Murray Rankin

[Wrecked, Abandoned or Hazardous Vessels Act, June 19th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I share with the member for Cape Breton—Canso a concern about our coastal environment. I know he shares it deeply from his part of the world, as much as we do in ours.

I am not able to answer the specific question about the frequency with which we have government vessels, but I am sure it happens. Why would it not happen? It depends how broadly government vessels are defined. It could be a tiny little tugboat owned by the Coast Guard perhaps that is abandoned somewhere, or a fisheries inspection vehicle. We do not have to think of gigantic military ships in order to see the problem that could occur. A little fibreglass boat owned by the Government of Canada could well be within that circle.

The fundamental question is, why would we have this conversation? Why is there an exemption? Why does the government not take responsibility for itself? Saying that there is no history of this, if indeed that is true, does not solve the policy question that underlies the question from the member.

[Wrecked, Abandoned or Hazardous Vessels Act, June 19th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Vancouver Kingsway had two insightful questions. The first was why the government would create any uncertainty about whether it is covered. My colleague is a lawyer. He would remember the crown liability and how it changed over time. The crown was never responsible under the law, until finally, in the seventies, the government made itself subject to the laws it passes. It is ironic that we are here again today.

There is no doubt about it. Section 5 says that “[d]espite any other provision of this Act...this Act does not apply” to vessels that belong to the Canadian Forces and to vessels “owned or operated by Her Majesty in right of Canada”. It seems pretty clear to me. It seems that the environment policy person from the department was entirely accurate.

On the second, more profound issue that my colleague raised, we are using our oceans as a dumping ground. It is the tragedy of the Commons, as people have it, and Canada is not immune. It happens all over the world. It strikes me that when one dumps stuff out at sea, there is the Canada Shipping Act about that kind of pollution. However, when we have the eyesores oozing pollution right on our beaches and citizens have to take action on their own because the government does not take any action to help, it really is another kind of tragedy.

[Wrecked, Abandoned or Hazardous Vessels Act, June 19th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I want to start by echoing words that we just heard from the hon. member for Cape Breton—Canso. He used the word “admiration” in reference to the member for Nanaimo—Ladysmith. Of course I want to shout out as well to the member for South Shore—St. Margarets. This truly is a coast-to-coast-to-coast problem, and it is lovely to see people working together on such an important issue. I live in a coastal community and I will have something to say about that in a moment.

The member for Nanaimo—Ladysmith has been absolutely admirable, to use the member's words, in bringing this to the attention of government and in pushing this forward. We have had this issue, since at least 2005, on the front burner in our part of the world and, I am sure, longer in Atlantic Canada. Thankfully, we seem to be getting somewhere with it. I say, “somewhere”, and I indicate from the outset that we will be supporting Bill C-64. The amendment that my colleague has brought forward is something I would need to address as well because, while we support this bill, there is a real missed opportunity on so many bases here that it needs to be addressed in that spirit.

It never was brought to my attention, until quite recently, just how enormous this problem and challenge is. There are thousands of vessels, that is from the Canadian Coast Guard, that are derelict or abandoned from coast to coast. I have seen first-hand in my riding what that means. I have been with John Roe and gone through Cadboro Bay and again through the Selkirk Trestle area of the Inner Harbour of Victoria, and seen boats just sitting there, oozing pollution into the waterways; abandoned, in some cases, for years. For some reason, there seems to be this inertia, this inability to deal with an imminent danger that these boats have caused. Finally we have some tools that are on the table for our consideration.

One day, I had the opportunity to go with John Roe, who is the head of the Dead Boats Society, an admirably named organization, and, as well, the Veins of Life Watershed Society. He has been doing enormous work. He was appointed by the current government in a past life as a member of the chief review officer's people who do appeals under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. I got to know Mr. Roe and I admire him. His tenacity resembles that of the hon. member for Nanaimo—Ladysmith. They are quite a team.

I had the opportunity to go and see these boats one day. Because the government was doing nothing, citizens in the community stood up and, on their own, at great risk in terms of potential liability, took action in Cadboro Bay. I had the opportunity to go out one day with Mr. Roe; with Mr. Eric Dahli, who is the head of the Cadboro Bay Residents Association; with Ian Hinkle; and with Commodore Wilkinson of the Royal Victoria Yacht Club. I am very proud of the Ralmax Group of Companies, which donated its equipment and its people. Here were citizens on the beach, taking direct action to deal with this hazard, when the government would not come to the table and do anything after years of asking. I really salute the people with that spirit that has made Canada great, actually getting involved, getting their hands wet and dirty, and trying to deal with this problem. I had an opportunity to get a sense of what it means and that was just one of the many communities around Canada. Hence the bill and hence the need to address this. I want to start by saying that this problem is enormous.

Second, there is an enormous backlog of thousands of abandoned vessels that are polluting our waters. Just how is this particular bill addressing that backlog? There seems to be no effort, to do what the hon. member for Nanaimo—Ladysmith advocated in her private member's bill, to pilot some sort of turn-in program to safe recycling facilities, so we could deal with these issues. If there were a registration fee for boats, as in Washington state and other jurisdictions like Oregon, and elsewhere in Europe, that could fund the program.

The government likes to talk about how much this is costing, and it has made a pitifully small financial contribution. It should not have to spend money at all. In the long run, as the economists would say, the cost should be internalized to the people who created the problem in the first place.

If I buy a boat, I should pay a fee. There should be a disposal charge, as we do with so many other consumer products. Why the government has not reached out to the provinces to assist in this regard is really beyond me. It would save money. It would save our environment, and it would get these eyesores off our coastlines all across the country.

The government's model essentially is to fine and ultimately to use criminal sanction, penalties and offences for owners of vessels. The problem with that model is that it will be very difficult to enforce. What if we do not know who the owner is, as is often the case? The registration number is filed off. We do not know who the owner is, and the vessel has been there for many years. How are we going to use the criminal process?

The Liberals talk about imprisonment and penalties of up to $250,000 and so forth. This is the old story of legislation involving the environment. We have fabulously large fines and we pat ourselves on the back for all the great action we are taking, but here is the punchline: We never get around to enforcing that. We never put in the resources, and we do not have the political will. It is nice, and it might scare a few people into action, but it really does not address the problem.

This is the problem that my colleague from Nanaimo—Ladysmith kept talking about in her private member's bill: the enormous backlog, the failure to have a vessel registration system for accountability purposes, the failure to establish a turn-in program to ensure recycling, and so forth.

I echo the words of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Transport, who spoke earlier. She used the phrase “legislative gaps”. There are so many legislative gaps in this program that I really wish the government had addressed them.

My colleague and the NDP made a number of amendments at the transport committee, almost all of which were defeated. One of them was about the vessel turn-in program that would deal with the backlog. The amendment about a dedicated fee to help cover the cost of vessel disposal, which Washington state has, was also defeated. There was also formalizing the role of the Coast Guard. It is like that Ghostbusters movie: “Who you gonna call?” Sometimes people can call the receiver of wreck, if they know who it is. People thought it would be simpler to just call the Coast Guard, but the Liberals seem to have abandoned that. They are committed to maybe doing something down the road.

The key “emperor has no clothes” issue here, which is addressed so clearly by my colleague's amendment, would be to deal with government vessels. I listened to the debate earlier today, and I was a bit confused because some people seemed to suggest that abandoned government vessels, such as old navy boats, ferries, and the like, would somehow be covered by the bill. I could not help noticing that the director general of environmental policy for the Department of Transport testified and said, “This legislation does not cover government vessels.” I am going to believe her, and I am going to say that there is a simple fix: deleting section 5 with the exclusions at issue. Let us make sure that we have a comprehensive bill to cover government and private vessels alike.

In conclusion, this is a good start. It has taken a long time. I am pleased it is here, and I will support it. It just could have been so much better.

[Petitions, June 18th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, it may surprise Canadians who travel abroad to acquire human organs that might have been removed from victims without their consent that they face no sanctions in Canada.

I am pleased to rise today to table a petition from dozens of people from western Canada who draw attention to the fact that a private member's bill is now before the House, and another bill is before the Senate, to address this problem.

The petitioners urge Parliament to pass this legislation and to amend two other statutes to prohibit Canadians from travelling abroad to acquire human organs removed without consent.

[Natural Resources, June 13th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, Canada should be investing in clean, renewable energy sources that create good quality, long-lasting jobs for today's workers and future generations.

Instead of looking to the future and eliminating fossil fuel subsidies as they promised, the Liberals have become huge supporters and investors in the oil industry. If they vote against the NDP motion, the Liberals will undermine Canada's commitment we made to the world in Paris and ignore the transition that we need to renewables.

Will the Liberals support our motion and ensure real climate leadership?

[Business of Supply, June 12th, 2018]

I will try to dignify that with an answer, Mr. Speaker.

Germany, last I looked, was one of the leading capitalist countries of the world. It is leading Canada by a country mile. It is way ahead on solar power, way ahead on wind, and last time I looked, it was not a communist government.

Second, China has had to grapple with this for the precise reason my friend pointed out, that coal is causing harm to people's health. The economy has begun to react with a massive investment in things like solar and wind precisely because it has to. That is the point that seems lost on my friend.

[Business of Supply, June 12th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I agree entirely with the hon. member that it is critical that we internalize the cost of pollution, and that is, indeed, the intent of any pricing mechanism that most parties in the House appear to agree is inevitable and long overdue. The province of British Columbia has had a revenue-neutral carbon tax for many years and its economy leads the country, so it can be done.

I accept the other point the hon. member made that there is no universal definition of what constitutes a fossil fuel subsidy, but I would invite my colleague to look at the study that was co-authored by the International Institute for Sustainable Development, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and a number of others, which concludes very clearly, after an analysis of the definitional issues that he rightly points out, that Canada is dead last in the G7. Any way one cuts it, Canada is dead last. We should be ashamed.

[Business of Supply, June 12th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by saying that I am sharing my time with my esteemed colleague, the member for Timmins—James Bay.

I am trying at this late hour to not simply repeat some of the excellent points that have been made already. I know that the motion involves three things. The motion talks about the desire to invest in renewables rather than leaky pipelines. It talks about the just transition and making sure workers are not left behind as we move forward to a low-carbon economy. Last, it asks the government why it chooses to continue with fossil fuel subsidies when the rest of the world seems to be moving in a different direction.

I have to start with a bit of repetition, however, on some of the points made about the famous Kinder Morgan project. I guess we now call it the Government of Canada pipeline and tanker project and its impact, not only on climate change, but no surprise to you, Mr. Speaker, as someone from a coastal community, its potential for a devastating oil spill that needs never to be forgotten in this place. It is the government's choice to spend our tax dollars and indeed it seems even to have the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board consider putting our pension funds behind this leaky 65-year-old pipeline.

In my part of the world, that is not going over well. Not only because of climate change, but the thought that we would be subsidizing our potential destruction of the coastal economy is causing a lot of my constituents to be very concerned.

It is also the opportunity cost point. The passionate speech from my friend in Courtenay—Alberni a moment ago points that out. Here is a government that has let the coastal restoration funds essentially disappear in his part of Vancouver Island on the Somass River. The Conservatives were criticized for how little they spent. The Liberal government is spending nothing on that.

The chinook salmon stock is what we depend on for the orca whales that are also going to be endangered by this tanker project. The opportunity causes a lot of Canadians to wonder where the government's priorities are.

As I said in question period one day last week, I do not remember any mandate that the government had to buy a pipeline. I do not remember any Canadians who were consulted. The government consults on what time of day it is, but there was no consultation of which I am aware among voters in our part of the world that the Liberals would spend, everyone says $4.5 billion, but that is just for the leaky 65-year-old pipeline, not for the $8 billion more or whatever it is going to cost to do the additional 1,000 kilometres of pipe and to do what is required to expand this project almost threefold. That is another part of the expenditure.

This is a speech and a day devoted not to talking just about the lunacy of the decision to buy this pipeline with Canadian tax dollars and as I said earlier, potentially pension funds of Canadians as well. It is about why we are not moving like the rest of the world is so aggressively toward a low-carbon economy based on renewables. That is what I would like to spend some time on.

We not only have the climate crisis before us and the implications of that at stake, but also the positive benefit that would come from investment in some of the new technologies, the battery revolution that might be part of that and so on. This needs to be discussed up front.

An article about Sir Nicholas Stern, an economist in the U.K. who studied climate change, said:

Failing to curb the impact of climate change could damage the global economy on the scale of the Great Depression or world wars by spawning environmental devastation that could cost 5 to 20 percent of the world's annual gross domestic product....

The implication of not spending money on these things also needs to be taken into account.

Meanwhile, as I said earlier, the government seems to be full steam ahead with fossil fuel subsidies. According to one recent study, the government now is spending $3.3 billion on these fossil fuel subsidies, a massive public investment that means, because of the tax expenditure policy that it is based on, less money coming to build hospitals and the like. That seems to be often forgotten as the government pats itself on the back for its current fossil fuel lunacy.

As was said yesterday in debate, Canada is now number seven out of seven in the G7 for its fossil fuel expenditures, notwithstanding a promise in the 2015 campaign by the government to do away with fossil fuel subsidies. They are not being done away with whatsoever. One could argue that buying a pipeline is another subsidy ultimately to the fossil fuel industry. Therefore, it is a little hard for a lot of people to understand why that is the case. That is not just people outside of the province of Alberta. Of the Albertans who were polled, 48% disagreed with public subsidies for the oil and gas industry. The vast majority of Canadians agree that it is the wrong thing to do.

Another interesting wrinkle on this is in a study that was done not long ago by the International Institute for Sustainable Development and others, it was pointed out that Germany and the United States scored the highest on transparency about these fossil fuel subsidies among the G7 nations. Can members guess who is the worst? It is Italy and Canada.

We are number seven out of seven when it comes to fossil fuel subsidies. I guess we should take some solace in the fact that we are number six out of seven when it comes to transparency about what we are doing. According to an EKOS poll, 96% of Canadians believe the federal government should disclose how much it is spending on oil and gas subsidies. Thank goodness for our independent officer, the Auditor General, to be able to ferret out, with some great difficulty, exactly how much these fossil fuel subsidies are costing us as Canadians.

Canada has a lot of explaining to do at the international level. It is also remarkable how out of step we are with other countries in the world. I would like to contrast China and its record with that of Canada in this regard.

Last year, according to The New York Times, China aimed to spend at least $360 billion on renewable energy by the year 2020. Another study by Clean Energy Canada, citing McKinsey & Company, shows that China is building a new wind turbine every hour. It is spending $360 billion. It wants to dominate the world. It figures it has created 13 million jobs in China based on this solar, wind, and geothermal, and other things that it is doing, while Canada lags significantly behind. I think a lot of Canadians wonder why.

Members may remember the retrofit program for homes a while ago and how popular that was in small communities as jobs were generated. We were getting a handle on the climate change implications and the loss of our energy. Canada uses a massive amount of energy, which we waste.

Our energy consumption is five times the world average on a per capita basis. It is the same for natural gas. We are 5.8 times the global average, and so forth, yet we do so little with respect to renewables. A lot of Canadians wonder why we cannot get the jobs that this will create, the positive climate change impacts this will generate, and deal with the workers affected, who will be left behind if we do not have a serious adult conversation about the just transition that is required.

The government finally got around to doing something about the just transition with respect to the coal industry. We heard about that today. However, not so much has been done with respect to the oil and gas industry. Where is that after this many years, and the government bragging about it at the Paris talks as well? We see nothing except with respect to coal, which is obviously worthwhile. However, other workers are going to be affected as well.

In conclusion, this is an important opposition day motion. It is designed to not simply be critical of the government's decisions, although there is a lot to be critical of with respect to Kinder Morgan and fossil fuel subsidies, but to be propositional as well, and to try to drive Canadians to understand how many jobs would be created, how much better we would do for climate change, and how much the workers could be protected if we actually moved to a just transition to a low-carbon economy.

[Justice, June 11th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, we will soon rise for the summer recess. There is much to do before then, but I would like to take this moment to highlight the exceptional work of certain individuals in my community who have contributed much to the debates in this place on matters of national interest.

Over the last four months, the justice and human rights committee has studied the scourge of human trafficking. Let it be clear: human trafficking is a horrible crime, robbing individuals of their basic human rights. I listened to the shocking testimony of survivors, who told us that some communities are particularly vulnerable to exploitation, such as indigenous women and girls and migrant communities.

I would like to thank especially Professor Cecilia Benoit of the University of Victoria, and Rachel Phillips and Sadie Forbes of Peers Victoria Resources Centre, who contributed so much to the justice committee study. Their thoughtful testimony will help us to build better legislation.

As we prepare to go home for the summer, let us recommit to building a better country, where no one is left behind.

[Export and Import Permits Act, June 8th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the speech from the hon. member for Ottawa West—Nepean, during which she claimed that the New Democrats are wrong in calling these things loopholes, and that we are engaged in partisanship.

Does the member agree with Project Ploughshares, as well as Control Arms, a civil society group 300 strong? Today, they asked Canada not to proceed because it needs to close these loopholes. They say the bill is weak and is an embarrassment. It is not the New Democrats who are saying these things on a partisan basis; it is Project Ploughshares and Control Arms.

How does the member respond to those people and their trenchant criticism of this bill?