David McGuinty

[Environmental Enforcement Act, May 12th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, in the last Parliament, we struck a special legislative committee to deal with the government's then proposed clean air act. Three opposition parties came together and worked long and feverishly. We invested wholly and greatly in improving that framework act. It was renamed the clean air and climate change act. We ended up internalizing a previous plan released by the official opposition called the carbon budget for Canada, in which we proposed the cap and trade system, pricing carbon gradually, a green investment bank and so on and so forth. It became the architecture. My colleague will recall that because he sat with me through long hours of sittings to ensure this was right for the country.

What did the Prime Minister do when he was backed into a corner? He did the same thing he did just months ago. He prorogued Parliament. He pulled the plug. He used the ultimate tool to stop the work of the House of Commons in order to block a comprehensive response to the climate change challenge. I have no confidence left in the government's serious willingness to move forward on this issue.

[Environmental Enforcement Act, May 12th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to pick up precisely where we just left off. This is an important debate about the environmental regime in the country.

I would like first though, to go back and congratulate all of those hundreds of Canadian government officials, the lawyers at Justice Canada, all the witnesses who appeared and brought their wisdom and their experience to bear on this bill, a new environmental enforcement bill for the country.

I would like to pick up on something else I just mentioned to the parliamentary secretary. In response to his claim that the government is not whittling down environmental assessment standards, he said that it is all about the need to streamline. Maybe I could paraphrase for government members who are listening. Maybe what the parliamentary secretary meant to say is that it is all about eliminating red tape, or worse, maybe it is about eliminating green tape.

That is very interesting because that is the typical ideological spin that comes from far-right regimes that claim to be in favour of the free action of the free market. They believe their job is to remove impediments from the free market. That has been the mantra and the spin of successive far-right governments.

It certainly was the mantra of the previous Ontario government that led Ontario into almost economic ruin. It would not be surprising for Canadians to conclude that that mantra still resonates inside the current government's cabinet, given that five key ministers in the government were part of the Harris regime which set my home province of Ontario on fire. It was the same mantra we heard then, but here is the problem. There is not a single shred of evidence to substantiate the government's claim that there is a need to whittle down environmental assessment, which is linked to environmental enforcement whether the government likes it or not. There is not a single shred of evidence to link that whittling down of standards to its need and our collective need to invest in stimulus projects across the country. Nothing has been put forward by the government.

The real problem with this is that we have a Minister of the Environment who is trying to put drapes in the window by saying that the Conservatives are going to get tough on environmental crime, which again is part of the ideological spin of a typical far-right regime, while at the same, with his left hand, in the dead of night, without consultation, without parliamentary debate, without it coming to committee, he is actually issuing backgrounders and he is whittling the regulations on environmental assessment that are here for all Canadians to read and know.

It is really important to link these environmental assessment changes to the environmental enforcement bill because the two intersect and they are critical to drive up our environmental standards.

Let us take a look at what the Conservatives are doing here on environmental assessment.

As I mentioned, the Conservatives are bringing in regulatory changes, not through a House of Commons debate and not through a committee debate, but surreptitiously, in the dead of night, they are issuing new regulatory standards which will do the following. Effectively, from now until March 31, 2011, virtually every single project in this country that is subject to a federal environmental assessment that is worth $10 million or less, and $10 million is a very big project in the majority of Canadian municipalities, townships and towns, will no longer be subject to federal environmental assessment.

I understand that Mr. Mulroney is testifying down the hall on another matter. However, I suspect that if he found out that this new regime, this far-right Reform, Republican, Conservative regime was undermining the very environmental assessment that Brian Mulroney brought into this country in 1992, he would be displeased, I am sure. At best, he would be displeased.

The Conservatives are saying that where the sensitive area is protected by the federal government, the total cost for the project must be less than $10 million and measures must be in place to protect the area in order to be excluded. What measures? Set out by whom? By what department? By the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency? By the proponents? By a waste management company? By a municipality? By whom? What measures?

Then the Conservatives proudly herald in their news release that on as many as 2,000 infrastructure projects over two years, that is, 1,000 projects a year, as if they are going to move 1,000 stimulus projects a year through this Parliament, through the government, will no longer need an environmental assessment. They herald this proudly. Ninety per cent of environmental assessments for these types of projects will no longer have to be completed. Two thousand projects over two years will be exempted from the requirement for federal environmental assessment as a result of the government's regulation. Are the Conservatives serious?

It is unbelievable. It is actually more unbelievable because they are heralding this as progress. I am sure Mr. Mulroney, Mr. McMillan and real Progressive Conservative governments would have a lot to say about this.

It goes much further. They actually say that the federal environmental assessment process can be substituted by provincial environmental assessment regimes and processes.

Well, I checked into that too. It turns out that not a single province has an agreement with the federal government to allow for its EA processes to take the place of a federal one. Furthermore, evidence provided by the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency tells us that if we substitute a provincial environmental assessment for a federal one, it is not actually catching all of the requirements under a federal EA regime.

Number one, provinces do not agree with this. Number two, it does not catch all the federal environmental assessment requirements. Number three, there is no agreement with any province anywhere. In fact, in the federal-provincial meeting where this was tangentially mentioned, there was not even a reference to this in the news release. It did not form part of any kind of communiqué. It was nowhere to be seen.

There was no discussion, no agreement, no substitutability and no identical substitutability. Then it goes further. The minister and his government say that the public have to have access to documents and they have to be able to participate if it is a provincial regime. If the provincial environmental assessment regime is kicking in and is substitutable for the federal one, the public must have access to documents and members of the public must be able to participate.

There is a problem with that. First, the Minister of the Environment allowed amendments to the Navigable Waters Protection Act to be inserted into a budget implementation bill as one of nine poison bills because he knew he could not get them through the front door of Parliament. What is really going on here is under the Navigable Waters Protection Act the minister is given unfettered discretion to decide whether environmental assessments should or should not occur. There is no conditionality attached around the public having to have access to documents. There is no conditionality here about the public having to participate. What is it going to be? There is absolutely no coherence in these changes that are being brought here for the environmental assessment regime in Canada, and it links directly to this question of environmental enforcement.

What the government gives with its right hand, it is taking away with its left. It is taking away with a left hand that is incoherent in between the EA changes and the Navigable Waters Protection Act.

The Conservatives say that they are going to consider a comprehensive reform of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act by 2011. I am not sure what that means. They go on to say, as I said earlier, it is 2,000 infrastructure projects that will no longer be caught. That could apply to all kinds of wonderful projects. Let me give Canadians an opportunity to understand exactly what kinds of projects will no longer be environmentally assessed by these federal Reform Conservatives.

For example, on modifying a municipal or community building for energy efficiency, an environmental assessment is not required. On modifying a municipal or community building, an EA is not required. On putting in public transit under $10 million, and supporting structures, an environmental assessment not required. On modifying a municipal or community facility for collecting, processing, diverting, treating or disposing of solid waste, an environmental assessment is not required. Imagine that, for the vast majority of landfills in Canada worth $10 million or less as projects, no more environmental assessments are required.

It goes on. If it has to deal with, for example, setting up residential, institutional or other accommodations, no environmental assessment is required. For meeting rooms, hotels and related facilities, no environmental assessment is required. For hospitals and emergency facilities, no environmental assessment is needed. For schools, universities, colleges, banks, financial services and information facilities, no environmental assessment is needed. For cultural, heritage, artistic, tourism facilities and services, no environmental assessment is required. For setting up an ecotourism system or a waste management system worth less than $10 million, no environmental assessment is needed.

For municipal parking garages worth less than $10 million, no environmental assessment is required. No environmental assessment is required for artistic, cultural and sporting facilities, and the list goes on and on. But it gets worse. Public transit facilities are no longer subject to an environmental assessment, as long as the facility is more than 250 metres away from an environmentally sensitive area. No environmental assessment is needed for a $10 million public transit addition, for example, in a small city or municipality in Canada. If we are installing, operating, expanding or modifying a rapid transit bus system, as long as it is not closer than 250 metres to an environmentally sensitive area, no environmental assessment is required. If we are modifying or expanding a public transit or railway system, no environmental assessment is needed. It goes on and on.

It is very unfortunate. It is something that we intend to continue raising here on behalf of all Canadians and on behalf of all cities and municipalities, and all proponents of projects. We know there is a link between enhanced enforcement, and a link between environmental assessment and standards that will drive up our competitiveness in this international carbon constrained marketplace that we are hurtling toward at breakneck speed.

My second theme today has to deal with how the commissioner's report applies to the question of environmental enforcement. It is a very fascinating read. Canadians should read it on the website. They should examine it. They should take a look at what has been going on for three and a half years on environmental enforcement on the climate change side and on the fish habitat side.

Let us turn to climate change first. That is a fascinating read. It tells us exactly what we have been saying for three and a half years to the government with respect to its third, second and first climate change plans. First of all, the environment commissioner and the Auditor General of Canada said that Environment Canada could not demonstrate that the emission reductions expected were based on an adequate rationale. The climate change plans overstate the reductions deliberately. They overstate the reductions that can be expected from the government's own plan.

I am wondering if that means the government is ignorant of its own potential targets. Is it ignorant with respect to whether the plan can achieve those targets, or is it deliberately misleading Canadians by saying we are going to achieve more reductions than we actually can?

This is linked to environmental enforcement. If we are not going to be environmentally enforcing the most important and pressing concern of the century, if not the millennia, which is the climate change crisis, what would it apply to? The Conservatives cannot provide a rationale. They are overstating the reductions. The third point the Auditor General's office is making is that the Conservatives' plans are not transparent. They do not disclose how they expect reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to be affected by future economic conditions.

Why is that important? It is important because the government now, as we move to deal with the NDP's bill on climate change, Bill C-311, is demanding that it be costed. The Conservatives are saying that private members' bills now must be costed. The problem is that they have not costed their own plan. That is what the commissioner is telling us. How can we move to environmentally enforce a plan that the Conservatives themselves have not costed?

“It has no system”, the Auditor General goes on to say, “for reporting the actual emission reductions achieved from the measures in the annual climate change plan that this party, this official opposition, forced on the government to hold it accountable through the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act”.

The real kicker, and the really problematic part of the commissioner's report today is the following. I need to read this to be absolutely accurate. It states, “However, in the plans prepared to date”, the report says, “the department has not explained why expected emission reductions can be estimated in advance”--as the Conservatives keep telling us, for example, about 20% cuts by 2020, using intensity targets--“but the actual reductions cannot be measured after the fact for individual measures”. Something needs to give here in terms of environmental enforcement.

On the climate change front, we have heard enough now to conclude, Canadians must conclude, the commissioner is telling them to conclude and the Auditor General is telling them to conclude, that the climate change plan being put forward by the government is a fraud. Every time we raise questions about it, only one response is given by the ministers and the Prime Minister, which is that they are dialoguing with the American administration, as if it started in 2009.

We know that the energy dialogue was launched between Canada, the United States and Mexico in 2001. In 2006, when the government was elected, it wiped the slate clean because everything that came before was bad in Conservative speak and everything that came after was good. Therefore, it cancelled five years of dialogue and rebooted it in 2009 as an announcement when President Obama was here. However, Canadians will not be fooled. They know this is not a climate change plan.

I now turn to the question of environmental enforcement when it comes to protecting our fish habitat. Fish habitat, one might say, is not too important and maybe it is something that is tangential but not quite. The commercial fishing sector in 2005 generated $2.2 billion in economic activity and it employed more than 80,000 people in fishing and fish processing activities. More than 3.2 million Canadians participate in recreational fishing which contributed in 2005 some $7.5 billion to Canada's economy.

Now that we know the context in which we are talking here, the magnitude of the economic opportunities, let us talk about what is happening with environmental enforcement here.

First, the conclusion is that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans is not cooperating in any meaningful way with Environment Canada.

Second, with respect to the state of fish habitat in our freshwaters, our lakes and our rivers, we have no idea whatsoever about the current state of Canada's fish habitat. We have no measurement and no data. We have nothing. Now one would assume, given the magnitude of that economic opportunity inherent in our freshwater fisheries and in recreational fishing, leaving aside the huge costs associated, for example, with a collapse like the cod fishery, that the government would be investing more in science, more in tracking and more in monitoring. However, not quite. We found out today that the government's budget is cutting scientific and monitoring support for the very habitats we should be looking to first, quantify, and second, move to manage because we cannot manage that which we do not measure.

On that note, I would conclude by imploring the government, now that it has delivered up an environmental enforcement bill that began under a previous Liberal regime and amends nine acts, which were brought in by previous Liberal governments, to make a decision on what it wants to do. It needs to make coherent the environmental assessment regime, which is weakening, the environmental enforcement regime, which we are working collectively on to strengthen, and decide whether we are going in one direction or in two directions. This dichotomy cannot stand and I ask the government to turn its attention to making the entire system more coherent.

[Environmental Enforcement Act, May 12th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to go back to where we left off before question period and return to the line of questioning of the parliamentary secretary about the whittling down of environmental assessment standards and the government's environmental enforcement bill.

His answer was that there was so much stimulus money to shovel out the door that it required that environmental assessment be weakened in the country.

Here is the problem. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities, as was referred to by at least one cabinet minister during answers in question period, has already approved $13 billion worth of shovel ready projects that have already been environmentally assessed, including through federal environmental assessment requirements.

How is it possible that there is a need to drop the standards for environmental assessment in order to shove out stimulus money when there are $13 billion of environmentally assessed projects ready to go?

[Environmental Enforcement Act, May 12th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I congratulate the parliamentary secretary for the tone and civility of his remarks today. This is an example of where the committee worked very well together to build on what has actually been many years of investment in reframing environmental enforcement for the country. It preceded the government's election pledge. I think he would be well advised to admit that and perhaps even support that notion. I think all thanks go to hundreds of justice and other officials who have helped to pull us together.

I have an important question concerning two significant things that have happened recently on the environmental front. One is this environment enforcement bill and the second is the government's decision to make changes to environmental assessment, not only through the Navigable Waters Protection Act where now unfettered discretion has been given to the minister to decide when and when not it will apply, but also new changes that exempt environmental assessment for projects of $10 million or less.

Can he help Canadians understand how, on the one hand, we are driving up enforcement and fining and giving discretion to judges to apply fines in different contexts, while, on the other hand, we are actually reducing the standards for environmental assessment?

[Royal Canadian Mounted Police Superannuation Act, May 12th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I have a quick question on the government's recent decision, which speaks directly to the matter of not only superannuation, but the overall organization of the RCMP, not to permit the RCMP to decide its own future, in terms of organization and personnel coming together to form different possibilities, even to hold a vote in that regard.

Could the member comment and help Canadians understand where that issue might lie and why the government would have opposed it?

[Royal Canadian Mounted Police Superannuation Act, May 12th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I would like to congratulate my colleague for his insightful remarks and for the fact that he was speaking extemporaneously, off the top of his head. Obviously he had a good grasp of the question.

I would like to ask him to expand a bit more on the balance which I think most Canadians want us to achieve here.

He alluded to a number of investments now, which reminds me of the old television advertisement for FRAM oil filters, where a mechanic would say, “You can pay me now for the oil filter”, and the next scene was the vehicle being towed into the garage, where he would say, “Or you can pay me much more for it later”. That reminds me very much of the climate change crisis and addressing it now as opposed to later. I want to come back to the member's central tenet about investing in root causes and the costs of dealing with these challenges up front and the back-end costs later on.

Could the member give us some idea of the balance he is seeking between proper enforcement, proper standards and a proper Criminal Code, and the same kind of approach to being tough on the causes of crime?

[World Press Freedom Day, May 4th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to remind all my colleagues that yesterday was World Press Freedom Day.

The United Nations has declared May 3 to be World Press Freedom Day.

We all know what a fundamental cornerstone of our democratic system a free press represents.

Without strong, independent media, our democratic system simply could not work.

Our citizens need to be informed of what is happening in their world. Without this kind of information, they cannot make informed decisions and cannot fully benefit from living in our society.

Whether in matters of public health—as we are seeing right now with the flu crisis—or to inform the public about decisions made by their government on their behalf, information provided by the media allows everyone to make more informed choices.

Let us take this opportunity together to reflect on the vital, no the indispensable, role of the free press in our society.

[Greenhouse Gas Emissions Trading System for North America, April 30th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I would like to begin by congratulating the member for Beauharnois—Salaberry on her comments and her speech this evening. I would also like to congratulate her on having brought this motion before the House.

This remains an extremely important subject, despite the parliamentary secretary's ridiculous comments about the Conservative government's position and performance over the past three years.

First, Canada led the fight for the inclusion of market mechanisms like a cap and trade system in the Kyoto protocol and the international agreement called the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. It was the Liberal government that fought hard with an American administration before the arrival of the far right Republican movement in Washington, under President Clinton. We fought for the inclusion of this market mechanism because we knew from the experience in the United States, under the U.S. clean air act, that it was less expensive to achieve reductions of greenhouse gases by using a market mechanism like a cap and trade system.

That was the genesis of the reason for all three countries pushing so hard during the negotiations backstopping the Kyoto protocol to include the market mechanism called cap and trade.

As my colleague from Beauharnois—Salaberry said, it is a system that has proven to be successful in achieving reductions of air pollution from coal-fired electrical stations in the United States under the U.S. clean air act.

Therefore, it is important to support the notion of cap and trade. It is important to be prudent with taxpayer money, Canadian industry money and other moneys as we seek the best and most efficient way to reduce greenhouse gases. It is why I am so personally supportive of the notion of a cap and trade system.

It also, as the member who proposed the motion suggests, creates a massive market for carbon trading. I asked the minister in question period this week whether he had any idea how we would capture what Deutsche Bank now describes as the trillion dollar carbon market, which will be up and running planet wide by 2020.

The government has no plan, and it is important for us to step back and be honest about this, so it cannot answer the question about how much we will take in Canada of the global environmental technologies marketplace, which is rapidly increasing, what part we will take of the global carbon market, which is rapidly increasing, while the Germans, Americans, French, Dutch and 10 or 20 other countries rapidly position not just their trading systems and their securities and exchange commissions, but their economies as well to go forward and capture so much of the wealth that is there for us to have.

My colleague is right: the Conservatives do not have a plan. Eleven groups analyzed the proposals. They all said that the targets were not realistic. She was also right in saying that the Conservatives are still going for intensity targets rather than absolute targets.

Intensity targets are completely out of sync with the notion of a cap and trade system. To have a cap and trade system, we need to have a real, hard cap so industry can trade within that cap, know exactly what it can or cannot emit into the atmosphere, trade away surpluses and create the marketplace by putting a value on the right to emit greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

There is no hard cap when one talks the nonsense talk of intensity targets. No matter how many times the Prime Minister stands beside the President of the United States and repeats that intensity targets are fungible and can be connected with real, absolute targets, it is not believable and no one believes it. It is not really responsible for our Prime Minister to speak in that kind of tone. He knows he is not disclosing the reality of the situation.

No other country has abandoned the only international treaty to deal with greenhouse gas emissions and atmospheric concentrations. No other country is pursuing a so-called cap and trade system, using intensity targets. No other country is now so utterly dependent on another country to develop a plan for the climate change crisis. This motion is extremely important, but I fear for the motion because we now completely know that many things are happening beyond the sovereign control of this nation-state called Canada.

It has happened deliberately on the watch of this particular Conservative-Republican regime for historical reasons that we do not have time to get into. However, here is the net effect of three and a half years of pretending and window-dressing that they are dealing with the climate change crisis. Canada will now be taking a price from the United States on how much we will value carbon emissions at. Canada will now be taking its design for a cap and trade system from the United States. I predict the government will be reeled out of the corner like salmon at the end of a fishing line and it will be forced to back away from the nonsensical talk of intensity targets. It will adapt and adopt absolute cuts because it will be forced to do so by an American administration, which is not in line with the particular ideology of the government.

Canadians must remember that for all the time this regime and the Republican administration were in power in Washington, they worked hand in glove to first deny the existence of climate change, then to delay the implementation of a climate change crisis plan and then to deceive the Canadian and American peoples respectively about what they were or were not doing on climate change.

I think I counted the parliamentary secretary saying that we needed to get it right three times. He even quoted his good friend the Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities, who said, “We need to get it right”. Here is the problem. We have had three plans and three ministers in three years. Have they got it right? There is no plan. The Conservatives are running cap in hand to Washington, asking it to provide us cover because they have no domestic plan. They have not prepared our industries. They are going to punish our industries.

It is so bad that the first minister of the environment did not even understand the concept of cap and trade. Then the Minister of Finance was asked point blank in the House whether he knew the carbon market was coming. He did not know what the carbon market was. Then the second minister of the environment said in the House that we could not trade internationally to achieve our greenhouse gas reductions. Then he changed his mind and said that we could trade, but we would cap the percentage of trade. Then he backtracked yet again. He said something else and he was yanked from his position.

Now we have a third minister who is in the United States this week telling the Americans and 16 other nation-states that Canada has an intensity-based cap and trade system. Really? Where is the cap and trade system for Canada? Where are the regulations? What is the price on carbon? Nobody in the government's caucus has an idea because the Conservatives do not even know what this design looks like.

Instead, we have a situation where theMinister of the Environment is skating with the sharpest blades he could possibly put at the bottom of his skates, pretending among the G17, led by the Chinese and Americans today, that Canada is ready to go with a climate change crisis plan.

There is no plan and no price on carbon, but it gets worse. Now we find out, because our domestic market is so small, that a cap and trade system, which would be just exclusive to Canada, would drive the price of carbon through the roof. It would cause so much pain because the market is so small and so liquid. Using the unfortunate words of the Conservative ideological leaders, it would simply increase the price of everything.

What I would like to hear from the government now, instead of nonsense and fairytales, is this. When will we see a price on carbon, what effect will it have on Canadian industries and their competitive practices and how high will the prices of energy in all their forms go?

[Canada Pension Plan, April 30th, 2009]

Get the bonuses back.

[The Environment, April 22nd, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, global investments in environmental technologies reached $155 billion in 2008. Now economists tell us the global carbon market will reach $400 billion in 2012 and exceed $1 trillion by 2020. The U.S. is outpacing Canadian sixfold in green research and development.

Why are the Conservatives not positioning Canada to succeed in this global market and create the tens of thousands of green jobs we desperately need? What do they have against working Canadians?