Charles Caccia

[Committees Of The House, October 26th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development has the honour to present its sixth report, pursuant to the order of reference made Monday, October 2, 1995.

Your committee reviewed Bill C-94, an act to regulate interprovincial trade in and the importation for commercial purposes of certain manganese-based substances, and agreed to report it without amendment. A copy of the minutes on this bill is being tabled.

[Grandparents Day, October 25th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, as members will probably recall, in June the Standing Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development issued a report on the Canadian Environmental Protection Act entitled "It is about our Health". It is a parliamentary study that aims at pollution prevention in the interest of public health. It was made possible because of extensive hearings with over 100 witnesses from all walks of life in all parts of the country. As a result of that, the committee recommended major changes to the existing act, commonly known as CEPA, the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.

The changes to the act, which in essence deals with toxic substances, are necessary because at the present time the legislation is too slow in protecting the public from toxic substances. For instance, the complete toxicity assessments for 13 out of the 44 substances placed on the priority list in 1988 have not yet been done. In addition to that, of the 26 substances found to be toxic, only three, those related to chlorofluorocarbons, chlorinated pulp effluents, and PCBs, have been subjected to regulation.

In addition, problems related to enforcement, problems related to biotechnology products, problems related to the role and lifestyle of our aboriginal people, in particular in relation to environmental protection, and problems related to the management of Canada's coastal zones have not been resolved by the act as it exists at the present time. To address these problems, the committee called expert witnesses, scientists and native people, industry, professional organizations, et cetera, to ensure their recommendations would have sound expert support.

The committee's recommendations reflect the principle of sustainable development as set out in the red book, Creating Opportunity , which was produced in 1993 during the federal election. In addition to that, the committee's report builds on three cabinet documents; namely, the government's toxic substances management policy, the strategic framework for pollution prevention, and the guide to green government. The last one was signed and endorsed by all members of cabinet. Therefore, the report of the committee has as its foundation three substantial documents produced by the present government, and quite rightly so, in support of sustainable development objectives.

To conclude, the report is based on the concept of pollution prevention. The accepted norm for environmental protection policy

in industry and governments in the western world is therefore in that report. Every witness before the committee urged that the government adopt pollution prevention, shifting away from the costly approach of reacting and curing to the more efficient approach of anticipating and preventing.

I see that my time is up. I thank you for your indulgence.

[Endangered And Threatened Species Act, October 18th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, on September 21 I asked the Minister of the Environment what measures the government was taking to counter the human causes

of climate change. In the meantime, a draft report by the United Nations panel on climate change has been published citing human activity as the contributing factor to climate change. In addition, there has been an Environment Canada report citing increasing summer temperatures in the last 10 years.

What is the cause of climate change? Briefly, it is caused by an envelope in the atmosphere which is created by the burning of fossil fuels on our part as a society, beginning with the industrial revolution 150 years ago.

What are the effects of this envelope? This envelope does not allow solar rays deflected once they touch the earth's surface to re-enter the atmosphere. Thus, the greenhouse effect is gradually formed. In other words, the effect of solar rays as deflected by the earth's surface is no longer the same as in the past. They are contained by the greenhouse gases envelope.

What is the main problem at the base of this? In essence, it is our dependence on fossil fuels, coal and gasoline, but also the emission of methane gases in our dump sites and the production of other gases that are mostly correlated to human activities or the necessities of agriculture and the like.

Next month the international panel on climate change will meet and likely approve a draft report which will mark a major turning point in the climate change debate.

Until now some members of the scientific community believe that the rising temperatures since the beginning of the industrial revolution could be attributed to at least in good part a variability in climate rather than the result of human activity. With this draft, the scientific panel will likely state and confirm that climate change is taking place as a result of human activity. Hence the adoption of this report by the international panel on climate change would result in an authoritative confirmation that global warming is posing a threat.

Some have suggested that the effects of climate change may actually be advantageous to Canada. These assumptions are now being refuted.

The report I am referring to predicts the changes associated with climate change are likely to have a negative impact not only on human health but on other human activities such as agriculture, forestry and the like.

The consequences are far reaching in economic and social terms. These are again explored in the panel's draft report as discussed last week in Montreal. The first attempt to assess the social and economic impact of climate change is the one that took place in Montreal.

I would appreciate very much a reply by the parliamentary secretary to this issue which, although stretched into the long term, is going to be of significant importance for the human family the globe over.

[Oceans Act, October 3rd, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, in September I asked the Minister of Foreign Affairs whether in light of the French government's decision to resume nuclear tests he would call for a boycott of products made in France. The minister replied that although deploring France's decision to test it is more important that next year France sign the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty.

Last May in Geneva, 25 years after the nuclear non-proliferation treaty was signed, 178 nations voted to extend it and make it forever illegal for any member country beyond the original five nuclear powers to develop nuclear weapons. In return, nuclear powers would sign a permanent test ban treaty next year, a first

step in dismantling their nuclear arsenals as required under the non-proliferation treaty.

While negotiations for a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty are under way, France has embarked on a course of action that threatens to destabilize this important treaty process. When these actions are combined with a reopened debate in the United States on whether nuclear tests below 500 pounds of explosives should be allowed under the proposed treaty, you can see why non-nuclear nations are wondering whether nuclear powers are truly committed to a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty and the eventual elimination of their nuclear arsenals.

The government of President Chirac argues that the principal reason the present tests are necessary is to provide data for developing nuclear test simulation software. I repeat: nuclear test simulation software. By contrast, in 1991 President François Mitterrand ordered that nuclear test simulation software be developed without further tests. In addition, the American and British governments have already developed nuclear test simulation capabilities. The fact that the technology for nuclear test simulation already exists renders current tests by France unnecessary.

As we talk in this chamber, the O.J. Simpson trial and other recent murder trials command more attention than the actions taken by the French government, which threaten the comprehensive test ban treaty process and the South Pacific environment. Such actions should not just be deplored, they ought to be forcefully criticized, as the Australian and Japanese governments have done.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs ought to call in the ambassador for France and ask that the French government stop all further tests. If this is unsuccessful, Canadians can register their disapproval by simply boycotting products made in France, from wines to perfumes, from cheese to fashion, from cars to tourism.

In Sweden the voluntary actions of citizens have resulted, I am told, in an 80 per cent reduction in the sale of French wines. Canadians as consumers can express their disapproval too. It is the only weapon we have as citizens to convey our sentiments about a primitive use of power or about an action that is best described as the pornography of power.

[Climate Change, September 21st, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday an editorial in the Globe suggested that there are benefits to be reaped from recent trends in climate change.

This conclusion is contradicted in a draft report by the United Nations panel on climate change and a recent Environment Canada report citing increasing summer temperatures.

My question is for the Minister of the Environment. Does the minister agree with this editorial? If not, what does she and the government plan to counter the human causes of climate change?

[Manganese Based Fuel Additives Act, September 19th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, a couple of hours ago the Minister of the Environment indicated in the House her meetings with industry and the offers she made to industry in the period preceding the introduction of this bill. Was the member in the House when the minister spoke a couple of hours ago?

[Auditor General Act, September 18th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, as usual the member for The Battlefords-Meadow Lake has quickly identified the Achilles' heel.

I can only indicate to him, drawing from my own experience, that when one goes to cabinet with a proposal one does not always get everything one wants. That applies also to committees. We did our best. We produced a report that we knew at the time was aiming a bit higher than the commitment made in our red book.

As they say in political jargon: "You win some and you lose some". Because of this I started my remarks pointing at the fact that the Auditor General Act will now be changed in its title. It will also be changed to include a new mandate. While it is not all we would have liked, as the parliamentary secretary said earlier, it represents a solid step in the right direction. It is my hope that once the commissioner has proven his or her merits within the governmental organization and has proven through monitoring and reporting this is an extremely valuable role, the commissioner will be given the additional role of indicating, beyond reporting and monitoring, what the shortcomings are of a given policy, which is a very delicate step as we know.

In committee I remember very clearly the auditor general warning us about giving this additional responsibility to the commissioner. I suppose it is good to start with what we have now even if it does not meet all of our expectations. We can build on the foundation through experience in the years ahead.

[Auditor General Act, September 18th, 1995]

It is important, Mr. Speaker, to very briefly indicate that if this bill is before the House in this form it is thanks to the efforts of the Minister of the Environment who certainly had to overcome a number of obstacles in ensuring that this measure would be advanced as legislation. Even if it does not fulfil all of the recommendations that the committee put forward it still represents a remarkable step forward.

I listened to the intervention of the hon. member for Charlevoix and his remarks about the Irving Whale which were also made by other members in the course of the discussion today. One thing is certain. Had we had in place a commissioner on sustainable development monitoring and reporting, that kind of role would have permitted the catching much earlier of the shortcomings of the Department of Transport and other affected departments. It would have, if not prevented, at least rectified the matter much sooner. Therefore it is only fair to conclude that we are moving in the right direction with this measure.

I must say the member for Comox-Alberni put forward in a very straightforward manner the criticism that one would actually expect from the official opposition. He did that in his usual frank style, which I fully respect. Of all of the points he made perhaps there was only one in which he was slightly off the mark, namely

by saying that the proposals in the bill before us today did not fulfil or reflect the promise made in the Liberal Party's red book.

As far as I can recall, the bill before us reflects that promise very well. It is not proposing a clerk, as the member for Comox-Alberni repeatedly said. It is proposing the creation of a position of a commissioner, which is quite different from that of a clerk.

Also it needs to be stressed that the commissioner and the bill create a completely new role in the Department of the Auditor General, because the act itself under which the auditor general is operating is being amended. Once the legislation goes through it will read: "an act respecting the Office of the Auditor General of Canada", as it does now, but will have added to it: "and sustainable development monitoring and reporting".

This is not a minor step. It is a remarkable one. It inserts in the mandate of the auditor general the importance of monitoring sustainable development strategy and implementing the meaning, significance and the interpretation of sustainable development. That is no minor feat.

It is sad that the member for Laurentides indulged in referendum matters and in the bashing of the Prime Minister in a manner that somehow serves another agenda then that of the bill before us. It is unfair and unreal to claim that the environment is being used by the federal government as a pawn to intervene or interfere in provincial jurisdiction.

For heaven's sake, as other reports from departments have done, the bill ensures that the measure being proposed is clearly and specifically restricted to the jurisdiction of the federal government. Therefore it is rather absurd to claim that the federal government is attempting, as the member for Laurentides said, to centralize, to impose massive centralization or to give more power to itself. The bill certainly does not do that.

Moving on to the substance of the measure and having listened to the minister, it seems clear that her reference to benchmarks-and she dwelt on the subject at some length-is a very important one. In analysing this measure in committee and in passing it the reference was made that we would have to be extremely careful in examining how the commissioner would operate. By benchmarks I understand her to mean yardsticks, namely a way of measuring sustainability.

The question is: How will sustainability be measured and against what? Will it be measured against the sustainable objectives of the department, or will it be measured against the sustainable development principles that are to be established by way of a regulatory process emanating from the law itself?

I hope that the yardstick against which the commissioner will be auditing will be very firm, very significant; will be one on which the entire federal jurisdiction will be able to agree; and will provide the necessary motivation and goals to move toward sustainable development. I suppose this is what the minister had in mind when speaking about benchmarks this morning. The yardsticks will have to be established in a manner that transcend those of internal regulations.

When the House passed Bill C-46 and Bill C-48 some 18 months ago, I remember the term sustainable development was included in the two pieces of legislations creating the new Departments of Industry and Energy Mines and Resources. I have been asking myself ever since how those departments implement the mandate of the minister to achieve sustainable development against the adoption of which yardsticks and against the background of what principles.

To be brief, it seems in essence the bill is about yardsticks of auditing which the committee will have to examine and the principles against which the yardsticks will be established.

We have a number of sources for principles. The Ontario round table produced six guiding principles to meet sustainable development: first, anticipation and prevention; second, full cost accounting; third, informed decision making; fourth, living off the interest; fifth, quality over quantity; and, sixth, respect for nature and the rights of future generations. These are six good yardsticks and I submit them for consideration.

There is also the question of looking at principles which deal with equity; integrated approaches to planning and decision making; integration of the economy with the environment, which is certainly a basic principle; and ensuring that the development of renewable resources and their harvesting remain sustainable.

There are questions of virtually eliminating persistent and accumulative toxic substances, of adopting a pollution prevention approach, of protecting the ozone layer, of reducing greenhouse gasses and of conserving biodiversity.

We are to examine quite a large collection of principles. I invite all members interested in this method to think about the necessity of principles and yardsticks and to provide the committee with the benefit of their advice and experience.

The question of the definition of sustainable development might have to be examined in committee because the Brundtland definition is so global and so over-arching that it needs to be filled in somehow.

A suggestion I have received is that the definition should be to the effect that sustainable development concerns the integration of

environmental sustainability into the economic development and social development objectives of the federal government.

At the present time there is a cabinet directive whereby all ministers are to include environmental considerations in policy and program memoranda prepared for them for submission to cabinet. This is done, I understand very dutifully and precisely. Some departments do it better than others. It is against this practice, it seems to me, that we should examine the question and the importance of linking the environment with economic and social objectives and perhaps improving the quality of the comments included in memoranda by ministers to cabinet.

I suppose this will be one of the tasks the commissioner will have to face. The commissioner, also it seems to me, will have to be protected against the possible threat of decreasing resources made available to the auditor general. In other words, the role and the funding of the commissioner must be ensured so that they do not suffer in times of budget cuts. I am certain this matter will be taken into account fully.

The legislation envisages the requirement within two years of the establishment of the commissioner of plans on sustainable development that each department will be requested to submit to the commissioner. The commissioner would then review them, monitor them and report in the proposed manner. It would be desirable in this process if Environment Canada were to volunteer the best possible example and be among the first and well within the two-year limit in providing its plan so as to give the other departments the example that is required and perhaps the advice that some departments will require in this respect.

We will perhaps be wise to examine in committee the question of crown corporations that at the present time are not included in the bill and possibly the review or the monitoring and reporting on international agreements.

These matters touch upon the sustainability of our economy and of the global resources particularly when it comes to delicate issues like the integrity of the ozone layer and the trend in climate change which are now being widely observed by meteorologists and scientists.

One thing is clear. The bill certainly aims at integrating the environment into federal decision making. Once passed it will represent a good addition to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act to which the minister referred earlier, to the task force on economic instruments and disincentives to sound environmental practices from which we hope to hear again, and to the more recently adopted document entitled "A Guide to Green Government".

We should be very clear what is meant by incorporating the environment and sustainable development into the Auditor General Act. If we mean balancing the economy with the environment, as some speakers have indicated in this debate, we would be missing the boat badly. The two cannot be balanced. It would be a serious mistake because first of all we implicitly declare that the environment is disconnected from the economy, that the two are not interrelated. In balancing the two-and the gesture itself is very revealing-we indicate also that in certain economic times the economy would receive all the attention and precedence and the environment would suffer and would be given different treatment at a lower level, a secondary level, one might say.

I submit it would be a very serious mistake and give the wrong interpretation of sustainable development. We would be proceeding in the same manner that we did in the seventies when our agenda was limited to the protection of the environment whenever possible.

We are now in a different phase, in the phase of a sustainable development. It means instead of integration, there should be a very strong correlation of the economy with the environment. They are one. They are interconnected. There cannot be a healthy economy in the long term unless there is a healthy environment as its foundation.

It is for that reason that the interpretation and the definition of sustainable development in this bill and in government operations are so important. It is also for this reason that the question of principle becomes so crucial in the operations of departments when they do embrace-a step which we all welcome, as in the Department of Industry and in the Department of Natural Resources-the concept of sustainable development. However that embrace, that commitment has to be taken a step further and has to be fleshed out with a number of basic principles.

I enumerated a few of these principles earlier, some taken from the Ontario round table and some taken from the Guide to Green Government -I applaud them all-which were signed by each cabinet minister including the Prime Minister. Those principles have now received an imprimatur, so to say, that is of great significance. It confirms the commitment of the government to sustainable development and to the principles fleshed out in the guide.

In the time that is left to me I would like to indicate that in addition to promoting sustainable development the bill will also open the road to petitions from the public. The member for Laurentides this morning asked a number of interesting questions on the effectiveness of this procedure. We will be glad to explore the questions that she raised because they seem to be very valid. These questions will be forwarded to the minister who will then be required to respond to them.

The commissioner will monitor and annually report to the House on the government's performance. In order to be effective in this auditing capacity the definition, as I said, of sustainable development incorporating very clear principles against which the auditing will become possible is immeasurable and becomes of the greatest importance. We had cabinet endorsement in June of this year of the

basic principle of pollution prevention. I applaud cabinet for having done that.

We have adopted on a number of occasions, at home and abroad, a precautionary principle; that is, that we move and make decisions even when science is not 100 per cent in agreement, but sufficiently in agreement to warrant a certain policy action.

I mentioned earlier full cost accounting and equity. In a country like Canada it is of the utmost importance we ensure that in the fisheries and in the forests we do not erode the capital but limit our harvesting to the interest produced by such resources.

We have the delicate question of carbon dioxide emissions, which is part of the red book commitment. It is very difficult to implement. We had extensive discussions on this particular issue last spring in Berlin at the United Nations conference on climate change.

We are a fossil fuel producing country and, therefore, we rely on it for a number of reasons. However, we must ensure in the long term that we gradually but systematically reduce our dependence on fossil fuels in the interest of the global community, to ensure that the climate trend is put back on the right track.

[Questions On The Order Paper, September 18th, 1995]

What is the amount, if any, of direct and indirect federal subsidies received by MacMillan Bloedel Ltd. since 1950?

[Nuclear Tests, September 18th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, in Ottawa this summer 230 parliamentarians from 48 countries, members of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, by resolution urged the French government not to hold nuclear tests.

My question is for the Minister of Foreign Affairs. In addition to the representations he made on September 6 to the French government, is he now prepared to call for a boycott of goods made in France?