Keith Martin

[Infrastructure, May 26th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, if there is one thing this minister is good at, it is making false promises.

I think he should listen to this. The government asked for shovel-ready projects and Vancouver Island answered the call: sewer extensions in Sooke and work road extensions in Langford. However, they have received zip. They cannot get their projects going until the government gets the money out the door.

I will ask the minister a simple question, for all Canadians. When is he going to say yes to Sooke, Langford and the other communities that are pleading with the government for the money they need to service their constituencies—

[Infrastructure, May 26th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I want to correct the Prime Minister. It is the government that is sitting on infrastructure money that this Parliament passed four months ago. Also, the Conservatives said to communities that their projects have to be completed by March 2011. They cannot, because the government cannot get the money out the door. They are saying no to Victoria's Johnson Street Bridge and Esquimalt's Archie Browning Sports Centre.

Municipalities are caught in a mess due to the government's incompetence. Will the government simply extend the March 2011 deadline by at least a year? Tell the House how it is going to streamline the process.

[Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, May 25th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I compliment the member on his speech.

I would like to ask him to outline some of the transgressions that have been taking place with respect to the ELN and the other paramilitaries, and the relationship between the government of Colombia, the ELN and the paramilitaries, as well as the remaining members of FARC that are still in existence.

I would also like the member to talk about the issue of drugs. Drugs fueled the narco-terrorist state that Colombia became, and still is, to some extent. Do we not need to have a change here at home? Does the west not need to change also? If there were not a demand, there would not be a supply.

We make demands on countries such as Colombia, Central American countries and Mexico, but do we not also need to change our demand here in Canada? The federal government should start adopting harm reduction strategies that work, which would reduce demand here and have a positive impact upon improving social conditions in countries such as Colombia.

[Family Homes on Reserves and Matrimonial Interests or Rights Act, May 14th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I want to advance some ideas for dealing with poverty in first nations communities, on reserve and off reserve.

There are a couple of concrete solutions that the government needs to address, and I will ask the hon. member if her party would support these. One is to make sure there is equal funding for aboriginal children versus non-aboriginal children. Right now there is a huge discrepancy in funding. This is deplorable, because kids cannot have access to the resources they need to get the education they require if there is such a huge difference in funding.

Second, there are places like Attawapiskat where the conditions are so bad that kids are freezing in their schools. How can they possibly learn when they are wearing parkas and they are frozen to the bone? Other communities, like mine, in Pacheedaht, have been on boil water advisories for huge chunks of time. The Department of Indian and Northern Affairs ignores their requests repeatedly. How can one have communities on Vancouver Island where they do not have access to potable water? It is absolutely remarkable.

The basics are not being addressed by the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, which has a huge budget.

I ask the hon. member what she thinks of truncating the size of the department of Indian affairs, downloading those responsibilities with the capacity building on the ground so people can take care of themselves and that first nations communities have the structure for direct investment that will enable them to generate funds to provide for their people.

[Family Homes on Reserves and Matrimonial Interests or Rights Act, May 14th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I know the hon. member sees these issues very much in her community, as we see the issues affecting first nations people in our communities. I have five first nations communities in my riding. Some of them have situations that are akin to the type of deplorable conditions we would only find in third world countries.

As the AFN has been requesting for a long time, I would like to ask my colleague if she thinks one of the root things this Parliament has to do in consultation with first nations communities is to scrap the Indian Act and replace it with something within the legal framework of our country established with first nations people that would more enable first nations communities to develop, expand and create the development they require.

Right now they are actually hamstrung by the Indian Act in ways that others cannot even hope to imagine. In fact, those in a non-aboriginal community have one-fourth the amount of administrative and bureaucratic red tape to go through versus an aboriginal community. That is deplorable. It is a huge obstruction to aboriginal communities being able to develop and become economic masters of their future.

[Marine Liability Act, May 14th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, we have learned over the years from the World Wildlife Fund and the International Union for Conservation of Nature, with respect to land examples, with some exceptions for necessary protection of lands because they are unique and very fragile, if we look at an area and say we are simply going to conserve something, in the end that area will not be conserved, it will in fact be destroyed.

We have to have, as the member correctly alluded to, the yin and the yang of this, which is sustainable development and conservation. Historically, some have thought that it cannot happen, but we have found that it must happen. We have to balance the ability of putting conservation first. With a mind for conservation, we can have sustainable development. We just have to be aware that what we are doing is not going to create and adopt practices that will damage the very biodiversity that is essential for the life of our species. We human beings are part of the web of life. We are all part of one wheel of life. If we damage one part of that wheel, then we are all affected as a result.

[Marine Liability Act, May 14th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the member is absolutely right. We can have all the laws in the world, but unless there is an enforcement mechanism they are not useful. They are not even as useful as the piece of paper in my right hand.

That not only goes for the domestic laws but also the international laws. We have UNCLOS, the UN law of the sea, to which we are a signatory. We have not been able to establish, domestically or internationally, an effective enforcement mechanism. We have a judicial mechanism without an enforcement mechanism, which makes the judicial system not useful at all. This is a fundamental challenge of the signatories to international treaties. We get half the equation correct, but we do not do the other half.

In my community on Vancouver Island, we only have one fisheries officer to do all the work on the southern half of Vancouver Island. That is absolutely impossible. We see a lot of poaching and destruction of habitat, and we have a beleaguered fisheries officer who simply does not have enough time.

The government really needs to come to the table to define how it is going to provide the resources to enforce the very laws in this bill.

[Marine Liability Act, May 14th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the member has asked an interesting question.

Penalties can be on the books, but the challenge is enforcement. I am still wondering where the enforcement aspect is in this legislation. Historically the government has not invested in the enforcement capabilities we need today to enforce the laws we already have. I am looking for the enforcement aspect of the bill, which is absolutely essential.

The member brought up the issue of the navigable waters act. The government added the navigable waters act to Bill C-10, the budget bill, an issue that had nothing to do with the budget at all. By putting this in the budget bill, the government actually compromised what it claims it wants to do, which is to have a system in place to protect our waters and to do proper environmental assessments of our waters.

As the member mentioned, waterways across our country are under threat. The changes the government has put in place to the navigable waters act are actually going to work counter to this legislation. I would like to see the government remove that completely from Bill C-10.

With respect to the last issue, oil dumping from ships is a huge problem. But the dumping that goes on with bilge cleaning and such is much greater than the large oil spills, and it has to be deal with.

[Marine Liability Act, May 14th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, thank you for doing that. I appreciate that.

Alanna Mitchell, who we hosted as part of the international conservation caucus a few weeks ago, is a former Globe and Mail reporter. She has published a book called Sea Sick.

In this book, she eloquently and articulately speaks about the damage taking place within our oceans, not only the oceans in other parts of the world but also the oceans that abut our country.

I recommend that people take a look at this book, because in it she describes the impact of the different pressures I mentioned before. One thing I would like to reiterate, and she says it very clearly, is that if the sea life disappears, the life on land will disappear, too.

This point is a fundamental principle that we must adhere to and that we must remember, because if we do not do something to deal with the destruction of sea life right now, then what we are going to see is that it will negatively affect life on land, and there is no going back.

How this is happening through global warming is as follows.

As the temperature is rising, as we are increasing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, what we are seeing is a meltdown. In the Arctic, where my colleague from the Yukon lives and has spoken very eloquently about this, the melting of the polar ice cap is actually also causing a melting of the permafrost.

The permafrost contains methane. Methane is a greenhouse gas that is 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. With this release of this methane, the methane is going up into the atmosphere and exacerbating global warming.

That is acidifying the oceans. The pH is going down. This is negatively affecting the life in the oceans, particularly the small creatures that form the basis of the food chain.

What we are seeing when that happens is a downstream domino effect on the rest of the food chain, affecting larger and larger species. So the commercial fish species that we consume and the fish that others consume are in decline.

One example I want to bring up, and I hope that the Minister of the Environment at some time would like to pay attention to this, is that there are very small fish up in the Arctic that are absolutely essential for the ecosystems in the Arctic.

These small fish are about to be harvested in an unregulated fashion by Norway. Norway is going to go up into our Arctic regions and harvest these fish, which are the basis of the food chain in the Arctic.

I would implore the Minister of the Environment to go and deal with Norway and develop a regime to make sure that we are not going to have an unregulated fishery in the Arctic that is going to have a cataclysmic effect on the Canadians who live in the Arctic. This is a very serious problem.

The other issue I want to bring up that the government could pursue is the state of the marine protected areas we have on the west coast and the need for other marine protected areas.

Right now with the collapsing fish stocks that we are seeing and the dead zones that are occurring, it is more important than ever for us to have these marine protected areas that are forming a contiguous area. As to some of the principles in applying for this, I know the IUCN and CPAWS have done a good job of identifying specific areas that need to be protected.

I would ask the minister to really listen to the WWF, CPAWS and the IUCN, and to take a look at those areas that they have identified as being critically important. They are important because they are crucial areas for different species of marine life in the sea. The removal and the absence of those areas is going to have a cataclysmic effect on the fish species there.

Right now, we have 59 conservation areas, covering some 3,020 square kilometres, that have been established throughout the region. This is a small fraction. In fact, only 1% of the areas that exist on the west coast are actually protected. There are other areas that have to be protected, and they have been identified.

I would just ask again that the government really listen to the NGO organizations that have identified these areas. If we do not do this now, those areas are going to be destroyed and the expansion of dead zones are going to continue in the ocean, which is going to negatively affect the communities that live in the coastal regions and are dependent on those areas.

One particularly unique species that we have on the west coast is glass sponges. They have survived 9,000 years, but right now, more than half of these glass sponges have been destroyed. They are, in effect, living dinosaurs. These areas should be protected because they are critically important in many ways for the larger submarine habitats that exist in the cold waters off the coast of British Columbia. If we fail to do this, these sponges will never come back.

The whale species, which are a signature species on the west coast, are in decline. This is a global problem. British Columbians are very attached to the orca killer whales. As I said, we have seen the numbers flatline and decline in some of the subspecies of orcas on the west coast of British Columbia. As a result we can see that these species can actually disappear.

Of course, the other issue is seabirds. Seabirds are a sentinel species. On the west coast of Canada, we have had a decline of these species, in part because of dumping into the ocean.

I want to get into the issue of dumping pollution into our oceans. In Victoria, we have a very particular issue having to do with sewage treatment. There is a demand on the part of the federal government to force Victoria to have a secondary plus level of sewage treatment. Unfortunately, this proposal, which is now estimated to cost $2 billion, is going to be the largest boondoggle in Canadian history. I will explain why it is not necessary and what should be done to address the environmental concerns that Victorians have.

I spoken with members of the Ministry of the Environment and they think we are simply dumping raw sewage into the ocean or into Victoria Harbour. That is absolutely not the truth. The fact of the matter is, though it is going into toilets and sinks, it is actually sieved so that nothing larger than four millimetres actually gets out the other end. In fact, the area around the outfalls in Victoria is not damaged. The area immediately around it has some effects, but more than 100 to 200 metres outside, there is no effect. In fact, those areas have some of the best fishing around, and fisherman will agree with that.

What comes out of the outfalls in Victoria is 99.9% water. Many of the bad things, such as the heavy metals, lead, mercury and pharmaceuticals that are of concern, are controlled by source control. They are not really dumped down. Even if they are dumped down, a secondary plus treatment system will not deal with this problem.

The major source of marine pollution taking place right now in Victoria is coming from the fractured storm drainage system. The detritus that Victorians see on the side of the ocean at times, particularly after a storm, is not a result of the outfall. The root cause of that is a fractured storm drainage system that is more than 80 years old, in many cases. That stuff is leaking into the environment. That is bad. It needs to be fixed, but it is not part of the mandate of what the federal government has asked Victoria to do.

In other words, the federal government is chasing a $2 billion boondoggle that is not going to affect the environmental needs of my community. This will be an irresponsible use of the taxpayers' money. If the minister wants to affect positively the environmental needs of my community of Victoria, wants to improve the marine life and decrease pollution in our oceans, he needs to do the following.

First, do not pursue this $2 billion sewage treatment boondoggle proposal. Second, put the funds into the repair of the storm drainage system. Third, have a better source control system. We already have a good one, but it can be improved somewhat. If we do that, the marine environments around Victoria will be addressed.

He can also pursue the enforcement rules that are necessary to ensure that dumping of garbage into the oceans is not going to continue. Much of the garbage that we see floating around does not come from an outfall. It actually comes from ships dumping raw garbage into the oceans. It comes from people dumping garbage into the oceans right where they live. That is the cause of the problem.

I would try to save the taxpayer $2 million, but the government is marching down a road it will regret. The proposal I am giving can be found on www.rstv.ca. It is backed by more than 10 environmental ocean scientists at the University of Victoria and more than six chief public health medical officers in Victoria. We are all on the same side, a side that is different from the government.

The government should look at the United States, where certain communities actually received an exemption. They have the same type of unique ecosystem as we do with the deep ocean currents and the cold water. They were able to take the essentially organic matter coming out of the outfall and use it for what it should be, which is food for marine life in our oceans.

On another matter, the issue of fishing, I would ask the Minister of the Environment to work with his counterpart, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans. There is a deep rot within the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. There is an inability of the department to deal with the pressing environmental challenges we have and an inability to allow a sustainable fishery on the west coast.

There is a lack of inclusion of stakeholders and a lack of dealing with the fundamental issues of enabling us to have funding for the salmon hatcheries. If we did not have those salmon hatcheries, essentially we would not have a commercial fishery.

We ought to have a system where the government works with the provinces to enforce the laws we have to stop forestry practices from destroying fish beds that are essential for the reproduction of fish.

There is a need for enforcement officers in the area and also an investment in science to do the monitoring that is required. Without this, we cannot have an effective commercial fishery.

There is an urgent issue regarding fish farming in the oceans. Open fish farms are placed right in the area where the smolts leave the rivers and go into the ocean. These smolts go by the open fish farms and pick up sea lice, which affects their ability to survive in the open ocean. A simple solution is to move those fish hatcheries out of those areas. The second thing that can be done is to only allow closed fish hatchery systems so the organic matter and other products that grow the fish quickly will not get into the larger ecosystem.

The absence of this is a serious problem to British Columbians, and ultimately it will affect our ability to have access to the fish we consume. The failure to do this on the east coast has cost hundreds of thousands of jobs with the collapse of the northern cod fishery. We do not want that to happen in British Columbia. Already there has been a significant contraction of those involved in the fishing industry, and part of it is because of the decline in fish stocks and the excessive pressure that has occurred.

We debated the seal hunt in the House, but we did not deal with the Europeans. European and Asian commercial fishing fleets are raping the world's oceans. They are destroying the world's oceans by creating dead zones. An international effort must be made, and Canada must take the lead on it, to put pressure on the European Union to halt the irresponsible, destructive commercial fishing practices that are destroying the earth's oceans.

The minister needs to study the work by Dr. Sylvia Earle, formerly of Woods Hole, Massachusetts and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California. She has eloquently, clearly and scientifically spoken about and detailed the destruction of our oceans.

The oceans are our birthright. They are our responsibility to give to future generations. We can have a sustainable fishery. We can have an ocean system that will be there forever, but it is up to us to implement the solutions required to ensure that happens.

[Marine Liability Act, May 14th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, it is a real pleasure to speak on this issue. My friend and colleague who just spoke very clearly mentioned some of the challenges we have, and as British Columbians, these challenges are in our neighbourhoods. They are next to our homes and affect the livelihood of the people who live and work in our communities.

Our nation, though, is very blessed. We have 5.87 million square kilometres of marine areas, one of the largest marine areas in the entire world. This is our legacy. This is what we have been given, and we are the stewards and responsible for managing this not only for our country but indeed for the world.

As we know, ecosystems are connected. They go beyond borders. The complex ecosystems and environmental systems in our country are connected to a global ecosystem. We have, as the saying goes, only one world, so it is up to us to be able to do the right things for them.

The challenges affecting our oceans are significant: global warming, pollution and the biocumulation of toxins. In fact, in British Columbia, whales such as orcas, and indeed, on the east coast, if a beluga whale were to wash up in the St. Lawrence River, that beluga whale would be considered to be toxic material, because the biocumulation of toxic materials in high-level marine mammals is a deep concern.

We also think, with respect to why the orca population on the west coast may have flatlined and is declining, it is because the accumulation of these biotoxins is actually having a negative impact on the ability of these large and beautiful mammals to reproduce.

We have the issue of oil spills, as I mentioned before, and ships, people, fractured storm drainage systems, which is happening in Victoria now, and logging practices. In my area, we have seen logging that has gone right down to the level of the rivers. What that is doing, in violating existing laws, is actually destroying the ability of these rivers to produce the salmon that so many British Columbians live on. As a result of that, the lack of enforcement is allowing the destruction of the very salmon beds that are integral to our ability to have a fisheries industry that is sustainable and growing.

On the issue of overfishing, 90% of the commercial fish species in the world are either at their limit or being overfished, which means they are in decline—for example, tuna and marlin. We saw what happened with the northern cod on the east coast of Canada. The fish species that the world consumes right now are being fished at such a level and at such a rate, in such an irresponsible way, that they cannot survive.

What will the impact be on our ability to eat fish? It is going to severely compromise it, not only for Canadians, but around the world in developing countries where the consumption of fish is one of the most inexpensive and most accessible, historically, sources of protein. Without the protein, people's lives are going to be affected from a health perspective.

Different fishing practices that exist now, I would say personally, should be banned. Why do we allow dragging? Why do we allow fishermen to drag the bottom of areas, which destroys the ability of fish to reproduce? The act of dragging is actually reducing and damaging the very places these fish reproduce. The goal we must have, in my view, is to create a network of marine protected areas.

In British Columbia, we have some marine protected areas, but the level of marine protected areas we have now is inadequate. These must be based on ecosystem management systems and sustainable fisheries practices. If we are able to do this, we will indeed be able to have the marine protected areas that are required.

As the basis of this, the marine protected areas must be founded on the sound principle of the combination--

Mr. Speaker, on a point order, is this a conversation that is going to go on during my speech?