Joe Comartin

[Question No. 105, February 28th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, I can assure my Progressive Conservative Party friend from Manitoba, my friends from the opposite side of the House, and you, Madam Speaker, that I do not intend to use all of the 27 minutes.

I did wish to raise one additional point. There is another concern that I believe the Yukon Territory is going to have to confront, assuming this legislation does proceed. That is the conflict in the territories with regard to outstanding land claims. The land claim issue of course is a problem across the country. Yukon is no exception to that, but there is a particular concern in Yukon because of the pressure that is being exerted on that territory in terms of the demands that we have for fossil fuel and the building of a pipeline that would cross the Yukon Territory.

As we know, there were various proposals outstanding for different pipelines, but one proposal would have fuel flow out of Alaska through the southern part of Yukon down through British Columbia and Alberta. The land that is in the area in the southern part of the Yukon Territory is subject to a land claim that, like so many others, has been outstanding for quite some time. This legislation, if it is applied to the proposal for the pipeline to run through that area, is also going to be confronted with how we deal with that proposal when we have an outstanding land claim. What role does that first nation play? It is not the only area in the territory where this is a potential problem. It obviously behooves this government to move as quickly as possible to resolve those land claims. On behalf of the NDP, I highlight this as a concern as to how this legislation is going to be implemented.

By way of summary, let me say that the NDP is in support of this legislation. We believe it has some innovative features which make it mandatory that it be supported. I have expressed today, as has the member for Winnipeg Centre in the past, certain concerns about the legislation, but it does enhance significantly the role that the first nations will play in the environmental assessment process. It introduces to a much more significant degree socio-economic issues, particularly cultural and heritage matters. It brings into play the cumulative impact principle. Finally, this legislation has had a significant amount of consultation with the first nations, with the government of the Yukon Territory and with local communities in Yukon. On that basis we will be supporting the legislation.

[Border Security, February 28th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, we continue to hear of numerous incidents of racial profiling at our borders and airports.

Last year the Minister of Foreign Affairs told Canadians that he had assurances from Colin Powell and the U.S. attorney general that the practice of systemic racial profiling would end. Well, it has not. There was a recent incident at the Toronto airport where both a customs officer and his supervisor told a Canadian citizen that dual citizens of specific countries had to be registered, that it was the law, and that he had to comply.

I ask the government, will it impose and order a travel advisory--

[Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Act, February 28th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise and indicate on behalf of the New Democratic Party of Canada that we will be supporting Bill C-2. We are pleased at the progress this demonstrates in terms of transferring authority and control to the first nations.

We do not see the bill, assuming it will pass into law and eventually be the law, as a panacea for all of the problems that will be confronted by the Yukon government and the first nations in Yukon with regard to environmental assessments. There are problems with the bill. However, because we have waited so long, we are at that stage where the party feels we must move ahead.

We expect that over the next number of years some of the problems that have been identified and that I will make reference to today will come to the fore. They will require either amendments to the legislation or some very generous interpretations to broaden the scope of the legislation.

One of the concerns we have with the legislation is that it will supersede the Canadian environmental assessment legislation. As the party representative on the environment committee, I have just gone through the review of that legislation. That legislation and the amendments to it will be coming before the House sometime between now and the spring. I am concerned because some of the amendments we made to it are not necessarily reflected in this legislation.

Again, going back to our support of the legislation, we see this as an initial stage. I will not say that it is an experiment, as we are beyond that, but it is the initial stage of having the first nations of this country take greater control of the environmental assessment process. For that reason alone, in spite of our concern about potential conflicts between the Canadian environmental assessment legislation and this bill, the Yukon environmental and socio-economic assessment act, we believe that it should go ahead, and we should develop experience from it.

One of the other concerns we have is that the legislation is not clear enough, we believe, as to how assessments will be dealt with when they cross boundaries, whether it is dealing with Alaska or with other parts of Canada, with the territories or British Columbia. It is quite possible, and I think of the pipeline in particular with the potential for pipelines coming out of the north, that it will require a number of jurisdictions to have environmental assessments. How that will be resolved, how the assessment process will take place when we have multi-jurisdictions, is not at all resolved in the legislation. That is a problem that will have to be dealt with at some time in the future and potentially in the near future.

Perhaps I will digress for a moment, if I may. Anyone who has looked at the territories and the north generally recognizes that they are under tremendous pressure and will be even more so in the next number of years from major endeavours to develop, whether it be in the mining sector, and the diamond mines are probably the best example, or in oil and gas. There is going to be tremendous pressure put on the governments, both in the north and in the provinces immediately adjacent to the north, to deal with how or whether those projects should go ahead. I would suggest that this legislation is going to be tested very early on and probably repeatedly.

It has some very good points in it. I think the major one is that it is not strictly the traditional environmental assessment approach. It does take into account and in fact give priority to socio-economic issues. It does not ignore, as we have on a number of occasions with the existing environmental assessment legislation, historical and cultural issues and topics. In fact, it makes it mandatory that they be taken into account.

The first nations who were consulted extensively in this process insisted on that being in the legislation, and rightfully so. I believe it is going to give us an opportunity, perhaps for the first time on the globe, for those issues to be taken into account significantly. We can point to other examples around the globe where assessment legislation will sometimes look at those issues almost as the periphery of the environmental assessment hearings that go on, but in Yukon they will be front and centre.

I suggest that we will see situations, and I am going to use an example, where perhaps a significant mining development wanting to proceed, that being the proposal that is before the hearing, will be confronted with the reality that there is a regional fishery that is very fundamental to that community, that forms the basis of that community. The importance of that historical fishery will be given prominence and may in fact override the need to have that mine developed. Given the fragility that we find in our northern territories, it is important and crucial that in fact those considerations be taken into account.

The first nations have argued strenuously in a number of areas, and we were confronted with this in the species at risk legislation, that traditional knowledge be given equal weight with what I will call European science. It was accepted in that particular piece of legislation and it is incorporated into this one also. It recognizes that the scientific technology and techniques that we have developed are not perfect. They are at times certainly not the best method to assess the significance of developments on the natural environment. In fact, the traditional knowledge that comes out of the first nations will be at times, in some cases many times, a better technique to be used. Again, as I said, that traditional knowledge, that concept, that principle, is incorporated into this legislation. It is an important step forward to be doing that.

The structure of the board and the executive committee I believe calls for commentary as well, because it reflects the importance of the first nations and local communities being involved in the process. The board will be composed of members of the first nations. Also, they will have not a majority but a significant representation at the executive committee, which is a three member committee. It will have one member from the first nations and one appointed by the government and then those two people will choose the third person. The larger board is roughly equally balanced between the local communities and first nations and the appointments from the government.

Therefore, the needs, the desires and the decision making will be flowing from the local community, not from the south. These will be people who know their communities, know their regions and know their territory. They will know what is best for it, where they want it to go and where they want to take it, what they want to save and what they want to develop. This is built into the legislation and I believe it is one of the strong points of the legislation.

There has been some debate and some criticism of the legislation over what will be considered. There is what is being touted in the legislation, the project list regulator, which will be the body that will determine which activities are subject to assessment and which are not. The goal of that body is to catch those projects that pose a potential risk to the environment and/or that have socio-economic impacts. It will also take into account and ensure that activities which do not pose any risk, either to the natural environment or with socio-economic impacts, will be cleared quickly and will not be assessed because they do not need to be.

The other point I want to make, which is both a strength and I think also a weakness in that it does not go far enough, is that of the cumulative impact. This has been a real weakness in the Canadian environmental assessment legislation to this point. We have attempted to deal with it in amendments that will be coming before the House shortly. I do not think we did so successfully.

Equally so, I do not think that this legislation is broad enough. It is one of the areas where some very generous interpretation is going to have to occur in order to take into account fully the cumulative impact of a series of developments and those developments impacting on the natural environment. One small mine may not be a problem, but if it is the first of a chain of mines in that particular region it may in fact be a major problem. More of that work and the questioning of cumulative impact has to be taken into account at earlier stages than what we have traditionally done under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act.

[Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, February 27th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, the only reason those committee meetings are being held is that the CAW, that national union, and the municipalities where some of these plants are located put extensive long term pressure on the department, the minister and his predecessor to finally get them to move. In fact, hardly anything has come out of them, because again, the department does not realize what is going on in the auto industry.

Let me just give the House one example. Up to two years ago we used to build two cars for every one that Canadians bought in this country. The ratio right now is somewhere around 1:5. If we lose those two assembly plants, the one in Oakville and the one in Windsor, we will fall down to a ratio of 1:1. At the rate we are going, we will fall below 1:1 in the next three to five years. That is the history of the government.

The government put us in this position. It signed us into those trade deals. It let the auto pact go. If we had not signed on to the free trade agreement--

[Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, February 27th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, my question for the Minister of Industry was along the lines of why so much investing was going into the United States and Mexico and why out of the last 19 assembly plants that were built in North America only one had come to Canada.

I do not want to give the minister a lot of credit but I want to read his response to the investment climate. He said:

Canada has the most attractive investment climate in the world. Given our economic circumstances, lowering taxes, stable and low interest rates, low inflation, productive workforce, it is a great place to invest.

I will give him some credit because there is some value to that. However we still only have one of the assembly plants. In the last 12 months we have been on the verge of losing three assembly plants, one in my hometown of Windsor, one in Oakville and one in Sainte-Thérèse.

There is an opportunity for us to save the plant in Windsor, which is to replace it with a new, modern assembly plant, and there is an opportunity to save the production in the plant in Oakville, but the government has to move.

I have a report that was prepared by the industry department. It is called U.S. State Programs for New Investment. It has about 20 pages. It was prepared during the early part of December 2002. At the back of the report is a chart showing the percentage of investments in the plant, both in brownfield and greenfield plants, greenfield being new production and brownfield being existing production with expansion going on.

If we go down the chart we see that it has a list of all of the new plants that I mentioned, plus a number of plants that were being expanded or added on to.

What we see in this is that in spite of that investment climate that the minister spoke about, the reality is that we are being more than matched and, in fact, out-classed by the U.S. and Mexico.

We see that one plant, a brownfield site actually in Alabama, received a 66% investment from state and local governments. We are not even in the ball park.

We lost a production line for Windsor this past summer, DaimlerChrysler. It went down to Georgia and Georgia invested 43% in that plant. It did not matter that we had medicare in this country, that the health costs for labour were lower here and that our dollar was lower. That is something this department has to learn.

We have to get on to this or we are going to lose those two plants, the one in Windsor and the one in Oakville.

[Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, February 27th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from the Bloc Quebecois, the member for Rosemont—Petite-Patrie. He has done a lot of work on the environment and it is good work. The motion that he has moved tonight in the House is an example of this.

Some of the other parties this evening have been giving justification for going slow or doing nothing, which has actually been the approach of the government for some time on this issue. The protocol and the debate around it in the country remind me of what we went through with the Kyoto protocol.

We have to be clear that Canada has committed to it. We signed on and expressed our intent to proceed with this. The expectation around the globe was that this would be done in 2003, that it would be completed and the 50 countries required to sign on would have signed on by now.

We have an international commitment that has to be met. Further dallying is no longer justified. It is also not justified on the basis that because we are doing nothing, because we are not proceeding with mandatory labelling or with the prohibition or the regulation of GMOs, we are exposing our farming communities to the very serious risk of being shut out of international markets. Europe has already done that in effect. It appears that India has or will. We do not have the luxury of sitting on the sidelines. We have to take an active role.

If we look at what has happened with other countries, we are not exactly alone in our concern if we ratify. India has ratified. The European community has ratified. In fact a number of countries that are major exporters, whose economies are based on exports as much as Canada's economy is, have already signed on, such as Sweden, Norway, the whole European Union, the Netherlands and Switzerland. Forty-three countries have come on side. I believe these numbers are up to date as of this week. We are only seven away. Canada should be one of the seven.

The protocol itself is one with which Canada should be proud to be involved. It provides a regulatory framework at the international level to deal with modified organisms. It provides a framework within which the international community is capable of dealing with these organisms country to country. It also has a very important precautionary principle to be used as a guideline when dealing with the organisms within the country and within the international market.

Also important is it is one of the few times that the environment and sustainability, the purpose of the protocol, is not, I repeat not, subordinate to the World Trade Organization. By putting that provision in, the international community is saying it is one of the few times that international trade, profit and money are not to be the guiding principles, but that the protection of human health, natural ecosystems and the environment generally will take priority. None of these organisms, however modified, will be allowed into the natural environment. None of these organisms will be allowed to be exposed to the human species or other species, unless we are absolutely certain it will not cause harm to human health or to the natural environment.

It is a major step forward. It is one that we need to apply both domestically in this country and in a number of other protocols.

It was interesting this past summer, when my colleague and I were in Johannesburg, that the use of the precautionary principle came up repeatedly. We could see that there were a number of attempts by multinational corporations that had a financial interest in turning back the clock and preventing the use of that principle. They were constantly trying to change some of the protocols that we were working on so that the precautionary principle would not apply and that monetary and economic issues would continue to be primary. They had mixed success and we as the human species as a result had mixed success in fighting them over that principle.

There are a couple of more issues that the protocol addresses. It provides for the provision of assessment of liability and compensation should communities be negatively impacted with these organisms. That again is a major step forward. I believe it is the effective way of controlling and regulating the use of these organisms in the economic sphere. It is a way of saying to companies or even countries that if they are to use these organisms, they must understand that if they cause damage, they will have to compensate the victims of that damage. Again, that is a very important principle to be applied.

In interpreting both the precautionary principle and the risk assessment, which is one of the tools that will be used to assess whether these organisms will be allowed into the international market, there is a provision in the protocol that socioeconomic considerations be taken into account. The importance there is that it is socio and economic. It is not just economic.

Therefore, if it will have a major negative impact to a society, for example if a country is emerging from poverty and it will negatively impact on its development because the use of these organisms will destroy part of its farm crops, that will be taken into account as to whether the organism will be allowed into the country. I believe for the purposes of the countries that are underdeveloped, it is a major step forward in terms of applying that type of principle.

Following along the same lines, it allows and encourages the wealthy part of the international community to assist in capacity building so that countries that are underdeveloped or undeveloped will be provided with services and resources from the developed world to assist them to move ahead in developing their economies.

We only need 50 signatories on this protocol. We have 43. As I said earlier, Canada must be one of those other seven and it must do it now.

[Canada Elections Act, February 17th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for my colleague from the South Shore. There has been a great deal of consternation over the evidence that came out with regard to these trust funds, with I think most of them, if not all, being held by members of the governing party. I have been hearing figures of $230,000 for one and very substantial amounts for others.

I want to pursue the issue of retroactivity, because as I read the bill I am not convinced that the bill is going to prevent these trust funds from being set up. Would my friend make some comments as to whether there should be retroactivity with those we are aware of now, whether they would have to be terminated under this legislation?

[Canada Elections Act, February 17th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, one of the concerns I have had regarding this legislation is that there is a real potential for unfairness in the way the corporate world would be treated versus the union movement. I would ask my colleague from Fredericton, has he addressed his mind to this issue?

As I see it, there is nothing in the bill that would prevent a corporation with subsidiaries, or a franchise type of operation, from having each one of the subsidiaries or franchises giving the maximum amount, whether it stays at $10,000 or hopefully something lower, or it is all merged into a total of $10,000.

As I read the legislation, it is my understanding that each one of those franchises or subsidiaries would be able to give the $10,000 and multiples if they want to donate to more than one party, but that unions would not. Has the member looked at that and what would his comments be?

[Canada Elections Act, February 17th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I was reading some figures today showing that the Alliance Party would receive $4.92 million under this structure, which would be a net gain for it in terms of the corporate donations it gets of just over $4 million. It would be a substantial amount for that party.

We have heard some of the Alliance's very clear opposition, ideologically, philosophically and in principle, to the legislation. Would the member perhaps support an amendment that would provide that a political party, based on principle, ideology and philosophy, could reject receiving funds so that the Alliance would not be burdened with having to accept the $4.92 million that it would receive under this formula?

[Petitions, February 17th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the last petition has approximately 1,000 signatures and calls on the House, in particular the Department of Health, to deal with the issue of child meningitis and to provide for immunization against that condition.