Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have this opportunity to join in the discussion today of Bill C-33, An Act to amend the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, regarding biofuels.
As we have been hearing, this is very important legislation. The amendment before us today is also very important, as it relates to how we do the business of the people of Canada in this place.
The intent of Bill C-33 is to enable the government to regulate renewable content and fossil fuels and proceed with plans to mandate a 5% renewable content in gasoline by 2010 and a 2% average renewable content in diesel and heating oil by 2012. This is something that we have supported in this corner of the House, although we supported it with reservations in the hope that we might see some important changes made when it was before the committee.
My colleague from British Columbia Southern Interior and my colleague from Western Arctic have worked hard to see improvements made to the legislation before it came back to the House. Unfortunately, that work was only partially successful. That is the reason we have this amendment before us today.
I should say that in committee there was some success, in that my colleague from British Columbia Southern Interior managed to ensure that a parliamentary review would be undertaken every two years on the environmental and economic impacts resulting from the biofuel industry. That was a very significant addition to the legislation.
It is certainly something that needed to be there, especially given the changing scene regarding biofuels and the concerns that are being raised more intensely with every passing day, it seems, about the effect of this industry and these fuels on our planet and on food production in particular. Achieving that review at committee as an amendment to the legislation was a very important contribution to the debate around Bill C-33 and will have an important and lasting effect should this legislation ultimately pass.
The other problem, however, is that the other amendments introduced by the NDP and my colleague from British Columbia Southern Interior did not get through the committee. They were very significant as well, in that they would have ensured that Canadian farmers benefited from any federal investment in the biofuel industry by the prohibiting of imported grains and oils for the production of biofuels. These amendments would have made sure that what is used in the biofuel industry is produced here in Canada.
The other part of the amendments that unfortunately was lost at committee called for the protection of the natural biodiversity of the environment from contamination by genetically modified trees and seeds. We have seen over and over again the concern about genetically modified foods being grown in Canada. There is a particular concern about the use of genetically modified seed and the effect that will have on agriculture in Canada. Given the interest in producing for biofuels, we wanted to make sure that there was some limitation on genetically modified seed and trees being used. Unfortunately, that did not make it through the committee either.
Finally, my colleague from British Columbia Southern Interior tried to ensure that prohibiting the exploitation of sensitive biodiverse regions for growing crops for biofuel production was part of the legislation. That seems to be a very reasonable addition. It is something we should be concerned about when we are going down this road of biofuels, but sadly that did not make it through either.
The final and most blatant statement, I think, and the most important statement of all, was that food production should come first, before production for biofuels. We wanted to see that enshrined in the legislation as a principle as well. That did not make it through the committee process.
These are all very serious issues that were raised by the NDP in the debate at committee and ours were all very reasonable and appropriate amendments to bring forward. I am sad that they did not get the support of the other parties to get them included in the legislation we are debating here today.
That being said, we are putting forward another amendment today at this stage of the debate. That amendment would ensure the scrutiny of the regulations related to the bill that are brought forward and would make sure that the appropriate committee of the House has that opportunity specifically to look at the regulations. We heard earlier from my colleague from Winnipeg that often the devil is in the details. When it comes to legislation, the details are often in the regulations.
That is why we believe it is important to pass this amendment. As well as having oversight of the overall environmental and economic impact of heading down the biofuels road, we want to make sure that we look specifically at the regulations that are brought forward by the government relating to this bill. That is extremely important. Often we do not pay the kind of attention that we should. Given the very serious concerns related to biofuels, it is important that we do that.
Without that kind of scrutiny, and given that this is broad enabling legislation, we worry that we are handing the government another blank cheque. The Conservative government seems to be very interested in those kinds of blank cheques. It seems to be very interested in promulgating legislation, guidelines and regulations that are big enough to drive a Mack truck through. We have seen this over and over again.
We saw this with Bill C-10. That bill was essentially about closing income tax loopholes, but also included a guideline around the film and video tax credit dealing essentially with the censorship of film and video production in Canada. It is a very broad guideline that gives the minister and the government very broad powers with respect to deciding, based on apparently their own personal tastes, what should or should not be funded when it comes to film and video production in Canada. We in this corner of the House and many people in the arts community and the film and video production community in Canada are concerned about that and are extremely upset about it. It is another example of putting a very broad guideline or regulation into a piece of legislation that would give the government broad powers to make decisions without being clear and transparent.
We have also seen this with respect to Bill C-50, the budget implementation bill. The bill includes similar broad powers for the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration when it comes to dealing with immigration applications from people wishing to come to Canada. It gives the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration the power to choose to ignore immigration applications. This is very inappropriate. The NDP has fought long and hard for an immigration system that is transparent, that is guided by clear regulations and clear policy. To give this kind of broad arbitrary power to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration who can ignore immigration applications based on unknown decisions to us, such as personal preference or biases of the current government, seems unreasonable.
We see Bill C-33 as very broad legislation. It would essentially give the government a blank cheque to develop regulations around the biofuels industry. The NDP is very concerned about that. It should be more closely delineated. There should certainly be, at least as a bare minimum, more opportunity for scrutiny of the overall direction of the legislation and the impact it would have, as well as direct scrutiny of the regulations that are brought forward relating to it. That is what our amendment deals with today.
The whole question of biofuels is part of what some people are calling the perfect storm. In an article Gwynne Dyer wrote about the coming food catastrophe, he sees it as a piece of the perfect storm, related to population increase, related to the demand for food which is growing faster than the population, and to the changes in diet in countries like China and India where there is a growing middle class. It is related to global warming. Some countries are seeing changes in climate that affect their ability to grow food. Again there is the whole question of biofuels and whether they supposedly reduce carbon dioxide emissions, but because of the change in food growing patterns that they are evoking around the world, they actually may strongly increase carbon dioxide emissions. Biofuels may not be a solution to the problem, but in fact may make it worse.
Gwynne Dyer certainly sees all of these things coming together as the perfect storm. He quoted Professor Robert Watson, a former adviser to the World Bank, who said, “It would obviously be totally insane if we had a policy to try and reduce greenhouse gas emissions through the use of biofuels that is actually leading to an increase in greenhouse gases”.