Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for St. John's East.
Bill C-22, introduced by the Minister of Natural Resources, develops measures for sharing the financial burden of an industrial incident between industry players and taxpayers.
As far as principles go, I support the merits of these measures. However, after a detailed look at Bill C-22, I must express my reservations and criticisms about liability levels and other provisions in the bill.
Companies working in the nuclear and oil industries have the potential to cause health and environmental damage and, unfortunately, they do not assume all of the social, health and ecological costs associated with their high-risk activities.
This issue adversely affects the world outside the industry because taxpayers will take on the majority of the financial, health and moral problems of a high-risk activity, yet they will not take part in the business deal or benefit from the resulting monetary profits. In the end, taxpayers will suffer the consequences of these activities without directly reaping the financial benefits.
It is important that we have responsible, effective legislation that encourages technical and technological advances without shifting the majority of the costs of an industrial incident onto taxpayers.
A responsible legislator must pass measures that require the entity responsible for a disaster to absorb the various costs related to an industrial incident. This is straightforward. In other words, the company responsible must ensure that its production costs include a major part of the potential social, ecological and health care compensation paid out if an accident occurs.
I support the idea of the polluter pays principle. It is a founding principle of environmental law. However, it is clear that the government is talking out of both sides of its mouth when it claims to ensure that the polluter is morally and financially responsible and then puts a limit on that responsibility.
The liability limit set by the government does not embody the spirit of the polluter pays principle. A nuclear incident has long-term negative consequences. From a health standpoint, it can result in bodily harm that is sometimes only discovered years after the incident.
Since the federal and provincial governments are involved in nuclear plants, we can assume that they will be directly affected by any potential consequences. Therefore, it makes sense to ensure that these accidents do not happen. Nuclear plants are often owned by the government. If an accident were to take place, the government would likely be footing the bill and will therefore ensure that there is no accident, since it knows that it will end up paying. Operational safety automatically becomes cost-effective and logical.
An industrial accident has a negative effect on economic growth, and especially tourism.
For example, if we had an oil spill, the region affected would certainly see fewer tourists. There would also be less foreign investment if an area were to become radioactive.
Bill C-22 provides for limited liability by setting the cap at $1 billion. Furthermore, it does not allow for indexing the amount of compensation, for example, with inflation. The government could have chosen to automatically index this amount, but it would rather let 15, 20 or 30 years go by before it realizes that this amount still has not changed and that it does not reflect the new reality. It would have been a good idea to insert provisions for this, since the effects of a disaster can last many years, and during that time the value of money fluctuates.
Bill C-22 provides a rather narrow definition of the polluter pays principle, in that the polluter would be more encouraged to pollute than to adopt best practices and standards to prevent industrial disasters.
The NDP is the only party that has credibility when it comes to environmental protection. The other political parties are not doing anything about the outdated shared liability regime. Outdated protections cost Canadian taxpayers a lot of money, since the taxpayer could be the victim of an accident and end up being taxed on that very same accident.
Unfortunately, we had a specific example in Lac-Mégantic. The insurance coverage the company was asked for was totally inadequate to cover the damage that the incident caused. The insurance was clearly inadequate to cover accidents.
In the event of an incident, the government should not expect taxpayers to act as potential contributors to its subsidies for these various forms of energy. If the government assumes that, at the end of the day, taxpayers will pick up any shortfall, it is indirectly subsidizing those two sectors by playing on the potential risks and playing with those who are going to pay the bills.
I also have to stress that other countries are planning to adopt the principle of unlimited liability, because it really is not such a good idea to set the compensation at a fixed amount. I do not believe that the negative consequences for public health and for economic activity can be reduced to a fixed amount. The responsibility comes with grave consequences for the community.
That is why it is necessary to look at a compensation plan in which liability is unlimited. Besides the effectiveness of the compensation mechanisms, public authorities must also establish safe and effective ways of reducing industrial accidents. In that context, Bill C-22 must be marked by a proactive approach.
Since I had the opportunity to attend a briefing on this bill given by the Department of Natural Resources, I asked how the limit of $1 billion was arrived at. I expected that they would have looked at accident scenarios in order to assess the cost, but that was unfortunately not the case. I received no precise answer.
To me, it would have been logical to have simulated various reasonable accident scenarios in an attempt to say how much it would cost today, and then set the amount. That step seems logical and appropriate to me.
However, the only answer I have received to date is that the amount of $1 billion is enough. I have received no technical or logical explanation that would allow me to understand why the $1 billion figure was arrived at.
I repeat that I support the principle of the bill. However, there are a number of unanswered questions, including the one dealing with the fixed amount, which seems strange to me. Since I am fortunate enough to be a member of the Standing Committee on Natural Resources, I will be asking departmental officials more questions about this bill.
I feel that they need to be asked, because we must not limit ourselves to partial liability in this case.