Debates of Nov. 4th, 2013

Safeguarding Canada's Seas and Skies Act

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it is always amusing to me when the NDP members make comments about the state of Canada's environment. They never provide any numbers. A recent UN report showed that Canada and Sweden were tied amongst all industrialized countries for the highest water quality in the world.

I would like to talk about economic policies, and the Province of Saskatchewan is very instructive. During the NDP years, the Saskatchewan economy was floundering. It limped along under the dead weight of toxic socialist policies. Then the Brad Wall government came in. There was a snap of the switch, and all of a sudden their economy boomed. Natural resources were being developed. Jobs were being created. Mines were being built. At the same time, the environment was protected.

Those are exactly the kinds of policies that the government is implementing. However, we know that the NDP thinks the natural resource industries are a Dutch disease.

I would like to ask my colleague why the NDP wants to see natural resource development stopped in Canada.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, first of all I want to thank my colleague for the almost Santa-like hyperbole that I just heard from him. I thank him for the question as well.

Let me make it very clear that the NDP is not opposed to development of our resources. We are not opposed.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

I am very respectful when other people are speaking, and to have that kind of response when I put forward what I firmly believe in is not respectful or needed in this place. I would remind our colleagues that each and every one of us is elected to represent our constituents in this House. We should pay some respect to that.

We are for resource development. We are for resource development that is responsible and environmentally sustainable, for the simple reason that this planet has to be protected, for our sake and for the sake of our children.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, looking at Bill C-3 and the name of the bill, I am sure the government must pay some individuals to be creative in coming up with names. The name of this bill is the safeguarding Canada's seas and skies act. I give the government full credit for whoever it is in the background, maybe someone in the PMO's office, who is paid an excessive number of taxpayers' dollars, coming up with these creative names for legislation.

I am wondering if the member might provide some comment on the following. To what degree does the member believe the implementation of this piecemeal-type of legislation, which we do support going to the committee stage, is going to ensure the safeguarding of Canada's seas and skies, given that a more holistic approach of dealing with the issues at hand would likely have given more merit to the title?

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, let me take us back to what happened during the budget.

The budget, which was thicker than many of the phone books for municipalities around this beautiful country, buried all kinds of stripping of environmental protections. There was much that was taken away, and then legislation is brought in which puts a little back in again. Then we are told, “Look, we are doing you a big favour. We are good people for doing this”.

All the government is doing is taking some parts of our agreement with the United Nations and putting it into legislation. There is nothing new in here. It is missing about 99% of what needs to be there to protect our environment. I am hoping the government will be open to those amendments at committee stage.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Mr. Speaker, this debate hits home with me. A lot of people in northern Manitoba right now are very concerned about a proposed shipment of crude oil on the bay line and through the Port of Churchill. Anybody who knows Canada's north knows that the terrain is extremely challenging. In fact, there were two derailments in the last two weeks. Thankfully, they were railcars that did not contain crude oil. People know that if something like this were to happen, it would be devastating if the derailments led to oil spills. People do not want to see that either on land or in Hudson Bay and into the Arctic Ocean.

One of the other reasons why people are very concerned about this is because we know that under the current government there has been a record loss of environmental regulations, so the checks and balances simply are not in place. Canadians want those checks and balances in place to protect their communities and coastlines. I would like to hear from my colleague what she thinks about that.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague because she is an incredibly hard-working member of Parliament in the House. I am always amazed by her energy and the advocacy she puts forward for Manitoba and the north especially.

It is not rocket science. I think most people will get it. If people have even spilled a bit of oil in their kitchens, they know how hard it is to clean that up. Imagine hundreds and thousands of tonnes of oil in the ocean. Remember that the ocean has life in it, the ocean has waves and those waves lap against the coastline. Before we know it, the environment is degraded in a huge way. It is time for the government to revisit its omnibus budget from last year and to put right the wrong steps it took. Let us build a progressive environmental agenda.

[Jonathan Tremblay, NDP, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, since the Conservatives were elected, we have noticed a pattern involving environmental deregulation and a tendency to transfer those powers to businesses. It is a bit like having the fox guard the chicken coop. Businesses are self-regulating when it comes to environmental impacts. We saw this regarding infrastructures that cross waterways and in almost all areas that require environmental assessments.

I would like to know what my colleague thinks of this pattern on the part of the Conservatives.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, that was a very thoughtful question and my colleague summed it up. It is like we are going to go ahead despite the science, the evidence and everything we know and we are going to take away all the environmental protections, safeguards and regulations that existed. That is what the government believes, while not paying any heed to what processes and systems are in place.

The government's own audit of the Canadian Coast Guard's capacity to monitor and respond to a marine oil spill found a system that was outdated, disorganized and in need of a major overhaul. The national capacity for oil spill cleanup is slightly less than 6,900 tonnes due to storage limitations in all regions, the report said, yet as I said earlier, we are now looking at millions of litres of oil being put into the ocean and there is no plan on how we are going to tackle that. At the end of the day, neither industry nor the government has a huge commitment that has been evidenced. Once again, who will pay the price? Aside from the environmental price that ourselves, our children and our planet will pay, who will pay the price for the cleanup?

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to what should have been a much more important bill than it is, because it should have had a lot more things in it. We have already advised what we think should also be in the bill, but it is part of a disturbing trend on the part of the government members to be all talk and very little action when it comes to the environment. When they do bring forth action on the environment, it is to reduce or eliminate environmental protections. One has only to go back to the last budget, and some of this budget, in which environmental protection was weakened or eviscerated entirely.

In the 2012 budget, we lost a lot of the environmental assessment process. The act was changed. Some of the act has yet to be defined. Unless for people on a reserve, we still do not know what the definition of “the environment” is because the ministry has yet to promulgate the regulations that come with that act.

We also have the loss of navigable waters protection, which has hurt thousands of rivers across the country that are no longer protected from oil spills for example.

I will be splitting my time with the member for Compton—Stanstead, Mr. Speaker.

This bill, ironically named “the aviation industry indemnity act” to make consequential amendments to other acts, would do essentially five things. It would allow some air carriers to be indemnified for flying in war-risk areas. It would allow for civilian aircraft accidents to be investigated in part by the military, which there may be some difficulties with in terms of how public that would be. It would amend the Marine Act to define what the effective date of the appointment of a director of a port authority would be. However, the two most important things that we have been talking mostly about in the House are the portions that deal with tanker traffic and oil transfer capacity in the deep-water ports of Canada.

We have some serious concerns on the part of the people who live along those coasts that they do not wish accidents to happen at all, period. The NDP believes that prevention and preventing accidents, not having them in the first place, is exactly what should be done. We are much better off if what we do is prevent the spill of oil into the oceans in the first place. However, I am afraid the government is not going in that direction. Its philosophy seems to be that it is okay to pollute as long as somebody has insurance, as long as somebody has some means of paying for the cleanup. Given that diluted bitumen has not yet been transported in great numbers and has not been fouling the ocean, we do not even know what the cleanup of that would look like if it should happen. Believe me, spills unfortunately will happen.

All of these systems come with a mean time before failure, MTBF, which means that everybody expects something to fail. When they fail at the same time, as was the case at Lac-Mégantic, an absolutely horrific disaster unfolds. There were several different failures that happened at the same time in Lac-Mégantic, and of course we all wish it had not happened. We all wish we had been more careful with our regulations with the rail industry. We wish we had been more careful with the size and type of railcars that we use to transport dangerous liquids. We all wish we had been more careful with the use of one person instead of two in those rail disaster prone areas. We all wish we had been more careful with the transportation of dangerous goods, but we were not. Therefore, we had a disaster that claimed 40-odd lives and basically incinerated the centre of a town. That should never have happen and it should never happen again.

The NDP is committed to seeing that we build into all of our systems for transporting dangerous goods, including on the open seas, outside of ports and on the west, east and north coasts, systems that prevent the spill of dangerous goods and prevent the disasters in the first place.

The Canadian Transportation Agency and the Transportation Safety Board of Canada have made recommendations to the government on a number of occasions about how to make the rail transportation of dangerous goods safer. Has the government acted on any of those recommendations? Not so far. We wish it would. We wish it would bring in positive train control. We wish it would eliminate the DOT-111A tank cars and replace them with tank cars that are actually capable of withstanding even a small collision, but the government sits on its hands and says and does nothing.

I am afraid that is part of what we are up against in the NDP. We are up against a government that is committed to extracting stuff out of the ground as quickly as it can and getting it to market as quickly as it can and hopes that nothing will happen. We cannot live with just hope. We have to build regulations and enforcement mechanisms that prevent things. When things do happen, as we all know they sometimes will, we need to have systems in place that find a way to clean them up. When we close, as the government has done, British Columbia's oil spill response centre and shut down the Kitsilano Coast Guard Station, those are two things that are designed to deal with this kind of thing in the first place. The government shuts them down, rather than builds them up.

If we are going to have more tanker traffic, if we are going to transport more oil and if we are going to suck more oil out of the sands of Alberta, which we apparently are as the government is determined, getting it from Alberta to the rest of Canada and the rest of the world has to be done safely. It cannot be done in rusty old pipelines. It cannot be done in tank cars and railcars that cannot survive a fender-bender. It cannot be done with double-hulled tankers on the ocean. Although the government would like to claim that it has introduced the notion of double-hulled tankers, they have in fact been around for more than 20 years and they, too, have spills. They, too, are subject to being punctured in a disaster at sea.

On May 25, 2010, the Malaysian registered Bunga Kelana collided with a bulk carrier. A 10 metre gash was torn in the side of the ship, which then spilled an estimated 2,500 tonnes, or 2.9 million litres, of crude oil into the sea. It was a double-hulled tanker. It did not prevent oil from spilling into the sea.

That is what we are up against. Some might argue that out in the middle of the ocean, if an accident were to happen, nobody is out there anyway. Actually, there is a lot of wildlife out there. There are fish and entire ecosystems that could not stand to have their systems fouled by oil.

To look at the pristine and beautiful coast of British Columbia and to suggest that we are going to allow giant tankers that carry two million tonnes of crude in their hulls along a very rocky and dangerous shore is just playing with danger. It is just inviting a disaster. We in the NDP believe that should be avoided. We believe disasters are meant to be avoided, not played with or messed with. That is our position on this. That is what we have been saying all along.

When we want to safely carry oil, my riding has a rail corridor through it that has hundreds and hundreds of those lightweight DOT-111A tanker cars going through it. When residents in my riding wrote to Transport Canada and asked the director of rail safety to come and talk to them, he said sure, that he would love to come and talk to them and tell them how safe the rail system was. That was until the minister nixed it. The minister actually interfered and muzzled the Transport Canada official. The minister said that he was not allowed to talk to people. There were some brochures and flyers, and that is all they would get. They were not allowed to be told face-to-face.

We in the NDP want a bill that actually prevents spills and measures taken by the government that actually prevent and stop them before they happen, rather than trying to find ways to ensure people are insured for when they do happen.

[The Acting Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

I would remind all hon. members that we have a five-minute questions and comments time. We will try to keep the questions and responses to no more than one minute.

We now move on to questions and comments. The hon. member for La Pointe-de-l'Île.

[Ève Péclet, NDP, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Mr. Speaker, as we have already said, the NDP will be supporting this bill. I understand the government will likely boast about having proposed provisions to clean up our coasts and so on. However, there is a problem here. Why bring forward a bill to ensure that those responsible pay for damages, while at the same time, make cuts to search and rescue centres and maritime search centres, which could help reduce the damages and impacts, thereby reducing the amount the government, businesses and citizens would have to pay?

I wonder if my colleague could comment on the parallelism of the government's interventions.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the whole polluter pay notion is actually an NDP notion. Because it has some credence, it has been adopted, but the government has not implemented it. That is one of the problems with the bill. It suggests that the liability for tanker carriers is somehow covered by a fund that has not been added to in almost 40 years. That fund has $400 million in it; a small oil spill might cost $3.5 billion to fix.

Who will be on the hook for that extra money? It is not going to be the polluter, the oil tank company; it will be the public. It will be just like the tar ponds in Sydney or like Giant Mine in the Northwest Territories: the government will end up picking up the cost.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, would my colleague like to comment on the extra dangers and risks that are involved with transporting diluted bitumen? We know that the Enbridge spill in Michigan on the Kalamazoo River has proven to stymie all sorts of normal methods of cleaning up oil spills and that it seems to have different properties from other kinds of oil.

Given that the whole question of tankers on the west coast is tied to the government trying to get diluted bitumen out to the west coast, I wonder if my colleague could comment.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the whole notion of what is in a tanker is something that needs to be absolutely crystal clear before anything is done about changing the rules by which these tankers operate. If in fact something different is going to be in that tanker that we do not know how to clean up, as is evidenced by what is going on in Kalamazoo, then hold the phone. Let us not put it out there. Let us not actually put anything in a tanker that we do not know how to clean up should it spill.

As is evidenced by the fact that there have been so many spills already, it is going to happen, so let us make sure we know what it is and how to clean it up before we put it in the tanker.

[Jean Rousseau, NDP, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have a question for my colleague.

How is it that the government is tabling bills like this one, bills that contain many often disparate components, when at the same time it has trouble disseminating information? We have just been discussing materials that are being transported without our really knowing their exact nature. How can we trust a government that refuses to disseminate information and that brings in seemingly disparate measures? How can we feel safe when all of these materials are being transported by land, sea or air?

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, just this week there was yet another derailment just west of Edmonton, so we have had two on the same line in two weeks. In this case, sulphur dioxide was being transported in one of the tank cars. Luckily, it did not rupture, but something is wrong with the system when we keep having these incidents involving dangerous goods being transported in a way that is not necessarily safe.

The railroads argue that the number of accidents is way down. The railroads have forgotten that the number of cars carrying dangerous goods has risen exponentially, and if only one of those bad things happens in the centre of a town—oops, it did, in Lac-Mégantic—then we have a disaster. We have to prevent those disasters.

[Jean Rousseau, NDP, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would especially like to thank my colleagues who took part in this debate throughout the course of the day and who pointed out many times that this government is incapable of drafting simple bills. Bills can be complex but yet easy to understand. They can contain a series of measures that can be implemented so that the public feels safe about the hazardous goods being shipped across the country.

It seems challenging. As I said when I put a question to my colleague, the government has trouble disseminating real information. It often leaves the job of disclosing information to businesses and then we need to invoke the Access to Information Act. That can take weeks or months, when sometimes the information is needed immediately. In an era when information can travel at the speed of light thanks to social media or telecommunications, we must rely on procedures that can take weeks or months.

I experienced first-hand the tragedy in Lac-Mégantic and five months after the fact, we are still not sure what some of the railcars were carrying.

How then can we trust the government when it tables legislation respecting Canada’s seas and skies? How can we trust the government and feel safe? This government lacks credibility. The short title of this bill is: Safeguarding Canada’s Seas and Skies Act. This bill will enact or amend five acts that cover different subjects. Again, we are being served up a kind of minibus bill. It is not an omnibus bill, but rather a minibus bill.

Well, we have no intention of climbing aboard this Conservative minibus. We will continue to fight for Canadians who want to feel safe by knowing what materials are being transported by rail and by sea. Canadians are concerned about the environment.

It is always the same story. Members of the scientific community are muzzled at a time when the public is deeply concerned about the environment. Many Canadians from coast to coast are worried about the environment. They are asking questions. Why is the Conservative government acting this way? Why is it not concerned about the environment?

It is not that we are opposed to the development of raw materials and natural resources, far from it, but we want to make sure some will be left for the decades and centuries to come. We want future generations, my children and my children's children, to have a healthy environment, clean air, fresh drinking water and fertile land for agriculture, whether it be in the Eastern Townships, Quebec or elsewhere in Canada.

When we see bills such as this one, questions come to mind. Is this government aware of and even vaguely concerned about the environment? I wonder. My fellow citizens ask me what planet the Conservatives are living on and what they are thinking.

Earlier, my colleague from Dartmouth—Cole Harbour quoted Commander Cousteau, but I could also cite Hubert Reeves and Albert Jacquard. In the 1980s, they raised environmental concerns based on the type of capitalism they were already seeing at the time. They said that the greatest threat was focusing on this damned economic growth regardless of its collateral effects.

The aim was always greater productivity regardless of the collateral effects of economic growth and productivity growth, always staggering and without concern for the environment. The more we consume, the more we keep on consuming.

Yes, in the 21^st century, we must still rely on fossil matter and fossil fuels, on development of the oil sands, development of shale gas and various other forms of fossil fuels. Development is one thing, and we can already see the Conservatives are not very concerned about the environment when it comes to developing certain sites. We want to consume more and we want more growth. That is all well and good, but we need more vehicles in order to do that. More hazardous materials are travelling on our railways, on the railway lines and highways.

Supertankers are starting to navigate our great St. Lawrence River, historically one of the most beautiful on the planet. They contain up to two million barrels of oil. A spill from one of them and we would completely forget the Exxon Valdez, whose impact on the biodiversity and drinking water of the Alaska coastline is still being felt 25 years later. It is incredible to think that we can develop raw materials and transport them anywhere without any concern for public safety, the safety of Canadians across the country.

Climate change is obvious. With respect to the airline industry, the insurance industry is the one that would like to dictate how "war risk" incidents are redefined. In agriculture, some insurance companies are already reluctant to see those kinds of crops in certain areas of the country since it is clear that the sector is at risk because of climate change. Unbelievable. It is sad to hear that. It is sad to realize the truth of that considering that we are a democratic institution that should discuss the real issues, like the environment, and yes, natural resource development.

In fact, that is currently the engine and lever in our economy. The NDP is very proud, just like many workers, the hundreds of thousands of workers in these industries and industries that depend on those large businesses. However, we must be mindful of our everyday actions and of the regulations we put in place because we are talking about our land, our drinking water supply and our air.

Back in the 1970s, we were trying to fight acid rain here because the automobile industry parked it in our driveway. We spent over 20 years fighting acid rain, and we were successful. In the past 10 years, the trend has reversed. However, under Liberal and Conservative rule, scientists and anyone who denounces these things have been muzzled. The government has even said that people who care about the environment, activists, are terrorists. I cannot believe people say that. It is unbelievable that people who want to protect their land, their seas, the sky and the air we breathe are treated like terrorists. It is as if some of the hon. members across the way are sometimes not getting enough oxygen.

It gives me great pleasure to do my work here. I understand that it is now time for me to answer my colleagues' questions.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my hon. friend for his speech, because he has given us so much ammunition. He has exposed the NDP for what it actually is. It is anti-free market, anti-trade, anti-growth, and anti-prosperity. We are going to have great fun reviewing this particular speech, so I want to thank him for exposing the NDP for what it actually is.

A number of years ago, an award-winning economist named Kuznets created something called the Kuznets curve. He compared a country's wealth with its environmental performance. I would like to inform my friend that as a country's wealth grows, environmental protection improves. Therefore, far from growth and prosperity, which he obviously despises, being a drag on the environment, a country getting rich is actually good for the environment. Why is he so against growth, prosperity, and economic development?

[Jean Rousseau, NDP, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I think that the member suffered from a lack of oxygen in the past few minutes, because I said specifically that we were in favour of developing natural resources, but that development had to be carried out in accordance with sound environmental practices. It must be carried out in co-operation with other groups, including groups that care about maintaining Canada’s prosperity. Our country has always been prosperous and we on this side of the House want our prosperity to continue. We must ensure that Canada continues to grow and also that there are jobs for everyone.

We will not be able to reach this goal if we destroy the social fabric. The social fabric is not just employment insurance and old-age pensions. It also involves the environment. It also involves helping the poor and our veterans.

In order to reach this goal, we need to have sound economic growth in which everyone takes part. Our unemployment rate is much higher than we think, because people are fed up with this government and they drop out of the system.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, my question follows up on the issue of pipelines. l know that many westerners are familiar with his leader's comments in regard to Dutch disease, which many people felt somewhat offended by.

I am interested in his thoughts on pipelines and the role pipelines could be playing in the extraction of resources, whether from the east or the west. What role does he feel pipelines should be playing?

[Jean Rousseau, NDP, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Mr. Speaker, when a sector of economic activity is developed, all the components and all the related activity sectors must be put in place. If it is a pipeline, it will be a pipeline. However, it must always be developed in harmony with the environment—every time. If we do not consider the environment today, tomorrow there will be nothing left for future generations.

This is why the NDP will always defend the environment first. Without a sound environment, the kind of environment we need, there will be no future opportunity to develop anything in Canada or anywhere else on this planet. Everything must be done in harmony, and that means that we must work together, not separately.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his passionate speech. I work on a regular basis with my colleague from Compton—Stanstead, whose riding is next to mine. I know that he is always very concerned about the environment. In my view, it is one of the most important issues not only for my generation, but for everyone.

My colleague drew a parallel between the Lac-Mégantic tragedy and the transportation of goods by sea or rail by certain companies and which may be just as dangerous. This huge bill tackles this issue in part by requiring that companies pay compensation for damages, as in Lac-Mégantic. This municipality is currently having problems with the main company that caused the damage and that should help to pay for the reconstruction.

Does my colleague think that in the event of accidents it is up to the public to pay for reconstruction or should the companies shoulder their responsibilities?

[Jean Rousseau, NDP, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my esteemed colleague, the young member for Sherbrooke. Yes, we are working for this generation and for all future generations.

Private companies, as in the case of Lac-Mégantic, are a very good example. So far, we know that up to $60 million or $80 million will be spent on the site. However, the MM&A was insured for $25 million only. It is unbelievable. We have not finished digging and decontaminating the site.

We must demand more protection for our constituents. To do so, companies that ship such hazardous materials need to have much more extensive coverage, especially when they go through the downtown core of a number of communities across Canada.