear and precise that all ship owners will understand perfectly that it is much better for them to make the necessary investments and take all the required safety measures than to have to suffer the consequences of a spill that could cause considerable environmental damage.
It is certainly very spectacular but, above all, very sad when environmental mishaps occur because adequate measures were not taken to prevent them.
Hopefully this bill will cover all possible situations. Hopefully there will be no loophole allowing people to get off scot-free. Nobody in the shipping industry should get special treatment.
In this respect, let us hope that the past will not be an indication of the future. Certain harmful behaviours proved that the federal government had granted special treatment to corporations. In so doing, it weakened the law making it less credible and less viable.
I hope that, at committee stage, we will meet witnesses who will tell us what should be changed in the bill. I hope the government will be open to amending the bill. I dare hope that it will even be open to broadening its scope to make it an omnibus bill and include changes to the legislation on migratory birds to answer the questions I raised before. I hope to see that kind of attitude on the part of the federal government.
For instance, the bill expands the area over which the law applies. It will be possible to inspect and search a vessel and direct it to a Canadian port if the offence took place within the 200 nautical mile limit. The current legislation is limited to 12 miles. I see that as an interesting improvement. The 12 nautical mile limit is the limit for the fisheries. It would be interesting to have a larger one for migratory birds.
The bill is also designed to deal with the uncertainty regarding the three departments that are involved when a polluting vessel is stopped. If things can be clarified it will simplify operations and it would be good to do so. In fact, it will allow for more coherent actions and will give much more satisfying results in the end.
As a whole, this bill is interesting. It remains to be seen if it goes far enough to make owners of vessels accountable. We believe that it is essential to get expert opinion. The shipping world is full of numbered and intermediary companies in charge of managing vessels. This opens the door to a lot of loopholes. The criminal responsibility of corporations must be very clearly defined.
There must be a balance between the powers given to game officers and the protection afforded by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
In conclusion, the bill is worthy of our support. It is important to send it to committee as soon as possible. We expect the government to be open-minded so as to make this a truly airtight bill that will cover all possible situations to prevent environmental accidents linked to waste being dumped by vessels.