Linda Duncan

[Committees of the House, December 8th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to this entire speech, and I am dumbfounded. I wish to share with the House that the government asked us, all members of the House, who worked very hard last summer, to host sessions in our constituencies about electoral reform and share with our constituents what some of the various options might be.

I instead held my session in the fall, because everyone who has done this kind of work, which I have done for 40 years, knows that they do not get a good turnout in the summer. I held my session in September, and I am delighted to say that I had 250 people. Two days later, the minister arrived in town and reported that she had 17 people.

I also went to the effort, with my staff, to circulate a survey, asking very simple, straightforward questions, explain the alternatives, and get feedback. We compiled it and presented it to the government.

I find it an affront to my constituents, having done all that work, that now they have to deal with this puffery piece, which does not present to them the same level of honest options.

[Crimean Tatar Deportation (“Sürgünlik”) Memorial Day Act, December 7th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I am also rising to speak to Bill C-306, an act to establish a Crimean Tatar Deportation (“Sürgünlik”) Memorial Day, tabled by the member for Edmonton Griesbach.

On this aspect of the bill proposing recognition of the mass deportation of the Crimean Tatars and the ongoing atrocities perpetrated against them, I believe the member will find considerable support.

Ukraine has passed such a bill, memorializing that date of the atrocities and the removal of the Crimean Tatars.

Stalin's forced expulsion of the Crimean Tatars in 1944 was among the more heinous crimes against humanity committed during a century littered with atrocities. The entire Crimean Tatar people, the indigenous people of Crimea, were exiled to the Soviet east in 1944 by the totalitarian regime of Joseph Stalin.

Hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children were forcibly and violently deported. Almost half lost their lives during the first year of exile, for no crime other than their language, culture, and traditions. Most reprehensibly, the women and children were separated from the men, and the men forced to fight in the Stalin forces.

The vast majority of those remaining in the Tatar community returned home to Crimea from exile in the early 1990s. This was largely due to the welcoming policy of the government of independent Ukraine. It is for this reason that the Crimean Tatars and their political and civic institutions are fiercely loyal to Ukraine. Today again, the Tatar people are living in fear as they have again been exiled, this time by Putin.

Little mention is made currently of the Russian Federation's illegal annexation of the Crimea in 2014. Crimean Tatars almost uniformly opposed the Russian Federation's annexation of the Crimea in 2014.

According to Amnesty International, Crimean Tatars have faced repressive measures, from media outlets being shuttered to activists being arrested and “disappeared”. Tatars have been forbidden to publicly commemorate the day of remembrance of the last deportation.

Last month Russia banned the Mejlis, the Crimean Tatar assembly, accusing it of extremism. As a result, anyone involved in one of the more than 250 local Mejlises across Crimea now risks arrest. They either live in fear in Crimea or they are living in fear on the borders of Crimea, their original territories.

According to eastern European scholar Anssi Kullberg, many historians believe that the true motivation behind the genocide of Crimean Tatars was the geopolitical location of the Crimea seen by the Soviets as an obstacle and bridgehead in the way of Stalin's aspirations to gain control of the Turkish Straits and Constantinople, and now, in modern times, we are seeing the same, with Russia wanting to claim Crimea.

The systematic erasure of the Crimean Tatars was holistic in nature with even Crimean Tatar place names changed to Soviet ones; mosques converted into movie theatres, or worse; homes, livestock, and gardens seized; and mention of Crimean Tatars was deleted or abbreviated in reference works. In other words, they were erased.

Crimean Tatars were forbidden to reside in, or speak of, their homeland. It was not even possible to preserve a Crimean Tatar identity in personal documents.

The decision by Russia to again suspend the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people and ban all its activities essentially denies the Crimean Tatar community the right to freedom of association and therefore denial of their basic human rights.

In November 2015, Ukraine's Parliament recognized this crime as an act of genocide against the Crimean Tatar people, and established May 18 as the Day of Remembrance of the Genocide of the Crimean Tatar People.

According to Paul Grod, National President of the UCC:

Today, the indigenous Crimean Tatars, together with the Ukrainian people and other ethnic and religious minorities living in Crimea, face severe repression by their Russian occupiers. It is vital for all members of Canada's Parliament to support this important legislation and to ensure that Canada continues to take concrete actions to oppose Russia's illegal occupation and annexation of Ukraine's Crimean peninsula.

Only last year I had the honour of standing alongside representatives of all the main parties in this chamber, all expressing support to the stalwart leader of the Crimean Tatars, member of parliament, Mustafa Dzhemilev. It is critical that we deliver on those words and lend support to their long-standing struggle for recognition of their human rights.

I support this legislation going to committee and for consideration of potential amendments. There are some concerns with the name of the bill and the preamble.

It is my hope that perhaps more might be done, rather than just naming a memorial day, to enable them to live in peace as a community.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2016, No. 2, December 6th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, one area that I am surprised the member did not talk about was the lack of support for small business. The hon. member comes from the same province I do. He is well aware of the downturn and those suffering. However, small businesses continue to buoy our economy as best they can, and have historically in Canada.

I do not recall the member speaking in support of our concern that there were not the promised tax cuts for small business, and none on the cap on transaction fees that were promised by his government, yet never delivered. Would he like to speak to those matters?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2016, No. 2, December 6th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member who always speaks very well in the House, defending his position.

I would like to ask a question for the hon. member. A lot of promises were made during the election for supporting small business owners, and yet again, there is no tax cut for small businesses and no cap on transaction fees for credit cards.

Small businesses right across the country are suffering, and they are particularly suffering in my province of Alberta with the downturn in the economy.

Could the member explain why the government is still not giving breaks to small business?

[Petitions, December 6th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise to table petitions from hundreds of voters in Edmonton, Sherwood Park, and Camrose. In a democracy, every vote, every voter, should count. Frequently our electoral system allows a party to win 100% of the power with less than 40% of the vote. The Liberal government promised to change our electoral system, but time is running out. We want a fairer system in place before the next election.

The petitioners therefore call on the government to adopt a fairer proportional voting system so that the Parliament of Canada can actually reflect how electors vote.

[Natural Resources, November 30th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, the government members promised Canadians that if they were elected, they would base their energy decisions on scientific evidence. In reviewing the Kinder Morgan project, the NEB heard clear scientific evidence that the sevenfold increase in oil tanker traffic through the Salish Sea would deliver a near certain extinction of the southern resident killer whale pod.

The NEB agreed that these are significant adverse effects. How does the government explain ignoring the science with the resulting death sentence to these threatened whales?

[Canada Pension Plan, November 28th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, thanks for that clarification. I can assure you that I am not recording. I do not think I am capable.

I want to share a letter written to me by a constituent, completely unsolicited. I want to share in the House what she said:

Now with this exclusion of the child-rearing dropout provision in the proposed expansion of CPP, I'm even more concerned that those making the decisions are either inadvertently or intentionally excluding this work from the social policy conversation. If it's an error, then there is a dire need for more diverse voices and experiences to be involved with policy development, and I want to know how this gap is going to be redressed.

She has written to the Government of Canada to answer that question. I wonder if the hon. member could respond to that.

[Canada Pension Plan, November 28th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for a very thoughtful and well-presented speech on the very important matter of the future access to CPP.

As I have shared with my colleague, I have been receiving letter after letter from constituents concerned about what is not in the CPP bill, particularly about the impacts to women who take time away from work, not earning income and will therefore get dropped out from the CPP benefits. They raise the additional concern of what happens if at some point in time they are sharing the work between two spouses, but then it does not work out, there is a divorce, and there are no CPP benefits.

There are all kinds of extrapolations we can look at where certain Canadians are going to be prejudiced by the fact that the government, in its wisdom or lack of, has decided to delete benefits that were once available more broadly to Canadians.

[National Strategy for Safe Disposal of Lamps Containing Mercury Act, November 28th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Dartmouth—Cole Harbour for his action on the environment. It is very clear he has the intent to resolve this issue, and also to support a very important industry in his own riding, an entity that recycles toxins. We need to have measures exercised by our federal government that support these kinds of industries, so toxins are safely disposed of and taken away from the environment, so they do not harm the environment and our health.

On second reading of the bill, I spoke very kindly about the bill, and had also shared that I hoped the bill would go further. Much to my regret, and my colleagues' regret, the decision was made to water down the effect of the bill. I remain puzzled about that. The argument has been that we need more time for the various jurisdictions to work together. However, I have been working alongside the federal, provincial, and territorial governments, and the industry for more than two decades on resolving the issue of emissions of mercury into the environment. In my humble opinion, it is time we actually have the federal government asserting its power to regulate this toxin, not simply to continue the dialogue, although continuing the dialogue is absolutely important. All members of this place recognize there is a need for the federal, provincial, territorial, municipal, and aboriginal governments to begin working together more effectively.

We have a law in effect in the country, the Canadian Environmental Protection Act that actually provides for the designation of toxic substances that are deemed harmful to humans and the environment. It extends the powers to the federal government to establish a regulatory framework for the cradle to grave management of these substances. That includes safe disposal.

Mercury was scheduled as a toxin long before the Canadian Environmental Protection Act was even enacted in the mid-1980s. It was formerly listed under the environmental contaminants act, and way back then, decades and decades ago, it was recognized as one of the most significant toxins that we need to control.

As early as 2000, the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment added mercury to its list of five top priority substances to address. Unfortunately, it has taken until very recently to address mercury. As I have mentioned previously in the House, apart from Alberta, no jurisdiction has regulated the single largest source of mercury in North America, and that is coal-fired mercury. Lamps were included in the CCME list, but after coal-fired power and cement. It is very pleasing that the member opposite has chosen to finally seek some action on this source of this serious neurotoxin.

Mercury, when combined with water forms methylmercury. That is how, if it goes into our water and into fish and is ingested, it can cause serious harm. It also can cause harm if it is in gaseous form. As I understand, when some of these lamps are broken there is potential for it to enter in a gaseous form, and therefore we need proper handling and disposal of these lamps. It is commendable that the member is seeking greater action on this risk.

So far, there is no safe dosage, but there are a couple of industries in Canada that are at least capturing it and trying to keep it out of the environment. Mercury cannot be broken down. It simply remains toxic.

What is important to note though is that the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, right now, specifically empowers the ministers of environment and health to recommend to the Governor in Council to make regulations governing the disposal of any scheduled toxin, and that includes mercury. It is sad to say, as of today, no federal government has ever chosen to actually assert that regulatory power. Why is that significant? It is because the very framework of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act is cradle to grave.

An additionally important framework for CEPA, when it was enacted, was recognizing the dual jurisdiction of federal and provincial governments, so if the federal government decided to issue a regulation regulating a toxin, any provincial or territorial jurisdiction could claim equivalency if it issued an equivalent regulation and the commitment to effectively enforce or seek compliance with that rule. It is for exactly that reason that that mechanism was put in place, and there have been calls for quite some time for stronger action on mercury.

For mercury in lamps, the only measure taken at the federal level until recently has been a Canada-wide standard, but mostly recently, there has been a code of practice put in place that deals with many of the matters the bill before us deals with. It sets forth suggestions to the provinces, cities, and companies on how they should control these lamps, how they should be collected and how they should be delivered to safe disposal.

I mentioned the Canada-wide standard. The common phrase is, “When is a standard not a standard? When it is a Canada-wide standard”, because a Canada-wide standard is not binding. It is merely a suggestion. It is more of a suggestion that friendly federal-provincial relations rule over actually asserting a federal rule. From my perspective and the perspective of many out in the public, when we are dealing with a serious neurotoxin, when is there possibly a reason for the federal government not to finally assert its regulatory power?

The bill calls for a strategy to address a number of matters, but it is disappointing that it does not extend what a number of people, including the Canadian Environmental Law Association, have called for, which is extended producer responsibility. It is hoped that if the bill passes and again the discretion then passes to the minister to decide what to do with the bill, that consideration be given to this. We have certainly heard about this before the committee.

Environment Canada itself has reported that only 10% to 15% of these lamps are recycled, and therefore, while we will try to have a proper mechanism to collect and dispose, we have that continuing problem of people who are not even returning those lamps and they are simply going into the dump.

A greater issue is that, unless producers are made more responsible, the practicality of consumers transporting the lamps to dispose of them and the manner in which they are collected and then transported for disposal expands the risk of exposure and leakage. That is exactly what the bill is attempting to deal with.

Again, what is particularly troubling to me and some of my colleagues is the decision by the tabler to remove the mandatory provision. The very strength of the bill is that it sets forth three key measures on which there is unanimity, even in this place, of action needed to be taken to make sure that we keep this mercury out of the environment, yet the decision was that the minister does not have to do any of those things. I think that is very regrettable. Even though the bill does not provide exactly what those measures would be, the most important one is that the minister would have been required to actually issue standards. If we defined standard as generally accepted in law, that would be to finally promulgate the regulations that are long overdue on regulating these measures. Regrettably, this discretion is still left to the minister.

I think there is a lot of heartfelt intent. I appreciate the member's efforts to try to have a clear framework around this, and in fact to support a very valuable industry in his riding. Regrettably it does not drive that because he has taken away the mandatory aspect. If national binding disposal regulations were in place, the provinces and territories, as I have mentioned, could simply enact exactly the same rules and enforce those equivalent rules.

We have heard a number of calls during a review of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act to strengthen the mandate of ministers. This is troubling to many in the public who have been working on these issues for many decades. While the bill provides for the listing of these dangerous substances, there is no mandatory duty on the Minister of Environment and Climate Change to actually take any action. That was what was commendatory about the bill that the member brought forward. It is regrettable that for whatever pressures were brought to bear on him, he has removed that provision. It is regrettable. Maybe at some point in time it might come forward and be strengthened.

We are dealing with toxins, and this is one of a limited number of substances, one of the top five designated by all the ministers of the environment across this country. I think it is regrettable that we would continue this, that we would defer to provinces or territories that may want to move in a certain direction, instead of the federal government. Every time a federal regulation is promulgated, there is vast consultation with the provinces and territories, with the industry and with the public, and that could have allowed for that consultation, but in the end, it actually had a binding rule.

Again, I commend the member, but I find it regrettable that he has taken away the very mandatory aspects of the bill.

[National Strategy for Safe Disposal of Lamps Containing Mercury Act, November 28th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the enthusiasm of my colleague across the way. I know he is sincere about addressing the issue of mercury. Unfortunately, what is troubling to me is that the member decided he would amend his bill to take away any mandatory duty to take action on mercury.

We have been trying to encourage him to come forth with why he made the decision that this would no longer be mandatory. I would appreciate hearing from the member as to why he has decided to remove very important mandatory requirements on the minister to finally move on measures for the safe disposal of mercury in lamps.