Monique Guay

[The Environment, October 5th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of the Environment. People in the Magdalen Islands and in the surrounding mainland are very concerned about the Irving Whale. This barge is leaking tens of litres of oil every day, thereby harming the flora and fauna of the St. Lawrence.

Would the minister assure us today that she will have the wreck's leaks sealed in order to stop this continuous pollution of our water, thereby reassuring the people affected by it?

[The Environment, October 3rd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, how can the minister claim that her department is fully involved in the clean-up operation when a memo provided by her department to SVP and dated September 23 indicates that no emergency plan, in case of a disaster, had yet been made public, this on the eve of the PCB clean-up?

[The Environment, October 3rd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of the Environment.

Last week, in reply to a question, the minister claimed that her department was involved in the preparation and monitoring of the operation to clean up sediments contaminated by PCBs in the St. Lawrence River, across from the city of Massena. This operation has in fact been put on hold because of serious safety problems.

Will the minister confirm the direct involvement of her department in this extremely delicate operation, or is her department merely receiving and blindly approving plans made by American authorities?

[Department Of Public Works And Government Services Act, September 30th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, the day Public Works and Government Services Canada becomes really open, really very clear and transparent will be a day of celebration for me.

I am very pleased to take part in this debate on Bill C-52, an act to establish the Department of Public works and Government Services. As I said earlier, until just recently I had the privilege of being the Official Opposition critic for this department and as such I had the opportunity to discuss matters with its hon. minister.

I would like to share with you today what I know about this department and what changes should be made to make it more transparent, more open and more accessible to all taxpayers who wish either to receive information on its activities or do business with it.

I understand, when one is in opposition one tends to exaggerate-I was there, and maybe I did exaggerate a few times. I will try not to do it now. I will give my total, sincere and deep commitment to do my best to improve the openness of this department. I understand that there is room for improvement, but I intend to do everything I can to increase the degree of openness and try to answer honestly the question of my colleagues, including the hon. member who just spoke.

All of us in this House will agree that, either way, these are legitimate demands on the part of the taxpayers and they should not be ignored in a cavalier fashion. This bill should ensure that the various demands of the taxpayers can be met, but this is not the case. The only thing the enactment does is to merge two former departments-a process which incidentally was initiated by the Conservatives-as well as various government agencies.

Section 5 of the bill states that this new department shall operate as a common service agency for the Government of Canada, and its activities as a common service agency shall be directed mainly toward providing the departments, boards and agencies of the Government of Canada with services in support of their programs.

Basically, this department is responsible for the acquisition and provision of goods and services for all departments of the Government of Canada. It negotiates, buys and rents an impressive number of goods and services for other departments. Last year it negotiated 170,000 public contracts. That is rather impressive.

As the member of Parliament for Laurentides and parliamentarian responsible for taxpayers' money as well as a taxpayer myself, I want to know everything there is to know-and I mean everything-about the tens of thousands of government contracts negotiated by this department every year. It is the taxpayers' money that the government spends; it is therefore accountable to them for its use.

Unfortunately, there is nothing in this bill about how these contracts should be accounted for in all the relevant information made available to the public. The government sticks to its old ways and continues to be secretive. This government refuses to make information readily available. That is very clear, but also quite sad. It shows mainly that the government is scared to death, scared of getting caught spending the taxpayers' money improperly.

By leaving out of this bill a provision to divulge automatically all information in contracts, the government perpetuates the widespread opinion that the department still indulges in patronage, and awards thousands of contracts under the pressure of lobbyists, friends of the government, or people who contribute to the funding of the old parties. Failure to take action to change this general opinion could prove in part that it is well founded.

To leave the minister and bureaucrats free to conceal or to divulge information clearly indicates that the system does not meet the basic expectations of a democratic society. Letting the minister decide whether Canadians should know how their tax dollars are spent seems contrary to the transparent and open government that Liberals have been promising since they crossed the floor.

The Liberal government is no better than its Conservative predecessor, that it once denounced so vehemently. Members opposite are backing down. They have lost the backbone that made them so brave when they formed the official opposition and during the election. The members opposite are going back on the commitments they made in their red bible. Transparency and openness no longer figure in their vocabulary. First it was the red bible, now they dress in red and follow their great leader, the Minister of Public Works, Santa Claus personified, the main purveyor of government contracts who keeps his secrets to himself and silences his little elves gathered round him, across the aisle.

This bill is nothing but a formality, an insipid document which again hands taxpayers over to the minister and those in high places under his control. With this bill, the government is saying to taxpayers: "The minister spends your money but this is none of your business". To use an expression made famous by our illustrious Minister of Transport: "If you taxpayers want to know to whom, and how, contracts are awarded, use the Access to Information Act".

Why make it so difficult to have access to that information? In recent months, I have tried to pressure the minister into setting up a rational system to disclose contracts awarded. I even tabled a motion asking the minister to disclose, on a monthly basis, all government contracts awarded. Such a system could even be established for all departments awarding numerous contracts. The minister replied that this monthly disclosure was unnecessary, since all the information is already available and ordinary citizens can find out anything they want about government contracts. How insulting from the minister! This answer shows that the minister has no respect for us. It is wrong to claim that

the information is available and accessible. As evidence of that, I have specific requests for information on contracts awarded to entrepreneurs in my riding which have remained unanswered for more than two months now.

What is even worse is the fact that recently all Bloc Quebecois members were refused access to a list of government contracts awarded in their respective ridings during the last year. This refusal from the minister and the Liberal government to provide that information to members is, in my opinion, a very serious violation of their right to information.

Indeed, how can an elected member, even if he is a minister, deny other elected members the right to know what is going on in their respective ridings? This behaviour is totally unacceptable and is exactly why people continue to believe that politicians and civil servants award contracts only to friends of the government and to contractors offering the biggest bribes.

The minister must explain why he refused to provide the Bloc members with the information they asked for. For the time being, he argues that it would cost $160,000 and that he is not equipped to provide the list of contracts required. Come on, with everyone talking about the electronic highway, no one can seriously claim that it is impossible to collect, code and release this information according to some specifications.

With all the computer equipment the government buys, I think it is a bit far-fetched to try to make us believe that all that work is still done by hand in the department.

I also think that this amount of $160,000 is part and parcel of the administration and operating costs of the department. I do not see how these costs can be considered as additional expenses.

Given the minister's refusal, we believe he is trying to hide something. He knows full well that his department is not known for its integrity and transparency. He also knows that the department does not distribute federal funds fairly among the various regions and provinces. The federal government must play fair and distribute Canada's wealth so as to support development in each and every region of the country.

However, statistics clearly indicate that the federal government supports some regions more than others. For example, the city of Ottawa alone received almost 99 per cent of all contracts awarded by the government in 1993 for the Ottawa region, while its twin city, Hull, across the river, made do with a meagre 1 per cent.

That is a harsh reality for those who believe blindly in this supposedly fair federal system. Federalists and centralists will surely find reasons, legitimate or not, to explain these statistics indicating such an extraordinary concentration of contracts.

In the view of the Bloc Quebecois, this imbalance could be corrected if all contracts were made public. Thus, small and large contractors would know which goods and services the government needs. And knowing this, they might want to do business with the government. Moreover, all this information would force the government to show greater fairness in the contracting process. Furthermore, the government should even support and help potential suppliers in neglected areas, thus creating growth and jobs where they are urgently needed. Is job creation the main goal of the federal government or not?

It is about time that the government show some openness in the allocation of contracts, not only in the department we are talking about today but in all departments. There are means to achieve this and the Bloc is proposing some.

Ministers across the aisle always beg us to suggest new ideas and new ways of doing things. Well, here they are.

[Department Of Public Works And Government Services Act, September 30th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, we have just heard an absolutely wonderful speech. You would think this is the best department in Ottawa. The problem is, I had the opportunity to work in this committee of public works and government services and I was also the official critic.

I can tell you that there is no openness in that department. The hon. member for St. Boniface made a big show of it, but the truth is we never got what we wanted. Every day we asked for information, but this department was never forthcoming. This is the patronage department. Let us be clear on that, there is no hiding it, this is a fact.

The hon. member for St. Boniface is nodding in approval, how very interesting. I know you want to answer my question, so I will give you the opportunity to do so.

Mr. Speaker, we introduced a motion to amend this bill. I hope the hon. member for St. Boniface will take it into account and not launch into another one of those dramatic speeches he makes every time he takes the floor in the House. I hope he will also try to improve this department where there is no openness whatsoever, but a great deal of patronage.

[Société Pour Vaincre La Pollution, September 30th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, earlier this week, the Minister of the Environment made some very uncalled for remarks with regard to an environmentalist group in Quebec, the "Société pour vaincre la pollution", which she referred to by its acronym, SVP.

SVP has been active in the environmental area for 15 years now. Like many other groups of its kind, it is on somewhat shaky financial ground. For the minister to declare that the restricted financial means of that group is a discrediting factor in the eyes of the public and of the scientific community is totally unspeakable.

Furthermore, the minister's data were inaccurate because, as one can see in the last issue of the prestigious magazine, National Geographic, the SVP group is still very much active. Such unfounded judgments on a Quebec environmentalist organization are unworthy of someone in a ministerial position.

[The Environment, September 27th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, will the minister confirm information from SVP to the effect that Environment Canada will monitor this extremely dangerous operation during only 10 per cent of the total time required to complete it?

[The Environment, September 27th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of the Environment.

The cleaning-up of sediments contaminated by dormant PCBs in the St. Lawrence River, across from the GM facility in Massena, New York, will begin in a few days. These sediments, which contain between 500 and 5,000 parts of PCBs per million, are a major threat to the environment. The clean-up will be carried out by GM and the American government.

Did the minister demand to participate in the preparation and monitoring of this operation, given the risks involved for those living along the St. Lawrence River?

[Toxic Substances, September 27th, 1994]

Madam Speaker, we are happy to hear from the Minister of the Environment that she intends to establish a new policy on toxic waste. You will understand, however, that we cannot give our support to this working paper without first having a chance to examine it. The minister's intentions seem good, but the federal regulations are often not implemented in due form.

The implementation of the primary Canadian legislation concerning toxic substances, the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, presents a number of difficulties. For example, in the two years since the CEPA was first implemented, some 20,000 substances have been placed on the domestic substance list and 44 have been identified for assessment and added to the priority substance list.

In his 1991 report, the auditor general noted that, although the CEPA required that the 44 substances on this list be analyzed by 1994, only two had been investigated fully. In addition, Environment Canada and National Health and Welfare have assessed

20 of the 33 chemical products on the list. To date, only ten of these assessments have been made public.

The creation of the Office of Enforcement is an initiative that should help to solve these problems, but a number of concerns remain, particularly with respect to the regulation and control of toxic substances. Thus, according to the Auditor General, there is confusion within the federal administration regarding who is responsible for introducing environmental programs and the department has failed to evaluate the effectiveness of existing controls.

This example, just one among many, is a clear indication that the federal government is already having trouble enforcing the CEPA. The minister should show us what means she intends to use to ensure compliance with the policy she will be introducing and she should realize that this is necessary if she is ever going to make us think that it will have a definite impact on the use of toxic substances in Canada.

I would like to see the minister's policy ensure a healthier environment and an improved quality of life for us all.

The minister talks about regulating industry in order to prevent the proliferation of toxic substances. Industry should convince the government that a given substance should not be eliminated from the environment. However, the federal government is not itself snow white in this regard.

I would invite the minister to take a stroll in the Old Port of Montreal, a few hundred metres from the downtown core. I would invite her to wander over to hangar No. 3 by the Alexandra pier, at the corner of Callières and de la Commune. The federal government is storing 1.5 tonnes of PCBs here in downtown Montreal, for lack of another appropriate site.

There is no cause for alarm. The building is inspected on a regular basis and well guarded at all times. But I can assure you that the Old Port of Montreal officials would be only too willing to get rid of it. Environment Canada should above all manage these toxic substances responsibly, by not taking any risk, however remote, of causing an environmental disaster in the heart of Montreal.

Last week-end, I had the opportunity of discussing with members of environmental groups from Quebec and Canada at the general assembly of the Canadian Environmental Network. These people strongly dedicated to environmental protection described to us the enormous difficulties they are faced with when working on issues involving dangerous substances.

What they are referring to is the powerful lobby of big industries that use harmful chemicals for the manufacturing or conversion of certain products. We must warn the hon. minister of the political and economic context of the discussions she is planning to have with the industry with respect to the burden that shall rest on it of proving that a given chemical substance poses no immediate or long-term threat to the environment.

The minister also indicated that she intended to discuss with the provinces with a view to improving on the working paper she has tabled. This is the least she can do. In fact, toxic substances control does not fall under the jurisdiction of any level of government under the Canadian constitution. Both the federal and provincial governments can act in that area and it is of paramount importance that all levels of government be involved in developing a policy in that respect.

Having read the minister's paper over, if it is clear that Quebec's jurisdiction was respected and that the policy provisions were duly negotiated with the Quebec government, the Bloc Quebecois will give its support to the minister's policy proposal. This means that the Bloc Quebecois support depends for a large part on the consultation process the Minister of Environment will choose to use with the provinces.

Environment is one area where Quebec and Canada can set common goals. A sovereign Quebec will quite obviously negotiate environmental agreements with its neighbours. Where the interests of Quebec and Canada coincide, which is often the case with regard to environmental protection, the governments must agree to look for a mutually beneficial solution to the problems confronting us.

[Petitions, September 23rd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, last week, I went to the Magdalen Islands. The people there gave me this petition concerning the wreck of the Irving Whale . The petitioners ask that the leaks from the wreck be plugged as soon as possible. They also ask that further public hearings be held.

Having seen and studied the reports on the Irving Whale , I strongly support the Magdalen Islanders' requests and I submit their petition.