Bernard Bigras

[Supply, April 28th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I find it hard to rise in this House after hearing such a disgraceful and demagogic speech from the hon. member for Abitibi, but I will still exercise my right to speak.

First of all, I would to point out that, last week, the hon. member for Lac-Saint-Jean made quite an impression when he took his seat out of the House. He did so to stress the social inequities that keep increasing despite major improvements to our economic performance. He walked out with his chair to trigger a larger debate on what it means to sit in the House of Commons.

What political power can we use to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor? As elected representatives, are we not the first ones to be asked this question? Yes, I think so, which is why I am glad today to speak on the impact of the globalization of markets and the proliferation of international agreements on the sovereignty of states and, therefore, the real powers we as elected representatives have in this House.

We have to have this debate here, because it deals with an issue that directly concerns all of us. We are here to represent the people who have elected us democratically. Therefore, every time we lose some of our power, some of our authority as legislators, it reduces the ability of our fellow citizens to shape their collective future, according to their own values. This is why I support the hon. member for Lac-Saint-Jean, who wants to see this debate go beyond the walls of the House of Commons.

After I was elected to this House, it did not take long for me to notice how globalization has an enormous impact on the work we do here, in Ottawa. My colleagues have already talked about its impact on many major issues. There is certainly an area in which the effects of globalization on national democracies cannot be denied, namely the environment.

Indeed, through the past generations, the ability of the human race to modify the world ecosystem has increased dramatically. This is due to our exploding population and our rapid technological progress. For instance, economic activity throughout the word is more than 20 times what it was in 1900. Consequently, many human activities are exhausting the planet's non-renewable resources.

Every day, our excessive production and consumption cause the extinction of at least 100 different species of plants and animals. Needless to say, this worrisome problem goes beyond national borders. We must find ways to solve it that are as international as the nature of this challenge.

Every year, we dump in the atmosphere billions of tons of CO2, the product of our energy consumption, and we use over 40% of the planet's organic matter.

In one year we burn as much fossil fuel as the earth was able to produce in around one million years. Poverty and misery are still rampant around the world.

The city of Montreal, where I live, is more and more frequently smothered in smog. Many Montrealers are getting organized to find solutions to this problem which affects our quality of life, but they will not be able to do it alone because half of this pollution comes from our neighbours in Ontario and New England.

Still they refuse to be defeated by the scale of the problem. Together we must find solutions to meet the challenges we face due to the deterioration of our environment and the multiplication of substances dangerous to human health. To do so we cannot keep our eyes on the short term. What is needed is a fundamental change in the way we make decisions at every level of society.

We must start integrating environmental concerns in the everyday decisions we make as individuals, managers and lawmakers.

Let us not fool ourselves: the precarious condition of our environment is the result of nearly two centuries of abuse. There is no easy solution. We can expect more crises, more environmental accidents. What is needed is for the ecological balance, which has been gradually destroyed over the course of centuries, and particularly over the past century, to be restored.

This is a long term undertaking, which will require the commitment of each and every one of us, from the various governments down to the last individual and, above all, a serious response to the environmental challenge which will lay our present lifestyle open to question.

Indeed, the environmental issue is more than just pollution, the build-up of domestic and chemical waste or land use management. These are just symptoms of a larger problem, and that is mainly the way we approach our relationships, define our prosperity and select a lifestyle.

In this respect, we are witnessing a real revolution in attitudes. Recent polls, open-line programs, radio hot-lines and television reports all agree. My fellow citizens, and young people in particular, agree on the value they put on their quality of life as compared with the mere accumulation of consumer goods.

They choose health over the pursuit of economic expansion at all cost. These new values are priorities. They should be used as the basis for the political will to allocate sufficient resources to the preservation of our environment, which we all care about.

It is paradoxical that this government repeatedly drew upon this widely held public opinion to finally come up short in terms of a commitment to reduce greenhouse gases and protect the collective scientific tools used to assess our environmental situation.

This government cannot be satisfied with reacting to environmental crises. Never has the government developed a long term action plan which takes into account the collective diversity of the territory for which it is responsible.

Never has the government seriously considered where it wanted to be in five, ten or more years from now. In order to have a political will, governments must be able to set out the goals they wish to achieve through the action they take. Unfortunately, for the moment, we have to express our concern about this government's lack of vision with regard to environmental issues in today's context.

Canada's failure in the area of greenhouse gases reduction says a lot about that. Only Quebec is on the way to meeting its international commitments in this regard. How can the federal government limit itself to feeble symbolic and optional measures to reach these ambitious targets when it is obvious they will lead nowhere unless they are accompanied by active measures and research budgets. It so happens the Liberal government, that claims to be concerned about the environment, has a budget for the reduction of greenhouse gases that is 10 times less per capita than that of our neighbours to the south.

Yet the situation is so alarming that many predict that environmental protection will become the main public concern in the near future.

However, during the same year, the same 150 countries that met in Kyoto, Japan, to agree on international targets for the reduction of greenhouse gases negotiated the multilateral agreement on investment, which is designed to reduce investment barriers.

These dual reduction targets are crucial to the preservation of our quality of life. But do the countries sitting at the table have the necessary powers to meet all these commitments? How can the globalization of markets affect our ability to respond to environmental threats? Which agreement will have precedence over the others in case of conflict? That question remains unanswered here, in Canada.

So far, the only general exception contained in the MAI relates to national security issues and law enforcement. There is no reference to important international agreements such as the Kyoto agreement or the Montreal protocol on CFCs. That is why, before giving our final approval for this agreement, we want the right of countries to take or maintain environmental protection measures to be explicitly preserved.

In conclusion, like all those around me in this House, I am concerned about the state of our society and our environment in the next 20 or 30 years. If we can agree on the principles of sustainable development that I just set out, we must promote these principles abroad both in trade and environmental negotiations. That is the role I have set for myself as elected representative of the people of Rosemont, and I will use all the means available to me to fulfil that role.

[Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1998, April 27th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, I simply wish to make a short comment following the question put by the hon. member opposite.

He spoke about provincial governments being irresponsible and offloading their responsibilities. I want him to look at the results of his own government in the environmental sector.

Members opposite have been telling us all day long that their government is always concerned about environmental issues. However, they said very little about the objectives that were not reached in Kyoto, after being agreed to in Rio. Not only that, they also remained silent on the cuts made in recent years in the Department of the Environment.

Is the member opposite aware that the budget of the Department of the Environment was reduced by 40%? These cuts were imposed by his own Minister of Finance and his government. Is the government aware that claiming to be concerned with the environment is not enough, and that such a claim must be supported by concrete measures?

Here is another example. In Quebec alone, 60% of the 1997-98 budget of $1,329,000 for inspection and investigation activities was used to implement the act and avoid environmental disasters. The other 40% of that $1.3 million was wasted on all sorts of administrative procedures.

Not only is the government opposite not at all concerned with the environment since it reduces its budget, it also shows that the department is poorly managed and that it is far from meeting Quebeckers' environmental needs and concerns.

[Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1998, April 27th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I have just heard the final remark by my colleague across the way, who wishes to pass on to the next generation a country with a clean environment. But, once again, I remind him that the federal government wants to play a leadership role when it comes to the environment and says it is doing its job. The problem is that the results are very different.

Unlike Quebec, the federal government has not even managed to attain the goals it set in Rio. There is a problem somewhere. It is therefore not true that objectives are reached more easily with a central, federal and paternalistic government.

The purpose of this bill is to give the law more teeth. That is what the minister and public servants are telling us. Existing enforcement of the legislation is lagging in this regard. I think that there is difficulty enforcing and implementing this legislation, and that there is a desire to give the federal government more ammunition. I think there is a problem.

There is the example of transborder movement of hazardous waste. Although there is legislation, it has not been possible to enforce it, with the result that Montreal has now become the black market centre for hazardous waste in Canada and even in North America. So there is a problem.

My question for my colleague opposite is as follows. The issue is not the level of government, but which level of government is in the best position to respond to requirements and to resolve the actual problems. Is that not the real issue? The issue is not whether it should be the federal or the provincial government, but which is in the best position to address environmental problems. In many instances, the provinces are in the best position to do so.

It must be remembered that the provinces are forced to meet their environmental commitments in addition to shouldering responsibilities that have been transferred from the federal government to the provinces. Will my colleague opposite not admit that the provinces are in the best position to address environmental problems?

[Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1998, April 27th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I must express my amusement with the speech by the Minister of the Environment in which she refers to her environmental concerns.

She tells us that she wants to act before there are any ecological catastrophes and before our environment deteriorates. I might begin by reminding her of her government's terrible record as far as greenhouse gas reduction is concerned. I believe that this government's failure to meet the objectives of Rio is an obvious sign of its lack of desire to take these environmental concerns into consideration. That was my first comment.

Second, the minister had very little to say about the negotiations surrounding the harmonization process. I would remind her that, in principle, it was intended to eliminate potential conflicts between the provinces and the federal government. It was also intended to eliminate duplication and overlap.

I would remind her as well that Quebec refused to sign that agreement, for two basic reasons. First, it wanted recognition of Quebec's exclusive and overriding areas of jurisdiction within its constitutional rights.

It also wanted changes to the legislation, such as those in Bill C-32, to take the concerns I have referred to into account. I take pride in speaking out against this bill, simply because it does not address the concerns defended by the Quebec Minister of the Environment.

My question for the Minister of the Environment is a very simple one. When I look at the bill and the spirit of that bill I see that it calls for interventions at the national level, for instance those in clauses 139 and 140 on national fuels marks and clauses 152 and 150 on national emissions marks.

Does the minister not agree that her bill represents a direct attack on the provinces and an obligation for them to adopt provincial regulations, as otherwise the federal government will end up directly interfering with what Quebec can do in environmental matters?

[Canadian Environmental Protection Act 1998, April 24th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciated my Conservative colleague's presentation. I know from often discussing environmental issues with him that we often share concerns in this respect. We sit on the same parliamentary committee and we often attend the same international conferences, including the one in Kyoto, to reduce greenhouse gases.

We also agree on the federal government's inability to resolve the problem. I think that we can agree on that.

What we never agree on—“but that is how our system works—” is which level of government should be responsible for environmental issues. Is it a centralized or central government? Is it the responsibility of the federal government or the provinces? Does the Government of Quebec have jurisdiction?

The harmonization process and the agreement were quite clear. There was a principle which stated that every effort would be made to eliminate duplication and overlap. Today, the government brings in Bill C-32. Every aspect of this bill is set in a national context or spirit.

I have a simple question for my colleague from the Conservative Party. Does he agree that the national principle underlying Bill C-32 is contrary to the stated principles of harmonization?

[Canadian Environmental Protection Act 1998, April 24th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, in this second part of my speech, I would like to draw members' attention to the fact that Bill C-32 is not part of a decentralizing approach.

It renews the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, which has been so vigorously opposed by the various governments of Quebec.

In the last parliament, the Liberal government attempted to get the previous version of this bill passed, but gave up the attempt in light of the huge outcry, which could have jeopardized the upcoming elections.

Bill C-74 therefore died on the Order Paper last session, but CEPA calls for a five-year review and that deadline is already past, so the government is at it again, introducing a bill that maintains the national vision, which still does not sit well with the members of the National Assembly.

What is the purpose of this bill? With it, the prevention of pollution becomes a national objective.

The government wants to amend Canada's legislation on the environment by changing certain technicalities while maintaining the essence of a centralizing vision of environmental protection.

The legislation introduces provisions to implement pollution prevention, new procedures for the investigation and assessment of substances and new requirements with respect to substances that the Minister of the Environment and the Minister of Health have determined to be toxic.

There is a broad range of such substances. Investigators will be given new powers, for example, and there will be new regulatory measures to deal with offences. Barely a few weeks after the sensational statement by senior officials of the Department of the Environment, who wondered openly whether their department could still monitor offending businesses as cuts had been so draconian, we may well ask ourselves what purpose is served exactly by tightening offence regulations if they cannot be enforced.

We are in favour of including the Native peoples in the environmental assessment process. We wonder, however, about the double standard in the degree of openness toward the Native peoples and Quebec. Native representation on a national advisory committee, as with the provinces and the territories, in fact diminishes the power of Quebec, which like the Native peoples wants to deal with the rest of Canada nation to nation.

What powers will the renewed CEPA delegate to Quebec and the other provinces in Canada? Although in theory Bill C-32 recognizes that responsibility for the environment is shared between the federal government and the provinces, in practice it delegates no powers to them, and this runs counter to real environmental harmonization between the various levels of government.

Bill C-32 unfortunately aims at strengthening the federal government's preponderance in the field of environmental protection. This centralization runs counter to the clearly expressed wish of the National Assembly to participate fully in the environmental assessment of any project on its territory. The bill is also in flagrant contradiction with the spirit of the harmonization process launched between the federal government and the provinces.

This is why the Government of Quebec has pulled out of negotiations, and is looking further into this promising process.

The bill thus opens the door to duplication of federal and provincial powers. The federal government is justifying its interference in Quebec's areas of jurisdiction by invoking the recent supreme court decision with respect to Hydro-Québec. This case has always been contested by Quebec.

All the courts that ruled on it, including Quebec's highest court, the Court of Appeal, declared the federal government's order invalid. Only the supreme court, with its unitary vision of Canada, overturned the Quebec court rulings.

Bill C-32 also contains a number of new features. For instance, the government wants to replace the existing federal-provincial CEPA committee with a new national advisory committee. This committee would consist of one representative each from Environment Canada and Health Canada, one representative from each province and territory, and up to six aboriginal representatives.

This committee will advise the two federal ministers on the drafting of regulations, the management of toxic substances, and other matters of mutual interest. The provinces will advise the federal minister through a national advisory committee. The bill contains provisions for the signing of co-operation agreements covering activities such as inspections, investigations and the collection of monitoring data.

The bill also includes provisions relating specifically to aboriginal governments. They will have the same rights and responsibilities as provincial and territorial governments, including the right to conclude administrative and work-sharing agreements and equivalent provision agreements with the federal government.

In addition, they must be consulted with respect to all environmental matters affecting their territories. Up to six representatives will sit on the national advisory committee. Again, it is surprising to see that Quebec does not get such recognition of its specificity and its culture.

The new act also provides for increased public participation and for better protection for those who report CEPA violations. Individuals will be allowed to play a role in the decision making process, by submitting to the Minister of the Environment comments or notices of opposition following certain decisions, and by asking the minister to investigate alleged violations of the act.

The bill also provides that individuals' identity may not be disclosed, and it protects employees who report violations under the federal legislation. It will also allow individuals to bring civil action to protect the environment when the government is not enforcing the law.

As for public information, such information will no longer be limited to the data found in the Canada Gazette . The act will create a new public registry that will include all environmental information published under the CEPA, including decisions and regulations. This registry will complete the 1993 National Pollutant Release Inventory.

As regards pollution prevention, this issue will become a national objective. The minister will have the authority to require a pollution prevention plan in respect of substances deemed toxic under the CEPA. A tribunal will also be authorized to demand a pollution prevention plan, an environmental emergency plan, or to rule that research must be done on the use and the elimination of the substances involved in the violation.

The new act creates a national information centre on pollution prevention to help the industry share the knowledge and technologies that relate to pollution prevention activities. The new CEPA also provides for the establishment of a reward program to recognize the voluntary efforts made by the industry to prevent pollution.

As for the protection of water, the bill seeks to protect marine environment against land and atmospheric pollution sources. It also limits what can be disposed of in the sea to a list of non-hazardous materials, and will require those desiring to carry out such a disposal to prove that this is the best solution and that reuse or recycling is not possible.

The federal government feels that this bill will enable it to work, with the United States in particular, to prevent or restrict cross-border marine pollution.

Bill C-32 will enhance the EPA's authority as far as fuel and fuel additives are concerned. Imported fuels, as well as those crossing Canada's provincial and territorial boundaries, must meet certain requirements. The bill will confer the ability to establish a national fuel mark to indicate compliance with environmental standards for fuel.

Where international atmospheric pollution is concerned, the government wants to do onto others as they do onto it. When a state has not allowed Canada rights similar to those Canada has allowed, the federal minister's will have the option to take action in cases of international atmospheric pollution.

As for protection of the air, Bill C-32 calls for a national emissions mark for equipment meeting its standards. It incorporates the power to limit engine emissions. These provisions apply to motor vehicles in general, which include pleasure craft, construction equipment, farm machinery, snowblowers and lawn mowers.

The bill also includes enhanced federal power over cross-border traffic involving hazardous and non-hazardous waste, domestic garbage in particular.

We have touched on some of the aspects of this bill. We cannot explain why the bill clashes with the harmonization the government claims to have as a priority.

As we recall, Quebec refused to sign the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment agreement this past January 29.

When the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment met at that time, Quebec Environment Minister Paul Bégin refused to subscribe to that agreement, as long as the conditions called for by Quebec are not met by the federal government.

These conditions include recognizing that Quebec has primary jurisdiction in certain areas, under the constitution, a firm commitment on the part of the federal government to amend federal legislation accordingly, and finally, the signature by Quebec and the federal government of a bilateral agreement on environmental assessment.

Moreover, Minister Bégin stressed that the federal government's plans to revise the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, giving the federal government increased powers, contravened the spirit and goals of the environmental harmonization accord negotiations, especially with regard to preventing overlap and intergovernmental conflicts.

Minister Bégin's position underscored our own, as expressed in the Bloc Quebecois' dissenting opinion made public in December 1997. This step followed the one taken on November 20, 1996. The Canadian Council of Ministers of Environment had then tentatively agreed to the Canada-wide environmental harmonization accord as well as two subagreements on inspections and standards. The subagreement on environmental assessment was negotiated during the winter of 1997.

It was aimed at improving the protection of the environment in order to contribute to sustainable development, while respecting each government's fields of jurisdiction in a more efficient manner. It contained general principles to be implemented through subagreements.

The Bloc Quebecois has always supported harmonization between the federal government and the provinces if it eliminates overlap and administrative and legislative duplication between both levels of government.

So, we are in favour of environmental harmonization as long as it is not used by the federal government to hide its interference in provincial areas of jurisdiction or, conversely, to dump programs on the provinces without the appropriate funding.

It is essential that harmonization recognize the exclusive or primary jurisdiction of the provinces in the areas entrusted to them by the Constitution. The spirit of harmonization must be reflected in the changes the federal government is making to existing legislation.

Lastly, the Bloc Quebecois thinks that only the Quebec environmental assessment process must prevail in the province of Quebec. The harmonization sought by the federal government must be reflected in its legislative agenda. However, we think that Bill C-32 does not take into consideration the legislative harmonization process envisioned by the federal government and the provinces and is simply another example of federal interference in a provincial area of jurisdiction.

The Bloc Quebecois believes that this new piece of legislation goes against the past positions taken by Quebec and against the spirit of the federal-provincial harmonization initiative.

The Bloc Quebecois thinks it is unfortunate that the federal government refuses to put into law its good intentions in terms of environmental harmonization and prefers to hide behind a Supreme Court ruling that it can use as an argument for centralization.

In conclusion, the bill confirms that, with the latest Supreme Court ruling on environmental matters, the federal government is trying to broaden its powers in this area. Although the federal and provincial governments share responsibility for the environment under the Constitution, the Liberal government clearly wants to subordinate the role of the provinces to that of the central government.

The emphasis on pollution prevention as a method of priority intervention with the power to require pollution prevention plans, which are mandatory for substances included in the list of priority toxic substances, involves the development of a direct partnership between the federal government and industrial sectors that are already partly covered under Quebec programs, such as the industrial waste reduction program that has been implemented in the pulp and paper industry.

The measures contained in Bill C-32 will allow the federal government to establish national priorities for intervention. Therefore, the provinces will have no choice but to adopt federal regulations, otherwise they will be forced to see the federal government serve the same clientele.

The legislative and regulatory powers that the federal government is giving itself are very important, and while the Liberal government is constantly talking about its willingness to work in partnership with the provinces, it nevertheless institutionalizes its powers in order to play a paternalistic role towards the provinces. That is what the Bloc Quebecois deplores.

In conclusion, in light of what I just said, we in the Bloc Quebecois are against the principle of this bill at the second reading stage.

[Asbestos Industry, April 24th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, here is the result of what the federal government has been doing in the matter of asbestos in the past two years. In Asbestos, 250 people were laid off and the BC mine there has been closed. We have just learned that the Council of Europe has decided to prohibit the use of asbestos throughout Europe.

My question for the Minister for International Trade is quite simple. Is the government waiting until there is no more asbestos industry in Quebec before acting and lodging a complaint with the WTO?

[Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1998, April 24th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today on a subject of the utmost importance. We in the Bloc Quebecois consider that the relationship between developing our economy and protecting the environment is one of the major challenges facing our society.

For the past few generations, the capacity of the human race to modify the world ecosystem has undergone a spectacular increase, as the result of the population explosion and our dizzying rate of technological progress.

World economic activity, for example, is more than 20 times what it was in 1900. Consequently, many human activities are on the verge of surpassing our planet's potential to replenish its resources.

Every year, the energy we consume is responsible for releasing billions of tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere and for using up more than 40% of the planet's organic material. Every year, we burn almost as much fossil fuel as the earth was able to produce in a million years.

Although we are forced to acknowledge that poverty and hardship exist throughout the world, and will continue to exist, we do not throw up our hands in despair at its scope. Similarly, we are capable of seeking solutions together to many of the challenges posed by our deteriorating environment, and the multiplication of substances that are a threat to human health.

A short-sighted view will not enable us to solve these problems. What we need is a fundamental change to our way of making decisions at all levels of society. We need to start incorporating environmental considerations in our day to day decisions as individuals, managers and legislators.

We must treat the environment as the limited and unique resource that it is. We must treat human life like the fragile thing that it is.

Let there be no illusions about this. The precarious state of our environment is the result of what will soon be two centuries of neglect. There can be no quick fix. There will be more crises, more ecological accidents. What is needed essentially is to restore the ecological balance that has been upset gradually over the centuries, and particularly over the past 100 years.

This is a long term undertaking, and one which will require the commitment of each and every one of us, from the various governments down to the last individual. Any serious response to the environmental challenge will lay our present lifestyle open to question, because the environmental issue is more than just pollution, domestic and chemical waste, or land use management. These are just symptoms of a larger problem.

The main thing is the way we approach our relationships, define our prosperity and select a lifestyle. In this respect, we are witnessing a real revolution in attitudes. Recent polls, newspaper forums and radio hot-lines all agree.

The public, and young people in particular, consider quality of life more important than the mere accumulation of consumer goods. They choose health over the pursuit of economic expansion at all cost. These new values are priorities. They should be used as the basis for the political will to allocate sufficient resources to the preservation of the environment we all care about.

It is paradoxical that this government repeatedly drew upon this widely held public opinion to finally come up short in terms of a commitment to reduce greenhouse gases and protect the collective scientific tools used to assess our environmental situation.

This government cannot be satisfied with reacting to environmental crises. Never has the government developed a long term action plan which takes into account the collective diversity of the territory for which it is responsible under the Constitution. Never has the government given any serious thought to where it wanted to be five or ten years down the road and even after that.

In order to have a political will, governments must be able to set out the goals they wish to achieve through specific actions. For the time being, we must unfortunately express concern about this government's lack of vision on environmental issues in the current constitutional context.

In fact, since I have been sitting in this House as the member for Rosemont, not one federalist party has been able to come up with a vision of the future that reconciles two fundamental values in my view: respect for societies, including Quebec society, and implementation of sustainable development.

Bill C-32 as it stands symbolizes the failure of a unilateral federal approach, which denies the right of the Quebec people to decide their own future. This is my view of Bill C-32. Because of what I believe in, I cannot consider this bill simply from a sovereignist or environmentalist point of view. I am opposed to Bill C-32, because this Liberal bill fails to reconcile two fundamental values for Quebeckers.

First, my vision of sustainable development is based on the conclusions of the United Nations commission on the environment and development, chaired by the then Prime Minister of Norway, Gro Brundtland. The commission defined this new concept that it was proposing to the world, namely that economic development must now be subject to environmental considerations.

Let us be clear: it is wrong to claim that the environment must now be at odds with economic development. These two basic realities are not at odds: they are essential elements of a type of progress that is now sustainable in our society.

The notion of sustainable development simply means that we must no longer endanger the resources of our planet and that we must make sure our natural resources will still be there for future generations. In other words, economic development must be achieved by preserving our planet's resources, rather than by using them up, or, to use a financial image, by using the interest and not the capital, in terms of our resources.

Economic development must not jeopardize the planet's natural balance. Since I first came to Ottawa, all too often I have seen people try to change the meaning of sustainable development. They closely link that concept to economic growth and then use it to oppose environmental concerns.

These people are not helping anyone's cause. If anything, they take us back 10 years, before the Liberals and before the work of the United Nations on development and the environment. We now have to recognize that the respect for individuals must be extended to their surroundings.

In other words, it is not a question of choosing between economic growth and environmental protection. Since both of these concerns are essential to global survival, what matters is finding an approach that takes both into account.

This environmental challenge still requires changes in attitude that force us to reconcile what might initially look like contradictory goals. I am convinced that we can forge a consensus in Quebec around these environmental and economic convictions. I am sure that a great many Canadians and Quebeckers also share my vision of sustainable development.

The misunderstanding does not lie at this level. The difference resides in our identifying with distinct peoples. We want to acquire as many tools as possible for orienting our development.

Our wishes are the opposite of those of the majority of Canadians, who basically want to see Ottawa play an increased role in numerous areas, including that of the environment. Elected representatives from Quebec, whatever their political stripe, have always fought to be able to retain the prerogatives that allow us to shape our future as we see it.

If there were any sign of this feeling of belonging and this desire for freedom in the other provinces, Bloc Quebecois members would not be the only ones rejecting the federal government's attempts to keep on grabbing a little more power. We can only conclude that this wish for autonomy is confined to Quebec. The fact of the matter is that, every time this country wanted or had to make weighty decisions of the sort that reveal basic natures, it went into crisis.

Instead of finding comfort in the face of adversity, instead of being galvanized by a challenge, and united in trust and hope, like a normal country, it instead fell into painful division. From the Riel affair to the schools in Manitoba, from conscription in World War I to conscription in World War II, from the 1982 patriation to the passage of the free trade agreement, from the Meech Lake accord to the Charlottetown accord, each time the same wounds were opened anew, the same tenuous solidarity was torn apart along the same stress lines by the same tensions. Paralysis and uncertainty were the poisoned fruits of this inability to live together.

Two recent environmental initiatives provide another illustration of the forces blocking the legitimate aspirations of two peoples still bound together by one federal government. The first issue is of the highest importance for our future, since it involves climactic changes affecting the nature of life on earth as we know it today. As I speak, millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide are being released into the atmosphere. In North America alone, we are responsible for more than a quarter of these emissions, which are having an unprecedented effect on our atmosphere.

For some time already, scientists from the four corners of the globe have noted that the planet has been warming up at a rate unprecedented in the past hundred years or so. Naturally, many research teams have looked at this phenomenon to understand its origins. One after another, the teams have published their disturbing results, which have begun to reveal that human activity is responsible for global warming.

Their conclusions were immediately contested by many scientists, who were astonished to learn that humans could have such an impact on the atmosphere protecting us. For a long time these scientists and ecologists were reduced to preaching in the wilderness. However, by the mid-1980s, we were becoming increasing aware of the seriousness of the environmental problem we now face.

Once the main concerns relating to the 1982 economic crisis were resolved, our societies began to realize the scope and the amplitude of our environmental problems. We all benefited from the expanded debate that ensued. It did not take long for the environment to become a concern to society as a whole.

Public awareness supported both specialists and political leaders in their efforts to further protect the environment. After facing the many challenges necessitated by greater levels of protection of waters, air, forests and the earth, we looked to problems at the global level, such as those concerning our atmosphere.

The international scale of these problems necessarily involves global and co-operative action by nations.

This led to the signature in Helsinki, in 1984, of the first international protocol to reduce transborder emissions responsible for acid rain. Three years later, in 1987, Montreal hosted an international meeting that resulted in the signing of the Montreal protocol, the purpose of which is to reduce the production of gases harmful to the ozone layer.

Five years later, over 150 nations got together in Rio for the earth summit. This meeting led to the signing of a UN framework agreement to limit concentrations of greenhouse gases. At this unprecedented summit, developed countries adopted the common goal of stabilizing greenhouse gas emissions at the 1990 level by the year 2000.

Today, five years after the Berlin conference, Canada as a whole has achieved nothing but a resounding absence of concrete measures for meeting this challenge. Why? Because the Liberal government, which has been in office since 1993, seems to have devoted more effort to developing an environmental doublespeak than to implementing concrete measures for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

There is no lack of examples. In a self-congratulatory advertisement that appeared on April 24, the Liberals claimed to have demonstrated international leadership by helping reduce the causes of climate change in the world. Nothing could be further from the truth. Unless, in Liberal speak, leadership means one of the worst performances in the world when it comes to reducing greenhouse gases.

Indeed, compared to other OECD members, Canada has done poorly in terms of reducing greenhouse gases, in spite of the good results achieved by Quebec, which is still in a position to meet the objectives set in Rio. For Canada as a whole, however, observers expect that there will be an increase of 13% in emissions by the year 2000.

If, by international leadership the Liberals are not referring to this country's notorious failure to reduce greenhouse gases, perhaps they are referring to its apparent wish to be the last to present a reduction goal for the period up to 2010.

In fact, thanks to the Liberal government, Canada was the last G-7 country to present its negotiating position for the Kyoto summit. For a long time, the only public position that was endorsed by the Minister of the Environment and the Minister of Natural Resources was the Regina position. Once again, this decision widened the gap between two blueprints for society.

[International Earth Day, April 22nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, today is Earth Day, which offers us the opportunity to reflect on our relationship with the environment.

In recent generations, the human race's ability to modify the world ecosystem has increased in a spectacular way, because of our exploding population and our technological progress. World economic activity, for instance, is 20 times what it was in 1900. Consequently, many human activities surpass our planet's ability to replenish its resources.

A short-sighted view will not enable us to solve these problems. We need to start to again incorporate environmental considerations with our day to day decisions as individuals, managers and legislators. It is possible for economic development to go hand in hand with respect for the environment.

International Earth Day reminds us that there is no time to waste in making the still theoretical concept of sustainable development a concrete reality.

[Legalization Of Marijuana For Medical Purposes, March 23rd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, morphine is derived from heroin, a hard drug which was legalized for therapeutic uses and is very beneficial to the sick.

Marijuana, on the other hand, is a soft drug whose use for medical purposes is outlawed, despite the fact that many physicians consider it could be used to alleviate pain.

My question to the Minister of Health is the following: In light of these facts, could the minister tell us when he plans to set the process in motion to ultimately legalize the use of marijuana for medical purposes?