Len Taylor

[Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, October 31st, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I have a couple questions which I will put individually to the hon. member.

I was quite pleased to hear that he and his party support the principle of polluter pay. It is something that I have supported for quite some time. It was refreshing to hear that the hon. member supports the concept as well.

I am wondering, given his respect for the Criminal Code, if he is prepared to take the issue of polluter pay one step further. There has been talk over the years of adding crimes against the environment as a new section of the Criminal Code and applying Criminal Code type penalties and approaches to crimes against the environment. I am wondering if the member would also support that principle.

[Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, October 31st, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, not wishing to abuse the House time but wanting the full benefit of the member's experience, I thought I might also ask a question in relation to the specific amendments in front of us, particularly the amendment dealing with intervener funding.

When we sat together on committee in the previous Parliament, the hon. member for Davenport was quite supportive of intervener funding and in fact had some very specific comments about how to put intervener funding into place.

Given the vagueness of the intervener funding amendment in front of us today, would the member be willing to consider supporting a much broader and perhaps more detailed amendment specific to intervener funding?

[Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, October 31st, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Davenport having just spoken I was very pleased to be here today to be able to hear his words. I have a great deal of respect for the member for Davenport with whom I shared a fair bit of time in committee looking at Bill C-13, the legislation which preceded that which we are amending today.

I have a couple of questions based on his comments just now. The member indicated quite correctly as I see it some of the questions which must be asked about the speech by the member for the Bloc Quebecois earlier today. In one of those comments on one of those points, the hon. member for Davenport talked about C-13 and the way in which it applies in the joint panels, the jurisdiction issue.

Could the member for Davenport explain a little bit further this whole aspect about the trigger mechanism that puts in place the joint panels. Could he give, as a member from Quebec, any examples at all of where those triggers would interfere with Quebec jurisdiction. It is my feeling that the triggers quite properly represent federal jurisdiction and perhaps there are no provincial jurisdiction issues to be dealt with here. I would like to know what the hon. member has to say about that.

Second, in his remarks he talked about the peace, order and good government matter. If I am not mistaken, the member for Davenport can correct me if I am, in the committee studying Bill C-13 we tried to amend the act to put in a peace, order and good government clause but failed to do so.

I believe the peace, order and good government clause he is referring to exists elsewhere. I wonder if under those circumstances he would be supportive of looking at the amendment in committee regarding peace, order and good government specific to this legislation.

[Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, October 31st, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I have a short question in the interests of time for the parliamentary secretary who I know has done a tremendous amount of work on the proclamation of the act.

Talking about provincial jurisdiction and joint panels, joint panels are something I am very supportive of. I believe the act has gone a long way to ensuring that joint panels will be able to do the job.

However, can the parliamentary secretary explain how the government will attempt to prevent certain confrontations that will exist with the provinces? The public examples which have brought us to the act we have today are the Rafferty-Alameda dam in Saskatchewan and the Oldman dam in Alberta. Both are examples where the provinces, the proponents of the projects were adamant about no federal involvement in environmental assessment. At the same time these projects point out the incredible need for adequate environmental assessment. The proclaimed act which was Bill C-13 has gone a long way to deal with that.

Can the parliamentary secretary give us some idea of how he thinks the government will deal with conflicts with provinces which are for the most part proponents of projects that are problems?

[Aboriginal Affairs, October 27th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, in addition to his apparent inability to discharge his general duties and responsibilities, the Minister of Canadian Heritage has failed to bring a sensitivity of Canada's First Nations to his department.

Earlier this year Heritage Canada published an otherwise fine publication for youth entitled "The Great Canadian Adventure". It is a trivia game that asks young people questions about Canada and in doing so continues to state as fact that Quebec and Prince Edward Island were discovered by Europeans. This language is no longer appropriate.

At the same time the department has just awarded a half million dollar contract to develop curriculum materials pertaining to aboriginal people in Canada to a Montreal company that has no cultural knowledge or expertise to handle the contract. This is disturbing since the cultural and technical expertise does exist at the Saskatchewan Indian Cultural Centre in Saskatoon, a group that was vying for the contract.

First Nation peoples deserve better from the minister responsible-

[4-H Program, October 26th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of one of Canada's most important youth organizations, Canada's 4-H. The history and results of the 4-H are well known to all Canadians.

Today with the future of rural Canada uncertain, the recognition of an organization dedicated to providing a quality life experience for rural youth has never been more necessary. However federal funding of 4-H remains uncertain.

Media reports that the Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food will trim its budget perhaps by as much as 40 per cent. The department's reluctance to commit itself to funding beyond the end of the current fiscal year is troubling 4-H participants across Canada.

I stand today 100 per cent behind Canada's 4-H program and its support for rural youth. In recognition of the value of these young people to the future of Canada I encourage the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food and the federal government to express their immediate and ongoing commitment to the 4-H program and its supporters across Canada.

[The Environment, October 6th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased that the Minister of the Environment has chosen to use Statements by Ministers to proclaim the act today. I think it is an important use of the House to take this route today.

I am also very pleased to see that the act has finally been proclaimed after the amount of time it took in development.

The act has the potential to be the most important environmental and economic legislation that this country has at this time. For that reason I was happy to participate in its development and now to see it proclaimed.

I am disappointed of course that the process has taken so long to get us to this point but in hindsight it is understandable. We all knew that the regulatory process was going to slow us down. It has. We tried to address that in the committee but now that we have that under wraps, I am happy to see it has moved along. In addition to the amendments that the minister outlined she will be presenting to the House this morning I would like to indicate that I think there is a need to further amend the regulatory process and involve members of the House and Parliament to a greater extent than the process. I will be working to see that that happens.

In conclusion, I would like to suggest to the minister that in keeping with her comments about the aboriginal rights and the stewardship of their traditional land that she consider applying the new process to the situation in Labrador and the Innu at this time.

[The Environment, October 6th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order.

I am wondering if I could seek unanimous consent of the House for two minutes to respond as the New Democratic environment critic and as the critic in the previous House who sat through much of the creation of Bill C-13. I would like unanimous consent of the House to have two minutes.

[Canadian Heritage, October 3rd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, last week I raised the question of the federal environmental assessment panel investigating a proposal to expand low level military flight training in Labrador, specifically flying over the territorial land of the Innu.

In asking the question I noted that all the public interest groups, including the Innu and the Sierra Club, have withdrawn from the hearings, rendering the process nothing short of a farce. The public has demonstrated by withdrawing from the process a lack of confidence in that process.

I asked the minister what the federal government would do to fix this so that the public and the most disadvantaged group in the area, the Innu, could participate.

Since the question, the Minister of the Environment has met with representatives of the Innu people and with Mr. Paul Wilkinson, a former and recently resigned member of the assessment panel in question. At that meeting and in a letter, Mr. Wilkinson said: "I was forced to conclude that I had outlived my usefulness on the panel when the chairman was effectively telling me that my opinion as a member of the panel carried less weight than that of the Department of National Defence".

The issue of the panel's bias is only one reason why the Innu and others are justifiably not participating in the hearings. According to the Innu, the panel seriously compromised the integrity and independence of the process when it failed to require the Department of National Defence to table critical information before the start of the public hearings so that it could be reviewed by the interveners.

The panel also prejudiced the hearing process by not requiring DND to provide an analysis of the impact of low level flight training on aboriginal rights, including the negotiation and settlement of land rights in Quebec and Labrador.

The Innu requested the right to cross examine DND technical experts but they were denied by the panel. They are therefore saying that they cannot participate in a hearing process in which their land, their lives, the environment around them and their rights are at stake but in which the proponent is not required to put information on the table or stand accountable for other information that is in question.

The Minister of the Environment has heard the arguments and has indicated that mediation may be needed to make the hearings more fair and visibly impartial.

I once again ask that the federal government suspend the flights and suspend the hearings until the Innu rights and concerns are addressed and that after addressing those rights with or without mediation the federal government put in place an independent environmental review process that is fair both to the Innu and the land in question.

The minister has indicated in other places that Canada's new environmental assessment legislation may be proclaimed within two weeks. That new legislation sets out a process that may be fairer. Perhaps the minister would suspend the present hearings until what we know as Bill C-13 is proclaimed and then establish a new panel under the auspices of the new agency and do things right for a change.

[Low Level Flights, September 27th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, my question concerns the federal environmental review panel investigating a proposal to expand low level flying in Labrador. All the public interest groups, including the Innu, the group with the most at stake in the process, have withdrawn from the proceedings.

How can the Minister of the Environment continue to give federal government approval to the assessment process when she knows how unfair and insensitive it is to the Innu and the traditional aboriginal way of life in the area?