Mr. Speaker, it is indeed an honour for me to stand and discuss the concept of sustainable development under the Federal Sustainable Development Act..
What is often lost to people is that sustainable development is actually a development concept. The concept was popularized by the Brundtland commission report, Our Common Future, published in 1986. What spawned that report was the deep frustration about how environmental policy was being done in the world. The assumption was that economic development was always at the expense of the environment, which is clearly not true.
Also, what the Brundtland commission concluded is that poverty causes environmental degradation. When we have economies that are not firing on all cylinders, when we do not have innovation, and when we do not have free markets or free trade, the end result is environmental degradation.
In 1992, the Earth Summit happened in Rio. I was there as part of the Canadian delegation. The message from the Earth Summit, loud and clear, was that ending poverty was the best thing the world could do for the environment.
Again, as a true free market Conservative, it is very clear to me that free markets, free trade, and a thriving innovation sector create the conditions for wealth production and environmental protection. It is no secret that advanced industrial societies have the best environmental quality. Now the Liberals on the other side always talk about the environment and the economy going together, but in an advanced industrial society, the way they see it is backwards.
In an advanced industrial society, wealth creation is absolutely necessary for environmental conservation. It is wealthy societies that make the investments in environmental protection. We have many northern and remote communities, for example, that live in pristine environments. There is no industrial development. The land is much as it has been for eons and eons, yet those communities have terrible economies and very difficult social problems. The pristine environment around them does not generate the wealth they need to sustain their societies.
An economist named Kuznets came up with a concept of looking at per capita income in a country and environmental quality, for example. He did a unique analysis of sulphur dioxide. In the early 1900s, sulphur dioxide was being belched out of coal-fired power plants at a furious rate that caused the great smogs. People said they did not care about the environment. The whole point was to industrialize and to use those power plants to power an ever-growing society.
What happened in the early seventies, however, is that people said that enough was enough, because of acid rain and air pollution. They simply could not put up with that. Society changed dramatically. Technology was developed to put scrubbers in coal-fired power plants. Starting in the 1970s, sulphur dioxide emissions declined dramatically in the United States as it got richer and richer.
I am not one of those people who talks about balancing the environment and the economy. Quite frankly, there is no balance. A wealthy society creates a better environment. Society gets wealthier and the environment improves. The term “balance” implies it is a zero sum game and that economic development is at the expense of the environment. That is simply not the case. Actually, the greenest government ever in Canada was that of former Brian Mulroney in the eighties. In fact, he was awarded the prize of being the greenest prime minister in Canadian history.
One thing the Mulroney government did in Canada, an example of a rich society, was to implement pulp and paper effluent regulations requiring every pulp and paper plant in Canada to build a state-of-the-art wastewater treatment plant. I happen, in a previous life, to have run one of those wastewater treatment plants. Basically, what those plants did was to turn a toxic effluent into effluent that a person could drink.
Only rich societies do those kinds of things. We put scrubbers on smoke stacks, as I said a minute ago. In rich societies, we also set aside vast tracks of land as parks. I happen to live next to Riding Mountain National Park. It has great timber and soils, all the makings of a piece of land that could be developed for forestry or agriculture, yet we as a rich society have decided that Riding Mountain National Park shall remain in its natural state. That is a good thing, but again, wealthy societies are the ones that do that.
That is something the Liberal government has completely forgotten. The Liberals are doing their best to kill Canada's natural resource economy, which is 20% of our economy. The way they are killing the natural resource economy is with process after process. The just-announced purchase of the Kinder Morgan pipeline by the Liberal government is testament to the failure of its environmental policies.
We lost energy east. We lost the Petronas project. We lost northern gateway. In addition to the Kinder Morgan project, these would have produced thousands and thousands of jobs, especially in eastern Canada. I am talking about energy east right now and the absurd situation of Canada importing foreign oil for our eastern refineries when we produce enough raw material to supply those refineries ourselves. Only a Liberal would think that is a good thing. I hate to break it to the government, but process does not improve the environment. Actual work on the ground does.
The other thing that is implied by the Liberals and the NDP all the time is that somehow industry is either not doing a good job, or always wanting to skirt environmental regulations. Nothing could be further from the truth. All of our industrial projects these days are built with the highest environmental standards from day one. I saw it in person on the ground when I was doing environmental monitoring work in the oil sands. The care taken by energy companies and contractors with environmental protection was something to see. Everyone was trained in spill response. All of the technology was in place. Spill kits were everywhere. All of the proper environmental protocols were followed. In terms of the plants and the mines, all of the pollution control devices were world class.
As I said earlier, environmental results are critical. Under our government the environment improved significantly. Sulphur dioxide went down, nitrous oxide went down, and the amount of land devoted to parkland increased dramatically. Over 800,000 acres of extremely valuable land was secured under the national area conservation plan.
Contrast that with what is happening under the current government. I mentioned earlier the plight of the Atlantic salmon. I was in New Brunswick where people are devastated by the near collapse of the Atlantic salmon stocks. Their anger at DFO almost knows no bounds. They are being ignored by the government. The Atlantic salmon was an example of sustainable development, a sustainable fishery that sustained communities with 4,000 jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars of income, and yet the government is ignoring the unanimous report of the fisheries committee. As a result, the Atlantic is in deep trouble.
Again, the Liberals think that process is results. Process does not produce results. Doing environmental conservation and environmental remediation and fish stock enhancement on the ground produces real environmental results. When I hear about the Federal Sustainable Development Act, I know it is about bureaucrats sending emails to themselves.
I would also note with regard to the Liberals' emphasis on process that in hearings before our environment committee on the impact assessment act, the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association said that Canada has a “toxic regulatory environment”. I guess that is why the Liberals are trying to buy their way out of it with the purchase of the Kinder Morgan pipeline.
The government is deliberately destroying Canada's natural resource industries and the communities, both indigenous and non-indigenous, that depend on them. This will have serious consequences for Canada's economy.
