Joe Comartin

[Airline Industry, April 10th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, communities all across Canada are suffering from decreased air service over the past several years due to the elimination of a national carrier and a reduction in routes.

Many local and regional airports have been forced to cover the cost of the federal government's downloading and pass on the costs directly to passengers in the form of service fees. These fees are in addition to the Liberal government's multibillion dollar airport security tax grab that forces passengers, including children as young as two years of age, to pay $24 on round trip tickets.

In Windsor, Ontario the airport authority is considering charging a $10 service fee to all passengers to help cover the financial losses due in part to a decrease in air travel since September 11. This charge would be an additional $34 for a round trip ticket for people flying from Windsor.

These unfair taxes are hurting Canadian families, the already struggling airline industry and communities across the country dependent upon the economic activity generated by local airports, and they should be removed immediately.

[The Middle East, April 9th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to acknowledge the motion brought forward by the member for Mercier and the ruling by the Speaker to allow us to have this emergency debate.

Given the lateness of the hour, it is worth noting this evening as opposed to a number of other occasions in the House and elsewhere in Canada, the measured tones we have heard from all members, with very few exceptions, and all parties. I congratulate members of the House for their approach to the debate because it is so urgent but also so important that we speak in those measured terms.

Before I go to the specific issues I would like to address around the Middle East and specifically Palestine, I would like to address some comments about democratic discourse in the country. I could not help but feel the pain of Michelle Landsberg. In her article in the Toronto Star this past weekend she expressed therein the feelings of a woman who has come out of the Jewish community but who in fact regularly has opposed positions taken by the Israeli government and equally and very strongly has taken positions against the Palestinian administration and some of the other Arab governments in the Middle East. She also reflected on the outright discrimination and the attacks that she has faced at times.

That is a bit of a microcosm of what happens in Canada. I have seen it happen in the last few weeks to those of us who have spoken out against the violence on both sides and then have been attacked by the other side. That is not acceptable in Canada.

Therefore, I try to reach out this evening to both the Jewish and Arab communities in Canada to tell them to strive for what is best in Canada as far as democratic discourse. Both those communities have a responsibility in Canada to provide leadership but also to reach out with a sense of co-operation to the other community to try to take a message back to the Middle East, back to Palestine, back to Israel to say that violence is not acceptable. It is not acceptable in Canada where, with every opportunity, we condemn it. Similarly violence in Israel and Palestine is to be condemned. It is not a methodology to resolve their differences.

The role Canada has to play is quite straightforward. We have to say to Israel, as I believe we have, that it is an absolute that we as a country will do whatever we have to do to guarantee its continued existence. Similarly, we have to say to the Palestinians that they have a right to their territory, to their sovereign nation and that we as a country will do whatever is necessary to see them achieve that goal.

The United Nations and the world promised that to both those communities in 1948. It is now in excess of 50 years and that still has not been accomplished. Earlier today I printed from the Internet a chronology of the history of Palestine since that proclamation in 1948 by the United Nations. It runs on for pages and pages.

What was so telling as I analyzed the history in more detail was how often steps were made to bring that area of the world to peace. It would seem every time those communities got close to that, something would happen.

Anwar Sadat reached out with Menachem Begin and said “We are going to take a step forward. We are going to try to resolve some of the problems”. Shortly thereafter Anwar Sadat was assassinated by people from his own community.

Yitzhak Rabin led what can only be described as the peace movement within his own government and made very significant strides toward resolving a number of the major issues. Within months, at a peace rally, he was assassinated by a member of his community.

We could stop and look at those two incidents and say that there is no hope, that every time there is a step forward, there is an assassination or violence breaks out. However, if we look at the whole history over the last 54 years, the reality is there have been steps forward.

I can remember when I was graduating from law school. At that time the PLO seemed to be a minor group on the world stage off fighting for its homeland. The reality 20-odd years later is that it was there, it was in its homeland. There have been very significant steps since the fighting that broke out in 1948. To say there is no hope is to be cynical and pessimistic.

There is a role that Canada needs to play at this time, right now, this week, this month. We need to say that we will do whatever we can to foster that hope, to continue the process, to achieve that security we promised, and I believe guaranteed, with all our support to Israel and to the Palestinians so that they can exist in secure settings and in peace.

I want to reiterate the importance of the things we have to do. Major reconstruction will be required. We have to provide all the facilities that we are capable of as a country around the negotiations that will have to be carried out.

I will finish by saying that as a country, we have to continue to say to Israel “You are wrong. We are supportive of you but you are wrong on this. Withdraw from the occupied territory”. Equally we have to say and say it forcefully “We condemn the use of suicide bombers”.

We have a role to play. Given our ability to do that, we can continue to foster at least some hope in that area of the world that is so troubled.

[The Environment, April 9th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, a recent Decima poll shows that an overwhelming majority of Canadians support ratifying Kyoto. Even in Alberta there is support of over 65%.

Last week prominent business leaders like Robert Schad and Stephen Bronfman were campaigning to get the government to meet its commitment to Kyoto. The environment minister is still waffling. Even his fellow cabinet colleagues openly question the support.

The Canadian people want the Kyoto protocol. Business leaders want it. Why can we not just ratify it?

[Pest Control Products Act, April 8th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his question. First, I am unalterably opposed to using products that are genetically modified without the long term research that is required. We should not put products on the market that have been genetically modified in any fashion after only a year or two of review.

Second, with regard to the hon. member's comment that a number of products do not have residue, I would not go quite that far. That is not the case. A number of products are better alternatives to what we now have in terms of buildup and accumulation in both the environment and the human body.

We do not look at GMOs as the be all and end all. That is not where we are at. The science is not there yet. I do not know if it will ever be. If the bill were properly drafted we would have an answer and the precautionary principle would be applied. Products would not be allowed onto the market or in the environment until they passed the litmus test.

[Pest Control Products Act, April 8th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague from Davenport was chair of the environment committee at the time the report was prepared and published. I acknowledge all the hard work and excellent leadership he provided.

With regard to the conflict between the two roles of the agency, the committee addressed the issue in its report. It is impossible to on the one hand say we would review products and decide whether they would be allowed onto the market and on the other hand say we would have a role in promoting the use of pesticides in Canada. It is impossible to tell civil servants they must play both roles at the same time. It is clear there should be a severing of the two roles into two separate branches of the department or, preferably, two separate departments. That way the conflict would be allayed if not completely done away with.

I will answer the question another way. Other than at a preliminary level there has been no indication of or provision for adequate funding for the role to be played by the department in this regard. It is an issue we hope to address at the committee when the matter finally gets there.

[Pest Control Products Act, April 8th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to finally speak to the bill. It is one that the NDP, environmentalists, scientists and the general public have been calling for decades for the federal government to introduce.

The current legislation was introduced over 30 years ago. Not since 1969, when DDT was still in wide use, have there been any substantial changes to the legislation. If I may digress for a moment, I would like to try to set in context where we are at in this country. There are a few salient points that need to be addressed.

First, at the present time there are between 6,000 and 7,000 pesticide products registered for use in Canada, an estimated 50 million kilograms of herbicides, insecticides and fungicides each year. That includes everything that we think of as normal pesticides used in agriculture and in lawn care to the products used in combating head lice in children.

It is also important to note the main problem we have with pesticides and it is relatively simple. They are designed to kill. They are deliberately introduced into our environment and onto our food to kill. It is also interesting to note that only 1% of all pesticides used actually gets to the intended targets. The other 99% stays in the environment, affecting humans and wildlife.

As well, over the last 30 or 40 years we have learned that many of those 6,000 to 7,000 pesticides I mentioned do not break down. They in fact accumulate in the environment, oftentimes in human beings, affecting the reproductive systems and the immune systems of both humans and animals.

It is also interesting to note that in the last while we have developed some alternatives, specifically in Ontario, where the World Wildlife Federation and the Ontario apple growers have developed an ecological program that is now producing five million pounds of premium apples. That program dramatically reduces the use of pesticides, at least in that province. There are a number of other alternatives like that.

It is impossible to address the legislation without looking at the report of the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development, released in May 2000 and entitled, “Pesticides: Making the Right Choice for the Protection of Health and the Environment”. This report was the result of widespread consultation among scientists, academics, labour groups and community organizations from coast to coast to coast. Many of those individuals gave evidence and supported the committee's report. As a party, we encouraged the government to take action immediately after that report was tabled and to implement the extensive recommendations of that committee.

There were a number of important recommendations. I believe that the most pressing was the call on the Minister of Health to introduce new legislation as a matter of top priority. Of course it has now been just about two years and we are just finally getting it, only at committee stage.

There are a number of recommendations, but I want to use that report as a litmus test, if I may, for what should have been done, as a test for assessing the viability of the legislation. Very quickly, the major recommendations made for what the act should cover were: to protect human health in the environment as the absolute priority in all pest management decisions; to apply the precautionary principle; to promote and increase reliance on pollution prevention strategies in order to eliminate or minimize the use of pesticides; and finally, to foster public confidence by actively informing and educating Canadians about pesticide use by involving them in the decision making process.

More specific, committee members are saying that the precautionary principle means that appropriate, preventive measures are to be taken when there is reason to believe that a pesticide is likely to cause harm even when there is no conclusive evidence to prove a causal relationship between the pesticide and its effects.

In effect they are saying that human health comes first. The onus falls on the producer of the product to establish absolute safety. Otherwise it does not go on the market and does not go into our environment. Unfortunately the government has not addressed all the concerns of that litmus test.

I would like to list a few points that still need further protection. One is that there is an inadequate provision for wildlife protection. The public is still denied full access to important information about pesticides. This is true both for the users of the pesticides and the workers who use those pesticides.

The information clauses in the legislation are not adequate. They paid lip service to the precautionary principle. It is mentioned in the legislation but is not operationalized. It is not a mandatory or functional aspect of the bill at all. There is a lack of streamlined process for registering low risk products for farmers, landscapers and other users to allow for the use of less harmful alternatives.

At the start of my address I mentioned that alternatives were available. One thing we have heard from the apple farmers in Ontario was that there were alternatives. The European Community in particular has a number of them that have not been registered in Canada because of the length of time it takes for that to be done. They need to be streamlined or fast tracked. In addition there is a lack of specifics in the bill. As the government so often has done, it has left way too much to regulation.

The greatest failure of the bill is the lack of the ban on the cosmetic use of pesticides. I believe the minister mentioned it again today as she certainly has in the past. She said not to worry about it, that the municipalities would take care of that. Approximately 37 municipalities have banned or severely restricted the use of pesticides for cosmetic reasons. The most recent one is Halifax which has introduced what in effect will be an eventual ban of all pesticides.

We have to set it in this context. Somewhere approaching 75% of lawn owners still use pesticides. Lawns and gardens in municipalities, in urban areas, are sprayed more heavily than farms. People still seem to consider that the use of pesticides is essential for lawn care in spite of the fact that a four to sixfold increase in incidents of child leukemia occurs when pesticides are used on lawns in urban areas.

A ban is necessary. We do not have the time in terms of protecting the health and well-being of Canadians to wait for every municipality to ban or at least severely restrict the use of pesticides for cosmetic purposes.

In summary, there is no question the bill is a step forward. We have begun to address some of the problems the Standing Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development raised but it does not go far enough. It does not ban pesticides in urban areas. It fails to protect generally the health of Canadians.

[Fisheries, March 21st, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, like my colleague from Cumberland--Colchester, I feel that I should not have to be standing here, that none of us should have to be standing here talking about overfishing off Newfoundland off the Atlantic shore. We have been talking about this issue for 20 or 25 years. The problem is we have not been doing anything or anywhere near enough about it.

I want to recognize the member for St. John's West who proposed this emergency debate. It is obvious that we need to press the government to take definite action, so I thank him for this opportunity.

These are observations from my travels to the east coast, never having resided there, but they are very much fixed in my mind, especially in regard to Newfoundland and Labrador. We are not just talking about the loss of an industry. We really are talking about the loss of a culture that is unique, certainly to Canada and I would argue unique to the world. That was brought home in the debate this evening as we listened to the members from the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans with those heart-rending tales of misfortune by fishers who live in that area.

In 10 or 20 years will have to say that we are sorry, that we recognized the problem back in 2002 and we recognized it back in the 1980s, but we just did not do enough about it? Will we have to say “Sorry, as a culture you have disappeared?” That is not acceptable but it is what we are faced with.

I was just reading some notes from the United Nations Global Environmental Outlook Report 2000 from which I will quote. It states:

In the North Atlantic, 21 of the 43 groundfish stocks in Canadian waters are now in decline and 16 more have shown no recent signs of growth. Groundfish, such as cod, haddock, redfish and several species of flatfish, are most affected by pressure from overfishing, and ground fish stocks off the east coast, especially cod, have nearly collapsed. The Atlantic finfish catch, of which groundfish form the bulk, declined from 2.5 million tonnes in 1971 to less than 500,000 tonnes in 1994.

Then it lists several other causes for this. It goes on to say that failures within Canada's domestic fishery management system and foreign overfishing outside Canada's 200 mile limit are the major causes. It points the finger directly at the government for permitting the overfishing.

We heard that again from the minister earlier this evening. He put his hands up and says that he cannot even think that they might do something more, that we have to stay behind that 200 mile line and that it would be against international law. I could not help but think back to my law school days.

When I was in law school in the late sixties and early seventies, I can remember all sorts of so-called experts saying that Canada could not extend its limit, which was only 12 miles at that time, that international law would not permit it, that we were a small country so we could not do that. “Oh woe is us” was really what they were saying.

That is what we heard from the minister again this evening. That is hogwash. When we look at what has happened, to suggest that we will stand back and say that international law will not let us do it is just not acceptable. It is not acceptable to the peoples of Newfoundland and Labrador and it is not acceptable to the country as a whole because it is not true. International law does not work that way.

Look at what we could be doing. We could be saying to those countries that allow those ships offshore to totally devastate our fisheries that they cannot do that anymore. They were given the opportunity. We set up NAFO, they have participated in that and the result has been a total devastation of our fishery. That is a responsibility we have not only to Canada but to the rest of the world. Every sovereign country owes that to the rest of the world.

If the international system is not working, then we have to take control of it ourselves. We have to say to that part of the international community, which refuses to comply with the agreements we have with them and comply with the system we have established internationally, that this has not worked, that they have had their opportunity and that we are now going to protect those fisheries for Canada and we are going to protect them for the international community.

I want to follow up on the comments of my colleague from Sackville--Musquodoboit Valley--Eastern Shore. We will be going to those negotiations in September. Do we have any contingency plans? I suggest again that we do not because that has been the pattern of the government.

Look what happened when the fishery was in such terrible shape in the middle nineties and the way the government further devastated those communities by dismantling the protection we had at that time in the unemployment insurance scheme. That was done by this government. It shows how much it cared for that area of the country.

What is the government going to do on October 1 as more and more fishers are no longer able to sustain themselves from the fishery? Is it going to maintain the EI system as it is now? Probably. Should it? Obviously not. Is it Will it extend the economic zone? Again, we heard from the minister this evening, probably not. However we should.

I think it was the member for Malpeque who talked about the negotiations that went on in January at NAFO. I would like to list some of the things that happened there. He wanted us to believe that it was not so bad, but here is what happened.

NAFO members voted down measures proposed by Canada to protect stocks under moratoria. They voted to increase the total allowable catch of Greenland halibut in clear contravention of the advice of NAFO's own scientific counsel. There was a long list of violations, the vast majority of them from the European community. Nothing was done about it. The European community led the attack against an important measure proposed by Canada to restrict fishing depths for Greenland halibut. Nothing was done about the extremely well documented misreporting of shrimp landings. That misreporting is one of the major problems. It is underreporting, non-reporting or outright falsification. Nothing has been done about it. There has been no enforcement.

Again, I come back to post-October 1 of this year. We know from experience that those NAFO negotiations will not be successful and will not be of any use in protecting the fishery off the Atlantic coast.

I urge the government to begin to plan for a conservation and sustainable program that would involve total and complete custodial management in the hands of Canada, not just the government, not just the bureaucracy within the fisheries department, but a custodial management program and plan that would have active, meaningful participation from the communities in Newfoundland and Labrador.

I strongly urge the government to consider looking at the banning of certain technology that is being used now. The dragging, which at one point was at 1,000 metres in depth, is now over 2,000 metres and appears to be extending itself on a regular basis. It is probably only a matter of a short period of time until that depth will be 3,000 metres. That dragging is devastating to the fishery. It destroys so much of the terrain under water. It destroys the habitat of that fishery. Even if they are not successful at getting one fish, it has a devastating effect on the overall fishery because of what it does to the habitat. I urge the government to look at that and to consider banning that technology where its use is inappropriate.

I urge the government to get serious about enforcement. We cannot depend on NAFO or the international community for enforcement. That is obvious. If we could, we would not be here this evening. We would not be in a crisis. We would not be looking at a fishery that is almost gone.

We have to seriously consider resources being put into the ocean, to monitor those custodial management plans and to monitor and enforce the regulations that would protect the fishery, that would give it an opportunity to recover and that would give those communities a lifeline.

I recently was on a panel as the environment critic for my party. It was more on the environment side, monitoring and identifying spills, investigating them and laying the appropriate charges. One of the individuals on the panel stated, and there were several who confirmed this, that currently off the entire east coast, that we have either a plane, helicopter or a surface ship in that area monitoring and trying to enforce one day out of every five. That on average is what we are doing. We have at this point absolutely minimal ability to enforce.

Again I urge the government, come October 1 that has to change. We have to have a plan in place that would let us take control of this fishery and enforce the regulations that we pass at that time. If we do not, the fishery will be gone and the whole culture and heritage of that island will disappear.

[Species At Risk Act, March 21st, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, when we broke for question period, I was addressing comments to the Group No. 4 proposed amendments, specifically to the gutting of the legislation done by the government and its impact on the aboriginal community, the Metis, the Dene, the Inuit and all other first nations in the country.

I began to quote from a statement released today by the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami president expressing his outrage at what has happened. Let me read from it fairly extensively. I think it summarizes very accurately the offensiveness on the part of the government to those communities. He says, and I quote:

The Report Stage changes, undertaken unilaterally by the government, do not currently reflect the constitutionally protected relationship between Inuit and the federal government. More specifically, the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami feels the federal government has undermined the integrity of the Species at Risk legislation through its report stage motions.

The statement goes on about section 7.1 which was in the amendments that were passed at the committee stage and brought forward for report stage. The government has changed that quite dramatically and that is what he is addressing.

The statement goes on:

Section 7.1. in the Act was of special interest to Inuit, as it created the National Aboriginal Council On Species At Risk (NACOSAR), in which six Aboriginal leaders would form a council with three federal ministers of the Crown to provide advice and recommendations to the Canadian Endangered Species Conservation Council (CESCC). The NACOSAR would have provided a direct link between Aboriginal groups and federal, provincial, and territorial ministers in charge of implementation, listing, and recovery of species at risk. Such a council would have benefited all Canadians. The Standing Committee agreed, voting unanimously in favor of the creation of NACOSAR earlier this year.

That is a very accurate portrayal of what went on leading up to report stage.

He then goes on and to say:

In Motion 20 of Report Stage, the federal government dramatically altered and weakened NACOSAR making it “discretionary” instead of “mandatory”, a “committee” instead of a “council”, and changing the composition of the committee to six Aboriginal leaders who would advise only the Minister of the Environment, not the CESCC.

These fundamental changes are unacceptable. The Report Stage NACOSAR belittles Aboriginal Nations and their leaders by removing their rightful place in an advisory body with ministers of the Crown within the Act. Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami has repeatedly asked for a formal response from (the) Minister of the Environment...regarding Motion 20, and has received none.

Since 1996, the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami has worked with the Canadian government on the development of the Species At Risk Act. Until Report Stage, ITK felt the Bill included appropriate Aboriginal involvement at a meaningful level, in spite of disagreements concerning but not limited to compensation and federal jurisdiction.

Then it concludes:

Due to these recent events, the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, along with other Aboriginal groups, have no choice but to withdraw their support from the Species at Risk Act.

That statement reflects very accurately what went on; the facts and the background to SARA. It also reflects, and what we have been told by those communities across the country, their feelings of betrayal by the government.

It is important that the House appreciate that a large number of communities such as aboriginal groups, first nations governments, the Métis, the Dene, and the Inuit came forward to the committee with presentations, some of which were extremely impressive and which impacted not only with regard to representation in the legislation by those groups, but also in a lot of other ways.

Often I have spoken about how impressed the committee was by these presentations and how they had a great impact in the ultimate amendments that were passed by the committee, which the government is now attempting to change. I cannot say enough about how effective they were and how much they did impact on the committee in its deliberations.

I can understand very well these communities feeling this betrayal and feeling outraged by it. It is another in a long series of the government offending the aboriginal community, the Inuit, Métis and the first nations. The government has done it repeatedly and now it has done it again. Quite frankly there is no reason for it. All they were really asking for was to continue to do what they did in that committee: to advise, to be consulted with, and to assist in the implementation of the legislation. These communities have a great deal to offer and are being denied significantly by the government.

[Species at Risk Act, March 21st, 2002]

Madam Speaker, all sorts of amendments have been brought forth by the government to dramatically alter the work done by the environment committee. A great deal of them are offensive but none more so, I would suggest to the House, than the amendments that are part of Group No. 4. They attack the sections that would expand the ability of the first nations to have input into the implementation and total application of SARA.

Just before the House resumed today a press release from the president of the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami Association speaking on behalf of the Inuit in the north attacked the government indicating clearly that the Inuit were no longer in a position to support the amendments as proposed. The Inuit were particularly interested in subsection 7(1) of the act which had the effect of establishing a council that would allow direct participation by the first nations.

The press release indicates that various attempts were made by the Inuit to approach the Minister of the Environment to ask him to reverse his position, go back to what the committee had proposed and to allow the first nations in the country meaningful participation. As of yesterday there was no response from the minister and today the Inuit issued this release indicating that there is no longer any willingness on their behalf to support the SARA legislation as amended by the government.

It is my understanding from contacts that we have with first nations across the country that the position taken by the Inuit is generally supported by most first nations in the country. It is another example of how out of touch with reality and relationships the government is with the first nations.

[The Environment, March 13th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I could offer the minister the report. Maybe that would help him get some of the information.

Let me go to another point. Like many European countries and even the U.S., Canada has no requirement for gas companies to blend their products to make them burn cleaner and reduce harmful emissions.

Canada's Iogen Corporation, a world leader in alternative fuel development, touted by the Environment Canada department, has said that Canada is missing out on the potential of new clean energy technologies and that there is no future in Canada for this company or companies like this. When will the government get serious about the environment and introduce mandatory blended fuels?