Keith Martin

[Marine Liability Act, March 30th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the fact is it will not, but we provide this opportunity for the government. We, in the opposition, can work together. All political parties, all members are offering the government solutions.

The government can put forth solutions to eliminate dragging and have a comprehensive strategy to deal with our oceans. It can take a leadership role rather than a subservient role on the issue of protecting marine areas in Canada and throughout the world, critical marine areas for the protection of species, many of which we consume as foodstuffs. The government also needs to work with first nations groups, which are willing partners to make this happen.

We need to do many things on climate change, on species protections and on reducing pollution. The solutions are out there. It requires leadership. It requires focus. It requires the Conservatives to do their job, rather than sitting back and thinking that other countries and other groups will do it for them. They will not.

[Marine Liability Act, March 30th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I will get to the last part of my speech. I was getting into the part about the fact that human activities are the biggest threat to our oceans. As I said before, 17 of the major fisheries in the world are depleted, overfished and becoming extinct. This is a catastrophic problem.

Global warming is causing sea levels to rise. Many pesticides and nutrients are getting into the ocean system. Factories and industrial pollutants are pouring into the oceans. Air pollution is responsible for one-third of the toxic contaminants and nutrients that enter our coastal waters. Invasive species are causing greater problems.

There are solutions out there and I am going to provide some of them. Number one is to establish marine protective parks. On the coast of British Columbia there are a number of areas that can and should be protected.

Dr. Sylvia Earle, who hails from Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and the Scripps Research Institute in California, one of the world's leading oceanographers, has repeatedly called for the protection of areas in the world where fish species go to become larger and reproduce. The failure to protect these areas, which are unregulated and unprotected, will result in the massive demise of major fish species that are the cornerstone species not only in the oceans but also critical to the lives of people across our globe.

We fish and the fish will not be available, a major source of protein. What are we going to do when that source dries up? We have a serious problem and we have to act now.

There needs to be an elimination of destructive fishing practices, like ocean dragging. Ocean dragging destroys ecosystems on the ocean floors. It must be banned. I expect that the government can work with us to provide leadership in that area.

We all know what climate change is. What does not receive enough attention is the impact of climate change on our oceans. Oceans act as a carbon dioxide sink. They also produce oxygen. As temperatures rise, the ability of oceans to absorb carbon dioxide and oxygen, quite frankly, diminishes. The decrease in carbon dioxide absorption results in a feedback loop that actually causes a worsening of climate change.

This is the horror story before us. Once these feedback loops begin, they cannot be stopped. The increase in ocean temperatures resulting in a decrease in oxygen results in the death of fisheries because these anoxic areas are created that do not have any oxygen. The absence of oxygen will kill fish. It is critically important that we start to address this issue.

On the issue of climate change, we are going to look at Copenhagen, which is really Kyoto 2. I am going to present a solution that I think can be quite innovative.

The forests of the world are actually giant utilities. These utilities provide us with an ability, through photosynthesis, to produce oxygen and reduce carbon dioxide. That is what photosynthesis is. As we slash, burn and cut these forests of the world, including our own, it results in a decrease in the carbon dioxide consumption or the carbon sink capabilities but it also reduces the production of oxygen. The great forests of the world are utilities but we do not pay for them. There is no value in them. The only value they have right now is, frankly, to cut them down.

What if we were to change the way we think about the forests of the world? What if we were to look at the forests of the world as giant utilities that provide a benefit, which they do? They produce oxygen and reduce carbon dioxide. What if we paid not to cut down the forests? What if we were able to provide a value for those forests? That can be done.

It is estimated that every forest can absorb about 200 tonnes of carbon every single year. At a price of $10 per tonne of carbon, that is $2,000 per hectare. In the case of Indonesia, for example, it would be mean over $2 billion would go to Indonesia not to cut its forests down. Putting a value on carbon and a value, therefore, on the forests because of their ability to consume carbon produces a value for the forests and for the people who have them. They could then produce carbon credits which could then be sold to generate money for their communities.

This is particularly important in developing countries. Herein lies the opportunity for CIDA. CIDA deals with human development. The Department of Environment deals with environment. The twain do not meet. There is a chasm between the two that has never been connected.

If we are to address the issue of climate change and the issue of human development, then environment and human development are two halves of the same whole. The way to connect them is through CIDA and the Department of the Environment working together so Kyoto 2, or the negotiations that will take place in Copenhagen, will produce a system where carbon has a price and forests have value.

Looking at forests as a giant public utility, moneys can accrue, so cutting down the forests would be unnecessary. That would arrest the horrible situation occurring around the world, which is the destruction of forests. The destruction is not only the cutting down of the forests, but in many cases they are being burned. In the burning of the forests, we see the release of greenhouse gases. It is a terrible situation.

Canada can provide leadership. Not many people are talking about the solution, but I firmly believe our ability to move forward, putting a price on carbon, putting a value on forests and paying for not cutting them down, will ensure that the people see value in keeping those forests, which would benefit the people surrounding them. In other words, when we benefit people, we also benefit our environment.

With respect to global warming, it is critically important that the government looks at best practices. It should be engaging, interacting and showing leadership rather than following. South of the border President Obama has chosen to take this with both hands and address the problem, as opposed to what happened in the eight years prior to that.

Our government, tragically, is cutting and choking off the funds for significant climate change groups in Canada, particularly those attached to universities. There is a network, partly at the University of Victoria, and Professor Weaver sits on the international panel for climate change, which won the Nobel prize. However, the government is choking off those funds. It is cutting the funds to this network, which has been built over the last several years to deal with climate change. Tragically, this will remove the very solutions we want.

I have provided a number of solutions for the government to improve our oceans, our navigable waters and our environment. We, in the Liberal Party, strongly want to work with the government to improve the bill to ensure that it addresses the concerns of Canadians.

[Marine Liability Act, March 30th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to this bill. Three areas of my riding of Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca are surrounded by the beautiful Pacific Ocean. The Straits of Juan de Fuca curve around the southwestern part of my riding. It is truly a gorgeous part of the world and I invite everybody to come down and visit.

This bill is particularly important, not only to my riding but also to Canadians from coast to coast to coast. It does have some good parts to it but I will outline some of the flaws, the neglect and the disinterest that the government has applied to our oceans and waterways since it came into power. I also will provide the government with solutions that will enable it to do the right thing and make changes that are reflective of the public interest with respect to the management of our oceans and of our navigable waters.

We know that our oceans provide life. Ninety-seven percent of the world's water is in our oceans, made up of 3% of salt, and 1.35 billion cubic kilometers of water exists in our oceans. From the phytoplankton that provides the cornerstone and the basis of the food pyramid to the larger mammal species, it is truly a remarkable thing to behold.

The oceans are also critically important to our lives. I will go through a number of things that will outline the problems and solutions that affect our oceans that only urgent action will address.

Before I go on, I want to deal with the changes to the Navigable Waters Protection Act because they are extremely important to all Canadians. As I said before, navigable waters are designed, if one can navigate through it, it is determined to be a Crown property and therefore subject to federal regulation. To arrest that, the government, in parts of Bill C-10 that it put forward, eliminated environmental assessments with few exceptions for development products on Canadian waterways. Second, it allowed Canadian rivers to be separated into those that were deemed to be worthy of being protected from those that were not deemed to be worthy of being protected. These classifications would be made not in a public forum, but in cabinet, in-House with no public assessment and no public input, in secret. Fourth, these decisions could be made on political expediency without any effort to apply science, research and environmental protection.

In my view we need to, first, restore the existing environmental assessment requirements; second, remove the minister's discretion on major construction projects as listed in the legislation, specifically dams, causeways, bridges and booms; and third, remove the power of government to arbitrarily divide Canada's rivers into those it considers worthy versus those it somehow considers less valuable.

The free passage of Canadians on our waterways goes as far back in history to the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215. However, in Bill C-10, the government ripped up that arrangement between the people of our country and their rights to the navigable waters of our nation. This will be a big issue in the next election. The government is now put on notice that it must make the changes or it will pay the price in the next election.

I want to speak to the issue of boats. In many of our ridings, people dump their boats into the ocean and walk away. There is no repercussion whatsoever for individuals who dump their boats into the ocean. These boats are an environmental hazard and a human hazard. In fact, a person in my riding was climbing into one of these boats and died as a result of it.

What the municipalities are finding is that the federal government will not take responsibility for the boats, nor will the individuals, and the province washes its hands. The municipalities now have an environmental problem with no ability to deal with it.

I call upon the government to deal with this issue and develop a process whereby the owners of these boats will be held responsible for removing them and, if they are not removed, the owners will be prosecuted. In my riding of Sooke, British Columbia, we have more than 20 boats that need to be removed because they are a hazard.

The largest boondoggle in Canadian history is about to take place in Victoria. It is a $2 billion sewage treatment plant that is not necessary at all and the science does not support it.

In British Columbia right now we have what is equivalent to secondary sewage treatment. The secondary sewage treatment happens as a result of the natural ebb and flow that exists within the Straits of Juan de Fuca. Contrary to the knowledge of some, sewage goes through, ends in an outfall and is sieved all the way through. Nothing larger than something that is six millimetres in diameter is actually released.

The problem that Victoria has, from an environmental perspective, is that its storm drainage system is fractured and it has become the source of the environmental hazards that we have now. It is a $2 billion infrastructure project of which the public will not get the gains that governments believe they will have. It will not remove the persistent organic pollutants, heavy metals, toxins, pathogens and pharmaceuticals that we want to get out.

How do we deal with that? We invest in a storm drainage system and have better source control than what we have, and, for heaven's sake, do not pursue this $2 billion boondoggle that is about to happen in Victoria.

It is not by accident that I have on our side of those who are against this, six chief medical officers in the greater Victoria area who think this is a boondoggle. Eight of the top ocean scientists at the University of Victoria think this is a boondoggle. The responsible sewage treatment group is made up of six chief medical officers and more than ten top ocean scientists.

The government should listen to the science and to listen to the chief medical officers. They are the ones who know. They have the science. This current project is not following the science. I warn the government that it will run into a very serious problem of a $2 billion boondoggle that it will wear unless it deals with the science, listen to the facts and work together with the groups that can put forth the effective infrastructure projects that will deal with the problems that the government and those of us who live in Victoria are deeply concerned about. However, this is not the way to go.

On the issue of the Coast Guard, the government put forth a Coast Guard assessment for Victoria. I must say that the Straits of Juan de Fuca is one of the busiest shipping zones in the entire world. However, what is shocking is that Victoria has no close-by ability to respond with its Coast Guard to a crisis that will occur in and around Victoria. This is a problem that needs to be rectified.

The Coast Guard did an assessment. There are solutions that have been sitting there for years. A 40-plus foot boat is sitting in Sidney doing absolutely nothing. I urge the government to move that boat to Victoria to provide the rapid response that is needed for crises that can and will occur in the Straits of Juan de Fuca.

Ocean traffic is a very big concern for those of us who live on Vancouver Island. All of us know that if a tanker runs aground in the area we will have a catastrophic oil spill. We have had some misinformation and a lack of clarity on this particular issue. I strongly recommend that the government provide clarity on the use of double hulled ships in the straits and to provide an effective conduit for tankers so they will not go through areas that are narrow and where the threat of a tanker to run aground is very high.

That route needs to be established, clarified and communicated to the people of British Columbia. and it should be done as soon as possible.

The Arctic is a serious challenge. We know the government, justifiably, has a new interest in this, which we commend and applaud. However, there are aspects in the Arctic that need to be addressed. One of the central keystone species in the Arctic is a small Arctic cod. That Arctic cod is going to be fished by countries like Finland and that will have catastrophic impacts upon the other species that live in the region.

I will put this into context. This means that one-third of all sea mammal species are threatened or on the brink of extinction. This needs to be addressed because as these species are tied into the web of biodiversity that we have in our world, they are part of the chain of life. If we take out a part of that chain, then the rest of the chain can be negatively affected. We are a part of that food chain. I strongly recommend that the government deal with this.

The next point I want to make is on the issue of forestry practices. People in my province are cutting down trees right to the edge of salmon bearing streams. There is a severe lack of oversight and accountability and the impact is what we are seeing right now and one of the contributing factors of the collapse of our salmon species on the west coast. We do not want to see our fishermen in British Columbia fall to the same fate that happened on the east coast with the collapse of the cod fishery. We need to do things today to prevent the collapse of the salmon fishery on the west coast from happening so we can have a sustainable fishery within Canada on the west coast. I strongly urge the federal government to work with the provincial government to establish enforced forestry practices codes that do not allow companies to deforest right down to the water's edge.

In official development, we have an opportunity to deal with taking the forests of the world and indulge in something called REDD. REDD is a program that pays for critical habitats and forests to not be cut down. This could be part of Copenhagen, part of Kyoto 2. The minister could link up human development with environmental protection. There are solutions to that missing link and we will get to that, I am sure, after question period.

[Marine Liability Act, March 30th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, in Bill C-10, the government made a change. It attached changes to the Navigable Waters Protection Act to that bill which had nothing to do with the budget whatsoever.

The right of Canadians and indeed all people to have access to navigable waters has really been protected in law at the federal level. It goes way back to the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215, but these changes are going to severely compromise the ability of Canadians to have access to navigable waters.

These changes that the government has put forward are potentially going to allow the government, by the minister's fiat, to remove whole sections of navigable waters and put them into private hands without any proper environmental assessment or any proper consultation whatsoever.

I would like to ask my friend this. Does he not think that the right thing for the government to do would be to go back, take those elements of Bill C-10 that dealt with the Navigable Waters Protection Act, send it to committee and address the Navigable Waters Protection Act in an open and transparent fashion to ensure that all Canadians from coast to coast can have access to the tributaries that we have always had access to up until now?

[Marine Liability Act, March 30th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague, who comes from the east coast, and we are bookends in our country, has a deep interest in fisheries. I would like to ask him a simple question.

We know that the oceans are dying, that a third of all mammal species are dying, and that overfishing has taken 17 of the major fisheries in the world. They have all been fished to overcapacity.

I would like to ask my hon. colleague, does he not think that this situation is so urgent and pressing that the federal government needs to bring together provincial counterparts to develop an integrated fisheries strategy that would deal with fisheries on the west coast, in the Arctic and on the east coast, so we will arrest the death of our fisheries, which has a huge impact upon foodstuffs, the environment, and all the other species that feed other fish? One example is the Arctic cod. They are small fish essential to the health of the Arctic Ocean.

The Finns are going to fish this particular species with no restriction, no barriers, no guidelines, and no oversight whatsoever. If this bill goes through, it would have a profound impact upon the health of the species in the north and the Inuit who live there.

Would my hon. colleague suggest that the government needs to be urgently seized with this issue and start to take responsibility for its role as the federal Government of Canada in dealing with this pressing problem?

[National Anti-Drug Strategy, March 25th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the government's drug policy is exacerbating crime, violence, the illegal drug trade and substance abuse.

The World Health Organization supports harm reduction strategies. The U.S. has even appointed a prevention focused national drug policy chair, but our government is refusing to listen to the facts and is actively blocking life-saving harm reduction strategies, like Vancouver's Insite program and the NAOMI program. The government is even trying to block these programs through the courts.

If we are to be serious about addressing gang violence, the illegal drug trade and even reducing the harm for our troops in Afghanistan, the government must see substance abuse as a medical problem, not a judicial problem. It should cut the link between users and organized crime through supporting NAOMI, Insite and other harm reduction programs that have been proven to work and save lives.

[Business of Supply, March 9th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I want to draw the government's attention to a particular issue that affects an area more importantly than anywhere else in our country. It is the issue of feedback mechanisms and feedback loops with respect to global warming. As the temperature goes up, methane in the northern permafrost is being released. Methane has a global warming capability that is many times that of carbon dioxide.

I want to ask my colleague about the importance of addressing this and the failure of the government to deal with the climate change foundation. It is severely affecting our ability to deal with this issue. Once we get into these feedback loops, we will not be able to change them because they allow an ongoing release of methane into the atmosphere. This causes an increase in warming, an increase in warming of the oceans, and a reduction in the ability for the normal carbon sinks to absorb greenhouse gases.

[Business of Supply, March 9th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I really appreciated my colleague's speech. It was outstanding.

Apropos to the minister's comments, I have a question for my colleague.

Members from the government have correctly listed a number of investments the government is putting forward, but those investments are actually investments in scientific infrastructure. They are not investments in the people who actually do the research. This is the fatal flaw in the government's plan.

Would the member not give the government a very constructive piece of advice: Please invest in the scientists who do the research in our country, for the absence of investing in our scientists will result in them leaving the country for green pastures?

[Business of Supply, March 9th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I have a very simple question for my colleague. He listed a number of areas in which the government has invested in research, but he was actually quoting the moneys that were put into infrastructure for research. He is not talking about the moneys that our scientists need to actually do the research. That is the problem and that is the challenge we have, because the absence of investment in our scientists will cause them to leave.

In the United States, President Obama is investing $10 billion into basic research and science, and other money on top of that. India, China, Brazil and other nations are investing in these areas now. The failure to do this will result in our scientists leaving Canada.

The other big hole in his argument is the fact that he is quoting moneys that were already allocated for the next two to three years. The government did not invest new money for groups like Genome Canada and others to enable them to plan in the future for the three, five, seven and ten year cycles that are needed for basic research.

Would the member not acknowledge that failure and commit to actually change the government's flawed research and development proposals?

[Business of Supply, March 9th, 2009]

Here is the challenge, Mr. Speaker, to clear the air here. What has happened is that the government has allowed funding to go on for the next three years. What it has not done is provide new funding that would enable our researchers to do the research they need to do beyond 2012. That is the kind of research and moneys that we are asking for right now.

Furthermore, moneys have been put, as the minister said, into research for commercialization. What we are talking about is basic research and investment into the men and women who do the research in our country. He is actually talking about old moneys that were already available. He is not talking about new moneys.