Debates of Nov. 26th, 2009

Reference to Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad my colleague named it for what it is. It is Jew hatred and to submit that anybody on this side, most notably those who had the flyers dumped into their ridings, are haters of Jews is vile and abhorrent.

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Mr. Speaker, we have a tremendous opportunity to serve in the House and to serve beside many great Canadians and none greater than the member for Mount Royal, who brought this motion forward, and my colleague who just addressed the House on this particular topic.

I had the privilege of coming to the House with the member for Winnipeg South Centre nine years ago. We were both in the class of 2000 and a group of us, who still remain from that class, had a gathering last night. We talked about the highlights and the lowest points that we have experienced in the House over the course of nine years, because there are many highs and lows.

I wonder if she would take the opportunity to share her lowest point with the people who are watching this debate at home and those in the gallery today.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, that is a difficult question to answer.

Last night, the class of 2000 played a game of talking about the highest and the lowest moments in our nine years here. We each submitted those memorable moments, some positive and some negative. As the member well knows, my reference was this past week. This past week has been the lowest of the lowest that I have ever experienced in this House.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

Questions and comments. Resuming debate. Is the House ready for the question?

[Some hon. members]

Question.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

The question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

In my opinion the nays have it.

And five or more members having risen:

The vote stands deferred until Monday, November 30, at the end of government orders.

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Even though we are past the normal time for private members' business, I think if you seek it, you would find consent among all the members in the House to proceed to private members' business as ordinarily would have happened at 5:30.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

Is there unanimous consent to proceed to private members' hour?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order to seek further clarification from you. I had put my name down with the table officers to speak to the question of privilege that was raised by the member for Mount Royal in his motion. I was getting up to speak when you asked for other speakers and you moved on right away into other matters. I am not sure what happened but I believe I had the right to speak when you had asked for speakers.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

The member is quite right, he did have a right to speak. The chair had been informed that there would be no other speakers from the whip's desk. I did call for further speakers and I looked around. I asked if the House was ready for the question and then I proceeded to put the question. I did not see the member rise. I did call for further speakers and I did say, “Is the House ready for the question”, as is normal, and then I proceeded to read the question. At no point did the member for Davenport indicate that he wanted to speak, so the matter has been dealt with now and we are on to private members' hour.

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I apologize, but I did get up. I think there was a matter that maybe you did not notice me but I did get up and you just moved on to the question, and, unfortunately I was left out. My name is there for the record and I did move and I had my speech prepared as well, so I am not sure why I was not recognized and not able to speak to the matter.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

I can only assure the member that I did call for further debate. I did, as is customary, glance around the chamber. I did ask if the House was ready for the question. Nobody indicated that the House was not ready for the question. Had the member stood up, I would have gladly recognized him and the House would have heard him.

I think it is incumbent upon members to be aware of the progress of motions and the state that they are in.

We are now on to private members' hour.

The House resumed from October 26 consideration of the motion that Bill S-216, An Act to amend the Federal Sustainable Development Act and the Auditor General Act (involvement of Parliament), be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Federal Sustainable Development Act

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Mr. Speaker, this afternoon, it is my pleasure to speak to Bill S-216, which seeks to amend a bill adopted in the dying days of the 39th Parliament. The bill was sponsored by a former colleague, John Godfrey, who retired from the House just before the fall 2008 election.

Mr. Godfrey was a member of the Standing Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development. I remember that he did everything in his power to ensure that his bill would make it through the committee stage and be passed in the House before the end of the spring 2008 session, because he realized that the Prime Minister was likely to call an election in the fall, which is exactly what happened.

Mr. Godfrey's bill, which is now a Canadian law, requires the federal government to develop a sustainable development strategy for its departments and agencies. Among other things, it requires the federal government to submit a preliminary version of this strategy to a House of Commons committee to be evaluated. Following the evaluation, the preliminary version would become the final version.

The purpose of the bill was to force the federal government to show leadership on environmental issues through its own activities. To that end, it must set an example for the rest of Canada and the world by taking action to protect our environment and fight greenhouse gases.

Bill S-216 would resolve a significant shortcoming in Mr. Godfrey's bill. It states that the government must consult both the House of Commons and the Senate. In other words, if Bill S-216 is passed, the preliminary version of the federal government's sustainable development strategy will be referred to committees of both the House of Commons and the Senate.

It seems very clear to me that the Senate must play a role in evaluating the Government of Canada's sustainable development strategy, and I will explain why.

First, there are many senators who consider the environment a priority and who have been interested in the environment for many years. These senators have something to say about sustainable development, and we need to ensure that their knowledge and experience will be brought to bear in developing the federal government's sustainable development strategy.

There are four senators who come to mind. The first is Senator Grafstein, who will retire from the Senate before the holidays.

Senator Grafstein has a special interest in water and has been working on this issue for years. There is Senator Lapointe, a great Quebec artist, actor and star, who has an awareness of environmental issues. There are also Senator Grant Mitchell of Alberta, who considers the environment a priority, and Senator Banks, who, when he chaired a Senate committee a few years ago—I do not know whether he is still the chair—released an extremely important report on water in Manitoba, Alberta and Saskatchewan.

The Senate, in terms of the senators who sit there, is well equipped to take a considered and informed look at a federal sustainable development project.

Second, we know that the Senate is sometimes a bit more representative than the House of Commons, because senators are appointed. For example, aboriginal Canadians represent 1.62% of members of the House of Commons, but nearly 6% of senators. There is also greater representation of women in the Senate than in the House.

The diversity in the Senate's membership is quite interesting. In the case of aboriginal senators, I would like to point out that these senators represent sectors or regions which, unfortunately, suffer the most devastating effects of climate change. We have Senator Watt who represents the Arctic. The Arctic is unfortunately seriously affected by the negative impact of climate change. These aboriginal senators often have a great interest in the environment. Because of the diversity in the Senate's membership, I believe that it is very important that it be consulted on these matters.

I would like to address another point. It is well and good to want to refer a bill on sustainable development to a committee, but we all know that the House committees are swamped. For example, the Standing Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development is presently conducting a number of studies. The work has backed up somewhat like traffic at rush hour on the Turcot interchange in Montreal. We are currently studying Bill C-311 on climate change. Next, we want to study the oil sands and water resources. We are also conducting the five-year statutory review of the Species at Risk Act. And we have other work.

The House committees are very busy. Why not ask a Senate committee to also have a look at it? This is another reason why I believe the Senate should be involved.

As I mentioned at the beginning of my speech, Mr. Godfrey's bill, which we are attempting to amend, required the federal government to show leadership on environmental issues. It is the type of leadership that the Liberal party has always exercised, especially with respect to climate change. Consequently, I believe that it would be a very good thing for our country if the Senate were to be more involved in this matter.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise today to speak to Bill S-216, a Senate bill. I note that the summary of the bill describes the bill as an enactment that “amends the Federal Sustainable Development Act and the Auditor General Act to ensure the full participation of each House of Parliament”. Clearly there was a mistake made some time back when the original legislation was tabled, but which is now being corrected by this bill.

Bill S-216 is sponsored by the member for Kitchener Centre on the government side. It amends the Federal Sustainable Development Act and the Auditor General Act. The former requires the government to produce and table a number of reports before the House; Bill S-216 proposes that the government table the same reports before the Senate. Therefore, the bill gives the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development greater flexibility regarding the timing of the tabling of some of the reports under the Federal Sustainable Development Act.

The bill also corrects an oversight that occurred, as I indicated before, during the development of the Federal Sustainable Development Act.

The act will establish a sustainable development advisory council, and there were a number of suggested groups from whom representatives would be drawn to sit on this advisory council.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of the Environment did speak to the bill, and I took the time to reread the first hour of debate, so I am aware what other members had to say regarding the bill. I must admit it was quite far-fetched. It was certainly way off the topic of the bill in many ways. Nevertheless, the parliamentary secretary did make reference to new regulations for tailpipe emissions and said, “We have reduced emissions through stringent tailpipe emissions standards” to begin in 2011.

I can recall the emissions standards in the United States under Jimmy Carter in 1980. They were in place to ensure that the Detroit big three built their cars in much more energy-efficient ways. Following the election of Ronald Reagan and the new Republican right, who were basically the forebears of the current Conservative Party, they took the emissions standards of President Jimmy Carter and basically gave the car companies a pass. They were supposed to bring in certain emissions standards by such and such a date over, say, a five year period, and Ronald Reagan changed that so the auto companies had 10 to 20 years to bring in the same emissions standards.

It is interesting after 38 years in political life and having seen many people change their positions over time to see the Conservatives talk the way they are right now, which I am not used to. Certainly in reading the speeches in Hansard, I have had some big surprises.

The parliamentary secretary has also said that 90% of Canada's electricity will come from clean sources by 2020. I applaud all of what he has to say, but what sort of studies does he have to show that this will in fact happen, because I do not know if the government actually has control of all the levers required to make certain it would?

I would like to get the information from him on that. For example, his colleague, the Minister of State for Democratic Reform, who is a member from Winnipeg, as I am, has been pushing for an east-west power grid. We recognize that it is important in order to meet the Kyoto targets. In order to reduce the greenhouse gases, we want to have am east-west power grid, so that we can bring developed hydroelectric power from Manitoba.

Rather than shipping it all to the United States on a north-south basis, we want to be able to send it east-west. We want to be able to send the power into Saskatchewan and Alberta, but particularly into Saskatchewan, so it does not have to rely on coal-fired generation, so it does not have to do any further studies of the nuclear option which it is looking at right now.

We want to be able to construct that east-west power grid to Ontario. If we could do that, we could provide hydroelectric power, clean power, to southern Ontario, so that the coal-fired generators that are currently operating in southern Ontario could be retired. I forget the exact number, whether it is five or fifteen, but there is a number of them still operating and they are certainly heavy on the pollution side.

The fact of the matter is that this issue has been dealt with since about 1991 when Premier Gary Filmon who was a Conservative Premier was dealing with Bob Rae who was the Premier of Ontario at the time. The deal fell apart at that point in time. There was talk of starting to look at it again later on and things are just not happening.

It seems to me that with a recession in progress, and I notice that the Conservatives now are talking about their strong connections with the Obama White House. They are now taking a different sort of attitude, and if that is the case, why are the Conservatives not putting up the money, why are they not highlighting this east-west power grid as one of their major projects?

I assume they are heavily interested in re-election. If they want to do that, it is certainly not going to make them any less popular than they are right now if they were to announce that they were going to do an east-west power grid from Manitoba to Ontario, and that we are going to sell power into the Ontario market.

It is just such a no brainer. We are putting the money into the north-south routes. As a matter of fact, Manitoba Hydro is getting close now to building its Bipole III which will be the third bipole.

The debate in Manitoba is whether or not this thing should be built down the east side of Lake Winnipeg or whether it should go all the way out to the Saskatchewan border and come back. I think at some point over time, over the next say 100 years, the Bipole III is going to be built and then we are going to be looking at a Bipole IV at a certain point. There is some advantage to having them spread a wide distance apart. If we were to have an ice storm, for example, and the two bipoles were within 30, 40 or 50 miles of one another, they could both be taken down in an ice storm. Therefore, there is an advantage of having several of them and having them spread out.

We know what happened in Quebec during the ice storm a few years ago. It basically shut the whole province down for a certain amount of time.

Therefore, I see here absolutely nothing coming from the government side on this issue at any point in time. The Conservatives have gone through an election now. The only person on that side who gives us any encouragement is the Minister of State for Democratic Reform who on a couple of occasions has said some pretty good things in support of the east-west power grid, but he does not seem to be getting anywhere with the member for Portage—Lisgar or--

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

Order. I have to stop the hon. member there. His 10 minutes have expired. So we will resume debate.

The member for Kitchener Centre is rising for his five minute right of reply.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to offer my concluding comments in the debate on Bill S-216, An Act to amend the Federal Sustainable Development Act and the Auditor General Act (involvement of Parliament).

Before I digress to that, I would like to thank the member for Lac-Saint-Louis for his very positive remarks today. It is what I have come to expect of him. I also wish to thank the member for Elmwood—Transcona for his very generous praise of the government's environmental policies, which were outlined by the parliamentary secretary.

Why do I enthusiastically support this bill? Why should all members support this bill? It is because the proposed amendments seek to strengthen our capacity to progress toward sustainable development. They reinforce one our government's most fundamental priorities: greater accountability and transparency. Our government has been working hard and has delivered many sustainable environmental measures.

The Federal Sustainable Development Act requires the government to produce a draft federal sustainable development strategy for consultation. The act currently requires the government to share the draft federal strategy with the Canadian public, the commissioner of the environment and sustainable development, a sustainable development advisory council to be created under the act, and a standing committee of the House of Commons.

Indeed, the government will be embarking on broad consultations for the draft strategy in the coming months. Yet, a key institution is obviously missing from these consultations on the draft strategy: the Senate. Clearly, senators are entitled to offer analysis that could improve upon the draft strategy. That is why I am pleased that the proposed amendments before the House today add senators to review the draft strategy.

The passage with all-party support of the Federal Sustainable Development Act last year was an important illustration of our collective commitment to transparency and accountability in this area. In our collective enthusiasm for this legislation, however, some of the key elements were overlooked during the committee stage. The amendments before the House today will address these issues, strengthening the act so that we can work more effectively toward our ultimate goal of sustainable development.

As mentioned, the existing act requires the government to table a draft federal sustainable development strategy before the House. In the interest of fairer treatment of the other place, Bill S-216 proposes that the draft strategy also be tabled in that place. This is a sensible change that I trust will also enjoy all-party support.

In addition, Bill S-216 would give the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development more flexibility in the timing of his report on the fairness of the information contained in the government's federal sustainable development strategy progress report, thus ensuring its timeliness. It also ensures that other reports prepared by the commissioner are tabled in the Senate.

These reports could very well improve the impact of the government's work on sustainable development and they would surely reinforce the goal of greater transparency and accountability. By extending the tabling of these reports to the Senate as well, there is the additional added value of improving the Auditor General Act. Let us show Canadians that we can all work together.

For all these reasons, I ask all members to join with me in supporting Bill S-216. Our government is committed to delivering both sustainable development, and greater transparency and accountability. Also, once again, I repeat my thanks to Senator Banks for originating this bill and for collaborating with me in this non-partisan effort.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

The question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?