Rick Laliberte

[Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, May 27th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to this group of amendments. I hope I can hold the bill; it is not a prop, I just want to use it to highlight the clause on which I want to focus.

In Bill C-32 the preamble states the whole spirit and intent of the bill. When we deal with the Group No. 3 amendments that have come forward, I would like to highlight that with Motions Nos. 6 and 7 there is a kind of tag team between the Reform Party and the Liberal cabinet on behalf of the minister. They have brought forward two amendments that are quite detrimental to the protection of our environment and our health in the future.

The motion deals with a preamble that states in part:

Whereas the Government of Canada will endeavour to remove threats to biological diversity through pollution prevention, the control and management of any adverse effects of the use and release of toxic substances, products of biotechnology, pollutants and other wastes, and the virtual elimination of persistent and bioaccumulative toxic substances;

Reform is releasing and completely taking away the whole aspect of virtual elimination of these toxic substances and highlighting the topic of control and management of pollution.

I would like to inform the House of another preamble. These go hand in hand. Obviously the minister and the Reform members who brought these motions forward together have had some guidance from somebody. In a previous motion, the government acknowledges the need to phase out the generation and use of the most persistent and bioaccumulative toxic substances and the need to control and manage pollutants and waste that were released in the environment.

What I am saying is that this bill and the government should be phasing out pollutants that are toxic and harmful to our health and our environment. We have to phase these out. I beg that members of all parties would listen to this. We need to take pollution out of our environment, not to control and manage it.

The two motions brought forward by the Reform and the minister are that we continue to control and manage pollution. Let us stop doing that. Let us look at phasing out the pollution, getting the poison out of our air, land and water and making a safe environment for the future.

This group of amendments is not a surprise. Through the committee process we tackled hard and strong to strengthen Bill C-32. These two amendments focus on the preamble. I highlight that for all members in the House and for Canadians listening to make sure that everyone is aware that these amendments could be a detriment to the existing structure of the CEPA.

The other issue that comes into play in this grouping is biodiversity and the whole issue of biotechnology. The products of biotechnology are highlighted in this group of amendments. The amendments ask that the exclusive responsibility of biotechnology and the products of biotechnology in the country be given to the governor in council. This removes the responsibilities that the Minister of the Environment, the Minister of Health and the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food have in terms of duties and roles under the act and gives them to the governor in council.

Biotechnology was highlighted in today's media on the issue of cloning. Recently we have seen the evidence of cloning and genetic engineering. We now find that the cloned sheep Dolly has genes and cells that are a detriment and have been deteriorating right from when she was first cloned. Future generations of hers will not exist after the sixth generation. There is scientific evidence that her cells will diminish to the point that she will not be able to reproduce.

That is the essence of the human health and environmental concerns. Mr. Speaker, I see you are indicating my time is up so I will continue my speech later.

[Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, May 27th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I will expand on what my hon. colleague said earlier about children's health and how crucial it is for us to take the responsibility as parliamentarians to make sure the environment and our health are the highest priorities.

We cannot sleep at night and wake up in the morning without giving thanks to what was given to us, the gifts of the Creator such as our children and grandchildren. For us to hold the title of noble ancestors we need generations that will follow us. If we make mistakes now and do not clean up our act we will not be noble ancestors. We will be like dinosaurs.

Future generations might try to find some fossil fuel in our humble organisms some ions into the future. In the meantime our job is to take care of our future, our children and our health.

I must highlight the comments of hon. members in the Bloc who put a spotlight on jurisdictional issues in the environment. They were quick to look at the rights of the provincial jurisdictions and to have first right opportunities, but we have to take responsibility for the entire nation of Canada. We cannot do it in a balkanized situation or look at it individually.

We have many good examples coming from the province of Quebec and from other provinces, but equally there are bad examples coming from certain provinces. I would highlight the province of Ontario, in which the national capital is located. The present provincial government has been a guiding light in proving what can go wrong with provincial responsibilities on environment.

The issue of environmental jurisdictions has not been clarified under the Constitution. The constitutional responsibilities of environment are assumed under peace, order and good government, under the concept of governing the country. Under the good government concept environment is a responsibility, but the provinces are quick to jump. The resource transfer act has also devolved environmental responsibility with the resources of the country.

The issue of the environment in the Constitution requires evolution. We will have to address it at some point in time. We need a strong national position on the protection of the environment. This is where CEPA plays a major role. We need federal and national measures. We need standards and enforcement measures which protect the future of the country and future generations.

As part of the ongoing saga of the Liberal cabinet and its leaders and its ministers, one of the guiding lights has been the harmonization in making agreements with the provinces to deal with environmental issues. However industry and business representatives wanted one-stop shopping. They wanted to go to Walmart to purchase all their pharmaceuticals, dry goods, a McDonald's burger, food, shoes and a new jacket under one roof.

Unfortunately that is not the way federalism has worked in the history of the country. We respect federal and provincial jurisdictions and give duly required applications, assessments and reviews under certain jurisdictions.

The industry wants one-stop shopping and to accommodate this the CCME, of which the environment minister is the lead minister, created the harmonization accord to look at overlaps which deal with environmental regulations.

Just this past week Mr. Emmett, Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, stated that the harmonization initiatives were well intended but were not working. Nobody is implementing these issues. Nobody is looking at what overlaps need to be addressed.

The witnesses the committee heard from indicated that there were major gaps among municipal, provincial and federal governments with regard to environmental responsibilities. One example to get the harmonization accord going was to get federal-provincial committees in place to design management agreements. They were never established. The actions suggested by the finance minister and the Prime Minister in press releases were all well and good but were nothing but intentions.

The program review by the Liberal government and the finance minister gutted environmental departments. Provincial governments have been affected by transfer payment cuts by the federal government, which resulted in further cuts affecting environmental departments at the provincial level. The federal cuts and provincial cuts are diminishing the environmental protection of the country as a whole. This has to be addressed immediately.

The commissioner confirmed our committee findings last year that the harmonization accord must not go forward without additional resources and a clear goal. It cannot be done for fiscal responsibilities.

Part of the fiscal measures have come about under CEPA. The government and the minister proposed in the draft of the precautionary principle that cost effective measures would play a major role. When looking at the protection of our environment we have to be cost conscious.

This issue was deleted by committee process, that under the precautionary principle if there is a lack of scientific evidence, that measures will be taken to protect our environment and our health. I guess under industry's lobby and highlighting the Reform Party as well, the Liberal cabinet has condoned amendments to bring back cost effective when taking measures to protect our environment and our health. That is totally contrary to the essence of the title of the bill. It is totally contrary to what Canadians expect as the government's responsibility. This is the time for us to prevent pollution, not to control and manage pollution. This is the time to prevent pollution.

The lack of enforcement is the other issue. This will come into play in future budgets. I want all Canadians to realize that there is an existing CEPA. There is a Canadian Environmental Protection Act in place and in effect as we speak.

Bill C-32 is the new bill. Under this new bill there are additional responsibilities for enforcement officers. There are additional responsibilities for enforcement. There are additional responsibilities in tracking and listing the toxic substances of this country. All these additional responsibilities are added to the environment minister's department but there are no new resources given for enforcement.

Well and fine, the government says it has $40 million to review the assessment of 23,000 toxic substances under the lists, but that is just doing the homework. That is just filling in the lists and putting them in filing cabinets in the right place where they should be. To enforce this on industries, on communities and make sure that the polluters are abiding by these laws there are no new additional resources.

There are new responsibilities but no resources. The whole guiding light of the minister has been on finances. In saying program review, it should have been financial review. Programs should have a special review in terms of what the ability, the service and the intention of each department is. Inevitably it has been a financial review to find out in which departments the government can make cutbacks to come out of the deficit and go toward a surplus situation.

I want to highlight as well that provincial responsibilities have not been followed through especially in Ontario. The Harris provincial government has proven that under its own program review. It has made cutbacks in its inspections and in its environmental assessments.

At one time we said that the industrial revolution really capitalized under the United States and Canada was a pristine, clean and environmentally conscious country. Now we hear that Ontario is running first, second and third, running for first place as the highest polluter in North America. That is a sad situation.

We must look in our own backyard. We cannot take our hinterland, our wilderness, our wildlife, our ecosystem, our biodiversity and our children's health for granted. We must work at what we do today. We must clean up our house, throw away our garbage, respect the food we eat, the water we drink and respect all the good things that are given to us. If we have disrespect, that disrespect will come around and it is what we will end up with. It may not affect us because our life cycle is a lot shorter, but the children to come have a future to look forward to and that is our responsibility.

In some provinces the financial responsibilities have certainly been backfilled in terms of housing and environmental responsibilities and highway repairs. In these responsibilities there has been an effort in some provinces and territories but there are bad apples to be taken care of.

It is a federal responsibility to ensure that all Canadians are protected under CEPA.

[The Environment, May 26th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, Canada's environment commissioner tabled his third report in a row which slams the Liberal government's environment record.

The entire Liberal government and its cabinet share this disgrace: the finance minister for a program review that cancelled environment as a priority, the industry minister for putting business interests ahead of ecosystem protection, and the health minister for refusing to identify toxic chemicals which poison Canada's children.

The commissioner states that “we are paying the price in terms of our health and our legacy for future generations”.

What does all this talk and no action mean for Canadians? Dangerous chemicals are found in the food we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe, and children are left in toxic sites.

The Standing Committee on the Environment shared the commissioner's concern and told the government to enforce the laws which protect Canada and its environment and not buckle to industry demands.

The Prime Minister and the Liberal cabinet are the prime suspects for destroying our environment and harming our health.

[Carriage By Air Act, May 14th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, Bill S-23 is an act to amend the Carriage by Air Act. There are opportunities to improve air transportation in this country and not only by this act. I will put forward a challenge on this in a very short while.

Air transportation in this country has evolved to become a major component of our way of life and the way we do our business. We will all be travelling back to our constituencies during the upcoming recess and a vast majority of us will depend upon air transportation to get us home.

Air is the only form of transportation to access communities in certain regions of this vast country of ours. Air transportation moves the basic necessities of life such as food and other cargo into isolated and remote areas. These isolated and remote areas depend upon good service from air carriers, but if these services are not available, then good sound legislation is of utmost importance.

The modernizing of our Carriage by Air Act is long overdue. The last update was in 1964, almost 40 years ago. There has been a lot of developments in the air transportation industry since then. There has hardly been any development on the issue of a passengers bill of rights.

In the old bills, and it was adopted in this one, only $35 could be assured for luggage and cargo loss. I had not realized this until I read the bill. A few years ago I had a carry on bag with sound equipment and photography equipment in it. Somebody walked off with it at the next stopover. When we arrived at our destination, my bag was missing. I had $1,300 of equipment missing and the offer made to me was $35. I could never figure out where the $35 came from. It comes from the Guadalajara convention of 1961.

There are international agreements that bind our nations, such as the 1988 Montreal protocol. All Canada is doing with Bill S-23 is modernizing and updating it to its international standards.

The challenge I want to place before the House and the government is that we have a Canadian passengers bill of rights.

We hear of recent developments on the news and in the media about the Americans. Our neighbours to the south are just as dependent on air transportation as we are, going between the east and west coasts. In the Swissair disaster, the victims' families were protected under the American passengers bill of rights.

We wonder what kind of protection we have as passengers, and what protection our families have, when looking at disasters that have hit our airports and airlines in recent years. Our situation forces us to use air transportation. Other situations loom before us in terms of a passengers bill of rights.

A snowstorm hit eastern Canada this past winter. Passengers were inconvenienced and left stranded in Canadian airports. Toronto was a prime example. Passengers were the last to know of any developments in the weather or decisions being made by the air carriers regarding the rescheduling of flights or arrangements for overnight accommodation. We saw pictures of passengers sleeping on benches in the airports. There were stories of lost cargo and luggage. This is a challenge for the government to look at a sound and safe passenger bill of rights.

A new territory was born on April 1. We hear stories that the entire territory does not have any highways to connect any of its communities unless it is winter travel by snow machine or dog team. They depend on air transportation.

The primary air transportation responsibility is highlighted in this bill. People switch from one airline to another. They may end up on six different airlines to reach their destination because of the huge explosion of other air transportation systems after deregulation of air transportation in the country.

We have to look at protection and who is responsible. It is highlighted in the bill that the primary air carrier will be responsible for passengers rights, whatever limited rights there are in the act. It does not matter whether passengers transfer flights. As long as the first air carrier on the ticket is listed, that is who is responsible for the passengers rights.

We support Bill S-23 and the updating of the Carriage by Air Act. It is an international standard act. I must repeat that we need a Canadian bill of rights for passengers, for our citizens and for visitors whom we wholeheartedly welcome into the country, as we just recently did with the Kosovar refugees. Tourists drive the economy of many regions of the country, especially during the spring and summer.

I wish everyone safe travel this weekend. I welcome and wish all passengers and refugees who have come to our country safe travel.

[Agriculture, May 14th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the damage from the farm income crisis just gets worse. In my home province there is a suicide watch on farmers. No wonder. They are faced with another wave of disasters: AIDA program qualifications; continued high production costs; low commodity prices; and the lack of a national vision on the whole farm and our food supply. If these issues continue to be unabated we will surely lose a generation of young farmers by mere discouragement.

Will the minister immediately call on this government to declare a royal commission on the state of the family farm in this country?

[Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, May 12th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to speak to an act respecting pollution. If we stopped at that we would be in great danger.

Pollution in this country was given a free ride for generations and decades. The protection of the environment and human health is the most important part of the act and contributes to sustainable development. That is the weight of this act.

We must respect the toxicity and the dangers pollution poses to our health, our organisms, our plants, our animals, our biodiversity, the air we breath, the water we drink, and the food we eat. Pollution has made its way into our entire being. Therefore we must find strong legislation.

We received a wake-up call in the 1960s when the terms ecology and ecologists came into being, along with the environmental bill of rights for all Canadian citizens, especially our children. That is what CEPA is deemed to be and where it will evolve in the future. It may not have achieved it in this round and it certainly did not achieve it in the first round.

In the first round pollution control was the key word. We tried to control pollution in our air, our water and our soil. Bill C-32 is designed to bring about pollution prevention, to eventually stop pollution.

That is the challenge we faced when we looked at the original draft of Bill C-32 during clause by clause consideration. It was referred to the committee on April 28, 1998. It took us a whole year to review it. Up to now over 800 amendments have been brought forward. This is strong enough message that something was wrong with the basis of the bill.

The committee heard from non-government environmental organizations and health associations across the country. These organizations and countless other groups came before the committee to offer their view that the bill was a biased industry bill designed and drafted for industrial purposes.

Last September committee members asked these organizations how much access they had to the minister. All these health and environmental organizations said that they had limited access to the Minister of Environment. We asked the same question of industry representatives who replied that they had unlimited access to the minister. They were happy with the balance between the environment and the economy as set out in the bill.

Through the whole committee process everybody rolled up their sleeves in a happy forum under the auspices of a good chair. In this democratic process we tackled the bill through thick and thin. Many amendments were lost and won. We felt the bill stood a chance of getting passed in the House. We looked forward to possibly supporting the bill which would ensure good health for our children and our families and clean air, clean water and clean lands.

We endeavoured to look at pollution prevention. We looked at a number of opportunities to enhance it. One of the issues that came out was precautionary principle, one of the highlights of the bill, which included the term cost effective. Through the committee process we were successful in taking the cost out of effective measures. Cost effective did not take into account that there were health matters. If pollution continues to enter our environment and continues to inflict illnesses on our children there are various costs: the health costs, the loss of work costs, the insurance costs, the cost of securing homes, the cost of buying cleaner water, and the cost of ensuring food is well prepared. These costs are not taken into consideration. The cost for our citizens, the cost for Canadians for clean food, clean water and clean air were not the definition of cost effective.

Cost effective was an industrial measure for controlling pollution. It was uppermost in the government's mind. Lo and behold we tossed out cost effective and included measures, that beyond scientific evidence precautionary measures should be taken.

Again cost effective came back into this round of amendments before the House from the government side. Obviously the industry has put its foot down. We would tell all members and all Canadians who are listening that the cost effective measures do not improve environmental measures. They look after the industry's needs and the industry's costs.

Another issue comes into play, that is virtual elimination which is a new term in law. In essence Bill C-32 is a piece of legislation which will be the law of the land. Virtual seems to be a high tech word. It is like virtual reality. It is not quite there. In my interpretation of virtual elimination we do not really want to prohibit or phase out toxic substances. We will try to do it to a point but there will always be a trickle of toxic substances in Canada.

I was quite startled when the minister said that in law we could not measure zero. That was a real awakening call. It will be a challenge to try to find a legal definition of zero. The closest the government has come up with is virtual elimination.

We lived through this phase of virtual elimination. We accepted where it was going. We kind of understood the integrity of the government, that it would try to achieve virtual elimination in the evolution of the bill and carry forward. However a big part of the virtual elimination is in clause 65(3) where the topic is defined as achieved virtual elimination.

Achieving virtual elimination is the task at hand. Members have proposed amendments to remove the achieving of virtual elimination. It is unacceptable. It does not make any sense for it to be taken out of the bill because achieving virtual elimination was the task of Bill C-32.

Another issue, which I will close on, is the phase-out of the generation and use of toxic substances. There are amendments to take out this part of the preamble and replace it with virtual elimination.

Canadians would understand and sleep better at night if they knew that the preamble of the bill was to phase out the generation and use of toxic substances. In essence the government and some of its members want to have virtual elimination in the preamble.

[Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, May 12th, 1999]

moved:

Motion No. 83

That Bill C-32 be amended by adding after line 41 on page 47 the following new clause:

“76.2 In section 76.1, “precautionary principle” means the principle that where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing measures to prevent environmental degradation.”

[Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, May 12th, 1999]

moved:

Motion No. 26

That Bill C-32, in Clause 6, be amended by adding after line 38 on page 11 the following:

“(1.2) In subsection (1.1) “precautionary principle” means that where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing measures to prevent environmental degradation.”

Motion No. 61

That Bill C-32, in Clause 64, be amended by replacing lines 34 to 39 on page 38 and lines 1 to 4 on page 39 with the following:

“entering or may enter the environment and ( a ) has or may have an immediate or long-term harmful effect on the environment or its biological diversity; ( b ) constitutes or may constitute a danger to the environment on which life depends; or ( c ) constitutes or may constitute a danger in Canada to human life or health.”

[The Environment, May 12th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the Canadian Environmental Protection Act needs to be enforced against polluters that harm our children. This act requires enforcement by our enforcement agencies.

Will the minister support the phase-out of toxic substances and enhance the enforcement budget of her department to stop polluters in this country?

[Canadian Environmental Protection Act, May 11th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, we hear this bill is really going to get carried through. Our environment is being poisoned. Our children are victims of pollution. Every Canadian family knows of a friend or relative affected by cancer. The links between chemicals and disease are proven. Bill C-32 is our chance for cleaner air and waters. Canadians demand improved environmental protection, but the unite the right to pollute says no.

Will the government commit to a full and open debate on Bill C-32 or will it force closure to hide from public scrutiny?