Joe Comartin

[National Drinking Water Standards, May 11th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, three years ago a Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation study concluded that the cost of providing safe drinking water in Canada would be $4 billion a year over 15 years. Canadians are looking to their elected representatives to give them reassurances that the water they drink is safe.

New Democrats across the country are working on this. Last month in British Columbia the NDP government passed the drinking water protection act. It provided an additional $11 million in new funding and enforceable standards, despite the objections of the B.C. Liberal Party.

In Ontario New Democrat Marilyn Churley has introduced a private member's bill to ensure Ontarians that they can trust the quality of the water they drink. Both of these pieces of legislation provide a framework for public disclosure and ensure the public has the right to know the results of water testing.

It is time the government follows suit by providing national standards for drinking water and an adequate infrastructure funding program.

[Income Tax Amendments Act, 2000, May 11th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I did have a different introduction to make, but after listening to my colleague from the Alliance I thought it might be important to point out to him and other hon. members of the House that the first government in Canada to balance the budget was an NDP government in Saskatchewan after some horrendous budgetary practices by the prior Progressive Conservative government.

We were the first ones. There were terrible practices by the prior government. It was a right of centre government, by the way. We take some pride in having been able to do that and, quite frankly, in the history of the administration of the finances of that province all the way back to when it was led by Premier Tommy Douglas.

I rise today to speak in opposition to the passage of this bill and wish to do so from a number of perspectives. I will start with the issue of the environment as that is my responsibility as critic for my party.

Earlier this week we had the opportunity to come together as a House on an issue proposed by the Progressive Conservatives with regard to the protection of water in Canada. All members of the House, with the exception of the Bloc, supported that motion and rightfully so.

When we look at these budgetary items we cannot help but realize the height of hypocrisy when the government side proposes that our finances be handled in this way. At the same time it ignores to a very significant degree the responsibilities of the government to provide necessary financing for a municipal infrastructure program to deal with the crisis facing Canada with regard to providing safe water for all citizens.

We see figures from the municipalities on what it will cost to treat our water and our sewage. The type of dollars they are talking about are no way reflected in the budgetary items before us. The figure proposed by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities is $16.5 billion. The allocation from the government for all types of municipal infrastructure is only $2.5 billion over six years, which is simply not enough.

I would like to present some statistics on the situation leading up to the financial statement. In the decade from 1989 to 1998 there has been a dramatic shift in wealth and we have seen the impact it has had on family incomes. If we break down by 20 percentiles all families in Canada, the statistics show that from 1989 to 1998 the families at the lower end of the scale dropped in income quite dramatically.

The poorest level dropped 17% in earning abilities in that period of time. The lower middle income group dropped 13%. The middle income group dropped 4%. The upper middle income group went up by 1%. The top end families that earned $114,000 in 1989 went up to $124,000, or a 9% increase, in 1998.

[Petitions, May 9th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present a petition under Standing Order 36. The petitioners call upon parliament to repeal regulation 53 of the EI Act.

Regulation 53 requires that 85% of the workforce return to work after a work stoppage because of a strike or lockout. That leaves it wide open for vindictive employers to punish employees. People in my area of Windsor and Essex county call upon parliament to repeal the regulation.

[St. John's Harbour, May 8th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I think it is appropriate that this private member's bill is being brought forward today given today's debate in the House on water and the obviously detrimental effect it has on the citizens of this country and on their health when it is not adequately protected.

That, to a great degree, is what the bill is about. I would like to thank the Progressive Conservative member for St. John's East for having brought forward the bill and giving us this opportunity to debate it.

I will take this opportunity to quote some material. One of the quotes I found is from the Telegram newspaper in Newfoundland from October 24 of last year. This is how the harbour was described: “The harbour, a noxious stew of feces, condoms, tampons, rubber gloves and everything else that gets flushed down the thousands of toilets in the metro area, has long been an environmental embarrassment”.

What is interesting is the date that the article appeared in that paper because of course it was not long before the last federal election. The present Minister of Industry was quoted at that time as saying that he would “work as hard and as smart” as he could to bring sewage treatment to the region, appropriately so, as we also have the Minister of the Environment in the government—again I am paraphrasing but reflecting the positions he has taken—on the record, recognizing that the lack of sewage treatment is a serious threat to the sustainability of coastal communities, affecting human health, constraining economic development and compromising ecosystem integrity through the release of toxic substances into freshwater and marine ecosystems.

He should also be working as hard and as smart as one of his other fellow ministers, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans who went further than the Minister of the Environment in his threatened legal action against those poisoning the waters of the Atlantic by the discharge of raw sewage. I am talking about the city of St. John's which the fisheries minister is to sue.

After all the work that has been done and the history in terms of the amount of pollutants being released into the water in that area, we still have no involvement of any consequence by the federal government. It is important to recognize the amount of work that has been done by both the province and the municipality in terms of their one-third shares. They have to be acknowledged in that regard.

In the legislature of Newfoundland yesterday Mr. Harris, a member of the New Democratic Party in that house, asked the premier what was happening in terms of the cleanup of St. John's harbour. Basically he received this response:

Unfortunately, I do have to report that we have no definite commitment from the Government of Canada yet with respect to their one-third share. We have made a firm request, repeatedly, that they participate with a special fund, and a separate fund, for an initiative as important as the clean up of the St. John's harbour.

Then he indicated they would continue to do that and were expecting at some point that the federal government would come through. He went on to acknowledge the comment that Mr. Harris had made earlier about the fact that the provincial government and the municipality involved had committed their one-third shares. Yet there has been no action by the federal government.

I come back to where we were today in the debate on water and the motion we passed earlier in support of setting national standards. It is typical of the federal government that it is willing to support that type of motion but when confronted with the reality of the necessary action we see no response.

We have the municipality kicking in its $31 million. The provincial government in Newfoundland is kicking in its $31 million. They are prepared to do so and ready to go. They even have a design of the plant and the piping required to make the system work appropriately and safely for the protection of the environment and the health of the people of St. John's.

They have done all that work and the only missing piece is a commitment from the federal government. They still do not see it. If the federal government were serious when it supported the motion that was passed earlier, it would act when an occasion like this one comes forward. We are in strong support of the motion and of the needed action and would vote accordingly.

[Supply, May 8th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I have been following rather closely for the last two years the issues surrounding the Sydney tar ponds and the impact that is having on human health, both from the perspective of my position as environmental critic for the NDP but also, and more important at this time, in regard to the impact that is having on human health.

The statistics that come out of there are just horrendous and bring us back to the issue. What has happened there, I am very afraid, will just be repeated by the government, because it has had in place a committee for going on five or six years, I believe, and there was a preceding committee. The committee really has not accomplished anything. I think everybody agrees with that. It is almost moribund in its lack of activity and has had no effective results at all, so while nothing is going on there, in the meantime we have people literally suffering serious health problems and there have been a number of deaths that I think can safely be attributed to the toxins that exist in the air, the soil and the water in that region.

The hunger strike that Elizabeth May is conducting at this point just highlights the level of frustration that people are feeling in Cape Breton over that issue and over the lack of any serious results being achieved while people are suffering major health problems. We believe that very serious numbers of deaths will ultimately come from that.

[Supply, May 8th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to rise in support of the motion, although with some reservations. I will be sharing my time with my friend from Winnipeg North Centre on this very important subject.

I must admit that I prepared some notes and I thought about the motion overnight. I did so with a great deal of concern at a somewhat personal level because I have some close friends who live in Walkerton. I have followed that issue and that incident very closely out of concern for their health and for the health of that community. When we heard the story break last week about North Battleford, it was déjà vu.

I could not help but recall it was a little over a year ago that the government and governments across the country had their warning. We had all the scientists and all the experts say to us that this would happen again. Now the citizens of North Battleford have been the next victims.

With regard to the motion, I must admit that I do not have a great deal of hope it would not be repeated in more communities across the country. We have known for 30 to 40 years that our infrastructure programs and support programs for both water and sewage treatment have not been funded properly. They have been deteriorating to the point as seen now in these two communities.

They have lead to the deaths of citizens in Canada. It is not limited to just those two communities. We have had regular and continuous warnings right across the country, including in the province of Quebec, in spite of my friend's protestation of how good the systems are there. It will only get worse before it gets better.

Last year in Ontario 274 communities had boil water advisories. Last weekend 37 Saskatchewan towns were being advised to boil their water. These are all after Walkerton.

The need for government action is very obvious. We will see that today in terms of the response we get from the various political parties in the House. It seems to me and to my party that to a great extent the motion is only window dressing unless there is action that flows from it. I have great reservations that will happen.

I had a vision of a federal budget that recognized the urgency and the crises we are faced with in terms of the treatment of our water. We did not see that in the fall budget and we will not see a budget for perhaps another year that would take this issue into account.

When I hear the Minister of Health saying that we cannot snap our fingers and solve the problem, he is right. It begs the question of where he and the government have been for the last year since Walkerton and where successive governments have been for the last 30 to 40 years.

It all comes down to money, as is often the case. We could set up a co-operative effort between the provinces and the federal government, but the reality is that the municipalities deliver these services. They are responsible for treating our water and our sewage. We cannot divorce those two issues.

I am not sure about the Bloc, but if we passed the motion everybody would be in favour of it. Then, tomorrow, do we just do nothing as we have for these last number of years? Or, do we deal realistically with it? Do we reach into our collective pockets in the form of tax dollars and pass those down to municipalities? They have told us that what they need over the next 10 years is a minimum of $16.5 billion.

The vast majority of those dollars have to come from the federal government because most of the provinces are either in no position or a very weak position to be able to fund that. At this point we have a commitment in the last federal budget. Over the next six years we have $2.65 billion committed for all types of municipal infrastructure, not just water or sewage treatment. That includes roads and any number of other items. That $2.65 billion comes nowhere near dealing with the problem.

What do we have? We have a situation where, from what I am hearing, I expect we will pass this motion. We will probably not do anything more. That is a sham we are perpetuating on the people of the country. If we do not take action we should all be ashamed.

We no longer can say, as some of the other political parties in the House would say, that we still must have this thrust of having tax cuts. We are seeing the costs of those tax cuts in Walkerton and in North Battleford. We will see it again and again across the country.

We have to get real. We have to dig into the pockets and use the revenue being generated, not to turn back as tax dollars but to flow through so that municipalities across the country can build the proper sewage treatment plants, can treat the water and can do the testing and monitoring that needs to be done, all of which will cost a lot more money than any of those municipalities have.

Unless we are serious about it, as I said earlier, we will simply perpetuate this sham. That is not something any of us should be proud of. All I can say on behalf of the New Democratic Party is that over the next weeks and months we will continue to press the government to develop an appropriate infrastructure program for the municipalities.

[Summit Of The Americas, May 4th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, there are growing concerns among the peaceful demonstrators who attended the Quebec summit and among area residents about what exactly people were exposed to and what the long term effects will be.

We are now told by the security forces that 5,148 canisters were released that weekend. The use of these chemicals was not localized to the targets. In fact, the effects and residue were evident for several kilometres from the site of the spraying. Area residents and their children were all exposed to whatever the police were spraying. Many rumours and questions persist about what exactly was used.

We are calling now on the government to release to the public the exact chemical composition of all chemical agents used that weekend.

[Marine Liability Act, May 4th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Churchill is on the committee reviewing the bill. When I became aware of the legislation it drew to mind an incident that took place in Lake Huron about a year ago. As a parent it is one of those scary nightmares we all have.

Students from one of the local high schools were out on a ferry on Lake Huron. There was a sudden storm, the ferry sank and two lives were lost. Two of the students drowned. It subsequently was learned that the ferry had no insurance. As a result the parents must not only cope with the tragic loss of their child. They must also deal with the financial consequences such as funeral expenses, et cetera, with no ability to look to the ferry operator for compensation.

The NDP is quite prepared to support the first motion before the House today because we believe insurance is the answer. I know from my experience in the civil litigation field that the second motion, my motion, is a far distant second preference. Putting up notices would not be nearly as effective as compulsory insurance in dealing with the issue.

The advantage of compulsory insurance is that it is not only available for parties who have suffered injury, death or other losses. It also acts as a check on the practices of the operators of the industry or service. If their practices are not conducted in a proper and safe fashion the insurance industry acts as an enforcement mechanism. It is therefore far preferable to have insurance than to rely simply on putting up notices.

If the government is absolute in its position that it will not make insurance compulsory then notices may still have some effect. If notices had been posted that the Lake Huron ferry had no insurance then the school that organized the day trip, being concerned for the safety of its charges, may not have used it.

There is not much more I can say. The comments of my Alliance colleague summarize the issue. I simply add these points and ask the government to rethink its position and move to compulsory insurance. If not, it should consider the fallback position of making it compulsory to post notices.

[Marine Liability Act, May 4th, 2001]

moved:

Motion No. 2

That Bill S-2, in Clause 39, be amended by replacing lines 35 to 38 on page 14 with the following:

“39. (1) The Governor in Council may make regulations requiring insurance or other financial security to be maintained to cover liability to passengers under this Part.

(2) Until regulations are made under subsection (1), vessel operators who do not have insurance or other financial security to cover liability to passengers must clearly and visibly post this fact in the appropriate location so that passengers, or potential passengers, are made aware of such absence of insurance.”

[Canada National Marine Conservation Areas Act, May 2nd, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I want to deal with dredging first. One of the first cases I was involved in as a lawyer involved the dredging of sand off Point Pelee National Park, just near my riding. I remember fighting that case along with a half a dozen other lawyers and law students representing various groups. Fishers were involved and local cottagers were being impacted by the dredging.

I always have a particular interest whenever we talk about dredging because I have a very real sense and knowledge of the impact it can have on the ecosystem, and that was relatively modest dredging.

The importance I want to raise about dredging is, that I am aware, especially in my province, that we are becoming more and more in need of aggregate. We are losing some of our traditional sources because of the environmental movement and conservation of terrestrial lands. There is more and more pressure to look to the oceans for dredging. There is some risk coming further down the road and that is a potential problem for us. That is a bit of a personal concern for me.

On trawling, I do not think there is any environmental group that is not opposed. The answer to it is that it would have to be banned. There is just no way deep sea trawling should be permitted in a marine park. It is devastating to a fish stock. Literally it goes in and wipes it out. It is a reflection of the quality of the technology we have at this time of just how effective deep sea trawling is, but it literally goes in and wipes out all species of fish in the area. The ships are so large, the nets are so powerful, the technology is so developed, it just simply would have to be banned. It could not be allowed.

If we are going to allow it, we might as well forget about designating the marine park.