Kirsty Duncan

[Nuclear Liability and Compensation Act, May 28th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, ballet slippers for little feet, cardboard pictures of Lenin and dolls in various states of dress and dismemberment provide a glimpse into kindergarten life before it came to a standstill in April 1986, when Chernobyl's reactor 4 exploded.

The fire burned for 10 days, contaminating tens of thousands of square miles, and the fallout was 400 times greater than that of Hiroshima. Thirty people died in the blast, four thousand died of cancer, a third of a million people were driven from their homes and six hundred thousand registered as cleanup workers or liquidators. Of these, 240,000 received the highest radiation doses.

Over the years, the compensation costs, economic losses, health and cleanup expenditures and lost productivity mounted into the hundreds of billions of dollars. Today Chernobyl remains the world's worst nuclear disaster.

Growing up, our high school teachers and our professors taught us to be concerned about nuclear accidents, nuclear waste, nuclear weapons proliferation and pollution from uranium mining. Unfortunately these problems have not gone away. For example, we continue to bury waste, a policy of “out of sight, out of mind”, despite not knowing the full environmental and health consequences.

Bill C-20 is however a positive step to managing and minimizing the risks involved in the use of nuclear material, namely through preparation, response and reparation. Specifically, Bill C-20 establishes the civil liability regime and compensation to address damages resulting from radiation in the event of a radioactive release from a Canadian nuclear installation, or from nuclear materials being transported to or from the installation. Compensable damage includes bodily injury, damage to property, economic and property losses and psychological trauma resulting from such injury or damage.

It is important that the bill address psychological trauma. The Chernobyl accident impacted economic prosperity, personal health and social well-being. Victims reported high levels of anxiety, stress, medically unexplained physical symptoms and reckless behaviour, including alcohol and tobacco abuse and consumption of game from areas heavily contaminated with high levels of radioactive cesium.

Bill C-20 increases operator liability from $75 million to $650 million and would put Canada on par with liability limits in many other countries, as well as responding to the recommendations of the Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources. The latter is important, as private insurers have consistently and systematically refused to provide coverage for damage resulting from nuclear incidents.

When discussing nuclear accidents, bodily injury may range from radiation sickness through to leukemia and other cancers. Radiation sickness is a serious illness that occurs when the entire body receives a high dose of radiation, usually over a short period of time. Many survivors of Chernobyl, Hiroshima and Nagasaki became ill with radiation sickness, which often began with nausea, diarrhea, skin damage and vomiting and progress to seizures and coma.

Most people who did not recover from radiation illness died within several months of exposure, usually from the destruction of bone marrow, which led to infections and internal bleeding. Unborn babies can also be exposed to radiation and they are especially vulnerable between two and fifteen weeks of pregnancy. The health consequences can be severe, including abnormal brain function, cancer, deformities and stunted growth.

Ionizing radiation can also cause certain types of leukemia. An elevated risk of blood cancer was first found among the survivors of the atomic bombings in Japan two to five years after exposure. Recent investigations suggest a doubling of the incidence of leukemia among the most highly exposed Chernobyl liquidators.

Unfortunately, time does not permit me to describe all potential health impacts such as cardiovascular problems, cataract and thyroid cancer.

Neither Bill C-20 nor its predecessors Bill C-63 and Bill C-5 have been the subject of lengthy public debate outside Parliament or have they attracted much media attention.

Members of the Canadian Nuclear Association have commented that the bill responds to society's needs and represents a balanced approach. The association further reports that the bill provides protection of the public under a coherent, explicit and stable framework.

Before putting forth questions that might be asked at committee, it is important to remind the House that while the government puts forth the bill, it is also responding to the leak at the Chalk River nuclear reactor, which provides a third of the world's medical isotopes.

The general manager of the Association of Imaging Producers and Equipment Suppliers points out that there have been at least five crises of medical isotope production in the last eighteen months. What makes the present crisis so challenging, however, is that three out of the four other reactors in the world that supply medical isotopes, in Belgium, France and South Africa, are also shut down.

While I support the bill in principle, it requires study at committee and careful questioning. For example, what are the projected economic, environmental and health costs of a nuclear release in Canada and possible impacts farther afield? Does the proposed compensation address those impacts?

We must remember that the Chernobyl fallout had far-reaching effects, spreading radionuclides as far away as Lapland in northern Scandinavia. The Arctic's Sami people are reindeer herders and face significant problems from the accident because of the high transfer rate of radioactive material from contaminated lichen to the reindeer. Many herds had to be slaughtered to avoid consumption of the meat. Scientists estimate that it will take another 20 years for radioactive levels in reindeer to fall to pre-Chernobyl levels.

The executive director of the Sierra Club of Canada reported:

A nuclear accident on the scale of the Chernobyl disaster would cost hundreds of billions of dollars in cleanup costs—conceivably 100 times more than the maximum liability industry would face under Bill C-63.

Belarus and the Ukraine are paying approximately $460 billion over 30 years to clean up Chernobyl. Twenty years after the accident, these countries still pay 5% to 7% of their budgets toward the cost of the catastrophe.

The bill is only a small part of a web of protection needed to make Canada more nuclear safe as well as providing life-saving medications to those in need.

We have had multiple wake-up calls. In August 1945, an American war plane dropped a nuclear bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. An estimated 80,000 people were incinerated and in the months that followed, another 60,000 died from the effects of radiation.

A few days later was Nagasaki. About 30% of the city, including almost all of the industrial district, was destroyed by the bomb and nearly 74,000 were killed and a similar number injured.

In 1979 radioactive steam leaked into the atmosphere in Pennsylvania when a water pump broke down at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant. There were fears that some of the plant's 500 workers had been contaminated.

Complacency cannot be an option when it comes to nuclear safety. Today we know the tremendous costs and we must take action.

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

Madam Speaker, it is up to first nations to identify gaps in laws. This bill would take away from the grassroots action, which is happening now.

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

Madam Speaker, Bill C-8 is inconsistent with first nations right to self-determination, which is recognized in our Constitution. It is contrary to first nations jurisdiction over family law, which was recognized by the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples.

I would like to stress that it is up to first nations to identify gaps in laws and address them as they see fit in their own law-making initiatives.

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

Madam Speaker, I think there is consensus in the fact that all first nations women's groups are opposed to the bill. Moreover, the bill does not meet the requirements of the UN declaration, which the government did not sign. The Conservative government was one of only four governments not to sign the declaration, and that number is now down to three.

The bill also does not meet our Constitution.

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

Madam Speaker, I support the amendment of my hon. colleague.

Although September 13, 2007, will be celebrated as a day when indigenous people and the United Nations moved to reconcile painful histories and resolved to move forward respecting human rights, it will not be remembered so here in Canada.

The UN Declaration of Rights of Indigenous Peoples was adopted by an overwhelming majority vote of 144 to 4 member states, opposed only by Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States. It was the first time that Canada sought to be exempted from a human rights standard adopted by the General Assembly.

I am compelled to speak out against Bill C-8 as I strongly believe it is fundamentally flawed. It violates numerous provisions of the UN declaration, including control of membership in accordance with tradition, protection against cultural assimilation, and right to self-determination.

It is inconsistent with first nations' right to self-government, recognized in the Constitution, and is contrary to first nations' jurisdiction over family law, recognized in the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples.

The government must not interfere in first nations' right to self-determination and must not attempt to justify its intrusion in any way, in this case saying the Indian Act does not address matrimonial property and provincial legislation does not apply. It is up to first nations to identify gaps in laws and address them as they see fit by their own law-making initiatives.

As it stands there is tremendous concern that Bill C-8 will undermine grassroots action and increase the legislative gap, not eliminate it.

Wendy Grant-John, the ministerial representative, tabled a report in 2007 that stated, “Unilateral, imposed federal legislation was not the proper way to proceed”. Recent court cases support her conclusion, namely that the federal government cannot unilaterally enact legislation that has the potential to affect or infringe aboriginal or treaty rights' interests without first consulting first nations.

Although the consultation process consisted of a planning phase, June 2006, a consultation phase, September 2006 to January 2007, and a consensus building phase, February 2007, the process was considered largely to be information sessions rather than serious consultations by first nations who want to protect and preserve their lands for future generations.

A second concern is that most first nations do not have the capacity to develop the local bylaws referred to in Bill C-8. More disturbing, however, is the fact that these local bylaws can only occur under a federally approved verification officer, a throwback to the Indian agent of the 1950s and wholly inconsistent with the inherent right to self-government. One chief said to me that he feels as if he is living through the residential school system again, a system which destroyed his family.

A third concern is that Bill C-8 does not recognize traditional first nations governments and procedures related to matrimonial property rights, such as traditional forms of dispute resolution involving elders.

Domestic violence is another serious issue that must be addressed as part of the search for solutions to matrimonial real property issues on reserves. Family violence in first nations communities has been described as a consequence to colonization, forced assimilation and cultural genocide.

Bill C-8 would force people with matrimonial real property, or MRP, issues to hire lawyers and utilize the courts, which would undermine the cultural integrity of first nations, and increase family and community discord. First nations want to ensure that their children have an opportunity to live in their communities and learn their culture and language.

The bill creates the appearance of action while leaving underlying socio-economic problems such as inadequate housing, substandard education and unemployment unaddressed.

First nations estimated a housing shortfall of 80,000 units on reserves in 2005. The federal government estimated the shortfall between 20,000 to 35,000 units. Based on current funding levels, it could take anywhere from 15 to 60 years to resolve current housing problems. Chronic housing shortages on reserves have, in turn, resulted in overcrowding.

Just this past week, Sandy Bay Ojibway First Nation buried five-year-old Tristan Mousseau, who perished in a blaze that destroyed a three-bedroom residence, home to 11 people. Tragically, it was the second time in three months that a child died in a house fire on the reserve of about 3,000 people.

Unfortunately, when first nations couples separate, the lack of affordable alternative housing often further breaks families apart, as one spouse and some, or all, of the children are forced to leave their community to seek available housing.

Not only does Bill C-8 violate the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples but also the Constitution and the comprehensive recommendations of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. Moreover, it is largely and strongly opposed by first nations.

Ontario Regional Chief Angus Toulouse wrote:

--the federal government reintroduced legislation on Matrimonial Real Property (MRP) on reserve. The text of the new Bill C-8 is exactly the same as the previous Bill C-47, which was condemned by Resolution 08/66 at the All Ontario Special Chiefs Conference on November 18, 2008. First Nations in Ontario have clearly expressed opposition based on the fact that the federal duty to consult and accommodate First Nations has not been met and further, that the Bill does not respect Aboriginal and Treaty rights as confirmed in the Constitution of Canada...the First Nation position is that the Bill should be opposed at introduction.

First nations organizations, including the Assembly of First Nations, Chiefs of Ontario and Nishnawbe Aski Nation, have passed resolutions opposing Bill C-8.

On March 26, NAN Deputy Grand Chief RoseAnne Archibald together with the NAN Women's Council and more than 80 women from 49 communities united in a peaceful demonstration to demand the Government of Canada withdraw Bill C-8. Some of the women carried signs which read:

Residential School, Sixties Scoop, Now Matrimonial Real Property; Accommodat2on, Consultation, We Were Not Accommodated with Regards to Bill C-8; and Listen to Our Grandmothers and Elders.

I wish I had time to identify the over 20 recommendations made by the ministerial representative and the federal response to each regarding Bill C-8. The words “not addressed” would occur repeatedly.

In closing, I would like members to know that prior to my serving this House, I had the honour and privilege of serving on a first nations board. Each time I sat down with elders and band members, I learned so much. I learned to listen and not to talk unless I held the talking stick. I learned to smudge or brush smoke from burning cedar, sage or sweetgrass to my body to cleanse my spirit. I learned that elders are vital to any community and was glad to learn at their knees and partake in ceremonies. I learned that before any meeting, a chief would call upon the grandfathers and ask for help because we do not have all the answers.

It is time that first nations hold the talking stick and that government listens.

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

Madam Speaker, government ministers have repeatedly claimed that the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is incompatible with the Canadian Constitution and Charter of Rights and Freedoms. However on May 1, 2008, a group of more than 100 Canadian lawyers, scholars and other experts published an open letter that described the government's claims as erroneous and misleading.

Could the hon. member comment on this inconsistency and how Bill C-8 fails to meet the criteria of the declaration?

[Marine Liability Act, May 14th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for noticing this and taking the time and effort to go back three times. He clearly feels very strongly about this. I also thank him for his attention to the bill and for his very thoughtful discussion.

I am wondering if the member could share why he thinks his amendment was voted against, especially when the vote was in favour of a foreign vessel over Canadians.

[Environmental Enforcement Act, May 12th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I am afraid I cannot comment on the government's position.

What I am concerned about, however, is that perhaps there is a lack of understanding regarding science. I think there has been investment in infrastructure, but the reality with scientists is that we need to fund people and we need to fund research.

We are already starting to see that scientists are moving south. The U.S. invested $10 billion in health, $2 billion to neuroscience. We recently lost an AIDS researcher and 25 of his team.

During my speech I mentioned that we have a climate scientist who is going to be able to fund his infrastructure but not his science. There is the threat that we will lose 24 climate change networks. When this is the most pressing environmental issue facing the planet, we cannot afford to lose one network.

[Environmental Enforcement Act, May 12th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to address the science first. The member is absolutely right. For two million years carbon dioxide stayed stable in the atmosphere. At the time of the Industrial Revolution, it started to increase and has increased 32% since the Industrial Revolution. Other gases have increased by 131%.

That may not mean much to people but we also see an increase in temperature. The earth's average temperature has increased .6°C. Again, that may not seem like much, but we must realize that if the earth's temperature decreases by 2°C to 4°C, that is enough to bring on an ice age. The .6°C increase is big.

In Canada the increase has been over 1°C and in northern Canada almost 2°C. These are big changes. Climate change is real. It is happening now and it is having an impact on the levels of the Great Lakes, which are going down. We have rising sea levels.

In the future, we predict that the average temperature of the earth by 2100 will increase by 2°C to 4°C. Again, that is a big change. The carbon dioxide levels in our atmosphere will double by the end of this century. That means our children are going to grow up in a world that is very different than the world we know.

[Environmental Enforcement Act, May 12th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-16 at second reading. This bill requires a respect for and an understanding of science and innovation, a discussion of climate change and real investment in climate science.

Science and innovation must be fundamental to this bill. Environmental enforcement requires monitoring and surveillance. If we look at the atmosphere, we must look at atmospheric chemistry and how carbon dioxide and methane increase in the atmosphere. It requires looking at ice cores and the percentage of carbon dioxide from two million years ago.

Science is important. Science and innovation matter more than ever, because the challenges we face, climate change, emerging diseases and shrinking biodiversity, are greater, and the potential benefits are larger. Canada must innovate to stay competitive, as our country must vie with emerging countries such as China. Fortunately, innovation can be cultivated through incentives for research and development that is important for environmental enforcement, encouraging higher education, fostering collaboration between business and universities and expanding excellent and relevant public research.

Innovation requires leadership and real reform. China, the United States and a few other countries are blazing a trail. Canada must also forge ahead.

President Obama understands that research is fundamental to meeting America's needs. During his inaugural speech, he said:

We will restore science to its rightful place... We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories.

It is even more exciting that President Obama is backing his words with action and money. He appointed top scientists to key positions, including Nobel Prize winning physicist Steven Chu as energy secretary, and Harvard physicist John Holdren as head of the White House office of science and technology. Moreover, the Obama administration is adding $10 billion to finance basic research that is important to environmental monitoring.

In stark contrast, the three agencies that fund basic research in Canada must cut spending by $148 million over the next three years. James Drummond, chief scientist at the polar environment atmospheric research laboratory at Eureka says he will be able to improve the lab through new infrastructure funding but he will not be able to afford to operate it as the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences received no new money in the budget. Without new funding, the foundation will shut down by March 2010, along with 24 research networks studying climate change.

As a scientist and former professor, I know urgent action is needed to safeguard research, keep talent in Canada and build for a better economy and environment. The government must increase funding for Canada's three granting councils, and it should match, on a proportional basis, the support offered in the United States. The government should ensure that programs and scholarships funded by the granting agencies are not restricted to specific fields.

It is my fervent hope that President Obama's appreciation for research and his optimism will spread to Canada as we discuss environmental enforcement. Last year, an editorial in Nature criticized our government for closing the office of the national science advisor, its skepticism about the science of climate change and silencing federal researchers.

It is the second point that troubles me with respect to Bill C-16, namely the failure to mention the elephant in the room: climate change.

The Conservative Minister of the Environment proudly reported:

In the election campaign, our government committed to bolster the protection of our water, air and land through tougher environmental enforcement that holds polluters accountable. Today we delivered. ...the new measures, will provide a comprehensive, modern and effective enforcement regime for Canada.

How truly comprehensive is the proposed bill if it fails to address our most pressing environmental issue, namely climate change?

Global warming will impact the very items that Bill C-16 aims to safeguard. As a result of climate change, we are already seeing changes in caribou, polar bear and seal populations, and changes in permafrost and impacts on traditional ways of life. In the future, climate change will potentially impact migratory birds, their flyways and possibly even the spread of influenza.

Our country's current climate change policies are widely criticized by external research bodies, parliamentarians, the public and the scientific community. In contrast, President Obama is recognized for taking global warming seriously. He is listening to scientists who tell us that the situation is outdistancing our efforts to confront it. The president said:

We all believe what the scientists have been telling us for years now, that this is a matter of urgency and national security and it has to be dealt with in a serious way.

President Obama has since called for hard caps on global warming, cleared the way for tougher clean car standards, declared an intention to play a constructive role in international climate negotiations and introduced a serious green stimulus package.

However, the Prime Minister believes the differences between the American and Canadian regimes are not nearly as stark as some would suggest. He said:

When I look at the President's platform, the kind of targets his administration has laid out for the reduction of greenhouse gases are very similar to ours.

Climate Action Network Canada and the US Climate Action Network, representing 100 leading organizations in Canada and the United States that are working together to prevent catastrophic climate change and promote sustainable and equitable solutions, argue that Canada needs to overhaul its current approach and raise its level of ambition to have a credible climate change policy.

Today the issue of climate change is more pressing than ever, as considerable time lags in the climate system mean that many impacts of climate change are already locked in over the coming decades. Today's buildings, power plants and transportation systems continue to produce increased emissions, meaning an even greater delay and increased warming in the future. Moreover, as some of the climate risks materialize, the economic costs will be much steeper than those from the current financial crisis.

Canadians want action on climate change, as recognized by a former Conservative environment minister who said, in 2007, “Canadians want action. They want it now.”

As testament to this, almost 10 million people participated in Earth hour 2008, in 150 cities from coast to coast to coast. People in cities across Canada held candlelight dinners, enjoyed time with family and friends and went on neighbourhood walks. In Toronto, electricity demand dropped by almost 9%, the equivalent of taking 260 megawatts off the grid or approximately 5.8 million light bulbs.

Canadians understand that Earth hour will not reverse or reduce climate change, but it will raise awareness about the climate change challenges the world is facing. Earth hour presents a good opportunity for people to show their federally elected representatives that they support action to fight climate change.

It is worth noting that most Canadian provinces have emission reduction targets that are much more ambitious than those of the federal government. Canada's largest province, Ontario, is moving ahead with the cap and trade system based on absolute caps aimed at meeting its reduction target of 15% below 1990 levels by 2020, with an implementation date of January 1, 2010.

The Conservative government must protect our atmosphere, and it must build partnerships with business, consumers, local authorities and the energy sector. It must find abatement solutions and reduce fossil fuel subsidies that currently put a premium rather than a penalty on CO₂ emissions. Indications of climate change must be treated with the utmost seriousness and with the precautionary principle uppermost in parliamentarians' minds.

Extensive climate changes may alter and threaten the living conditions of humankind, which may lead to greater competition for the earth's resources and induce large-scale migration. Such changes will place particularly heavy burdens on the world's most vulnerable countries.

Leading entrepreneurs, scientists and thinkers identify the greatest challenges facing humanity over the next 50 years as producing clean energy, reprogramming genes to prevent disease and reversing the signs of aging. They describe sunshine as a source of environmentally friendly power, bathing the earth with more energy each hour than the planet's population consumes in a year. They identify the challenge, namely capturing one part in 10,000 of the sunlight that falls on the earth to meet 100% of our energy needs, converting it into something useful and then storing it.

Solving the clean energy challenge will change the world, but change will not be met without economic and political will, as cheap polluting technologies are often preferred over more expensive clean technologies despite environmental regulations.

However, humanity is up to this challenge, as shown by financial and political investment in President Kennedy's tremendous vision in 1961 to land a man on the moon, and the initiatives to build the CN Tower and construct the Chunnel connecting England and France.

Today we need a new vision, or in the words of James Collins, “a big hairy audacious goal”, a renewable energy goal that stimulates progress and leads to continuous improvement, innovation and renewal.

We must economically and politically invest in renewable energy to protect our environment. It is no longer a choice between saving our economy and saving our environment. Today it is a choice between prosperity and decline. It is a choice between being a principal producer and a consumer in the old economy of oil and gas or a leader in the new economy of clean energy.

We must remember that the country that leads the world in creating new energy sources will be the nation that leads the 21st century global economy.

Failure to limit climate change to 2°C above pre-industrial levels will make it impossible to avoid potentially irreversible changes to the earth's ability to sustain human development. We have a five in six chance of maintaining the 2°C limit, if worldwide greenhouse gas emissions are reduced by 80% by 2050 relative to 1990.

In light of this science, there were 17 sessions on climate change under the theme, “the shifting power equation”, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland this year. A total of 2,400 global leaders, including 800 CEOs, attended sessions, such as the economics of climate change, make green pay, the legal landscape around climate change, the security implications of climate change, and culminating in a plenary session entitled “Climate Change: A Call to Action”.

Clearly, global business leaders recognize that climate change is a serious economic and social challenge and that delaying mitigation will make future action more costly. Business leaders are therefore committed to addressing climate change and are already undertaking emission reduction strategies in their companies. More important, they support the Bali action plan and its work program to negotiate a new international climate policy framework to succeed the Kyoto protocol, and are ready to work with governments to help this happen.

There are numerous opportunities to mitigate and adapt to climate change, from carbon capture and storage to cleaner diesel, to combined heat and power, to fossil fuel switching, and to hybrid vehicles, to name but a few key mitigation technologies.

In closing, our most daunting challenges are the global economic crisis and climate change. Humanity needs a climate change solution that is scientifically credible, economically viable and equable.

Finally, we must heed the words of 12-year-old Severn Suzuki who, at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, was fighting for her future and who challenged us to fight for all future generations when she said:

Do not forget why you are attending these conferences—who you are doing this for. We are your own children. You are deciding what kind of world we are growing up in. Parents should be able to comfort their children by saying, “Everything's going to be all right. It's not the end of the world. And we're doing the best we can”. But I don't think you can say that to us anymore.