Mike Bossio

[First Nations, Inuit and Métis Children, Youth and Families Act, June 3rd, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, one of the amendments that was made to the bill was around funding, that it needed to be sustainable and it needed to be needs based. Once again, we do not want to define everything that should be in the bill. In doing so, I feel we would do an injustice to the intent of the bill, which is to be a framework for indigenous communities to define. It is for indigenous communities to define what is sustainable and what is needs based. That definition will be different depending in what part of the country the community happens to be. There is no one size fits all when it comes to what is sustainable and what is needs based.

I was very happy we were able to bring forward that amendment to make funding sustainable and needs based.

[First Nations, Inuit and Métis Children, Youth and Families Act, June 3rd, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member's question gives me an opportunity to speak to that. It was not my intention, whatsoever, to cast aspersions upon Dr. Blackstock. Her representations at committee were invaluable. Her representations toward indigenous children have been invaluable for an exceptionally long time. I have tremendous respect for Dr. Blackstock. The reason I raised that was I felt that there were a lot of views expressed at committee in support of the bill.

Once again, the elegance of the bill is that it is a framework that indigenous communities will then define. It is for indigenous communities to define what is in the best interest of the child. Some of the comments that were made moved away from that. It is a difference of opinion, and I accept that. At the end of the day, the overwhelming strength of the bill is that it is a framework. However, I felt it was being defined more than it needed to be defined. That was not the purpose of the bill, to define everything to the nth degree.

If my comment was taken in the wrong light, I apologize to Dr. Blackstock. It certainly was not my intention to have it framed in that way. I thank the member for allowing me to clear that up.

[First Nations, Inuit and Métis Children, Youth and Families Act, June 3rd, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Winnipeg Centre.

I am pleased to rise today during third reading debate on Bill C-92, an act respecting first nations, Inuit and Métis children, youth and families.

Let me first recognize that we are gathered on the traditional and unceded territory of the Algonquin people.

Bill C-92 seeks to establish a framework for indigenous communities to exercise jurisdiction over child and family services. This is in keeping with the inherent right of self-government of indigenous peoples. The bill also sets out principles, applicable on a national level, for the provision of child and family services in relation to indigenous children and families. These principles intend to help ensure that indigenous children and their families will be treated with dignity and that their rights will be preserved.

To be specific, the bill before us provides clear affirmation of the inherent right of first nations, Inuit and the Métis to exercise jurisdiction in relation to child and family services. This would strengthen the mandate of indigenous governing bodies to administer prevention and protection programs and services for child and family services in a way that reflects their customs, practices and traditions. The bill would also empower them to enact laws in this area if they choose to do so.

One size does not fit all. Indigenous peoples would be free to assume partial or full jurisdiction over child and family services at their own pace. This would enable indigenous people to tailor the exercise of their jurisdiction to their needs.

I want to emphasize that this bill is not about imposing solutions; rather, it is about opening the door and beginning a new era in which indigenous peoples can pursue their own solutions for their children and families.

In fact, this proposed legislation has been co-developed with the first nation, Inuit and Métis peoples whose child and family services it will affect. We introduced it only after careful engagement. We held over 65 different meetings and heard from nearly 2,000 people from across the country. However, just as the bill was co-developed with first nations, Inuit and Métis, so will be its implementation, and we will continue to engage with indigenous partners, provinces and territories throughout the implementation, should the bill receive royal assent.

All too often, past decisions affecting children and families have been made without putting the best interests of the child first. This bill changes that and has the best interests of the child as its central objective. Bill C-92 establishes principles that help to identify factors to be considered in determining the best interests of the child. These principles would have to be observed by provincial and territorial courts as well as by providers of child and family services.

Nothing would preclude provinces and territories or the indigenous governing bodies from offering more protection than that which is set out here. This bill represents the floor, not the ceiling, of the provisions to protect the best interests of an indigenous child. The end result would be to have the cultural, linguistic, religious and spiritual upbringing and heritage of the child given more priority in determining his or her best interests.

A number of amendments that strengthen the bill were adopted by the Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs during the clause-by-clause consideration. One of these amendments would ensure that when determining the best interests of an indigenous child, primary consideration would be given to the child's physical, emotional and psychological safety, security, and well-being, as well as to preserving the child's connection to his or her family, community and culture.

Clause 10 was also amended to clarify that the best interests of the child are to be interpreted, to the extent it is possible, in a manner that is compatible with a provision of an indigenous law.

Another amendment deals with fiscal arrangements. It outlines the importance of fiscal arrangements to help ensure that the indigenous governing bodies can provide services that are sustainable, needs-based and consistent with the principle of substantive equality.

A third element was added to the bill, stating more clearly that it will align with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, to which the government declared unqualified support in 2016. Taken overall, the bill before us seeks to ensure that indigenous child and family services are aligned with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Bill C-92 is the product of broad engagement and the result of a codevelopment process with indigenous partners. It represents a historic opportunity to break from the past and protect indigenous children and their families for generations to come.

It was such a privilege to be on the committee that studied the bill and to hear the many witnesses who came before the committee to express their support for it. I feel the reason they expressed support for the bill is that, as mentioned earlier, it is a framework. It is a starting point for indigenous communities and peoples to take control of indigenous family and child services and put in place their own laws that they feel will benefit their communities, their families and, most importantly, their children.

As has been noted many times in debate, that is what this is all about. It is about children and their best interests. For too long, our country has not had the best interests of indigenous children in mind. I am so proud that Bill C-92 is going to change that and provide the opportunity for indigenous communities to enact their own laws that will be in the best interests of their communities and in the best interests of their children.

We heard from so many about the importance of the paramountcy of indigenous law over federal and provincial law. That is such an important component because it helps indigenous communities, once again, to have the certainty that they know what is best for their own children and what laws best reflect their communities, their culture and the best interests of their children.

I was very happy to see the collegial atmosphere that existed at committee with my NDP and Conservative colleagues and counterparts as we made sure that the bill moved through committee as quickly and efficiently as possible. One message rang true at committee. It was the overwhelming desire, from every person and witness who came to committee, to make the legislation a reality as quickly as possible so that indigenous communities can make the determination of what is in the best interests of their children.

I urge all hon. members to join me in supporting the bill to move it through the House as quickly as possible.

[First Nations, Inuit and Métis Children, Youth and Families Act, June 3rd, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, I have to say from the get-go what a privilege it is to sit with the member on the indigenous committee. I have a deep respect for her passion and she has a beautiful heart when it comes to indigenous issues. I just wanted to state that first.

The members knows my position on the bill. I find that the elegance of this bill is that it is a framework and a starting place, the ending place being that indigenous communities will establish their own legislation when it comes to child and family services. What I find the most powerful thing about this bill is that their own legislation will have paramountcy over federal and provincial governments. Would the member agree that this is a very powerful part of the bill itself?

[The Environment, May 16th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, the member's question is a very important one, because addressing the concerns of indigenous people is in that nation-to-nation relationship, and reconciliation is the most important relationship our government has been working toward.

In recognizing the very difficult conditions that indigenous people are in, our government has made vast investments into infrastructure. There were a number of investments announced today, $241 million in total, to help Inuit with infrastructure and the actions on permafrost.

We saw the road that was built to Tuktoyaktuk, and I give credit to the previous government for doing that. The great thing is that there are now sensors in that road measuring the impacts of climate change. As the member mentioned, those impacts are far greater in the far north than they are here in the south. It accentuates the importance of moving on this quickly and having a comprehensive plan to deal with climate change. That is exactly the plan that we have, and it is working.

Once again, the important thing is to ensure that the economy and the environment go hand in hand. If we blow up a section of the economy, then we will not have the revenues necessary to help indigenous communities build out.

[The Environment, May 16th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, with all due respect to my colleague, I could not disagree more. The first thing we did as a government after the election was to bring all the provinces together to create the pan-Canadian framework, which was the basis of what experts call the first real plan in Canadian history to actually deal with climate change.

It is a vast plan of over 50 different measures that bring into effect investments in innovation, infrastructure and transit, and set methane emission standards. It is about clean energy, clean technology and a price on pollution. There is no silver bullet that is going to solve climate change. It is going to take a real plan to do it.

It is very easy for people to be skeptical of a real plan and criticize it when they do not have any plan of their own. The Conservatives have done nothing for 10 years, and they do nothing today but criticize what others call the first real plan.

Our plan is working. As a country, we have created over a million jobs. We have reduced unemployment to the lowest levels. We are reducing our emissions and we are going to meet our emissions targets and our Paris Agreement commitments, because we know that the economy and the environment can, and must, go hand in hand.

[The Environment, May 16th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, maple syrup, does it get any more Canadian than that? We can all imagine the crunch of snow under our boots, the steam coming off of the evaporator, treating our kids and maybe ourselves, too, if we are being honest, to some maple taffy when we pour warm syrup into a bucket of clean, fresh snow.

There are not too many things more closely tied to our rural communities and identity than producing maple syrup, yet even this time honoured Canadian tradition is at risk due to the impacts of climate change.

More and more research shows that warming temperatures and the loss of snowpack are having a negative and costly impact on the production of maple syrup and therefore on family farms that produce them. These family businesses keep our rural communities sustainable. This is not news. Sadly, we have known this for some time.

As far back as 2008, a study was published about the Hasler farm in Flinton, a community in my riding. From 1956 to 2007, tree tapping for maple syrup shifted a full two weeks earlier. The temperature range that is needed to produce maple syrup is becoming briefer and the season shorter. In fact, in 2012, our production of maple syrup in Ontario fell by 54% because of the unusually warm spring. Since Canada produces 70% of the world's maple syrup, this has an impact on our rural communities and our rural economy, including our family farms.

Ask any farmer in my riding and he or she will confirm the weather is getting wackier all the time. I heard from my constituent, Matt from the Hastings Stewardship Council. He told me that we really needed to prepare for the changes that were already happening and more that were going to happen.

Farmers want to pass their farms to the next generation. Through low-till and no-till practices, good stewardship, environmental farm plans and more, farmers are making great efforts to fight climate change. Unfortunately, they are also the first ones to suffer from its effects through severe weather events like drought and floods.

I would like to confirm, Mr. Speaker, that I will be splitting my time with the member for Guelph.

When farmers cannot grow food, it is an emergency and we are all in trouble.

Let me talk about five or six 100-year events in my rural community. I say 100-year events, but they actually all happened in the last six years.

It 2013, in the beautiful town of Bancroft, and there was a state of emergency. Flood waters had risen and roads were washed out. Three schools had to shut their doors. The children's centre was shuttered. Arnold Creighton, an 83 year old, was quoted as saying he had lived there his whole life and had never seen anything like it.

In 2014, in Corbyville and Foxboro, villages in my riding that fall under the city of Belleville, there was another state of emergency. The mayor at the time, my good friend, the member for Bay of Quinte, was out there day after day sandbagging and helping to coordinate the relief.

Now it is 2016 and our farmers are hurting. Sixty days without solid rainfall was producing burnt and premature crops, costing our farm families. It was the worst drought in my area since record keeping began in the 1800s.

In 2017, we started the year with Quinte Conservation warning residents of the Napanee River watershed that they would have worse floods than even 2014. I get almost daily updates from Chief R. Donald Maracle of the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte, telling me of the devastating effects that flooding is having on homes in the Tyendinaga Mohawk territory. Properties on Amherst Island and Hay Bay are under water, not just by inches but by feet.

Those who have not experienced flooding themselves are not always aware of all the subsequent impacts. Rural properties are usually on septic and well systems, both of which can be compromised by floods.

However, 2017 was just getting started. It seemed that Mother Nature was playing a cruel joke after all the flooding, but by summer and fall, the Moira River was experiencing the lowest water levels and droughts since record keeping began. It was even worse than 2016, when the drought had already exacted a terrible toll on our farming community.

This year, 2019, I recently visited properties in Bancroft, Hastings Highlands and Corbyville. They were under water yet again. There were roads washed out in Tweed and 21 roads washed out in North Hastings that they had to deal with. We do not have to look far to see the devastating toll right here in the Ottawa region.

Amid all this historic flooding and the hard work our conservation authorities have to do to help our communities, it is mind-boggling that the Ford government has cut flood prevention funding for our local conservation authorities in half. These are the Conservatives' cuts, Conservatives who do not take climate change seriously.

Extreme weather events have a cost, a very human cost that we see on the faces of distraught homeowners who have lost everything. There is also a massive financial cost. Last year, extreme weather cost Canadians $1.9 billion. From 1990 to 2009, the average was $400 million a year. That number is only rising and is estimated to be as high as $43 billion by 2050 if we do not act.

My constituents are awake to the impact of climate change in our rural communities. I heard from Louise, at Harvest Hastings, who reminded me of the increase in diseases affecting trees due to the warming temperatures: emerald ash borer, Dutch elm disease, beech bark disease, ash wilt, and the list goes on and on. All of this leaves our forests more susceptible to the devastating impact of wildfires.

The Ford government's cuts to planting 50 million trees is not helping this problem. To add insult to injury, these seedlings in eastern Ontario are going to be destroyed because of the Ford Conservatives' cuts.

Climate change is also causing rural communities like mine to have a higher incidence of ticks, which is a cause of Lyme disease. This has devastating health impacts. I have three friends whose health has been impacted for the last five to six years because of Lyme disease. It is happening more and more often. These are three personal friends who live in my own community who are trying to recover from this disease. Their immune systems had been comprised. Two of them were recently diagnosed with cancer because the impact was so dreadful.

There are a number of Conservatives who represent rural ridings. When we look at the devastating impact climate change is already having in our rural communities and on our farm families, it becomes clear that the Conservatives are doing a disservice to their constituents by fighting climate action instead of fighting climate change. The fact is, the fight against climate change is one of the most important fights of our generation, and future generations depend on us.

As a lifelong environmentalist, from my days growing up learning good stewardship practices while hunting and fishing in Madoc in the 1960s and 1970s, to starting the first recycling program in my apartment building during my young professional days in Toronto in the 1980s, to fighting as a community activist in Tyendinaga to protect our community's drinking water from the mega-dump expansion in Napanee from the 1990s to this very day, one thing is clear: I will never stop fighting to protect our environment, our community and future generations.

Extreme weather events across Canada and the world are increasing: forest fires in the west, tornadoes in Ottawa and historic droughts and floods in my own rural community. The science is clear and the impact on human lives is clear. We cannot leave it to our children to pay the vastly higher, even existential, costs of climate change.

We know how to solve this, and it is our duty as parents, citizens and legislators to act. This is a climate emergency.

[May 7th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, the member talked about a price on pollution not making a difference in lowering our GHG emissions. We have an example here in Canada, British Columbia, which has not only had one of the fastest-growing economies in the country but also one of the fastest-growing populations in the country. However, since it has brought about its price on pollution in 2008, it has lowered its GHG emissions. As importantly, it has lowered its GHG emissions intensity substantially.

The member talked about the affordability of a price on pollution, yet I do not know if he has looked at the report from the Parliamentary Budget Officer, an office that was appointed by the previous Harper government. It stated clearly that the vast majority of Canadians will benefit from the rebate we will be giving back to the citizens who live in the provinces in which the revenue was generated. I would like to ask him if he is aware of the rebate and aware of the Parliamentary Budget Officer's report stating that it is going to benefit those who are the most vulnerable in our society.

[Napanee Raiders, May 6th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, hard work and persistence have paid off to the tune of an all-Ontario hockey championship. Last Tuesday, the Napanee Raiders clinched the Clarence Schmalz Cup for the second time in their 30-year history, defeating the Grimsby Peach Kings 3-1 in game five. They did it in our hometown of Napanee.

The Peach Kings came out strong in a must-win game and dominated the attack early on in the game, forcing the Napanee Raiders to work hard for the win. The Peach Kings came close to tying it late in the third, but Napanee's goalie, Nicholas Nabuurs, reacted quickly and was able to catch a bouncing puck.

As forward Ryan Casselman said, “Our dressing room is the reason we won. Every practice, every meeting and every game, we were there for each other. We just loved being together and that really makes for a good hockey team. Capturing the Schmaltz is something we'll never forget.”

We will never forget either. I congratulate the Napanee Raiders.

[The Environment, April 29th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians cannot afford politicians who ignore climate change. They expect us to lead the fight against climate change to protect Canadians and our communities.

Can the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Environment tell this House how our government is taking real action, while the opposition is just—