Marc Garneau

[Foreign Affairs, October 1st, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister told us in the House that 69 soldiers were going to Iraq. Later, his Minister of Foreign Affairs told us there might be as many as 69. Today we learn there are only 26 soldiers.

Did the Prime Minister pull that number out of a hat or was it later decided that there was no need to have 69 soldiers? If so, why did the Prime Minister not inform Parliament?

[National Defence, October 1st, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, sometimes the government tells us that our special forces are advising and training the Kurdish Peshmerga forces, and sometimes it tells us that they are advising and training the Iraqi security services, including the army and the police forces.

Are we training and advising the Peshmerga forces or the Iraqi security services or both?

[Infrastructure, September 30th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, to everyone's surprise, the Minister of Infrastructure, Communities and Intergovernmental Affairs announced that he was considering setting up tolls on a number of bridges to the Island of Montreal. True to form, he did not consult Quebec's transport minister or any of the mayors of the cities that would be affected by this news.

Does the minister understand that consultation is a good idea and that it is always better to share the results of studies than to keep them secret?

[Reducing the effects of urban heat islands Act, September 26th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in support of Bill C-579, An Act to reduce the effects of urban heat islands on the health of Canadians, sponsored by my colleague from Honoré-Mercier. The purpose of the bill is to address the effects of higher temperatures on large urban areas. I too live in a large urban area, in Montreal.

This is how Bill C-579 defines “urban heat island”:

“urban heat island” means a built-up area in an urban environment in which the average air temperature is markedly greater—as much as 12 degrees Celsius hotter—than that in nearby rural areas.

As I said, my own riding of Westmount—Ville-Marie, which is heavily urbanized, is a good example of a region that is affected adversely by this phenomenon.

As the city of Montreal grew, forested areas and vegetation were cut down to create office buildings, parking lots, and residential complexes. These kinds of structures absorb heat much more readily and result in localized rises in temperature.

Heat islands are forming on the earth's surface and in the atmosphere. On hot summer days, the temperature on the outer surface of buildings, in parking lots and on roadways can often be between 27 and 50 degrees Celsius higher than the air temperature. In the evening, this accumulation of heat in urban infrastructure is released, thereby keeping the air temperature elevated. The higher temperatures of urban heat islands, particularly in the summer, can have a definite impact on the environment and the quality of life of a community.

Urban heat islands have a number of effects, including increased energy consumption, higher levels of air pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions, negative impacts on human health and increased discomfort, and degradation of water quality. The average number of premature deaths in Toronto due solely to extreme heat is estimated at 120. That number could be a lot higher, because mortality rates increase sharply during extremely hot summers.

High daytime temperatures can seriously compromise people's health when the mercury does not drop enough in the evening and when air pollution levels are high. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, extreme heat can cause respiratory difficulties, heat cramps and exhaustion, non-fatal heat stroke and heat-related mortality.

An assessment rendered from the 2010 urban heat island summit in Toronto, which was attended by local decision-makers, heat researchers and industry representatives, concluded that the issue could not be tackled by a single measure or by a single municipal department. This is why it is important to have federal government leadership.

The bill has several objectives.

First, the Minister of Health and the Minister of the Environment must establish a national strategy to reduce the effects of urban heat islands that includes the following elements: (a) create a public awareness campaign on air quality and heat islands; (b) develop an inventory, prioritizing heat islands; (c) develop action plans that must address: (i) the management of urban biodiversity; (ii) the promotion of community green projects; (iii) the protection of natural areas; (iv) the establishment of greening areas to be developed; and (v) the promotion of public transit and sustainable transportation.

Within 90 days of this act coming into force, the minister must convene a national conference establishing this strategy.

This bill focuses on the health and safety of Canadians, as well as the health of the environment. It aims to make the Canadian government a world leader by urging it to work with the provinces, territories, municipalities and specialists to come up with an action plan.

I know it might seem terrible for this government to have to work in partnership with the provinces and scientists, or to have to play a leadership role when it comes to the environment, but one can always hope that the government might actually change its position on something.

Many municipalities have begun tackling the problem of heat islands, but their efforts have been scattered and are not nearly substantial enough to produce real results. Some measures taken involve increasing the amount of vegetation and the number of trees, creating more parks, building green rooftops and rooftop gardens, installing cool roofs and using cool pavement.

Luckily, there are potential solutions that can help mitigate the effects of urban heat islands.

As Dorothy Maguire, a Ph.D student in natural resources sciences at McGill University in my riding, wrote in a recent article:

...researchers have found that the effects of heat islands can be reduced through innovative urban planning and design that increases the amount of urban green space! Vegetation in the city cools surface temperatures by increasing the amount of heat reflected back into the atmosphere (called the albedo effect). The same way that we sweat to cool our bodies, vegetation reflects sunlight and releases water into the atmosphere to cool the city down. Trees also provide shade, reducing the exposure of heat-absorbing surfaces to sunlight and giving us city-dwellers a cool place to relax. We need to encourage strategies to reduce the urban heat island effect in Montreal, like developing green roofs, preserving existing natural areas and reforesting degraded ones.

Measures similar to those proposed in this bill were implemented in the early 2000s and have been quite successful. There is no doubt that the phenomenon of urban heat islands is a problem in urban centres. The targeted interventions set out in the bill should help improve public health, environmental quality and energy efficiency in urban areas, as well as in surrounding suburbs and rural areas.

We need to deal with this issue, which affects environmental health, in order to help our society move toward more sustainable and effective solutions.

Studies have all shown the same thing: the presence of urban heat islands has harmful effects. For example, they negatively affect water quality, increase atmospheric pollution, increase heat stress and create an environment that is conducive to the spread of vector-borne diseases.

As I mentioned earlier, there are many documented examples that show how effective green projects are in reducing the effects of urban heat islands, increasing energy efficiency and improving public health and general environmental conditions in cities.

This is an important bill that focuses on both the environment and health, two issues that are important to me and my constituents.

I would like to thank the member for introducing this bill, and I look forward to hearing the rest of the debate.

[National Defence, September 26th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, just as a correction, Canada does in fact collect metadata; it depends on it for its security activities.

A Canadian military mission in Iraq is an extremely serious undertaking. Canadians need to be fully informed about what the government is proposing to do on their behalf. There should be no confusion about important questions, such as whether it is the U.S. asking Canada for additional help or the Prime Minister offering to provide additional help for an expanded mission. Can the government assure us that going forward it will be fully transparent with Parliament and Canadians about what undertakings it is proposing?

[National Defence, September 26th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, in his interview with The Wall Street Journal, the Prime Minister was in fact misleading on more than one issue. He in fact told the interviewer of The Wall Street Journal that Canada does not collect metadata for its national security activities when in fact it does. As I said, the Prime Minister told Canadians that he was approached by the United States, as opposed to the inverse of that. Do Canadians not deserve a Prime Minister who is honest on these crucial issues?

[National Defence, September 26th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, the Prime Minister suggested that he had been approached by President Obama about making a bigger contribution to the war in Iraq. Yesterday, we learned that, in fact, the opposite was true. The Prime Minister was the one who asked the United States what else we could do.

Why did the Prime Minister mislead Canadians?

[National Defence, September 25th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, Canadians learned that the United States is asking Canada to expand its military involvement against the Islamic State. The Prime Minister informed the Wall Street Journal that he was considering it and would decide how Canada will get involved.

My question is very simple. First, does the government commit to giving Parliament all the details of this request from the United States before taking action? Second, does the government commit to consulting Parliament if it is considering expanding Canada's military involvement against the Islamic State?

[Privilege, September 25th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to shed a little light on it as well.

I happened to be on the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs a couple of years ago when exactly the same incident occurred and was studied by the committee.

At that time, the conclusion was that unfortunately when RCMP officers were involved with the visit of dignitaries, they were not familiar with the process of respecting the rights of MPs to have unimpeded access to the Hill, particularly on occasions when they had to vote. We were told at the time that this would be rectified, but it appears that sadly exactly the same thing has happened roughly two years later.

There is definitely, in my opinion, a breakdown of communication between the Hill and the RCMP officers who come in and do not understand the existing rules with respect to access to the Hill.

[The Environment, September 22nd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, tomorrow marks the beginning of the UN climate summit. Of the world leaders who were invited, only four, including our Prime Minister, refused to attend. Perhaps he is embarrassed because he knows that he will not meet his own targets for 2020. Rather than going himself, he is sending his minister, no doubt so that she can pick up another Fossil of the Year award. How are Canada's environmental and economic interests served by the Prime Minister's absence?