Mr. Speaker, I rise here today to share my views on Bill C-38.
This is a very important bill, but unfortunately, not in a positive sense. On the contrary, several elements of this bill are bad for Canadians and for the environment.
This bill is not a generous bill. It is not generous towards immigrants, towards small and medium-sized businesses, towards older people who want to retire, or towards the environment and our fish stocks.
I would like to focus on three main elements in my speech. First of all, Bill C-38 takes us in a direction and down a path that is undemocratic, which is reflected in the process and the content of the bill.
Second, this bill will have a devastating effect on the environment in the long term. This is very worrisome to me and to all Canadians. This bill will damage not only the environment, but also biodiversity, our fish stocks and the health and safety of Canadians who are counting on a healthy environment and healthy ecosystems for the long term. Passing this bill entails several risks.
Third, this bill should create hope, provide opportunities and be generous, since Canada is recovering from a serious recession. Instead, this bill does not help Canadians. On the contrary, this bill contains elements that are bad for small and medium-sized businesses and for Canadians employed by these businesses.
I will now address the first element in greater detail for my hon. colleagues.
While I am confident that there are some positive elements in this budget implementation bill, as there will be in any bill, unfortunately they are completely outweighed by the negative aspects of the bill. The complexity of a 420-page bill that amends some 70 other pieces of legislation makes it difficult to even assess and paint a picture of the things that concern us.
I know my colleagues in the New Democratic Party have been calling it a Trojan Horse bill, but I have a different name for it: I would call it the “infected blanket bill”. This is an infected blanket budget. I use that term very specifically because in the 1700s there are accounts that suggest that gifts by the British government to first nations in North America were knowingly infected with the smallpox virus, which then spread out in those communities and did damage.
Perhaps not immediately, but over time it was very detrimental to those populations, and this is that kind of bill. While the bill is presented as a gift to Canadians and as something positive, in fact some of the provisions, such as the changes to old age security, will inevitably fall most strongly and negatively on the poorest of Canadians, on disabled Canadians and on single elderly low-income women, with who knows what kinds of repercussions. In some case disabled persons report that they are waiting to turn 65 so that they can be lifted out of poverty by old age security and GIS. Those are the Canadians who will lose $30,000 a year with the government's changes. That is the kind of negative gift that will keep on giving.
This infected blanket budget bill will cost our environmental protection incrementally over the long term. We have developed, over perhaps 30 or 40 years, a framework of environmental protection whereby economic development can proceed in a way that mitigates environmental damage. As populations increase and our economy continues to grow based on the development of resources, those good things need to be accompanied by a strong environmental safety net for the health and safety of Canadians and for the long term of an ecosystem that can provide Canadians the services that assist our well-being.
Down the road, if the air poisons us or we have oceans without biodiversity that cannot feed some of our aboriginal communities or we have failing seafood industries that cannot feed Canadians and our export industries, it is going to be negative for Canadians. Over the long term, by gutting these environmental regulations and taking the protection of fish habitat out of the Fisheries Act, we may well see the demise of the salmon stocks on the west coast comparable to what we saw with the cod on the east coast, although I certainly hope not.
We have had the experience of ignoring conservation and environmental sustainability as a principle that must be embedded in the way we develop our economy and our day-to-day lives, and we have seen the cost of ignoring that. That is why we have environmental assessment regulations. That is why we have the species at risk law. That is why we have a Fisheries Act that protects fish habitat and fish. Those are the very things that are being undermined in this bill, which provides an override to the government for political reasons or reasons of industrial pressure. That will cost our fish, wildlife, sea life and the very fundamental importance of them to Canadians in the future.
That is why this budget is of such concern. It is not just that the future destruction is hidden in a budget implementation bill. It is not just that there is no opportunity to duly and properly give justice to these massive changes to our environmental safety net. It is not just that 300,000 people have staked their lives and futures on their hopes and dreams of coming to Canada, a group of people who have paid money, responded to requests for information and put their lives on hold to come to Canada and who are being told, “Sorry; you are history”. It is not just the content of the bill, but the fact that the government is hiding the very contentious things it is trying to in a way that is anti-democratic and takes us down a road toward dictatorship. That is not too strong an image. We are going in a direction away from accountability, away from transparency and away from long-term responsibility for the resource base that must nourish our lives and well-being into the future.