House of Commons photoWon her last election, in 2011, with 49% of the vote.
Aboriginal Affairs June 5th, 2006
Mr. Speaker, the barricades in Caledonia are still up because the residents of Six Nations feel the federal government is not fulfilling its responsibility. The minister must prove his leadership on first nations issues.
When the minister presents the draft UN declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples to cabinet will he recommend that Canada adopt the declaration?
Forest Industry June 1st, 2006
Mr. Speaker, my riding of Nanaimo--Cowichan has survived and thrived because of the logging industry. Generations of workers made their living from our forests, yet that is changing.
When I drive home, I pass a sign hanging high in the trees that says, “Ban Raw Log Exports”. Since 2001, forest companies have exported over 19 million raw logs from British Columbia and have given pink slips to 17,000 workers. In the Cowichan Valley, the Youbou Timberless Society has counted a hundred loaded logging trucks leaving the valley daily.
Exporting raw logs exports jobs. Mills are closing all over Vancouver Island.
The workers are not going to sit back and let this happen. They are consulting with everyone the government will not talk to. First nations, environmental groups, and labour and industry representatives have formed the forest solutions coalition to develop a long term plan to have the forest managed by local communities and first nations.
I support the work of the coalition and encourage the government to adopt its ideas as a solution to the crisis the logging industry faces today.
Criminal Code May 29th, 2006
Mr. Speaker, I was interested in the hon. member's comment about justification and I want to go back to a Canadian Criminal Law Review. In volume 8, 2004, the reviewer spoke about the fact that because of the relatively recent introduction of conditional sentencing, there were actually very few academic studies that have been done around the impact on the criminal justice system. The article goes on to indicate that there is a real lack of sentencing statistics in Canada, even with the adult criminal court survey of Statistics Canada.
I would like to ask the member, what additional kind of information is critical for members here to examine before making such a radical change as is being proposed with this conditional sentencing bill?
Aboriginal Affairs May 17th, 2006
Mr. Speaker, without last year's NDP budget the Conservatives would have only committed $450 million to aboriginal peoples over two years, not the $1.15 billion that the minister is fond of bragging about.
The Auditor General's report shows that Conservative promises are not nearly enough to reduce the gaps in the standard of living for first nations, Inuit and Métis. Will the minister commit to implementing every single recommendation in the Auditor General's report for first nations programs immediately?
Aboriginal Affairs May 17th, 2006
Mr. Speaker, the Auditor General said yesterday that no federal organization has taken responsibility for assessing the extent of the insidious mould problem on reserves and no one is developing a comprehensive strategy to address it. This is a serious health and safety issue for first nations.
Which of those ministers will take responsibility for this disaster and ensure the resources are available to deal with this problem?
Business of Supply May 16th, 2006
Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for his very good question and support. Coming from municipal backgrounds, we have always been conscious when senior levels of government start to impose their will. However, in this particular case the federal government has a very clear and well defined role on approving pesticides.
It is the government's responsibility to determine the safety of a product and it falls within its purview to do that. I would expect that the role for the federal government here is the precautionary principle that I talked about earlier, but it is also the role of the federal government to take some leadership around this matter, particularly because it impacts on water quality. That is another place the federal government has a role. We have an inadequate drinking water policy in this country and this is one step that is clearly linked with water. This is an area for the federal government to demonstrate some very clear leadership.
Business of Supply May 16th, 2006
Mr. Speaker, I am ever hopeful that members of the House will see the light of day and support this important motion before us. However, in the absence of that, I know that our environment critic from Skeena—Bulkley Valley will be working closely with other members of the environment committee to ensure that initiatives are brought forward to do things like protect our water quality. We will be working hard on that issue.
Business of Supply May 16th, 2006
Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Burnaby—New Westminster.
Of course, I am rising in support of this motion. In the debate today we have heard differences of opinion, but I also think there is increasing support for banning the use of cosmetic pesticides. A number of cities across Canada have taken that very step.
I want to refer to various pieces of evidence in support of banning the cosmetic use of pesticides. I want to refer to some work that was done in this very House.
Back in May 2000 there was a report called “Pesticides, Making the Right Choice for the Protection of Health and the Environment”. In the chair's preface to this report there were a couple of key comments that speak in support of examining the impact of pesticides on human health:
We looked at the current system of regulating pesticides in Canada and we asked ourselves whether it is possible for one agency, the Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA), to perform two virtually conflicting tasks, namely that of approving chemical pesticides as requested by industry while at the same time regulating them in order to protect health. We asked ourselves whether it is possible to strike a balance between economic and health protection goals.
The chair went on to say:
We found, however, that pesticides are highly poisonous substances designed to kill living organisms and are thus potentially harmful to workers using them and...communities unknowingly exposed as well as to consumers. Therefore, we asked ourselves whether a regulatory system could be designed that would give clear and absolute precedence to human health.
That raised some pretty serious issues about whether or not pesticides were being appropriately regulated and whether or not human health was being protected. There is another report from a committee. A report from the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development stated:
The Committee firmly believes that a moratorium on pesticide use for esthetic purposes is necessary until science has proven that the pesticides involved do not constitute a health threat...in urban areas. Pesticide use should only be permitted in an emergency, such as a serious pest infestation which threatens the health of people and the environment.
Those were two pieces of work that were done right here in the House questioning the safety of the cosmetic use of pesticides and being concerned about the potential impact on human health.
Since we are talking about human health, I want to turn to the Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health, Volume 11, Number 4, April 2006. Earlier we heard some members speaking about scientific evidence and talking about proof. The Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health report talks about this scientific proof. I want to quote from this journal because these people are specialists in their area. They see the impacts of pesticide use. Many of them are scientists. They look at the weight of evidence. In this particular case, they are talking about the scientific evidence:
The method for obtaining the highest quality of medical evidence, the randomized control trial, is unethical for pesticide testing. However, serious inadequacies in evidence stem from study and review procedures. Pesticide assessment falls short of current best practices by relying on industry-supplied proprietary studies that are not open to independent review and on reviews by interested parties rather than independent systematic reviews of primary literature.
Physicians are questioning whether or not the evidence that is being used to determine pesticide safety is actually adequate. That should lead us to some very serious concerns about the cosmetic use of pesticides in our country, pesticides that impact on human health, on children's health. This is a very important question for the House to consider.
I will now talk about municipalities, because we have heard about jurisdictional issues. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities has talked about the fact that communities across the country are increasingly aware of the potential impact of synthetic pesticides on the health of children, pets and wildlife.
Research findings are linking pesticide toxicity to reproductive disorders, neurological conditions, cancers, and other medical conditions with particular concern about the effects of pesticide exposure on pregnant women and young children. They go on to talk about the variety of tools that are being provided, both through the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and other organizations to help Canadians break their dependence on cosmetic pesticides.
Even a body like the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, that can hardly be called a left wing think tank, is calling on Canadians to re-examine their pesticide use and is offering support to municipalities in that vein.
I will now switch to some more progressive thinkers and I am going to talk about David Suzuki and some other organizations. I think David Suzuki has a great deal of credibility among Canadians. He talks about pesticides and this can be found on the David Suzuki Foundation website. He states:
Pesticides are equal-opportunity killers. While they may eliminate garden pests, they also kill beneficial soil bacteria, insects, and even wildlife. Killing off these “good” bacteria, worms, and bugs unfortunately leads to a catch-22 situation since gardeners then have to add even more chemical fertilizers and pesticides to replace the jobs these helpful creatures used to do for free!
He goes on to say:
Chemical pesticides also inadvertently enter the storm water system and end up in streams, rivers and lakes, where they may kill or harm insects, frogs, and fish. In some cases, pesticides can contaminate our drinking water.
Drinking water is such an emotional issue in this country. We saw over the recent months a number of first nations communities all under boil water advisories. There are a number of boil water advisories in other communities and there are a variety of things that can contribute to the contamination of our water. Certainly one of them is the cosmetic use of pesticides.
I found an interesting study that came from the National Water-Quality Assessment program in the United States. Canadian water and United States water share a lot of things in common. We like to drink it, we like our fish to swim in it, and we want it clean and safe for our children, our pets and for everybody to be able to consume. The study that was conducted is quite frightening. It said:
The frequency of pesticide contamination, however, is greater than expected. At least one pesticide was found in almost every water and fish sample collected from streams and in about one-half of all wells sampled. Moreover, individual pesticides seldom were found alone — almost every water and fish sample from streams and about one-half of samples from wells with a detected pesticide contained two or more pesticides.
The study went on to say:
For aquatic life and wildlife, however, NAWQA results indicate a high potential for problems in many streams, particularly in urban areas, where concentrations of more than one pesticide often approached or exceeded established water-quality guidelines.
Not only is this affecting our water quality, it is also affecting the fish and other critters that live in those streams, and we eat the fish. In addition, the study stated that:
Important questions remain unanswered about potential risks of pesticide contamination to humans and the environment. Currently, standards and guidelines are available only for a limited number of individual pesticides, do not account for mixtures of pesticides or for pesticide breakdown products, and are based on tests that have assessed a limited range of potential health and ecological effects. Long-term exposure to low-level mixtures of pesticide compounds, punctuated with seasonal pulses of higher concentrations, is the most common pattern of exposure, but the effects of this pattern are not yet well understood.
The study also mentioned the fact that the accumulation is often not understood.
In closing, I want to emphasize the fact that pesticide concentration has been found in salmon and in other fish that we consume. The accumulation process has not been well understood. I think it is time for us to call on the precautionary principle to say that unless people can unequivocally demonstrate that it is safe for us to consume these products that have been contaminated by pesticides, we should call for the ban of cosmetic pesticides.
Business of Supply May 16th, 2006
Mr. Speaker, it was with interest that I listened to the member talk about the work that is being done by Health Canada. I wonder if the member would comment on the Auditor General's report from 2003 which cited serious weaknesses in Health Canada's management of pesticides. The report highlights that new pesticides are sometimes not fully evaluated and older pesticides are not re-evaluated. Information on compliance is lacking and information on the use and impact of pesticides is inadequate.
In addition, in the 2004-05 budget, Health Canada received approximately $40 million from industry in terms of supporting its operating budget.
I wonder if the member could comment on why it is that we would have faith in a process that clearly the Auditor General has said is inadequate.
Public Health Agency of Canada Act May 5th, 2006
Mr. Speaker, I want to touch on a specific issue mentioned by the member in terms of the public health responsibility around access to clean air and clean water.
A first nations community on the shores of the St. Clair River in southern Ontario is surrounded by industry. The community has significant health problems as a result of water and air contamination.
I wonder if the member could speak specifically to how important it is to have the Public Health Agency oversee these kinds of impacts on our communities.