Karen Redman

[Species at Risk Act, March 21st, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I have been listening with great interest and intent. I am having a very difficult time relating this to Group No. 3 amendments. I am wondering if my hon. colleague could show some relevance to what is before the House.

[Cenotaphs, March 20th, 2002]

Madam Speaker, it is the intent of this federal regulation that it be adhered to across Canada. There is no intent to ask any province to lower that standard. If Quebec were to continue to have a standard that may be a bit more stringent than those of other provinces and territories, it would be respected by the federal government.

[Cenotaphs, March 20th, 2002]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to be given the opportunity to address the concerns of the hon. member for Sherbrooke regarding waste imports. My only regret is that I cannot do it in French.

I should like to state right away that Environment Canada's proposed regulations regarding imports and exports of non-hazardous waste will respect provincial regulations. Once the regulations are in force every notification received by the federal authority of a proposed import to Quebec of prescribed non-hazardous waste will be shared with provincial authorities.

The province of Quebec will have the opportunity to review, consider and provide either its consent or objection to the proposed shipment. The proposed federal regulations will therefore complement existing provincial controls by elaborating the mechanism of prior informed consent that includes the full participation of provincial authorities.

The renewed CEPA, the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, emphasizes pollution prevention and advocates maximizing the reuse, recovery and recycling of any waste product through industrial and human activity. CEPA also aims to strengthen Canada's ability to meet its international obligations.

Canada is party to several international agreements that relate to waste. Among these are the Canadian-U.S.A. agreement on the transboundary movement of hazardous waste and the Basel convention on the control of transboundary movements of hazardous wastes and their disposal. Both agreements emphasize the need to ensure the environmentally sound management of wastes.

The federal policy regarding transboundary movements is to allow borders to remain open to the controlled movements of both hazardous and non-hazardous waste to ensure that such movements are managed in a manner protective of human health and the environment, and to allow the importing jurisdiction opportunity to refuse or to consent to imports on the basis of protecting their environment.

I should like to take a moment to elaborate on the third point which relates to the prior informed consent procedure I mentioned earlier. In this respect CEPA authorities clearly outline requirements for proposed imports into Canada when they occur. The steps are that a notice of proposed import must be submitted to the minister and the notifier must receive a permit from the minister before any movements may commence.

This permit must state that the authorities of the jurisdiction of the destination for the waste, that is the province or territory, have authorized the final disposal of the waste in their jurisdiction. In Canada provincial and territorial authorities license and permit waste management facilities within their borders.

Therefore a provincial response to proposed imports could take into account the permit conditions of the facility in question including the facility's ability to manage the proposed waste import in an environmentally sound manner.

I therefore wish to assure the hon. member that Environment Canada will continue to work with stakeholders to develop effective federal regulations regarding movements of non-hazardous waste and regulations which complement existing provincial controls by elaborating a mechanism of prior informed consent that includes the full participation of all provincial authorities.

[Supply, March 19th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I too was listening intently to the speech just given by the Alliance member. I am a little puzzled and I would ask her to reconcile the two points of views that I hear her putting forward.

She talks about greenhouse gas emissions as largely an urban issue and the fact that we are looking at sinks in agricultural practices as a way, in her words, to sweep it under the rug. Yet at the Kyoto protocol negotiations in Bonn, Germany, Canada was not alone. Canada was part of an umbrella group with Australia, Japan and Great Britain. We were looking at the kind of flexibility needed in order to ratify Kyoto and make it workable. Indeed, rather than pitting rural and urban Canada against each other we were looking at some kind of indication as to how we could reach those goals realistically.

Carbon sinks are not tree museums. There is an acknowledgement that we will have to figure out how to deal with this as we go along.

[Supply, March 19th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I was at a presentation given by the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters Association. When asked what those very inflated statistics were based on, the answer quite simply was that the statistics were two years old. A survey was done of the association's membership who were asked how many jobs they thought would be lost through climate change and what a business would lose through climate change.

Is this the kind of lax and loose scientific data that my hon. colleague would choose to move forward with on such an important issue?

[Supply, March 19th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I too listened with great interest to the speech of the hon. critic of the environment. I found the last line very interesting as well, that they would feel compelled to support the Alliance in its opposition day motion.

I want to respond to the cost of not ratifying Kyoto and the cost of inactivity. We look to the fact that a billion dollars a month is spent by Canadians on extreme weather situations. We heard today about the 1998 ice storm that cost $5.4 billion. There is real climate change and it is impacting Canadians. As we speak, we have seen the warmest winter on record. We have seen droughts in western Canada. I wonder about the position of the hon. member opposite when he says that they will not ratify Kyoto. Can we afford not to?

[Supply, March 19th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the hon. member's intervention on this opposition motion. While she touched on many aspects of the Alliance motion, one of the things she did not talk directly to was the fact that the Alliance Party feels this will make Canada uncompetitive.

The significance of Kyoto is actually the fact that it is a global initiative and I have a question for my NDP colleague. Canada has taken great pains to continue to bring the United States to the table, and when we hear the fearmongering about the fact that it may cost jobs and it may cost economic gains, I look south to the United States. While it has opted out of being a signatory to Kyoto, it is doing some very significant things. I look to the $4.6 billion package of clean energy tax incentives that the president of the United States announced. I wonder if my colleague would comment on the fact of this assumption that there will be an economic downturn from this because we are in such close partnership with the United States. I know that jobs are something that her party is always keen to protect.

[Arts and Culture, March 15th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased today to congratulate the recipients of this year's Governor General's awards for visual and media arts. This award was created in 1999 by the Canada Council for the Arts.

These seven talented individuals will be honoured at a ceremony at Rideau Hall next Wednesday. They each excel in arts ranging from painting to photography to video. This year's recipients are: artist AA Bronson; painter, photographer and filmmaker Charles Gagnon; aboriginal artist Edward Poitras; new media artist David Rokeby; video-artist and photographer Barbara Steinman; artist, printmaker and architectural artist Irene Whittome; curator and philanthropist Ydessa Hendeles.

I ask the House to join me in recognizing the lifetime achievement of these creative media and visual artists and in extending congratulations to each and every one of them.

[The Environment, March 12th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, it is most fitting that my hon. colleague from Yukon would ask a question about persistent organic pollutants, as they pose a serious threat in Canada, especially in our north where pollutants have led to the contamination of the traditional foods for aboriginal peoples.

The majority of POPs enter Canada's environment by being transported through the atmosphere from foreign sources such as China and other countries in south and southeast Asia. That is why $20 million was committed to Canada's POPs fund at the Royal Bank to help countries address POPs issues. Yesterday we announced the contribution of $316,000 through joint funding to the Royal Roads University--

[Species at Risk Act, February 26th, 2002]

We addressed 70.