Mr. Speaker, I know the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands gets all harried when we talk about math and numbers and so on. This is what is really important.
House of Commons photoWon his last election, in 2015, with 46% of the vote.
Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Act April 10th, 2017
Mr. Speaker, I know the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands gets all harried when we talk about math and numbers and so on. This is what is really important.
Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Act April 10th, 2017
Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill C-17. The background leading to Bill C-17 is as follows. The federal government's role in the management of lands and resources in Yukon was devolved to the Government of Yukon in 2003. The Government of Canada maintains the responsibility for outlining the environmental regulations there. The Yukon Environmental Socio-economic Assessment Board was established under the final agreement.
Our Bill S-6 was intended to make, and did make, the northern regulatory regimes more consistent with those in the south to attract investment and develop economic opportunities. Bill S-6 was a very good bill. It put time limits on the review process. It exempted a project from reassessment when an authorization is renewed or amended, unless there was a significant change to the project. It gave the federal minister the ability to provide binding policy direction to the board, and very importantly, the ability to delegate the federal minister's powers, duties, or functions under the act to the territorial government.
I became a member of Parliament in 2010. For the first term of our government I was on both the fisheries committee and the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development. For most of that time, I was the only member of Parliament of any political party who was on both of those committees. I was very privileged to get a view into our environmental policy-making and I participated fully in many of the changes that we made. Many of the changes that we made improved the environmental process, cleaned up a number of very bad pieces of environmental legislation, improved the potential for economic development, and had absolutely no negative effects on the environment. We amended the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act to remove duplication.
We changed the Navigable Waters Protection Act into the Navigation Protection Act. The Navigable Waters Protection Act was a particularly egregious act. It was a good act when it was written back in the 1800s when Canada depended on water navigation to a very great extent, and blocking navigable waters simply was not an option for our growing economy. However, over the course of decades and years, judicial interpretation of what was a navigable water kept growing smaller until intermittent streams were considered navigable waters. There are those who have a strong interest in stopping economic development. My colleague opposite inadvertently used the phrase “environmental industry”. I think there is an industry that has been developed that is doing very well financially in stopping projects. The old Navigable Waters Protection Act was a particularly bad act because it forced municipalities to spend inordinate amounts of money to build bridges over tiny intermittent water bodies.
We also changed the Fisheries Act quite dramatically. As a fisheries biologist, I was very much involved with the changes to the Fisheries Act.
These examples that I am citing are germane to the topic of the Yukon situation because the regulatory regime of a country is critical to the economic development of that country. Modern projects must be environmentally sound, and indeed they are, and at the same time investment must be encouraged.
Revising the Fisheries Act, 2012, which was our Fisheries Act, was one of the current federal government's platform policies. The fisheries committee had extensive hearings. I am still on the fisheries committee as the vice-chair. We had weeks of hearings where people who were opposed to the changes we made to the act wanted the act to go back to the way it was, the old way, where basically the entire country was considered fish habitat, and the Fisheries Act was able to be used by the environmental industry and environmental lawyers to block, hold up, or otherwise stop economic development.
I have a strange view of the environment. I believe that when we talk about environmental policy, we should actually talk about ecology, nature, landscapes, and water, because presumably that is what it is all about. However, all I hear mostly from environmental advocates these days, especially those on the Liberal left, is process, process, process.
In our Fisheries Act hearings, over and over again we asked this of the ones who were so excited about the changes we made to the act. Since the act was changed in 2012, we asked them if they could point to any fish populations that had been decimated or affected by the changes we had made. Not a person could come up with any examples, but they sure were mad at the process. Their metric for success of an act was how many investigations there were, how many charges there were, and how many processes there were. The fish and the environment actually became an afterthought.
The changes we made in the Yukon Act included putting in time limits, no reassessment unless the project was significantly changed, the federal minister binding policy direction, and delegate the federal minister's powers to the territorial government.
When I was an environmental director at a paper mill, I remember being involved with a change in the direction of our mill. Multiple bodies were regulating the environmental assessment we were doing. We never knew which level of government would step in since it was optional. They would sit in the weeds, we would do the environmental assessment, and we would ask what they thought. They would say that they were not sure, that we should keep doing what we were doing. This kind of uncertainty has a very direct and negative effect on investment. It is great for lawyers, the billable times just keep going up and up. However, with respect to communities, people, livelihoods, it is the worst thing that could happen.
When I was a young biologist in the seventies, and right out of university, one of my very first jobs was being part of the environmental assessment of the Mackenzie Valley pipeline. It was dream job for a kid out of university. I was able to play around with fish, fly around in helicopters, and sample rivers and lakes in remote parts of the Mackenzie Valley. It was an absolutely marvellous experience. This was back in the days of the Berger commission. I remember the team of which I was a part. We sampled every waterway in the Mackenzie Valley, every tributary, all the lakes along the proposed pipeline route. We flew the pipeline route, wrote copious reports, and took a lot of water and fish samples, all the usual kinds of fun stuff that field biologists get to do.
The report was written and the Berger commission was held. At that point, oil and gas prices were not too bad. We had an oil embargo, so there was a certain urgency for Canada to develop our natural resources. The government of Pierre Elliott Trudeau of the day ultimately turned the project down after all that work.
Interestingly, the project was resurrected in the 1990s again. Gas prices were up. I think it was $15 a thousand cubic feet. It was a high price and they wanted to see if we could get the Mackenzie Valley pipeline going again. The proponents for that project in the 1990s had to do exactly the same environmental assessment that we did in the 1970s. Nothing had changed. The rivers and lakes were exactly the same. There had been no development, no economic expansion, nothing, yet what we did in the 1970s was redone all over again for a number of years.
As time went on, the price of natural gas declined dramatically and the project became uneconomical. Delay and uncertainty kill projects. Now we have no Mackenzie Valley pipeline and we have 15 or 20 communities that are in dire economic straits. We know how to build pipelines safely. They are all built in an environmentally sound way. It is because they are so good that when a spill actually occurs, then it is a big event because it is an extremely rare event.
There is a fundamental misunderstanding of modern economic development, especially resource projects. All projects are built with state-of-the-art environmental technology. The implication when one goes into an environmental review process is we either do this review process or the environment will be destroyed, which is complete and utter nonsense.
Again, in my own experience managing a waste water treatment plant at a paper mill, doing environmental assessments in the oil sands, and many years of experience doing environmental assessments across the country, working with companies, working with engineers and designers, I can absolutely guarantee that state-of-the-art environmental technology is built into every project before any shovel goes in the ground. Scrubbers are put on smokestacks, waste water treatment plants are designed for, and the technology for environmental improvement is increasing all the time.
One can look at the miracle of Inco. Thirty or 40 years ago there was a moonscape around that town because of acid rain emissions from the mill. The mill has been cleaned up and the landscape around Sudbury has come back. I have been there and seen it. This is what advanced industrial capitalist free market societies do. We get richer and we do a better job environmentally, and the process is ongoing and continuing.
The other thing about environmental policy is that it is very important to measure environmental results.
There was a great philosopher, Pythagoras, who said that all was math. What I see in environmental policy-making is that nobody measures anything. We have this faith, and I use the term advisedly, that what we want to do is good for the world because, “I am a good person and I want to save the world, therefore what I do is good.” We do not do the hard-nosed measurements to zero in on what the environmental problems may be, measuring the state of the earth, measuring fish populations, water quality, and so on, and then focusing our efforts on where environmental programs will actually make a difference. For example, wetland loss is very serious in the country, yet we only have halfhearted measures to preserve wetlands.
Again, I go back to the process and I go back to what we, as the previous government, did to streamline the process and remove duplication. Hearings and meetings by themselves rarely result in environmental improvement. Spending $25 million putting a waste water treatment plant at a paper mill will improve the environment. That is how I look at environmental policy, and that is how it should be looked at across the country.
When we were going through the process of the Fisheries Act, as I mentioned earlier, there were critics of what we did under the Fisheries Act. Their metric as to what the 2012 changes to the Fisheries Act did was how many authorizations, how many charges resulted from the 2012 act, whereas our main concern, obviously, was the health of the fish.
Fisheries and Oceans April 6th, 2017
Mr. Speaker, fish harvesters attending the Gulf Groundfish Advisory Committee in Moncton expressed their frustration and disbelief over the Liberals' inaction in protecting groundfish stocks by controlling the grey seal population. Despite scientists confirming that grey seals are responsible for declining fish populations, the minister has failed to take action.
Given the importance of the fishery to communities in rural Atlantic Canada, especially in light of the drastic reductions in the shrimp quota, will the minister commit to using a portion of the new Atlantic fisheries fund to address growing seal populations that are preventing the recovery of commercially valuable fish stocks?
The Budget April 3rd, 2017
Mr. Speaker, my colleague talks about his love for rural Canada, but one thing I did not catch in his speech was the value of the hunting, angling, and outfitting industry in rural Canada. The Liberal member for Long Range Mountains owned a number of fishing and hunting lodges in Newfoundland.
The reason I start with this preamble is that the recently announced Firearms Advisory Committee by the Minister of Public Safety does not have a single representative from the tourism, hunting and outfitting industry in it, one of the most significant industries in rural Canada. It is a travesty that the Firearms Advisory Committee has a number of anti-firearms representatives on it, and not a single representative, as I said, from the outfitting industry or the hunting and angling community.
Could the member comment on the discrepancy in the makeup of the Firearms Advisory Committee, which obviously is designed to further restrict hunters, farmers, sport shooters, and especially the outfitting industry in rural Canada?
Petitions March 6th, 2017
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present a petition signed by over 60 of my constituents, which emphasizes the importance of regional, local, and community broadcast programming, and asks the government to enable a network of community-operated media centres not served by public or private media. Furthermore, the petitioners request that all Canadian residents have access to multi-platform media skills training and content distribution in the digital economy.
Business of Supply February 23rd, 2017
Madam Speaker, the number of ducks that were killed in that incident was 500. A fall flight to North America is 48 million ducks. Therefore, let us put it in perspective.
It is very important that we address real and measurable environmental issues. I know some members will pooh-pooh the issue of birds. The Minister of Environment and Climate Change should engage the Migratory Birds Convention Act and have a really good look at the effects of alternate energy on some of our most vulnerable and endangered species. She is not doing that.
Business of Supply February 23rd, 2017
Madam Speaker, I happen to have had the honour of working in the oil sands myself, doing environmental monitoring in the winter of 2009-10. Regarding the oil sands, the total aerial extent of the oil sands is 143,000 square kilometres, of which 700 square kilometres have been exploited and 70 square kilometres have been restored.
In terms of her point regarding pollution from various industrial facilities, what happens in modern industrial societies is that industrial processes keep getting better. I will never argue for environmental processes that cause environmental harm or human health damage.
The trend in modern industrial societies is for both the environmental performance of the economy and environmental quality to get better, and Canada is on that path.
Business of Supply February 23rd, 2017
Madam Speaker, what I find interesting about my colleague's comments is he did not mention the environment once. He assumes we tax citizens, which is a tax, and then we give it back to them. Where is the environment in this? Where is the impact on water quality? Where is the impact on air quality? Where is the impact on biodiversity? He never mentioned the environment once. The money is taken from citizens and then is given back to do things that may or may not have anything to do with the environment.
I thought this was an environmental policy. As somebody who spent a lot of time in the environmental policy business, what I care about is delivering real and measurable environmental results on which we can count.
Business of Supply February 23rd, 2017
Madam Speaker, it is an honour to follow my colleague from Calgary Nose Hill.
As someone who has had a career in environmental policy and environmental science for more years than I care to admit, I have come across a philosophy that I follow. Every environmental policy, program, and dollar spent needs to generate real and measurable environmental results. For example, in 1989, the Mulroney government introduced the pulp and paper effluent regulations that required every single paper mill to put a waste-water treatment plant in. That generated a real result. Scrubbers were mandated on smokestacks, which resulted in the Sudbury miracle, a landscape that was restored.
It is very important in environmental policy and environmental science to do the math. The results must be measurable and belief alone has no place in proper environmental policy-making. I noticed that my colleague from Calgary Nose Hill presented verifiable results. She read from scientific and economic documents, whereas the member for Winnipeg North and parliamentary secretary went on and on, with no math or citations whatsoever.
In terms of the Conservative government, I was very proud of its environmental record. Sulphur dioxide went down and nitrous oxide went down. The UN, in 2010, said Canada had the second-best water quality in the industrialized world. Our natural area conservation plan conserved 800,000 hectares of high-quality biodiversity habitat. Our recreational fisheries conservation partnerships program, in one year alone, restored 2,000 linear kilometres of fisheries habitat. That is a real and measurable environmental result.
When we do that math, and I know math is hard for both opposition parties, Canada has 1.6% of global emissions, and this is not my opinion. Quite frankly, not much we do will make any difference to the global climate, and it is simply math. The math also says, if we look at what China is doing right now, it is building two coal-fired projects every single week.
How does the carbon tax, or, more correctly, a carbon dioxide tax measure up? Let us first ask the question: What is CO2? CO2 is an odourless, tasteless gas that makes up 0.04% of our atmosphere. When I brought up the issue of photosynthesis in my question before, I noticed both opposition parties laughed. I find that quite surprising. I guess they do not understand what photosynthesis is. It is only the most important equation on earth. The first molecule in the photosynthetic equation from which most life flows is carbon dioxide.
To school my colleagues opposite in biochemistry, because my colleagues on this side of the House certainly know this, it is carbon dioxide plus water through the miracle of photosynthesis that creates sugar and oxygen. That is a simplified equation, but that is what carbon dioxide does. I still maintain it is absurd to use the phrase “carbon pollution” when referring to CO2. It is a loaded phrase that Liberals use to drive a very wrong agenda, which the minister and the parliamentary secretary do. Volatile organic compounds are carbon pollution, not carbon dioxide, which is literally vital for life itself.
Again, my career in biology spanned some 35 years and I did a lot of fieldwork, so I have a deep affinity for landscapes, forests, waterways, rivers, fish, wildlife, all the things that make up the Canadian environment. I would remind the government that there are more environmental issues than climate change, which are extremely important. They are being ignored by the government and never mentioned by the NDP. For example, the eutrophication of Lake Erie is proceeding apace. I will read a quote, “In the mid-1990s, excessive algal growth began to re-emerge as a problem in the Great Lakes.” The government has not mentioned the Great Lakes once, not that I have heard, and most Canadians live around the Great Lakes.
Wetland loss in Canada is estimated to be about 70% in the settled area of Canada. Again, these are real and pressing environmental issues that should be addressed, but are not being addressed by the Liberal government.
In environmental science, we have something called environmental indicators that are actual measurements of certain environmental factors, things like sulphur dioxide, nitrous oxide, biodiversity, fish populations. We measure these over the span of time so we can assess what is going on in the environment.
Again, when it comes to environmental indicators, we have to ask what the environmental return is on a carbon tax. Notice again that there was not a quantative statement between the two Liberal members who spoke before.
Part of the climate change agenda of the government is a push for so-called green energy. Interestingly, the Liberals never talk about the environmental harm caused by some green energy projects. For example, wind turbines are notorious killers of birds. Some have called them bird cuisinarts. I have a paper from Avian Conservation Ecology 2013 regarding Canada. It states:
Installed wind capacity is growing rapidly, and is predicted to increase more than 10-fold over the next 10-15 years, which could lead to direct mortality of approximately 233,000 birds / year, and displacement of 57,000 pairs.
Where are the opposition parties when it comes to this? Nowhere.
In terms of bald eagles and wind turbines, research from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service shows in the United States alone more than 4,000 bald eagles are killed by wind turbines.
With respect to a species that I am quite familiar with, the Myotis, or the little brown bat, it used to be common in my area. Now it is a COSEWIC listed species. A paper from Popular Science says, “Wind Turbines Kill More Than 600,000 Bats A Year. What Should We Do?” Again, it went on to say how bats were killed by wind turbines. ”Even if the bat isn’t struck, spinning turbines create changes in air pressure as they move, which can essentially cause the animals’ lungs to explode”. Again, none of these negative impacts of green energy projects is ever mentioned by anybody in the opposition parties.
There is a solar plant in California that kills 6,000 birds a year. The report says, “A macabre fireworks show unfolds each day along I-15 west of Las Vegas, as birds fly into concentrated beams of sunlight and are instantly incinerated, leaving wisps of white smoke against the blue desert sky”. Yes, that is green energy all right.
In terms of people, again, I refer to Ontario where the great wind turbine fight is going on. In the bulletin of science and technology journal 2011, researchers studied the health effects of wind turbines. It says:
People who live near wind turbines complain of symptoms that include some combination of the following: difficulty sleeping, fatigue, depression, irritability, aggressiveness, cognitive dysfunction, chest pain/pressure, headaches, joint pain, skin irritations, nausea, dizziness, tinnitus, and stress. These symptoms have been attributed to the pressure...waves that wind turbines generate in the form of noise and infrasound.
Yes, that is green energy all right. Again, the wind turbine fights in Ontario will only get stronger over time.
There is an article from February 23, 2016, entitled “Rules Ignored in Ontario Wind Energy Plan”. A local resident, Jane Wilson, was quoted as saying, “Just in terms of the fabric of the community (it is) ripping people apart”. She chairs Ottawa wind concerns.
People have lost complete faith in their government. People had no say whatever in what happened in their communities. Furthermore, if we look at Ontario, over the years when it has been going down this green energy path, it has only managed to create 13% of their energy mix from wind, biofuel, and solar.
In the case of my constituency, which is a very vast rural constituency, my constituents live on very modest incomes. In fact, it is one of the lower income constituencies in the entire country. What do modest incomes and the need to travel long distance add up to? A devastating effect from the Liberal carbon tax, which will hurt my constituents directly.
Business of Supply February 23rd, 2017
Madam Speaker, I find it completely hilarious when the environment minister and the parliamentary secretary use the phrase “carbon pollution”. We are talking about carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is the stuff of life.
I have a question for the parliamentary secretary. Has he ever heard of the process called photosynthesis, does he understand how important photosynthesis is, and can he describe the photosynthetic process? Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. Volatile organic compounds that contain carbon are carbon pollution; carbon dioxide is not.