Colin Carrie

[Questions on the Order Paper, November 16th, 2022]

With regard to purchases of COVID-19 vaccine doses by the government: has the government purchased any doses before the doses being approved by Health Canada, and, if so, what are the details of all such purchases, including the (i) manufacturer, (ii) name of the vaccine, (iii) date of purchase, (iv) number of doses purchased, (v) date of the approval by Health Canada?

[Strengthening Environmental Protection for a Healthier Canada Act, November 2nd, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, this is one of the important things we can talk about when we debate it at committee. There are many things we can do as a country to make improvements. Unfortunately, the way the bill is written right now, it just is not going to do that.

Hopefully, we will get an opportunity to chat a bit more in committee.

[Strengthening Environmental Protection for a Healthier Canada Act, November 2nd, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague.

What I am talking about here is perspective, and we have to look at what Canada can do. I was quite correct when I said 93% of the plastics that go into the oceans come from 10 rivers that are not in Canada. However, we are successful at recycling, and we can get better, but we cannot put in something that is going to be doing the exact opposite of what we should be doing.

As I said, we have so many issues here with the carbon tax, and I could go on and on about that: how it is increasing our costs and decreasing our competitiveness. What we want to see as Conservatives is something that is really going to be effective in lowering greenhouse gases and doing something positive for the environment.

I welcome my colleague's comments, and hopefully we can get something together that will make a positive impact for Canada.

[Strengthening Environmental Protection for a Healthier Canada Act, November 2nd, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Kingston. Hopefully one day we get to share that chicken at Swiss Chalet, and hopefully he is paying this time.

Let us actually talk about results. The member talked about Brian Mulroney, and he is exactly right: Brian Mulroney realized that we had to take action, but the action had to have results.

I brought up the issue of the straw, because literally millions of straws are used every year, and it is absolutely going in the wrong direction. Add that to some of the other Liberal policies, like the carbon tax, for example, which we see has done absolutely nothing to lower emissions. Let us look at the record of the Liberal Party. It has not actually met any of its targets.

We can talk, and we can kind of massage things, but at the end of the day, Conservatives on this side want results. At the same time, we want to make sure our economy keeps growing and that we are a good place to do business.

We will support the bill, but we have to send it to committee because of some of these amendments, and because there are problems with the bill.

[Strengthening Environmental Protection for a Healthier Canada Act, November 2nd, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to Bill S‑5.

I will give a bit of background for people listening this afternoon.

Bill S-5 is an act to amend the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, to make related amendments to the Food and Drugs Act and to repeal the Perfluorooctane Sulfonate Virtual Elimination Act

The Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, CEPA, has not been significantly updated since it was passed in 1999. Bill S-5 is the first major update of this very important bill.

I just want to remind people watching that if they look at the word “conservative”, the root of the name of our party, it means to conserve. We have always been committed to protecting our ecosystems and our environment.

There are some things in this bill that are good and there are some things that are not so good, which I want to explain. Let us start by talking about what is good and what is supportable in this bill right from the start.

This bill modernizes our environmental regulations in the act. As I said in my opening, it has been a long time and it is definitely overdue. It also reduces some of the red tape. This is a good thing. It helps our competitiveness. It helps people do business. It helps the environmental assessments get done and done properly.

It also allows other ministers to manage substances where another federal act is more appropriate. Again, these are more efficiencies.

It allows environmental risk assessment for drugs to be done solely under the food and drugs regulations and it removes duplicate monitoring under CEPA. Again, as someone who has served as the parliamentary secretary for the environment and health, I see how these work together. I see these as very positive things.

There are some things in here that are not so good.

The bill does introduce the concept of the right to a healthy environment. Again, this is a good thing. However, the bad thing about it is that it is not defined. What is the right to a healthy environment?

The Liberals have had a long time to approach this and define it so that it gives certainty. Unfortunately, they are going to have two years to define that. Anything that adds uncertainty, I find, is not a good thing.

The bill also has several amendments put forth by the Senate that really are not in the best interests of Canadians. I will talk about one of them.

One of the amendments introduces a new term called a “vulnerable environment” without defining it. This is more uncertainty. It gives a little bit more power to the minister, which is very subjective. Business and environmental institutions want some certainty, so that is a bit of a problem.

What I find is a big problem with it is it allows anyone to request that a minister assess whether a substance is capable of becoming toxic. Let us look at this a little more closely.

That means that anyone in Canada can bring forward a letter or request to a minister and the time this would take and the number of people who would be interested in doing this could be unbelievably large. In one part of the bill, it does help remove red tape but then in another part like this, it increases it.

I would like to talk about the plastics industry. I am from Oshawa where we like to manufacture stuff. One of the things that we have a history of manufacturing is automobiles. Plastics are one of those substances that allow automobiles to be lighter and more efficient, which, when we are thinking about the environment, is a good thing.

With this bill, what we have now is that plastics manufactured products are listed in schedule 1, part 2. The Alberta government is actually taking the government to court over this because it is very, very serious. The government renamed schedule 1 so that it is no longer called a list of toxic substances. However, substances are still referred to as toxic in the act. This is problematic.

To explain it to the House, I looked up the definition of “toxic”, so I would like to read it into the record. Toxic means containing or being poisonous material, especially when capable of causing death or serious debilitation; it is also defined as being of, relating to or being caused by a toxin or another poison.

This is a problem. We just came out of a pandemic, for example, and plastics were an extremely important part of our being able to manage that. As I said, for car parts, where I come from, this is going to be really important, and I do not think the government has looked at the economic cost of changing this and calling plastics toxins.

It is something I am really worried about. I think we have to look at this in committee and make sure we change it, because I wonder what the motivation is here. I think it is going to cause a lot of fear. We can pick up anything here in the House, and whether it is a phone or an earpiece, they are all plastics. Again, I wonder what the motivation is.

I mentioned that Alberta is taking the government to court over the legislation. It seems the government, whenever it gets the chance, wants to beat up Alberta. It is horrible, because plastic is another economic driver, and I am very uncomfortable with the legislation.

We can elaborate a bit on the plastics. What do people think about in this past pandemic when they think about plastics? They think about PPE. They think about something that is very sanitary. It has trusted performance. We can be sure it is going to do what it has to do, and it is very convenient, so if we start to call these things toxic and we are dealing with them in health care, it does not even make sense. What are going to be the options for physicians in hospitals, if they cannot use plastic?

In Oshawa, we see what we can build cars with, but sometimes there is no real option other than plastics, so what is going to happen if we enforce the legislation? What I see happening is that it is going to drive plastic manufacturing outside the country. A lot of it is going to be driven to areas that do not have really great environmental laws and protections, like we have here. I could mention China, and maybe I will talk a bit more about that, if I can get to it.

When we are looking at plastics, everybody would like to see less plastic, for example, go into the oceans. Everybody is okay and in agreement with that, but Canada is not the problem here, so we would be putting something in, when 93% of the plastics dumped into the oceans come from 10 rivers, and seven of those are in Asia. One is the Yangtze River in China, and two are in Africa, so the government would be driving jobs out of Canada. It just does not make sense. We do this really well. Canada is not the problem. We should not be getting punished because the government really has not thought this through.

Let us take a look at the competitiveness issue. No matter what, if we are not manufacturing plastics here in this country, we are still going to have to use them. I know the Prime Minister does not really talk about monetary policy, and he does not really think about it, but other MPs in the House have to. We really have to look after our communities that are going to be hit really hard, for example, this winter, so let us take a step back here and allow the legislation to go to committee, because having these plastic bans, sometimes, sounds good, and the Liberals like things that sound really good. However, the bans may have a negative effect on the environment, because we would have to substitute different products.

Maybe I could talk about how this is starting to happen and affect everyday people. I took my mom out for dinner last night. She is 94 years old. One of the places she loves to go is Swiss Chalet, so we had a drink. Instead of a plastic straw, we got one of these paper straws, and I will just go into a bit of statistical analysis here. We go into this restaurant, and instead of a plastic straw, which takes 39 kilojoules of energy to make and emits 1.5 grams of carbon dioxide in its life cycle, we now have a paper straw that takes 96 kilojoules of energy to make and emits 4.1 grams of CO2 over its life cycle, so the problem with a lot of these Liberal policies is that they sound good, but they really are going in the wrong direction.

I would like to continue. I know I am running out of time, but I welcome questions from my colleagues.

[Remembrance Day, November 2nd, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, next week is Veterans' Week and on Friday, November 11, we will finally be able to meet in person to honour our veterans at Memorial Park in downtown Oshawa. Hundreds of my friends and neighbours will be in attendance as we get back to our regular services.

I want to thank my local Royal Canadian Legion branches 43 and 637, our military service clubs and the City of Oshawa for their coordinated efforts in organizing this year's ceremony.

I can proudly say that, in Oshawa, Remembrance Day is like none other across Canada. We welcome all to join us for this spectacular event as we will even have tanks on parade from our very own Ontario Regiment Museum.

This is the time we stand together, humbled, and reflect upon the sacrifices of those who laid down their lives so that we can live free. As we know, freedom is not free.

I am thankful for the work of our great community leaders in organizing this ceremony, and I look forward to paying my respects.

Lest we forget.

[Strengthening Environmental Protection for a Healthier Canada Act, October 24th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from the Green Party for her speech. I want to get her input on the idea of competitiveness.

She knows I come from a community that does a lot of manufacturing with plastics. We try to make cars lighter and integrate it into the manufacturing. My concern is the way plastics are being treated in this bill. Inadvertently, we may be driving the pollution to other parts of the world.

For example, I brought up that 93% of the plastic going into the oceans is from 10 rivers, and none of them is in Canada. There is the Yangtze River in China, for example.

The carbon footprint for the lifetime of a plastic straw is about 1.5 grams, whereas for a paper straw it is 4.1 grams. We are putting in these policies that may affect our competitiveness here in North America.

What is the member's advice to make sure we do not have that pollution leakage to other parts of the world, like China, because of our policies being too strong or different here?

[Strengthening Environmental Protection for a Healthier Canada Act, October 24th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, my question has to do with the plastic industry, and my concern is with the virtue signalling of this government.

For example, 93% of the plastics that are going into the ocean come from 10 rivers, and none of them are in Canada. However, we are moving to paper straws, for example, from plastic straws. Now, the life cycle of a plastic straw is 1.5 grams of CO2 compared to the paper one, which is 4.1 grams of CO2. There maybe a well-meaning purpose here, but the government is not looking at the science.

Could the member comment on the virtue signalling versus the concrete action that needs to be done for Canada with the bill before us?

[Petitions, October 24th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, I am tabling a petition today in support of Bill S-223, a bill that seeks to combat forced organ harvesting and trafficking. This bill has been before the House in various forms for approaching 15 years now. The bill was supposed to be considered at a meeting of the foreign affairs committee happening right now, but the meeting was cancelled at the last minute without consultation by the committee chair.

The petitioners want to see Bill S-223 passed as soon as possible.

[Committees of the House, October 24th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, I want to take this opportunity to sincerely thank my colleague for bringing this issue forward, because he is giving the Liberal cabinet an opportunity to stand up for a group that is being systematically traumatized by the act of forced organ removal. It is something that disgusts everyone in this House, and we have voted on it in the past.

I wonder why the member thinks it is taking so long for the Liberal cabinet to embrace this issue and start implementing some things we could do quite simply here in the House that would make a real difference for Uighurs around the world.