Mr. Speaker, I believe this bill, which proposes the national sustainable development act, put forward by my colleague from Don Valley West, is an idea whose time has truly come.
We are struggling as a nation, under a new government, to assert the proper integration of the environment, the economy and the social well-being in Canada. This is a struggle that transcends Canada as a single nation state. It is a struggle that the planet is trying to achieve in terms of making progress and moving forward.
Sustainable development for many Canadians is a conundrum. It is a mystery. What do we mean by sustainable development, some might say. In fact, many argue against moving forward in a coherent way, as is proposed by my colleague, because it is often very difficult, if not impossible, to define what sustainable development means.
Sustainable development is not a destination. It is a direction for the way in which we order our affairs in Canada and around the world. It is a direction that looks to this proper integration of the economy, the way we operate in the free market, environmental integrity and, of course, the social well-being that flows from that appropriate integration.
Sustainable development is a little bit like 50,000 pieces of a puzzle in a puzzle box without a cover picture on the box. Slowly, if we do this right, under a national sustainable development act, we will assemble 50 to 100 to 250 pieces of the puzzle at a time and we will slowly craft a new picture for the future, an idea, as I say, whose time has truly come.
Only a few countries in the world actually have a commissioner for sustainable development and the environment. Our government was perspicacious. It was wise to create this position in Canada in the Auditor General's office.
I am disappointed in the government's conduct around the motion that was passed through committee by all parties but the Conservatives to make truly independent the commissioner for the environment and sustainable development and strengthen that office. However, that is another matter, on which we just heard a ruling from the Speaker, and I am sure will continue to be debated in committee.
There are core principles in the notion of sustainable development. The fact that we cannot necessarily describe what it looks like, what the picture looks like, does not mean that is an excuse for inaction. We know about the precautionary principle, which is increasingly informing our legislation in this country. We understand the polluter pays principle. Many of these principles have been codified through practice, and that is a very good thing.
When it comes to the notion of sustainable development and the strategies in the federal government, which the government is required to prepare, 24 to 25 or 26 line departments and a smattering of agencies, boards and commissions and occasionally crown corporations that prepare these strategies every two years, there are eight cross-cutting themes that cut right across all of these strategies.
However, one of the challenges the government has not addressed whatsoever is the true accountability for performance under these strategies, which is why I so strongly support the bill put forward by my colleague from Don Valley West. In part, one of the things the act would do is ground, locate and make responsible in the very centre of the federal administration, from a machinery of government reform perspective, it would very critically establish a sustainable development secretariat within the Privy Council office.
That is where the buck stops. That is the Prime Minister's own personal department to backstop his political office, the Prime Minister's Office. If there were such a secretariat within the Privy Council office, it would help integrate all these strategies across all the line departments and make them more robust and more accountable for their performance and it would them all together with quantifiable and measurable goals.
The bill also deals with things like making Canada a world leader in living sustainably, reducing our air pollution, changing our production consumption patterns, dealing with water stewardship, which is a critical issue for the future, and the kinds of cities in which we will live as quality of life becomes the defining factor for attracting capital now in our cities.
All those questions are neatly tied into the bill put forward by my colleague. For the first time in recent Canadian history, we see a bill that is something we ought to be moving aggressively with as a Parliament going forward.
I am disappointed that the government, in its own approach to the machinery of government issues around sustainable development, appears to be backing off. For example, the national round table on the environment and the economy, which I used to run, ought to be reporting, as it is structured, directly to the Prime Minister and the Privy Council office. Unfortunately, after nine years of such reporting functions, the Prime Minister in his wisdom has decided to shift the national round table out of his office and put it over into the line department called Environment Canada.
Some people would say that seems to be coherent. In fact, it is completely incoherent because it sends a signal to Canada that environmental issues are marginalized issues, that sustainable development issues are only about the environment when they are not. What we are looking to do here through this bill is to fully integrate into our federal government, the nation state, a new approach which integrates right across all the line departments.
In a perfect world, we may not have an environment department in due course because these issues would be treated, as they should be, in each line department at the right level and in the right way. Transport Canada and Agriculture Canada ought to be examining these questions and issues.
Taking this agency and pushing it over and marginalizing it with the Minister of the Environment is in fact a step backwards. We are looking for more integration, not less.
Those are some of the features of the bill that I think Canadians should be aware of that are particularly positive as we look to lead the world.
We have lots to learn. The United Kingdom and Sweden, for example, by law require the production of a national sustainable development strategy with clear goals and objective reporting. Our previous government did two things that would strongly support and buttress this act. We developed eco-efficiency metrics. These are measurements, such as energy intensity measurements, water intensity measurements and materials intensity measurements. We devised these as a previous government with the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants so they could be measurable both in public and in private sectors in those settings.
Second, our previous government designed new environment and sustainable development indicators which ought to be used alongside this bill, this new approach, for national reporting. We would know then how well we were doing as a nation state, how well we were doing when it comes to air quality, water quality or the extent of wetlands in Canada or forest cover.
This is all available, shrink-wrapped as they say, on the shelf for the government to use. Unfortunately, both of those initiatives dealing with eco-efficiency metrics and the environment and sustainable development indicators have been thrown out by the government as it continues to marginalize environmental issues in a line department, while grossly underfunding it.
Those are some of my comments. I am looking forward to seeing this bill arrive in committee. It is an idea whose time has come. I appreciate the fact that this would require a cabinet committee with a constant, unwavering focus on a sustainable development strategy. It reminds me of those folks who golf and who sometimes yell at the golf ball and ask it to sit down on the green somewhere. It is time for sustainable development to sit down on the green and the logical place for it is in PCO, something contemplated in this bill.
I strongly congratulate my colleague from Don Valley West for a terrific and very positive piece of work.