Mr. Speaker, the government is keen to accept accolades for efforts to combat climate change. Regrettably, it has failed to give equal attention to its duties to transboundary waters and to address injustices suffered by indigenous communities from toxic pollution.
Canada has been chastised by the U.N. for failing to protect the Peace–Athabasca Delta and the indigenous communities who depend on it for their survival. In approving Site C, the government ignored the pleas of Alberta first nations to first assess the impacts of it on their treaty and constitutional rights.
Successive governments have turned a deaf ear to these communities seeking studies of the impacts of oil sands emissions on their health, a mandatory duty long vested in the federal minister of health. Despite parliamentary reports recommending regulation of oil sands' toxic emissions, there has been no action. The report by The Lancet identifies pollution as the greatest global threat to life and health and decries governments for their failure to address this injustice. The government has the power and the responsibility to act. Why does it continue to abandon these indigenous communities?