Roundup is a trade name, okay. Members can tell I did not grow up on a farm. I picked apples every once in a while. My apple farmer uncle, Gerry, who is now deceased, used to call me “the city boy” when I would come to the farm and pick apples. I guess he was right. Thanks for confirming my wise old Uncle Gerry's assertion that I was a city boy.
Glyphosate caused harm to my family. I will say that my dad has taken on his fight with Parkinson's with quite a lot of consternation. He is a really remarkable guy for managing his disease the way that he has. I do not think it is necessary for people to be exposed to things like that. I would hate to know what types of disorders and diseases tailings ponds and other toxic industrial applications might prove to impact folks with. I hope that we do not see more spillage, because that certainly was devastating for those communities that surrounded that.
Moving on, Bill S-5, known as CEPA, was introduced on February 9, 2022, more than a year ago. Since then, Senate committees and the House of Commons environmental committee have received 105 written briefs. If I compare that to how many briefs we receive at the health committee for similar pieces of legislation, I would say that is a lot. It is probably triple what we received for the most recent bill studying children's health. They have spent, collectively, over 50 hours studying that bill, with a lot of great input from experts, industry leaders and a tremendous number of witnesses at those committee hearings.
They have received over 80 witnesses' oral testimonies, and they have debated over 300 amendments tabled. This is one of the most debated pieces of legislation that we have seen in this House and through the Senate over the last couple of years. This excludes any of those subamendments because, of course, there have been considerable subamendments as well.
I think all members of this House can agree that there has been extensive debate around this bill during second reading in the House of Commons. This bill actually received more debate time than the budget implementation act would usually receive. I do believe we can all agree that it has had its time here to see the light of day.
Prior to those recent amendments, as many of my colleagues have pointed out, CEPA had not been updated in over two decades. Much has happened over the last two decades. A lot of new technologies have come to the fore and there are plenty of new chemicals to account for. We need to ensure they are not having a negative impact on people's health.
During this time, over the last two decades, we have certainly developed new technologies and we have deepened our understanding of toxic substances. Across the board, we are getting better at science, especially climate science. Our environmental legislation needs to reflect this important progress.
It has been said a number of times throughout debate today that this bill is not one that is focused on climate change; it is focused on toxic substances in our environment. I think that is very true. However, at the same time, we need to consider the impact of many of the industries that directly increase climate change and have a negative impact on climate change and warming, as well as the dryness of our climate currently and the incidents of wildfires and other horrendous natural disasters. They are all related, and we need a 360-degree view and a science-guided, evidence-first approach to preventing harm when it comes to the technologies that we are adapting to and all of the new methods by which we are going to get enough energy for transportation and for all the other things, like heating our homes, that we rely on. It is so important that our legislation advances forward with the technology and with all those new developments.
For the first time ever, CEPA recognizes the right to a healthy environment for Canadians. To ensure this right is meaningful and taken into account when decisions are made under CEPA, this bill includes a number of requirements.
For instance, it requires that the government must develop, within two years, an implementation framework describing how this right to a healthy environment would be considered in the administration of the act. This framework would explain, among other things, how principles of environmental justice, non-regression and intergenerational equity would be considered under CEPA. The framework would elaborate on principles such as environmental justice, meaning avoiding adverse effects that disproportionately affect vulnerable populations, and issues of non-regression for continuous improvement of environmental protection.
CEPA, as it is, is a very technical and lengthy bill. We have heard a lot of testimony from expert witnesses from all backgrounds. I think it is extremely thorough and I am glad it is one that most members in this House seem to support. In debate, we have heard from all parties and it seems like the majority of members do support this bill.
That said, we have also heard from constituents via email. I know I have. I have received some from fantastic, environmentally focused organizations in my riding.
One I want to point out is Sustainable Milton. Sustainable Milton is a group of concerned citizens who regularly take action to advocate for and directly clean up our environment. They are a wonderful group of people, and I want to give them a shout-out. They have led town cleanups in our community. I want to acknowledge that litter is a visual concern, for the most part. In our environment, it is annoying to see litter, but it is nothing compared to toxic substances that are going to have a deleterious impact on our health. However, Sustainable Milton has done a really great job leading these litter cleanups. I am grateful to have taken part in a couple, and I want to thank all of the councillors who led their own cleanups as well with the stewardship of Sustainable Milton.
I would also like to reference the Halton Environmental Network, which was actually cataloguing a lot of that litter and looking into whether some of it had any deleterious impacts on waterways and tributaries. Milton is a bit landlocked, but it has quite a lot of watershed down to the Lake Ontario area and the basin around there.
What we put into our environment matters. It has an impact on habitat, and it has an impact on the water we drink. I want to thank the Halton Environmental Network and Sustainable Milton for their stewardship and action on environmentally focused activities in Milton. I also want to thank them for their emails.
I have received dozens of emails from constituents asking our government to position Canada as a global leader in developing more non-invasive methods, non-animal methods and methods that are less harmful to our health and to the health of animals.
We know that we are connected to our environment, not just through the air that we breathe and the water that we drink, but also through the food chain. A lot of our food is produced locally. Last week, I had the chance to visit Monaghan Mushrooms, a farm in my riding that produces fully three-quarters of the local mushrooms that our community consumes. If someone had a mushroom omelette in the last couple of weeks, I would encourage them to have a look at the label. I would bet the mushrooms were produced in Milton, Ontario. Those are all the button and portobello mushrooms. Then there is also another farm in Milton that produces all the specialty mushrooms. I learned a lot about fungus last week.
What I know is that those mushrooms, as they are being produced, drink the same tap water we do. They require soil, which is produced locally, actually through manure from Woodbine Racetrack. They actually provide a service to Woodbine Racetrack, one of the largest horse-racing facilities in Canada. They take all of the horse manure and put it directly into a compost mix, and that compost is then used to produce mushrooms.
Why am I going on about horse manure and mushrooms? It is because the horses that race at Mohawk racetrack in Milton drink the water from the surrounding area, and if they are like the animals in my life, they sometimes just drink from puddles. They eat grasses and locally produced vegetation, and then their excrement leads to something that is used to produce the food that we consume on a daily basis.
We are all connected through the water that we drink, the air that we breathe and the food that we consume. It is so important to make sure that the toxic chemicals that might exist in only a very small percentage in things like grasses, table water or any of a variety of things do not biomagnify all the way up into something that we consume on a regular basis and then have a deleterious impact on our health.
At committee, members heard from Dr. Chandrasekera, the executive director of the Canadian Centre for Alternatives to Animal Methods, an international expert in this field, who presented technological innovations that have been made in producing viable alternatives to animals for testing. Health Canada is working to address the issue of animal testing outside of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.
Our government has also passed a motion that would see the requirement to report on the operation of the act with respect to indigenous peoples to be done annually, rather than just once every five years. That revised requirement ensures consistent annual reporting on all issues raised by indigenous groups in relation to this act. These motions will improve transparency and ensure that the government remains accountable.
We know that climate change is a real threat that affects all Canadians, and now more than ever we must have strong environmental protections to protect our health from toxic substances that enter our natural environment. Our country has an opportunity to be a leader in climate policy, and passing an updated, strengthened CEPA is absolutely vital to this.
In closing, I would like to say that in previous speeches today I have heard quite a lot of talk about tailings ponds and whether this is a bill related to climate change. I think I have touched on how it is related to climate change but possibly in more of a tangential way. Climate change is real. I know this is not something that is universally held as a conviction in this House. Unfortunately, some people like to talk about historical accounts as to how much ice was above certain towns or cities in Canada. That probably would not be true if one were to consult a historian or a paleoclimatologist.
However, the fact remains that we have an obligation as a country, as a government, to stand up for the health and wellness of Canadians, and that includes animals and vegetation, because those products do biomagnify into our biology as well.
