Yvan Loubier

[Government Contracts, June 14th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, over the past two years, the vast majority of senior managers at the Department of Public Works and Government Services have received performance bonuses. Yet, the 2000 internal audit report contained devastating conclusions about the incompetence of managers and irregularities in the sponsorship program.

Will the Minister of Public Works and Government Services explain to us the exact criteria that are used for these bonuses?

[Pest Control Products Act, June 13th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question. I know a little bit about that, but once again, I repeat that I am not an expert.

We are rather hypocritical in the industrialized countries. I am not talking about my colleagues, but rather in general terms, about the industrialized world. We are acting somewhat hypocritically. I think I should tone down my rhetoric here.

For example, when we say that we are increasing international aid from the commodities that we produce, that we are sending tons of grain or of milk products to the developing countries to help them, it is not really true, we are not helping them at all. Under cover of this international assistance program, we are disposing of surpluses that we cannot control. That is what we are doing.

People should not believe that the new U.S. farm bill, which will pump billions of dollars into the agricultural sector, will help the world. Overproduction is not going to end in the United States and world markets will keep being flooded. The local economies will be destroyed, particularly in Africa and in South America, and this will not help them at all.

What does not help them, and my colleague has mentioned it already, is that the seeds, the pesticides and everything around them, is controlled by the same companies and that the seeds cannot be reproduced. How can these countries pull through when they are in the middle of this massive industrialization movement in the agricultural sector and cannot get their local economy moving again? It is complete nonsense. It is therefore a question of principle that will have to be settled without delay.

[Pest Control Products Act, June 13th, 2002]

I am not saying this out of modesty. It is true that we do not have enough resources for the promotion and development of organic agriculture, and this has always been the case.

I remember that, in the mid 1980s, the MAPAQ, which is the department of agriculture, fisheries and nutrition, began implementing various incentives. However, it was not enough then, and it is not enough now.

The situation is clearly evolving. A number of citizens now oppose the massive industrialization of agriculture. This sector is more industrialized than ever before and becoming even more so every day.

I believe we will have no choice but to provide, rapidly, significant financial and technical resources to promote a type of agriculture that is more respectful of the environment and of human health.

The United States have just passed the Farm Bill , which I consider to be the toughest and the most inhuman policy in the agricultural sector. Under this bill, billions of dollars will be used to finance exports of surplus grain and milk products, among other things, on world markets. As a result, this will flood markets, bring prices down and eliminate farmers, especially in developing countries. A part of those resources should have been used to develop alternative means of production and to produce less massively but in a better way than what is being done at the present time.

However, industrialized countries have not reached that points yet. This is our role. When I hear my colleague from Rosemont--Petite-Patrie talk about the protection of the environment and about sustainable development, I thing this also applies to the evolution of modern agriculture.

We should take a first step and make a first improvement by doing what we used to do 30 years ago, when we started using pesticides. We used to target pests and use only the desirable quantity of pesticide, according to directions. We used small quantities.

Today, however, the use of pesticides has become so prevalent that they are being used in a preventive way. When there is prevention, there also is exaggeration. This is the real problem at the present time. The problem is not that we use pesticides but that we use them in the wrong way and massively.

We have the same problem with manure management. This may seem trivial, but natural compost has fertilizing virtues far superior to the chemical fertilizers that are being sold.

For the past 30 years, however, farmers have been brainwashed into buying chemical fertilizers because that way the percentage of phosphorus and other elements is known, they know it is always balanced, whereas with compost you never know, it varies from one week to the next.

So for the past 30 years, we have been lazy, going with technology and saying “We are going to use chemical fertilizers; we are going to use pesticides in a preventative manner and, as for the rest, manure, it is worth nothing, we will have to dispose of it”. The natural reflex should have been to use this natural fertilizer and to have the same reflex as 30 years ago: if there are pests, if there is a risk of infestation, only use the required quantity. Of course, more resources should have been invested in organic alternatives.

However, I believe we are at a crossroad. We know political will develops under public pressure. Today, the pressure is too great to have farming practices that are more environmentally sound and less harmful to human health, and to break away from the control of Monsanto and CIL.

This is very important. It is a major concern. These big transnational companies have control over the world agricultural economy. We should never forget it.

If we are serious about our vision for the future of the farming sector, and if we want to go organic, we will have to keep on breaking up international monopolies and take away from them the privilege of having control over life and the manipulation of life and all those rights that are very harmful to the future of mankind.

This too is a major issue, which will not be solved here alone but which must be solved here and by international bodies. It is urgent.

[Pest Control Products Act, June 13th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, in all modesty I must admit that I am no expert in agriculture, even though I have worked for experts in that area, namely the agricultural producers in Quebec.

[Pest Control Products Act, June 13th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to take part in the debate on Bill C-53, which is aimed at protecting human health and safety and the environment by regulating products used for the control of pests.

By way of an introduction, I would like to congratulate my colleague from Rosemont—Petite-Patrie for his excellent job in raising the awareness not only of his own Bloc Quebecois caucus, but also of the public at large. I congratulate him not only for his work on this bill dealing with the proper use of pesticides, not only for his major concern for organic farming for instance, but also for his interest in anything having to do with the environment. He is becoming an expert like no one else in this parliament.

It was high time the federal government took action in its jurisdiction. Indeed, pest control is an area of shared jurisdiction, the federal government having certain powers, specifically with respect to registration and the safe use of pesticides.

This act, which had become obsolete, outdated and criticized by just about everybody, should have been reviewed at least 25 years ago. We are talking about everything that has to do with pesticide use. Naturally, it was not criticized by those who sell pesticides; I believe the old legislation served them well these past few years. Updating this act was long overdue, especially since, for the past 25 years, a lot of scientific research has been carried out on the dangers of uncontrolled use of certain pesticides. This often resulted in the outright ban of products found to be dangerous, particularly in the United States, where more stringent controls of pesticide use were imposed in the early 1980s.

I recall that, these past few years, whenever pesticides were withdrawn in Canada, it was because the United States had carried out the necessary research, with the proper resources, in order to review the past registration of a given pesticide. They would come to the conclusion that given the state of research at the time, the pesticide in question was now deemed a hazard to human health. Canada benefited from the resources the United States has been investing for a long time in the protection of human health.

Talking about research, we talk primarily about what was done over the last few years, which has demonstrated beyond any doubt the link, sometimes a direct one, between the use of pesticides and certain conditions that develop over time, such as allergies in young children. Children are more sensitive to pesticides than adults. They also play merrily outside in the summer, precisely on the grass made so perfectly green by the use of pesticides, and easily develop allergies. Researchers link certain cases of cancer to the use of pesticides.

Thus this becomes a serious issue. It calls for a tightening of controls, notably through this legislation which, incidentally, will be supported by the Bloc Quebecois. However, we would have liked the bill to go much further, particularly with regard to alternatives to chemicals currently used. However we will come back to that at the end of this demonstration.

As I was saying, research has been developed, which established a link between illnesses developing over time, such as allergies and even cancer, and the use of pesticides. However, we have not yet reached the point where doctors receive training adequate enough to make a link between certain symptoms of these illnesses or short term symptoms associated with pesticide use, and the health of children and even that of adults. Often we think that an indigestion is simply an indigestion. The fact is, however, if we took a closer look at what the child visiting the doctor for some indigestion had been doing, we would realize that he had likely been playing on grass that had just been sprayed with pesticides to prevent it from yellowing or from being taken over by dandelions or other pests.

We should not only pay special attention to the use of pesticides, but also consider the fact that this industry is dominated by big players, essentially transnational corporations which control the entire agricultural production in the world. They control just about everything.

Companies have challenged bylaws passed recently by municipalities to ban the use of pesticides for cosmetic purposes in their jurisdictions.

Take for example companies like ChemLawn or Spray Tech, which specialize in massive chemical spraying of lawns. They tried to challenge the jurisdiction of municipalities and their authority to regulate the use of pesticides in their jurisdictions. They even went to the supreme court, but they lost. When I learned that they had lost at all three judicial levels, I was very pleased, because there is big money behind pesticide use.

We are talking about two companies in particular, namely ChemLawn and Spray Tech, but we should not forget those that supply their inputs, the likes of Monsanto and CIL.

If there are businesses that take advantage of people and of this planet, they are the ones, along with other similar transnational companies. Why do they take advantage of the planet and of people who live on it to the point of devastating complete regions? Let me explain briefly.

They have complete control, from the seeds to the finished product. They produce genetically modified seeds for crops of wheat, soya beans, rapeseed and canola. The genetic modifications make the use of the pesticides produced by these companies essential. Therefore, the whole world is dependent on their genetically modified products and the pesticides that go along with them.

If you use Monsanto seeds but not the Monsanto pesticides, your crop will not yield as much or could even be completely devastated by pests.

Internationally, farmers and peasants in Africa and Europe are at the mercy of these companies controlling the agrifood industry upstream and downstream.

Those large companies manufacturing pesticides and seeds to match are so destructive that they were the cause of the devastation observed in Africa in the 1980s and 1990s. Efforts to boost several regional economies through agriculture, which represents on average 80% of the GDP of these countries, except for South Africa, were a failure. This initiative was a failure because the only seeds available on the world market were genetically modified seeds. Following harvest, it was impossible to keep any portion of the crop to seed the next crop, because the seeds must be used together with the pesticides produced by CIL or Monsanto. Besides, they are not reproducible.

Agriculture is a very simple thing. For centuries, it has been the result of nature's miracles and human intelligence. For planting, one sows seeds or plants and transplants seedlings. Once they have grown, you set some aside. This is what people have been doing from time immemorial. Part of the crop is set aside to be used for seeds the following crop year.

It is no longer possible to do that because these big companies have control over seeds, pesticides and all the rest.

Do not think that having allowed the pesticides control and registration legislation to become outdated did not help these companies. It served them very well because once pesticides were registered, 25 years ago, there was no reason to be concerned. As a matter of fact, after registering products once, the government did not re-evaluate them. This allowed producers to sleep tight, do research to improve certain aspects of their products, while knowing that with such an outdated legislation, they had nothing to fear in Canada.

Coming back to pesticides used in Canada, this is a large market. Sales total $1.4 billion a year. In Quebec, since the late 1970s, there has been a massive increase in the use of pesticides because of the enthusiasm for green lawns free of pests and undesirable plants, like dandelions—I wonder why people do not like them; they are so nice.

During the 1990s alone, over a five-year period, I believe it was from 1992 to 1996, there was a 60% increase in the use of pesticides in ornamental horticulture.

In Montreal alone, 300 kilos of pesticides are used in parks, in places where children play. Children develop allergies and they can also develop cancer. Three hundred kilos of this junk is used in parks where our children play.

This reform was long overdue, but it does not go far enough. We congratulate the government for at least dusting off the old act. However, when one wants to do a good cleaning job, one has to do more than dust; one must also do some polishing. If the legislation can be improved, it is a good opportunity to do so. The government could have gone much further in this modernization of the pesticide registration legislation.

Had the government heeded the recommendations of my colleague from Rosemont—Petite-Patrie, who is becoming an expert on this issue and on the environment in general, someone with convictions who is working hard to bring the government to keep its word on the Kyoto agreements, for example, perhaps we would have had an act worthy of its title, true legislation dealing with pest control, but pest control with no risk to human health and not interfering with the protection of animals and plants.

But no. As usual, the government does things grudginly. It does them in stages and says “We will try this first; we will remove the dust and then, in two or three years, we will pick it up”. We sometimes wonder whether Liberal legislators know how to clean up.

When one picks up the dust, one can say that the housework is done. However, as long as one leaves it there, the housework is not done. And the government is leaving the dust in this bill, when it could have gone much further. Even if it had used the U.S. legislation as a model, it would have been a clear improvement, compared to the bill before us.

Why did the government not listen to my colleague from Rosemont—Petite-Patrie, when he suggested a data bank on alternatives to current pesticides?

There are natural pesticides in use in the United States and also in a part of Europe. They are not harmful to human health and, if they are used wisely, they do not represent a threat to the environment. Why did the government not give the example with this bill?

A government that claims to take the environment and health seriously and that keeps talking about its so-called deep convictions has introduced an incomplete bill. Why did it not create this bank? Why, also, did it not increase research on alternatives?

In this regard, even though there are natural pesticides, there is a lack of research on their large scale use, to ensure that producers in Quebec and Canada can get results and be as competitive as the United States or Europe.

Why did the government not increase significantly the resources allocated to research and to enforcement of the modernized version of the act? My colleague from Rosemont—Petite-Patrie was pointing out to me that the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development tabled a report in 1999 in which she identified serious problems that could have guided the government in drafting this bill.

For example, the report refers to the lack of re-evaluation programs. This bill provides for a certain degree of re-evaluation of registered pesticides, but we think that it is not enough. The bill does not go far enough in that area.

The report said that Canada was lagging way behind other countries throughout the world, not only with regard to pesticide registration, but also with regard to spending for the implementation of standards and regulations to protect human health as well as animals and plants. Agriculture means plants, animals and humans. We must find the right balance between protection, yield and the health of users.

The commissioner said that Canada lagged far behind in terms of the resources for the enforcement of provisions on the use of pesticides and their re-evaluation. No resources worth mentioning were added in the bill. A major part is missing, and the bill does not fill the gaps mentioned by the environmental commissioner.

Clear processes are also lacking. Did the bill settle the issue of certification, of re-evaluation and so on? Does the government know where it is going with this bill? I do think so.

I see my colleague from Rosemont—Petite-Patrie, who is nodding. There is a lack of clear processes for things like certification and the time it can take. In the United States, it is clear. A product is certified within a year. There is no fuss.

Indirectly, we are dealing not only with human health, but also with the profitability of the agricultural sector. For example, there are consequences if we cannot certify biological control agents. It would be best to be able to certify them for their use in this country. If our competitors in the U.S., for example, use biological control agents that are as cost effective as chemical pesticides used in this country, or more cost effective, we will be at a disadvantage. Since we are a net exporter of farm products, it is very much to our advantage to keep our competitive edge.

We are really disappointed with the registration process. We would have liked a much faster process, access to an alternative products databank and access to a much more efficient model, like the one that has been adopted in the United States for example, which does not threaten, as is the case here, human health and competitiveness in the agricultural sector.

We would have supported this bill with a lot more enthusiasm. However, we will support it anyway. As my colleague from Rosemont—Petite-Patrie mentioned more than once in his speeches on the protection of the environment and human health, it is a good start. We hope that the government will speed things up to further improve this area of shared jurisdiction, that is the registration of pesticides and the search for alternatives.

I wonder why the government acts like this for all its bills. In the more or less eight years that we have been here, we have made all sorts of proposals with respect to the criminal code. The government was rather hesitant and came back three years later with other amendments to the criminal code. Why did it not accept the Bloc Quebecois' recommendations which, in the case of pesticides, put forward a full plan for a real pesticide control bill promoting health protection. There again, we will keep on working to convince the government, because it has a hard time understanding.

[Government of Quebec, June 13th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, the Government of Quebec once again demonstrated its lead position in North America as far as social policy is concerned, by introducing an anti-poverty bill and action plan that reflect the wishes of a determined community.

Having cleaned up public finances and passed anti-deficit legislation, the Parti Quebecois government has completed the cycle of the collective and profound wish of Quebecers to live in a society that is financially healthy, one with equal opportunity for all, and compassion for its least advantaged members.

Quebec can be proud of the steps it has taken to battle the deficit and create this safety net: $5 a day daycare, indexed social assistance. Now it can be prouder still of this masterpiece: a stringent and stimulating anti-poverty bill.

Congratulations to Bernard Landry, who committed himself to battle poverty as far back as his Verchères speech. Bravo to Linda Goupil and the Parti Quebecois government.

[Government Contracts, June 7th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, now we have a better understanding of why the Prime Minister was so anxious to find the ones responsible for the leaks.

Is it not precisely because he know that these leaks would make it possible to trace everything back to his office, from which the whole thing has been orchestrated for the past two years?

[Government Contracts, June 7th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, in response to opposition questions, the Prime Minister tried to lay the blame on public servants, as if they were the ones really responsible for all these scandals.

Today, we realize that the situation goes far beyond the public servants. Decisions came from the highest political level.

How can the Prime Minister justify his persistence here in the House in dumping the blame on public servants, when he knows very well that his office has been the one directly handling this business for nearly two years now?

[Pest Control Products Act, June 7th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in this debate on Bill C-53, An Act to protect human health and safety and the environment by regulating products used for the control of pests.

It was time for the legislation regulating the use of pesticides to be modernized. It has been talked about for years. For years, there have been proposals on the table.

For years, many scientists have been warning the public that using pesticides is not a trivial matter and that pesticides are products which carry a health risk.

More and more studies are showing the long term impact of pesticides on human health. There is particular emphasis on the effects of pesticide induced illnesses among young children, who have more contact with pesticides because they tumble around on the lawn and often play outside, in close contact with the elements of nature, which may contain vapour from pesticides, insecticides or herbicides.

More and more epidemiological studies are showing beyond any doubt that, in the medium and long term, pesticides can definitely have an impact on human health, not just in a sporadic way, such as dizziness or vomiting, but that they can even actually cause cancer.

The use of pesticides has become routine and their danger played down to the public over the years, often by the companies which sell these products. The practice of using pesticides is not a trivial matter. In Quebec alone, 8,200 tonnes of pesticides were spread in 1997. Even in the ornamental horticulture sector, there has been a 60% increase since 1992 in the use of pesticides by ordinary citizens, who often lack information about the dangers of using these products.

As I mentioned earlier, there has been a greater attempt at raising awareness in the past few years coming not from governments but from scientists—particularly in American publications—who are warning the public about the dangers of using pesticides, particularly for improving the appearance of lawns, a popular practice since the mid-1970's.

As the old saying goes, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. We always want to have the greenest lawn in the neighbourhood. It is a matter of pride in our modern life. We want to be able to say our lawn is greener than the Jones' and that it is free of weeds and dandelions.

Attitudes are changing, though, and so much so that the federal government wants to modernize the Pest Control Act by implementing several recommendations of the committee, and that the Quebec government has also introduced a bill and done some promotion and education to help the public understand the risks of using pesticides.

In the last several years, municipalities have regulated the use of pesticides within their jurisdictions. But that kind of regulation is a brutal attack against the markets of big corporations that not only produce pesticides but also spread them on the lawns for consumers.

ChemLawn and Spray Tech have challenged before the supreme court the right of the municipalities to make regulations on the use of pesticides, and they lost. It is a huge victory because these companies which are backed by the manufacturers of pesticides like Monsanto and CIL all too often control the information and the market. This is happening not just here, but also internationally.

The situation is so serious that a major debate has been going on for some 15 years regarding the fact that these companies control not only the pesticides, insecticides or herbicides that are used for agriculture, which accounts for 80% of their use, or for cosmetic purposes, but also control related seeds. Through cross-breeding and genetic manipulations of the seeds, they have managed to ensure that these seeds cannot reproduce themselves. Therefore, it is not possible to keep some of the seeds harvested at the end of the crop year to start the following crop year. These seeds and the plants they produce are also subject to very strict requirements regarding the use of pesticides and pest control in general. The result is that, first, farmers no longer have control over their production and their future. This is happening here.

Second, they are forced to buy from these companies, which have an upstream and downstream monopoly on agricultural production and sales.

Third, these companies are often transnationals, such as CIL and Monsanto, and they take advantage of their presence all over the world to organize the market, depending on local regulations.

This has happened in the past. It happened with DDT, a pesticide that was used massively by farmers in Quebec and in Canada. The product was banned here after being banned in the United States, because it was proven to be a strong cancer causing agent. Several years after it had been banned in the United States and Canada, this product was still being used in South America. South American farmers were once again being exploited by the large companies that were producing DDT. They were not warned of the dangers related to DDT, a product that had been banned for a number of years already in Canada and in the United States.

It is high time that these corporations, which not only control pesticides, but the very future of agriculture in Quebec and in Canada, and even throughout the world, were brought into line. It is time to break their monopoly on the future of humanity. When one has such perfect control over food production, one also indirectly has perfect control over the survival of the human race.

This being said, we deplore the fact that, with the two amendments that were presented, the government only did 80% of the work. It could have improved its legislation and made us 100% happy.

First, when we talk about the legislation review process by the Senate, there is something wrong there. The Senate is asked to continue legislative measures or to stop them, while it is for the House of Commons, comprised of elected members who vote, to do its job as lawmaker. It is not legitimate to ask a non elected chamber to decide on the continuing or not of a public policy bill like this one, when it was passed by elected members.

Second, we would have liked that one of the main recommendations of the committee be included in the bill, that is promoting alternative products to chemical pesticides. There are organic pesticides everywhere. We can blame Canada, as was the case in the 1980s when I was an economist at the Union des producteurs agricoles, for its slow approach in registering pesticides, compared to what is happening in the United States. It is totally different there. The process is very slow here, while American producers now have access to alternative pesticides that are not harmful to the environment. They have a competitive edge over our producers. We should model the registration process and the related resources on the United States. This is what needs to be done here.

Third, we deplore the second amendment proposed by the government on the confidentiality of business data. The government could have ignored this type of consideration, especially since there is a problem with public information about the danger of pesticides when the companies are asked to conduct analyses on the possible effects of their products on health, and these analyses are kept confidential and the public cannot have access to them.

We will nevertheless vote in favour of the bill, but we would have liked the government to do 100% and not 80% of its job.

[Supply, June 6th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Could you ask the Liberal members to be quiet while my colleague gives his explanations? I think that it would be a good idea.