Mr. Speaker, it is indeed a pleasure. I would like to address the bill before the House on behalf of the member for Nanaimo—Alberni, the Reform environment critic.
Reform's position on the environment is very clear. The Reform Party supports ensuring that all Canadians dwell in a clean and healthy environment. Reform believes that environmental considerations must carry equal weight with economic, social and technical considerations in the development of a project. This is the key to protecting our environment. We believe in public consultation, public participation and public commitment. Governments must work together to ensure our environment is a priority.
When the Canadian Environmental Protection Act came into force in 1988 the primary objective of the act was to protect the environment and protect human health. The act was intended to fill regulatory gaps in certain environmental matters, particularly with regard to toxic substances. It was also aimed at enabling Canada to fulfil international obligations. The Environmental Protection Act replaced and incorporated several previously existing acts such as the environmental contaminants act, the ocean dumping control act and the clean air act. Section 139 of the act requires a five year mandatory review of the administration of the act, and review began in the last parliament. The Standing Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development held hearings which resulted in a report full of recommendations so that the then minister of the environment drafted Bill C-74 in the last parliament. But for many reasons, largely a result of its inadequacies, which I will get into briefly a little later, it died on the order paper and never made it through the House in the last parliament.
The bill we are talking about today is Bill C-32 which is a revamped version of Bill C-74 tabled in the last parliament. This new legislation provides measures for protection of the environment and human health, pollution prevention, management of toxic substances, virtual elimination of releases of substances determined to be most dangerous, and partnerships to achieve highest levels of environmental quality.
Changes to CEPA contained in Bill C-32 include provisions to implement pollution prevention, new procedures for the investigation and assessment of substances and new requirements for toxic assessments, new provisions respecting fuels, international air and water pollution, motor emissions, federal and aboriginal land protection, disposal of wastes and other matter at sea and the export and import of wastes. That is quite an expansion.
The legislation provides for the gathering of information for research and the creation of inventories of data, publishing of objectives, guidelines and codes of practice, new powers for inspectors, investigators and laboratory analysts, environmental protection alternative measures and civil suit action guidelines.
Although we are still considering the merits of this bill it appears the legislation has resurfaced with amendments that work in favour of the bill. There are many areas in this bill that Reform supports. However, there is also concerns which must be addressed both in committee and in the House.
In speaking today there are four major areas that I want to discuss. Those four areas contained in the legislation are the main areas of jurisdictional issues, public consultation, science and enforcement. I will start off with the jurisdictional issues.
As it stands, environmental jurisdiction is not clearly defined and separated in our Constitution. Since the 1980s expanded environmental protection at the federal and provincial levels of government has caused considerable tension. Although the supreme court decision ruled last September that Ottawa has the right to enact legislation to protect the environment the federal government should not take this as a carte blanche to run roughshod over the provinces.
Although environmental issues transcend boundaries there is no reason for the federal government to interfere in provincial affairs. Federal-provincial co-operation is essential to ensure environmental policies are carried through. Clearly provinces must be involved in this process as Environment Canada simply does not have sufficient resources to take full responsibility for the implementation of the act.
Reform blue book policy clearly supports the establishment of clear federal-provincial jurisdiction over environmental matters. There have been some amendments to the bill introduced since the last parliament to require co-operation between levels of government and to better recognize the harmonization accord.
The preamble sets out a shared responsibility for the environment. This is a start. However, this can be improved as the bill does not spell out that the government will discharge its responsibilities by working co-operatively under the federal-provincial-territorial Canada-wide accord on environmental harmonization agreed to in principle by the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment and the subagreements.
Bill C-32 does not and should ensure that the provinces are able to advise the federal government on an international treaty requiring provincial implementation and that they take part in the treaty's implementation strategy. The bill also empowers the minister to control the movement of non-hazardous solid waste to or from the United States. As waste management is primarily provincial jurisdiction, this probably represents an intrusion on provincial powers that must be addressed.
Furthermore, Bill C-32 creates a national advisory committee. The concept of a national advisory committee appears quite meaningful at first observation, yet on examination of this section of the bill it is clear that the committee may be compromised by its very structure. The committee, surprise, is appointed by the minister and not by the provinces. Therefore it is very likely that this committee may function as little more than a political vehicle to promote the minister's agenda rather than a national vehicle to ensure that the provinces and territories are properly represented in the decision making.
I was going to talk about four issues, jurisdictional issues, public consultation, science and enforcement. I have talked about the jurisdictional issues. I am now going to talk about public consultation.
It is critical that the process for public consultation in the development of regulations and additions of new substances to this act be as fair and open as possible. The Reform Party is founded on the principle of grassroots participation and public consultation in policy development. This is particularly important when we deal with issues such as the environment that affect all Canadians.
In the last parliament one of the strong complaints voiced by many against the bill was that it lacked proper consultation. There were over 100 concerns regarding the bill when it was introduced in the last Parliament. Some areas of concern have been addressed in the new legislation, though there are still areas that need attention. Some of the issues concern the public consultation process. For example, the bill needs to ensure that all draft regulations and guidelines are released for public comment 60 days before the minister formally releases the assessment.
The bill creates and environmental registry. However, the form and access of the registry is at the minister's discretion. Access to this registry should be open and the form clearly announced.
The act allows for notice of final agreements to go into the Canada Gazette but it does not require that the final text of all agreements be published in full in the Canada Gazette or as an alternative that access be provided through the Internet. These are very common sense things.
The act does not allow the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development adequate time to review proposed administrative and equivalency agreements. Clearly it is important that we move away from the old way of doing business behind closed doors and into a more transparent manner of conducting business.
The third area I want to talk about is science.
When dealing with the environment, sound science is essential to good policy discussions and decisions. This is not always the case with the present government. Our legislation must ensure that political decisions do not overshadow making the right choices to protect our environment. Decisions made under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act must be substantiated by scientific study.
The last bill had serious problems regarding the minister's power to bypass section 65 and its risk assessment approach for determination of toxic substances. This section gave the minister unlimited powers to bypass science in her decision making. This was one of the critical reasons Reform, industry and many Canadians could not support the bill. It is likely one of the reasons for its demise in the last parliament. This section has now been amended. I look forward to receiving comments from witnesses as to whether this has been properly addressed in the new bill.
Some areas of concern regarding the science of the bill includes the fact that toxic is not defined in the preamble. Yet it is defined in the section on controlling toxic substances. This is clearly problematic because it may allow substances to be defined toxic without scientific evidence which proves that they are in fact toxic. This section may give the minister of the department authority to arbitrarily ban substances which, if true, is frightening to say the least.
This was a major concern in the last parliament. A separate piece of legislation went through parliament banning MMT without a scientific basis. We now have an ongoing legal suit from Ethyl Corporation that is held up by many as a fallout from things like negotiating the MAI as a complexity that can be made much worse through something like the MAI. If the decision on MMT had been done not on ramming legislation through the House without scientific basis but had been done on a scientific rationale the whole argument would be moot. We must ensure that the legislation does not allow that kind of back door thing to occur again.
Another concern is the fact that provisions to provide for toxic assessment consultation failed to require that qualified experts from government, academia and industry be full partners in the assessment process.
Another controversial section of the bill is where it provides for a national ban on substances banned in other provinces or industrialized countries. Such a policy could negate the need for Canada to carry out a risk assessment as a basis for chemical control, which is the standard accepted internationally and by the science community. This policy could also undermine the necessity of requiring a scientific basis for decisions. It is critical that the role of science be clarified so that science forms the basis of decisions made under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. This needs to be spelled out clearly and precisely. Without that all else fails.
The fourth subject area I want to discuss is the whole area of enforcement, which is also critical to environmental policy.
The Reform Party has many clear positions on enforcement. Reform bluebook policy clearly supports the principle that the polluter shall pay for its pollution controls, that this be stringently enforced in an unbiased manner and that penalties be severe enough that polluters will not consider them a licence fee to pollute.
Reform also supports fines and jail sentences for officers and executives of companies violating environmental laws. The biggest problem with the Canadian Environmental Protection Act in this regard is its lack of enforcement. When CEPA was proclaimed 10 years ago the Conservative government bragged that it had introduced the toughest environmental law in the western hemisphere. Yet this has proven to be quite the exaggeration.
One of the principal concerns regarding this act is inadequate funding for enforcement. The Department of the Environment simply does not have the resources to ensure that the requirements of the act are fulfilled. The clearest way to state that is that the environment department has had almost two-thirds of its budget slashed since the Liberals came to power. That is quite a commitment to the environment.
No matter how tough the minister makes this act it will make no difference unless the department has the resources to enforce the legislation.
What must be emphasized, however, is more than enforcement. The operative word is compliance, not enforcement. Compliance is number one. It is always better to follow the carrot on the stick approach. A law must have the capacity to enforce its regulations. Yet it will be a more effective law if it can deter individuals from breaking the law or, better yet, if it can encourage individuals to follow the law.
That applies to all legislation in the House. If we could follow the basic principle that incentives, all things being equal, work better than sticks, I think we would all be much further ahead. The business community certainly knows about natural incentives.
Other areas of enforcement contained in Bill C-32 also need to be examined and possibly amended for improvement. For example, the right to supervision contained within the bill may be improved if amended so that the government is made a mandatory party to any suit. Whistleblower protection contained in the legislation may also require expansion to include whistleblower protection for workers who report breaches of the law and bad environmental practices, not just to inspectors but to the public and through the media. Pollution is a public issue and workers should have the right to publicize it without fear of sanctions.
Despite the many needed areas of improvement, some of the other improvements to the bill include improved time lines for adding new substances that have been assessed to the domestic substances list. Pollution prevention planning guidelines have been further developed in the new bill. Recognition of voluntary instruments has also been added. Section 51 has been amended to ensure that pollution prevention, virtual elimination and environmental emergency plans can only be required by the minister for substances on the list of toxic substances. Greater flexibility has been provided in the preparation of pollution prevention plans to keep with the policy objective that these plans do not become akin to excessive regulatory burden.
How does a bureaucrat cut red tape? The answer is lengthways. As we can see many changes have been made to Bill C-32 to make the bill more acceptable to the public than Bill C-74 which died in the last parliament.
There are still areas of concern that need to be worked out. Canadians have waited a long time for the government to pass meaningful and realistic environmental legislation.
We had the recent example of the fiasco over Kyoto. We do not need another one of those. Canada went with no plan, no preannounced target. We abandoned our own negotiators for political reasons. We had no cost benefit analysis, no idea of how to get to our commitment. It was an international embarrassment due to a Liberal search for political correctness, without caring about the downstream consequences. It was almost as if we would not bother to measure them so that we could not be held accountable later. It is sort of like make it up as we go along.
I am hoping to see our government get away from its empty rhetoric and destructive political agenda and move toward something more realistic and acceptable to Canadians that will truly benefit our environment.
It appears there has been progress in amendments to the legislation since the last parliament. The bill has shortcomings and some revisions are certainly required, as I have pointed out.
