Francis Scarpaleggia

[Strengthening Environmental Protection for a Healthier Canada Act, October 19th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, I have a great deal of respect for the member. I had the pleasure of listening to one of her speeches during a Conservative Party opposition day. She delivered a magnificent speech on pricing pollution.

Honestly, I would rather that we not open the Canadian Constitution. The member may want to see the Constitution reopened and constitutional discussions, but I remember constitutional discussions and I would like to stay away from that sort of idea.

[Strengthening Environmental Protection for a Healthier Canada Act, October 19th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, that is an interesting question. I would assume that there would have to be some kind of triaging system. One could ask the government to assess a substance that is totally harmless, so I think there would have to be some funnelling.

However, the government has been assessing chemicals for a long time. This bill goes back to 1988, and I believe we have a lot of expertise in the government on the assessment of toxic substances. I have faith that the government will be able to act on this particular provision, but it is a point that I look forward to discussing. It is a good question and, in fact, I would like to see that question addressed to government departmental officials.

[Strengthening Environmental Protection for a Healthier Canada Act, October 19th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to participate in this debate. Before I get into the substance of Bill S‑5, I would like to share a brief history of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, and before I do that, I want to talk about the harmful effects of pollution on human health and emphasize how crucial it is to keep enforcing tough regulations to minimize pollution.

In 2017, The Lancet commission on pollution and health concluded that pollution is the greatest environmental risk factor for disease and premature death worldwide. An update to the original report published in 2017 was recently released. It finds that pollution is still responsible for a staggering nine million premature deaths per year, which is one in six deaths worldwide. These nine million pollution-related deaths each year are nearly 50% higher than all deaths worldwide attributable to COVID‑19 to date. They are also higher than all deaths in 2019 attributable to war, terrorism, AIDS, TB, malaria, and drug and alcohol use combined. Air pollution is the largest contributor to pollution-related deaths, accounting for 6.67 million total deaths.

I would like to go back to the Constitution of 1867 and remind everyone that there is no reference to the environment in terms of the division of powers between the federal and provincial governments. I would presume that if the fathers of Confederation were here with us and we used the term “environment”, a question mark would appear over each of their heads. Of course the Constitution talks about forests and fisheries, but purely from the perspective of resource development, not from the perspective of resource protection.

The division of powers in environmental matters is not a static thing. It is a result of court rulings or the product of case law. That case law does not grant sole responsibility to any one level of government. In other words, the environment is a shared jurisdiction.

At this point, I would like to talk about the well-known Hydro-Québec case, when the Supreme Court decided that the federal government did indeed have the right to legislate on the regulation of toxic substances under criminal law. In this case, Hydro-Québec, a Crown corporation, was charged with dumping polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, into the Saint-Maurice River in the early 1990s under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.

In its arguments, the Crown corporation stated that the regulation of toxic substances did not fall under criminal law and that the federal government was using criminal law as a pretext, or colourable device, to infringe on provincial jurisdiction. In a rather close five to four decision, Justices La Forest, L'Heureux-Dubé, Gonthier, Cory and McLachlin said, and I quote:

The protection of the environment, through prohibitions against toxic substances, constitutes a wholly legitimate public objective in the exercise of the criminal law power.... The legitimate use of the criminal law in no way constitutes an encroachment on provincial legislative power, though it may affect matters falling within the latter's ambit.... The use of the federal criminal law power in no way precludes the provinces from exercising their extensive powers under s. 92 to regulate and control the pollution of the environment either independently or in co-operation with federal action.

In other words, the Canadian Environmental Protection Act is a cornerstone that is rooted in our criminal law. It is serious business. Anyone who says that the act is not robust or strong is minimizing the powers enshrined in the act.

What does Bill S-5 do? No doubt it has been mentioned in other speeches, but it does the following: It recognizes the right to a healthy environment. This is something that many constituents have written to me about. They are asking for this bill to incorporate it. It also confirms the government's commitment to implementing the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The bill recognizes the importance of minimizing the risk to vulnerable populations, namely children and those who live in high pollution areas. Very importantly, it requires that cumulative effects, that is, how chemicals interact with each other, be considered in substance risk assessments. That is not nothing; this is something that is value-added to this legislation.

Of concern also to many of my constituents, the bill seeks to reduce the use of animals in testing the safety of products. Also, Canadians would be able to request that specific substances be assessed outside the government's particular assessment priorities. There is a role for citizens in this bill and that is in regard to the role and right to request that specific substances be assessed.

Let us go back a bit in the history of CEPA. Let us go back to 1999. The first update to CEPA was in 1999. I remember that very well because I was working on the Hill as a political staffer and the MP I worked for was the parliamentary secretary to the minister of the environment. There were lengthy consultations with stakeholders on how to amend the bill. The committee hearings were quite extensive and involved.

CEPA, 1999 incorporated for the first time the precautionary principle, which, again, is not nothing. The precautionary principles states:

Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.

I remember there was a lot of debate around that definition of the precautionary principle. No doubt many people would like to see the definition perhaps be a little stronger and maybe not mention the term “cost-effective” as in cost-effective measures. Nonetheless, it is there in the bill.

Also in CEPA, 1999, there was a focus away from managing pollution after it had been created, to preventing pollution in the first place. CEPA, 1999 also included provisions for regulating vehicle emissions which, as we know, the government uses in the battle against climate change.

Finally, CEPA, 1999 established a new, more rigorous and timely approach to assessing whether a substance is or may be considered toxic to the environment or to human health. In the act, toxic is defined as having “an immediate or long-term harmful effect on the environment or its biological diversity” constituting or possibly constituting “a danger to the environment on which life depends” or constituting or possibly constituting a danger “to human life or health”.

Bill S-5, as I understand it, would inject more rigour into the process. Here I quote:

The new regime will retain the risk-based approach in the current Act. For substances assessed as meeting the criteria to be considered toxic under CEPA, the amendments would then require that the Ministers give priority to prohibiting activities in relation to said toxic substances of the highest risk. The criteria for substances of the highest risk would be set out in regulations, and would include persistence and bioaccumulation as well as criteria for such things as carcinogenicity, mutagenicity, and reproductive toxicity. These regulations will be developed in consultation with stakeholders.

We are talking about a bill, and this is a complex area. Clearly, regulations will be required. One cannot put everything in the bill. Much of the detail will have to be contained in regulations.

Another interesting fact about Bill S-5 is that the bill, if it is passed and I assume it will be, would require the Minister of Environment and Climate Change to publish and maintain a watch-list. This is something new. By watch-list, we mean a list of substances that have been determined to be capable of becoming toxic under CEPA. We are not just talking about substances that are determined to be toxic, but those that could be determined, after study, to become toxic, if, for example, exposure is increased. The watch-list would help importers, manufacturers and Canadian consumers to select safer alternatives and avoid regrettable substitutions.

Another interesting fact about CEPA, which I do not think has really been talked about too much is that CEPA is relevant in the context of the fight against climate change. When we talk about the measures to battle greenhouse gas emissions, we refer a lot to the price on carbon, the price on pollution, but we do not really focus on CEPA.

I was elected and already sitting in the House in 2005, and I remember that the government of Paul Martin added greenhouse gas emissions to CEPA, 1999, namely those emissions from large industrial emitters, citing the “worldwide scientific consensus that there is sufficient and compelling evidence to conclude that greenhouse gases constitute or may constitute a danger to the environment on which life depends.”

This was almost 20 years ago. Even back then the Liberal government had the foresight to understand that climate change was a real and growing problem and made amendments to CEPA, 1999 to give itself the leverage, the power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. I do not recall the Conservatives being thrilled with this change at the time, although today they happily preach the regulatory route to supporting clean technologies as the preferred alternative to putting a price on carbon.

It has been mentioned and talked about even today in this debate that one of the major steps forward through Bill S-5 is the introduction of the right to a healthy environment. I will read the new section 5.1(1) of Bill S-5, which says:

For the purposes of paragraph 2(1)‍(a.‍2), the Ministers shall, within two years after the day on which this section comes into force, develop an implementation framework to set out how the right to a healthy environment will be considered in the administration of this Act.

I will come back to this in a moment.

There is another very important aspect of Bill S-5 which should not be minimized. It has been mentioned; the member for Victoria touched on it. The bill seeks to minimize risks to the health of vulnerable populations. By vulnerable population, we mean “a group of individuals within the Canadian population who, due to greater susceptibility or greater exposure, may be at an increased risk of experiencing adverse health effects from exposure to substances.”

Those with greater susceptibility may include, for example, children and those in poor health. Those with greater exposure may include workers and those living in areas where levels of pollution are particularly high.

In addition, the new law would require that the government conduct research and studies, including biomonitoring surveys specifically in relation to the role of substances in illnesses or in health problems which may relate to vulnerable populations.

This is where Bill S-5 intersects with Bill C-226, which in this Parliament is being sponsored by the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands, but was first introduced by the member for Cumberland—Colchester in the last Parliament. It has been referred to as the bill on environmental racism.

Bill C-226 is identical, except for a couple of grammatical changes and some wording, to the bill that came out of the environment committee before the last election. This bill goes a bit further than Bill S-5 in being very proactive and prescriptive in engaging with vulnerable populations on the risks they face.

For example, Bill C-226 requires the minister to develop a national strategy to promote efforts across Canada to advance environmental justice, and to assess, prevent and address environmental racism.

The bill requires that this strategy include a study that includes an examination of the link between race, socio-economic status and environmental risk, information and statistics relating to the location of environmental hazards. It must include measures that can be taken to advance environmental justice and assess, prevent and address environmental racism and that may include possible amendments to federal laws, policies and programs, the involvement of community groups in environmental decision-making, and lastly, the collection of information and statistics relating to health outcomes in communities located in proximity to environmental hazards.

In an effort to leverage the new right to a healthy environment and the protection of vulnerable populations, it has been suggested that Bill S-5 be amended to require that the minister specify what actions the government will take when ever a substance for which an ambient air quality standard has been established, when the average ambient concentration of such a substance in a geographic area exceeds the standard.

I think this is very important. I think it was alluded to by the member for Victoria. Going back to the beginning of my speech, this is where pollution really impacts human health. It is often through air pollution. Many are calling for an amendment to the bill that would require the government to develop actions whenever it is determined that the ambient air quality in a particular area is above standard.

I understand there are some federal and provincial jurisdictional issues around doing this, but I hope it is something that the committee will explore with expert witnesses and perhaps an amendment will be introduced to this effect.

This connects to another issue that I received a lot of mail about in the last few years. The bill seeks to reduce reliance on animal testing. I have many constituents who have written to me in relation to animal testing for cosmetic product development. They have written to me saying that we have to stop this. In fact, the bill opens the door to minimizing the use of animal testing. The Senate made some amendments to make that part of the bill even stronger.

I have met with stakeholders, particularly animal rights groups like the Animal Justice Canada, Humane Canada and the Humane Society International/Canada. They have recommended strengthening this part of the bill even more. The Senate amendment talks about refining the use of animal testing, but that leaves the door open a little too wide according to those I have met with.

[Committees of the House, October 18th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, it is an interesting idea, and I look forward to following the debate. I am sure the government is quite open-minded to all kinds of proposals that will provide proper sanction to those who deserve it.

[Committees of the House, October 18th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, that is a good question. I am not intimately familiar with the Magnitsky act and the difference between that approach and the approach the government is taking.

My sense, being on the government side, is that the government is looking for the most effective way of going about sanctioning individuals who deserve these sanctions. My sense also with the government is that it is always open to improving its approach, and it has shown this in the last few years. When something is not working as well as it could, it will try a different approach.

I am sorry that I cannot address the finer point of the member's question.

[Committees of the House, October 18th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, that is a deep question and it is not unusual for my colleague to really plumb the depths of an issue.

Democracy is hard work. Sometimes people come to see me out of frustration. There are many good causes of frustration today, and there always have been really throughout history, but people ask me why the government cannot just does this or that and why it takes so long. I have to explain that, yes, I guess a corporation can make a quick decision and if it is the wrong decision, it will pay in terms of lost sales and lost profits, so on and so forth, but governments are not corporations. Governments need to build consensus, and that is done through debate.

Debate is long and sometimes arduous. We have to listen to points of view that we do not necessarily agree with and many people need to be consulted, many stakeholders. The objective is to come through with a consensus that people can buy into so that we can move forward, but it is hard work and we see it here in this House and in committees every day.

[Committees of the House, October 18th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, with Gazprom and the turbines, it has been said in the House that we did not want to give Vladimir Putin an excuse. That is as a pretext to say that we were making the situation worse.

On another point, yes, we have to take difficult decisions, but there are going to be cases where we have to make some judgments. Does creating a complete energy crisis in Germany advance the goal of peace? I am not so sure it does.

These are decisions, obviously, that the government has to make. They have to be debated around the cabinet table. I have no doubt whatsoever about the proper intent of the government, but it had to make a difficult decision and it looks like it made the right one.

[Committees of the House, October 18th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, the hon. member's question is a very good one. I do not think that there is a coordinated solution globally. Each freedom-loving country, each democratic country, has to take this problem, this dissemination of misinformation, very seriously.

Things have changed. It used to be that we could have erroneous opinions and we could write them and send them in to the letters to the editor of a publication, but one's opinions were not being torqued through the use of algorithms and so on. We need to look at that as a national government. I think all national governments should be looking at that and trying to minimize the spread of patently false information. Again, on a national scale and on a more local scale, digital literacy has to be a priority in our schools.

[Committees of the House, October 18th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak to this motion, though my reason for being in the House this morning was to get up and speak to Bill S-5. There will be time for that, obviously, a little later on.

I have been listening intently to the words of all members in the House, and it is obvious that all of us, all Canadians, are profoundly scandalized by the war crimes that we have witnessed through the news. We are scandalized by the disregard for the international order that has been displayed by Vladimir Putin and those who are working with him to carry on this illegal invasion of a peace-loving country that seeks only democracy and freedom.

We are all profoundly scandalized by what is going on. We live here in a free land. We live in a land that is essentially free of violence, and it is certainly free of persecution. While we understand and are repelled by what is going on, we are really seeing it through the intermediary of the news, of the TV news and of the newspapers that we read. I cannot imagine what it must be like to be living in a war zone.

I know that when President Zelenskyy spoke to us a few months ago, he tried to bring it home to us by asking us to reflect on what it would be like if we were living in downtown Toronto, like many MPs here live in downtown Toronto, and one morning we woke to the sound of bombardment bringing down structures as iconic as the CN Tower and whatnot.

He asked us to reflect on what that would be like. How would we explain that to our children, who would be completely perplexed and puzzled and fearful? I think that was a very important approach that President Zelenskyy employed to make us try to understand what it is like on the ground. I do not think we really can, but we are seeking to understand, and even though we are not on the ground, we are no less disgusted and repelled by what Vladimir Putin has done.

My generation never thought we would ever see another war in Europe. We thought that the First World War and the Second World War had driven home the point that conflict can lead only to mass suffering and destruction and all kinds of economic and human pain. We never thought we would see the day, but obviously this has taught us all, in some way, a lesson, a lesson that I think veterans understand.

I know we are approaching Remembrance Day and we go to Remembrance Day events and reflect on the past and on past sacrifices. We underscore the sacrifice of those who fought for liberty, but somehow we always think that this was something from the past, which it was, but also that it was something that would never recur, at least not in a European context.

I was reflecting on Remembrance Day just the other day, because it is coming up and we will all be asked, most likely, to speak at ceremonies. I was thinking about how the context of this year is so different, because we will not be thinking just of past sacrifices; we will not be thinking just of all that veterans have done to protect our freedom and our democracy. I think we will look at their message in a different light. Yes, there is the sacrifice, but the veterans are also sending us a message.

They are saying that they understand something that maybe not everyone understands for not having been through war, that authoritarianism has not disappeared. The impulse toward authoritarianism has not disappeared. Authoritarianism can raise its ugly head very quickly, even in Europe and even though we never thought we would ever see that day. I think there is a special, additional meaning to Remembrance Day this year, which is that we have to be on guard against authoritarianism.

We should be grateful that there are many courageous individuals who volunteer for the armed forces, knowing that they are making sacrifices just by being in the armed forces but also that they may be called upon to make great sacrifices at times of conflict. As we know, our Canadian military is helping out over in Europe, offering training to Ukrainians.

The thing about authoritarianism is that it can be defeated through military action. We saw that in World War II. The military action of the allies was particularly effective. However, there is another element that is required to defeat authoritarianism, and that is dissidence from within. I marvel at those who stand up to authoritarian regimes, whether it be in Iran or those who are protesting in Moscow and no doubt throughout Russia. I do not know what it means to fear that what I say would provoke a violent reaction against me and my family.

We all get up and say things about other members. We criticize their positions and we even use a little humour sometimes to put down the point of view of the other, but we never walk out of this place thinking we are the target for somebody now. This is true of our entire society. We can stand up to political leaders, and people do it all the time. We can mock political leaders and we can satirize political leaders, and so on and so forth, without ever having any fear of retribution. This is something that should be underscored, because there are people putting their lives on the line to stand up to people like Vladimir Putin and to stand up to the Iranian regime, knowing that they could wind up behind bars in what I would say are some very awful conditions that would be foreign to incarceration in our own country.

It is very important that we salute the dissidents. As I think of dissidents, many in the House are probably too young to remember the stature that a dissident like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn had all over the world, but especially in North America. I remember how former President Carter and his wife, Rosalynn Carter, embraced Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and his cause, and how he had the courage to write things that Soviet authorities were not too pleased with, and he paid the price.

This is someone who was actually in the military himself. He was a military person who had fought in the war, but he saw certain things that he did not agree with and he wrote about them in an eloquent manner, and in a voluminous manner. His books were very large tomes, whether we are talking about about the Gulag Archipelago or others, like Cancer Ward. The west stood up for him.

It is very important that we stand up, not only that we stand up against Vladimir Putin's military machine, but that we stand up for dissidents and that we do so through the sanctions that we apply and that keep coming. I would like to underscore that fact. We have imposed sanctions on oligarchs, on members of the Putin regime, but they have been successive. They have not stopped after one round of sanctions. The foreign affairs minister has announced multiple rounds of sanctions, and I suspect there are many more rounds to come. We have done the same against the brutal authoritarian dictatorship in Iran.

We need to stand up for the dissidents, and one way of doing so is through sanctions. I would like to say how fortunate our government is, not just the government but Parliament is, our country is, to have as an adviser someone whom I and the member for Winnipeg North sat with in this House, the Hon. Irwin Cotler. He devoted his life to standing up for persecuted dissidents, specifically but not exclusively by any means, in the Soviet Union.

To know that there is wisdom being communicated from the Hon. Irwin Cotler to this Parliament and to this government personally reassures me as a parliamentarian and also as a Canadian. We are very fortunate to have someone like Irwin Cotler providing his perspective and his advice on how we can support dissidents and how we can stand up to Vladimir Putin.

As a matter of fact, if I recall, so courageous was Irwin Cotler that he went to Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union, and I believe he was poisoned while he was there. I do not know if that was the official news or headline, but I remember him saying that something was happening, that he was not feeling well and that it was not just the garden variety of food poisoning. I do not know more about that situation, but I seem to recall hearing or reading about it. We are very fortunate to have the Hon. Irwin Cotler who, of course, has been an advocate for the Magnitsky Law and so on.

However, I think Canada is doing its part by supporting Ukraine militarily, but it is also doing its part by targeting those who would be part of the machines, mechanisms or apparatus of repression that are targeting, no doubt, dissidents in both Russia and Iran.

With that, I will now take questions as best I can on a very difficult topic.

[Committees of the House, October 18th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, the government introduced the bill in the Senate because there was room in the Senate, whereas the agenda here was a bit more gridlocked. That shows that we were very much interested in expediting the bill.

My second question to the member is whether it is possible that the Conservatives do not want to get to CEPA because CEPA is used to regulate greenhouse gases and vehicle emissions.