Philip Toone

[Safeguarding Canada's Seas and Skies Act, November 4th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I entirely agree with my colleague.

This government definitely has enormous trouble complying with international agreements. At least we can congratulate it for complying with the agreement it signed four years ago. It took way too long to put it into the form of a bill, but I congratulate it for having done so. That is a start.

However, it contains a lot of deficiencies, and I entirely agree with the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands on that. The bill can definitely be vastly improved. However, this government does not appear to be concerned about environmental protection.

Its concern seems to be how we can transport hydrocarbons as efficiently as possible without being troubled by environmental regulations. Bill C-38 reduces them to a very large degree.

We no longer protect more than 90% of Canada's rivers and lakes. We no longer protect fish habitat. Now it appears we may be content merely to establish a compensation fund to provide protection in the event of an oil spill, but we do not yet have the capacity to clean it up. In short, there are a lot of deficiencies, and I thank the member for emphasizing that point.

[Safeguarding Canada's Seas and Skies Act, November 4th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to share my time with the member for Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord.

Today, we are debating Bill C-3, Safeguarding Canada's Seas and Skies Act, which would amend five acts: the Aviation Industry Indemnity Act, the Aeronautics Act, the Canada Marine Act, the Marine Liability Act and the Canada Shipping Act, 2001.

My speech will focus on the maritime and marine aspects. I will start with the title of the bill: the Safeguarding Canada's Seas and Skies Act. The purpose of the bill is to safeguard our seas and skies, but frankly, it really missed the target here. We have a problem with this bill, which is why, on our side of the House, we are willing to pass it at second reading, but only so that there can be a good debate when it goes to committee.

We had proposed that this bill be debated at a special committee before it go to second reading. We really wanted a bill that would truly protect Canada's coastal communities and marine habitats. Unfortunately, the bill as written contains a great many flaws.

I would like to mention one that is very worrisome to the people of the Gulf of St. Lawrence: under the legislation, oil carriers will not be liable unless there is a spill of 10,000 tonnes of oil or more. People may be wondering how much 10,000 tonnes really is. We usually talk about barrels or use other ways to measure oil if there is ever a spill. However, in this bill, the figure is 10,000 tonnes. For anyone who is interested, 10,000 tonnes of oil is equal to 75,000 barrels. That is a mere fraction of how much oil a tanker transports.

Tankers in the Gulf of St. Lawrence currently transport 150,000 tonnes of oil, not 10,000. A spill of 150,000 tonnes would be devastating for the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Therefore, 10,000 tonnes is not enough. This bill does not go far enough to properly protect either Canada's marine areas or the coastal communities that depend on the marine areas.

Take, for example, the Irving Whale oil tanker, which sank off the coast of the Magdalen Islands in 1970. The Irving Whale was carrying 800 tonnes of oil, compared to tankers today that carry 150,000 tonnes, yet, 800 tonnes was all it took for oil to continue washing up on the beaches of the Magdalen Islands today, 43 years later. Every year, oil from the Irving Whale washes ashore and we are still cleaning it up, even though there were only 800 tonnes.

Furthermore, the Exxon Valdez was carrying 40,000 tonnes of oil and the spill is still not completely cleaned up. In 1989, that was a huge amount. Today, oil tankers are not held responsible unless there is a spill of 10,000 tonnes or more. I repeat that we still have not finished cleaning up after the Exxon Valdez spill. That number—10,000 tonnes—is simply not enough.

I would like to talk more about some aspects of the bill. An oil company will not be held responsible unless the spilled oil amounts to 10,000 tonnes. Only then will the company be responsible for cleaning up the mess or for paying into the compensation fund set up to deal with spills.

I would like to point out something about the ship-source oil pollution fund.

In March 2013, the fund was at $400 million. After the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the cleanup cost $40 billion, but the fund is at $400 million today.

The legislation leads oil companies to believe that, if the spill is more than 10,000 tonnes and they pay the required money into the compensation fund, they have nothing to worry about because someone else will clean up the mess.

That is all well and good, but the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development indicated that the Coast Guard does not have the capacity to clean up after a spill. That is what the commissioner said in his last report, before his position was eliminated by the Conservatives, in their rush to eliminate environmental protection in Canada.

As my colleague recently wrote, we do not have the capacity to deal with these oil spills. According to the report by the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, on the west coast our capacity is limited and on the east coast it is inadequate. On the north coast, the east coast and to some extent in the west, winter is inescapable. I do not think there is any technology that makes it possible to clean up an oil spill in icy ocean waters. I think that the Conservatives will probably propose a method during the debate in committee and perhaps even before then. I would be very interested in learning more about it, but right now we do not have the capacity to clean up such an oil spill.

In his latest report, the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development warned us that we are unable to clean up a major oil spill. He emphasized that marine oil exploration and development is bound to increase in Canada, and it is coming soon. We must ask ourselves the following questions. Do we have the technology to do it? Can we do it successfully? We cannot jeopardize the industries that are already there.

Because of the tourism industry and the fishery, which has suffered enormously since the 1990s, we cannot afford an oil spill in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. We would not be able to clean it up.

Even if a company is able to compensate the compensation fund, the question remains: What should be done with the oil in the ocean? Spills have to be cleaned up.

The bill proposes that if the Coast Guard is not able to clean up the oil spill, response organizations should be invited to do so. Subcontracts would be awarded to non-governmental organizations. Which non-governmental organizations are those? Who has this capacity? Throwing money at a problem is not enough; action has to be taken and the spill has to be cleaned up, but no one has the capacity to do it. Someone has to take the time to conduct a realistic assessment of action to be taken in the worst-case scenario, what to do if a spill occurs. It is completely predictable: there will certainly be another oil spill. It is not just a theoretical issue, because oil spills are highly predictable. Unfortunately, we are not able to clean them up.

I would like to invite all members of Parliament to think about the following. What will the coastal communities that depend on Canada's environment and marine areas do if their beaches are soiled with oil? What about fish habitats, and what will they generate if they are also covered with oil? We have often seen pictures of birds caught in oil spills; cleaning them up is not possible. This bill will not make that any more possible.

I hope all the members in this House will give this serious consideration. Do coastal communities and coastal areas in Canada deserve the government's protection? I hope that the answer is yes and I hope that it means this bill will be greatly improved.

[Fisheries and Oceans, November 4th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, talk about bad faith.

With the new Fisheries Act, the Conservatives are proving that they have no interest in protecting marine life. The only protected fish are the ones humans eat; the Conservatives do not care about the rest. I have some news for them: that is not how we safeguard an ecosystem.

Will the Conservatives restore this legislation so that all species of fish will once again be protected?

[Offshore Health and Safety Act, October 31st, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to my hon. colleague and I found his speech very interesting. We are all concerned about workplace safety regulations in all regions of eastern Canada and across Canada.

The bill before us is a step in the right direction. I look forward to hearing the debates that will take place in the parliamentary committees that will examine it if it passes second reading. We hope it will.

I wonder if my colleague could come back to the issue of jurisdictions. The fact that the House of Commons and the National Assembly have not yet adopted an agreement between Quebec and the federal government regarding the Gulf of St. Lawrence is still a problem.

Does he foresee any difficulty in implementing Bill C-5, specifically because we have not yet reached the point where all of the provinces that share the gulf have agreements? I am talking about Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick and Quebec.

Yes, agreements exist with Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, but three provinces that share the gulf and are entitled to have their own agreements do not have them. Could this create any difficulties regarding the bill currently before us?

[Employment Insurance, October 31st, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, by moving too quickly on their bad employment insurance reform and eliminating benefits for fishers who also work in other sectors, the Conservatives drew the ire of the independent fishermen's federation in Atlantic Canada. As a result of public pressure, the government has reversed this illogical decision. Thank goodness.

This illustrates what happens when the public is not consulted. Will the Conservatives continue moving in the right direction and scrap employment insurance reform?

[BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE AND ITS COMMITTEES, October 21st, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, although I appreciate the comments from the government House leader, I wonder what he means by the opposition not wanting to just go ahead with starting things over. When prorogation is invoked, the entire government program is supposed to be reset. It hits the restart button and starts over from zero, from scratch.

On the other hand, the House leader is now saying that Conservatives want to start over with a new throne speech and want the opportunity to make it seem that the government is shiny and new, when in fact they are taking all of their old bills that they could not have passed when we were all working very hard last summer, as he correctly pointed out; all of us together working very hard could not get them passed because they were so faulty. We had a lot of problems with those bills. They were just not ready for prime time.

Instead of saying we should work through the month that just went by and see what we can do about improving those bills, the Conservatives set prorogation in place so that we could not work on those bills. Instead the Conservatives are telling us that we are ones who are trying to delay Parliament, the ones who are obstructionists for their bills, but they pushed the reset button themselves.

They should be consequential. They wanted prorogation so that they could have a throne speech, which, by the way, was highly criticized for being devoid of content, with many words but very little content. They wanted to go ahead with the throne speech and make it seem as though the government had something new to offer, which to all intents and purposes does not seem to be the case, but it has to be consequential.

Prorogation means the reset button. The government does not have the right to redefine the work.

[Consumer Protection, October 18th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives want us to believe that they are standing up for consumers, but the regions no longer have access to CBC/Radio-Canada television as a result of the blind budget cuts the Conservatives made in 2012.

Basically, they want to force companies to offer pick-and-pay cable services. However, they are forcing thousands of people in the Gaspé, the Magdalen Islands and other regions to pay top dollar for cable just so that they can have access to CBC/Radio-Canada television programming. That is unacceptable.

Why are the Conservatives ignoring the problems of consumers in the regions?

[Business of the House and its Committees, October 17th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for her interesting comments. I would like to commend the work she has done in her riding. I know that she consults her constituents frequently and that she does a good job of representing their views. We would all benefit from having more members who do that kind of work, work we can all be proud of.

We all know that the government keeps saying it will do something, but it never actually does anything. We really have a lot of issues with this government. It is not exactly confidence-inspiring.

For example, the government has once again announced a plan to create jobs. All of the provinces have already rejected the plan, but the government keeps saying it intends to go ahead. How can it do that when this is an issue that falls under provincial jurisdiction? The provinces have to buy in. The government knows it needs them as partners, but it conveniently forgets that.

Sometimes the Conservatives are mistrustful and fearful. They do not understand. I do not know what the problem is. I am fully aware that the government talks and talks, but unfortunately, it does not have much to say.

[Business of the House and its Committees, October 17th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I have a certain degree of agreement with the member. We on this side of the House as well have a hard time understanding why the Conservatives felt it was important to stop debate for an entire month and why they felt it necessary for their representatives including, as the member said, the Prime Minister, to go to Europe and not be here to be accountable, to not permit a full and entire debate on the very agreement that he has left Canada to go to Europe for, which is to sign a free trade agreement with Europe, which the members of the House have not had occasion to look over. As representatives of the people, we have not had an occasion to actually put in our two cents, feelings, worries and suggestions for improvement. None of that has happened. The government insists on doing things its own way and forcing that point of view down the throats of Canadians.

It is a government that seems out of control, quite frankly, and it is a government that lacks accountability. We need a government that is actually going to answer to the needs of the people and that government is represented by the members of Parliament who are sitting on this side of the House.

[Business of the House and its Committees, October 17th, 2013]

Quite the opposite, Mr. Speaker: the comments of every Canadian citizen are equally valuable. It is for this very reason that the government should give them all equal weight.

Being the good parliamentary secretary that she is, the member surely knows that the government has valuable and powerful means of consulting Canadians. It is good that she consults her constituents in her capacity as an MP. I am very proud of her. I think that all members here consult their constituents. I know my colleague from Gatineau has done so many times, as have I. Contrary to the member's experience, however, I never hear from my constituents that we should “stay the course”; rather, I hear that we are heading straight for disaster. Every Canadian citizen has his or her own set of views and positions. The important thing is that they are able to express them.

When the government wants to pass a bill, it is its job to consult the people. It is good that members work within their constituencies, but the issue remains that we should bring the debate back to the question of citizens' ability to be heard by the House of Commons. That is not happening.

The member is free to use her props to try to prove that actual consultations took place. The problem is that this government's consultations are always arbitrary. They are never full and meaningful. The government is never willing to bring people before parliamentary committees. It is never willing to allow open and public Web consultations. It is not even willing to pay for a dependable Web service that would allow people to take part in advertised consultations.