Mr. Speaker, I rise with pleasure today to support the amendment to the Pest Control Products Act in order to significantly limit the places where pesticides can be used legally in Canada.
In fact, when we introduced a similar bill in 2002, the purpose was to protect human health and safety, and the environment by regulating products used for the control of pests. The PCPA's primary objective was to prevent unacceptable risks to people in the environment from the use of pest control products. Ancillary objectives included supporting sustainable development to enable the needs of the present to be met without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own.
This bill passed on June 13, 2002, and was given royal assent on December 12, 2002. It was sponsored by the Minister of Health and in fact replaced a 33 year old act first passed in 1969. It controls products commonly called pesticides, but it also encompasses a broad range of products including insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, algaecides, insect repellents, wood preservatives, et cetera.
The development of the PCPA involved collaboration with the Pest Management Regulatory Agency of Health Canada, the Departments of Agriculture and Agri-Food, the Environment, Industry, Natural Resources and Fisheries and Oceans, Canada Food Inspection Agency, and industry stakeholders as well as broad consultations with environmental and health advocacy groups.
The result of their efforts demonstrated the way Canadians approach sustainable development in terms of policy, legislation and regulations. The bill protects human health, biodiversity, air, water and soil. It protects and promotes the interests of our agricultural industry to ensure a safe and abundant food supply at an acceptable cost, and the productivity of our natural forestry endowments by encouraging the move to the development and use of leading edge, sustainable pest management practices.
The preamble of the bill states that the regulation of pesticides is to be pursued through a scientifically-based national registration system that addresses risks to human health and the environment both before and after registration. A new product will be approved or accepted only if there is reasonable certainty that there is no harm to human health, to future generations and to the environment under the conditions under which a pesticide has been approved.
The proposed amendments would strengthen the use of the precautionary principle that refines our views of what constitutes reasonable certainty. The precautionary principle applies in the current version of the PCPA and the principle asserts that a lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent adverse health impacts or environmental degradation.
Science offers an evolving set of parameters within which we make decisions. Centuries ago our understanding of science allowed us, with reasonable certainty, to believe and act on an opinion, for instance, that the earth was flat. It would appear that some members in the Conservative Party continue to hold that view when it comes to environmental policy and other fairly arcane ideas about sustainable development.
We support the amendments which strengthen the approach in applying the precautionary principle. The amendments strengthen protection against possible exposure from multiple sources including food, water, home and school. By restricting the legal use of pesticides in specific locations, populations including pregnant women, children, farmers and their families would be protected from cumulative risks that would otherwise exist.
Due to their smaller size, diet and play habits, children are indeed more vulnerable to the harmful effects of pesticides than are adults. The existing bill recognizes this special vulnerability of children by calling for the application of an additional tenfold safety margin in evaluating a product's health risks. The amendments, as presented, would expand our protections to those in society most vulnerable to impacts.
The PCPA prohibits pesticides from being imported, sold and used unless they have been registered by the minister. Once registered, their use is carefully controlled. The minister may refuse to maintain an applicant registration where reporting requirements have in fact not been met.
This is an important protection for Canadians and for our agricultural sector as well. It creates the context for a race to the top among our agricultural sector positioning Canada as a leader in sustainable pest management.
Environmental policy can be used to create economic growth and opportunities. To do this, tax credits need to be put in place to attract capital and talent to promote research and development in environmental sciences and create a positive context for the marketing of this sort of technical and technological environment.
It was more than 20 years ago that Harvard professor Michael Porter, in assessing Canada's position in the global marketplace, described a robust regulatory regime for environmental and health protection as “technology forcing”. In fact, it does help when there is multilateral cooperation between governments that not only require consumers and the private sector to develop better long term approaches to the environment, but also help create economic opportunity in doing so.
We have seen evidence of the ingenuity of our Canadian agricultural and forestry sectors to respond to health and environmental challenges with cutting edge pesticide management strategies. The sectors have adopted a “reduced risk” approach to pest management. Our agricultural sector has collaborated with Agriculture and Agri-Foods Canada developing an array of pest management strategies for priority crops and land uses. Some of these strategies create a brand for Canada, a brand in the use among global leaders of integrated sustainable pest management approaches.
Canada could become a world leader in this type of environmental technology, particularly with green technologies, green energy and clean energy, for example. There will be lots of opportunity in agriculture, for example, to develop biodiesel.
Some of these strategies, that the private sector and our agricultural and forestry sectors have developed, are actually breathtaking in their simplicity. In pear and apple orchards, which are an important ingredient in infant and child diets, pesticide use has decreased in favour of mating disruption techniques thus reducing the typically high pesticide load on this horticultural crop and strengthening the organic farming sector which is one of the faster growing sectors within horticulture.
Berry farmers have found the chemical controls for weevils to be ineffective, but the parasitic nematode used in a low temperature tolerance strain of berry has in fact produced results that have increased crop yields.
Canola and potato farmers, whose crops incur a 20% loss due to root maggot and wire worms, are using fungal parasites and meeting their pesticide use reduction goals at the same time.
There are new approaches to tillage to control weeds in oat, flax and wheat fields. This is contributing to new approaches to protecting waterfowl habitat, and soil and microbial damage and erosion.
Using pesticides before crops emerge helps to control weeds, deliver low health and environmental impacts, and reduce overall use of pesticides in the long term.
Cattle ranchers know the blight of the leafy spurge, a non-indigenous species which impacts two million hectares of valuable grazing land and whose sap is toxic to cattle. Chemical treatment of these species is expensive and is inappropriate in terms of being close to water sources in those areas. Canadian farmers are using a biological control, the black spurge beetle, to reduce losses and increase productivity and innovation in their approaches.
By amending the bill and expanding the application of the precautionary principle, PCPA will protect human health and the environment and drive innovation, productivity and competitiveness in the agricultural and forestry sectors.
It is important to recognize that Canadians, not only from a short term health and safety perspective but from a long term environmental and economic sustainability perspective, understand the importance of these measures and in general environmental policy.
There is a lot of support throughout the country for environmental measures, especially in Quebec.
I would now like to talk about greenhouse gases. It is clear to everyone that Canada, as a multilateralist, has a responsibility to honour its commitments to the Kyoto protocol.
In addition, it is clear to everyone that the Conservative government does not support the principles of Kyoto.
It is also important to recognize that we have a huge credibility challenge right now as a country.
Indeed, we are the only country in the world reducing its environmental spending this year.
To be the only country in the world that is in fact reducing environmental investment this year is not the kind of club Canada wants to belong to.
In terms of Kyoto, we have a history as a country where we are respected internationally as a country that keeps its promises and respects its treaties. We have a responsibility to do more. There was a plan implemented by the previous Liberal government and that plan was working. Any plan takes time to have the effect required.
It has been often referred to that there was a growth in greenhouse gas emissions over the last 13 years of about 24%. It is also notable that during that period of time there was a GDP growth economically in Canada of about 45%, largely driven by some of the worst emitters, the fossil fuels petroleum industry. While technologies are evolving rapidly and importantly in those areas to clean energy production from traditional sources, we still have a long way to go.
This is why I think it will be very important for Canada to work with the other international partners to develop innovative technologies to reduce greenhouse gases and to create economic opportunities at the same time. Canada could be a world leader in this area and create opportunities for young Canadians to earn a living. In addition, it will have an impact on industries such as green or clean energy, or alternative energies. There will be many opportunities.
In my opinion, this will be the 21st century's most dynamic sector. So, it is our responsibility as leaders in Canada and the responsibility of the government as well to play a leading role in this area.
It is embarrassing that we now have headlines such as the one in the Toronto Star this morning that the Minister of the Environment “lacks credibility; Rather than embarrass Canada, environment minister should stay away from UN meeting on climate change”.
It is not the right kind of signal to be sending to the international community in terms of Canada's seriousness on these issues, that 300 non-governmental organizations from around the world charge at the meeting that the minister ought to step down from her role as chairperson. In fact, the 300 organizations that signed on to the ECO newsletter said the following:
Avoiding dangerous climate change clearly requires leadership from industrialized countries such as Canada in reducing emissions now and an agreement on deeper reductions for the second commitment period. If you feel, as Chair of these proceedings, that you and your government are not committed to fulfill your obligations under the Kyoto Protocol and that you cannot provide this needed leadership for the future, please, do the honourable thing. Step down.
That was the communication of 300 international non-government organizations in the environmental community directed to the Minister of the Environment on her chairpersonship of the Bonn conference.
It is important, whether in pesticide management or in measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, that we work multilaterally. Greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants do not stop at borders. It is important that we work multilaterally, with the United States absolutely, but also with our partners through the Kyoto accord. The fact exists that in the U.S. private sector players are now seeking to put together a trading mechanism that can work because their government has not signed on to Kyoto. They recognize the efficacy of a trading system that would enable them not just to be competitive internationally but at the same time to build a cleaner greener planet.
Progress has been made within Canada with our private sector, with our oil and gas sector and in fact with our new energy sector. Wind farms are being built and are operating successfully in places in southern Alberta and also in places within Atlantic Canada. We are seeing the development of biofuels. That is good for the agricultural industry and traditional sectors. It is good for rural Canada. What is exciting about this is that some of the intractable regional and rural development issues and some of the intractable and difficult development issues with aboriginal communities can in fact be addressed through what quite possibly will be the fastest growing area in the 21st century economy and that is new energy and clean energy.
They are not going to be putting wind farms on the corner of Bay and Bloor and they are not going to be developing biofuels on Bay Street either, but the fact is that a lot of these opportunities will provide sustainable economic opportunities to rural Canada, to aboriginal, first nations, Métis and Inuit communities, if we get it right.
To do this, tax credits must be put in place to attract capital, for example. There is a lot of international capital and many investors wanting to invest in this area.
Canada can become the world leader in this area.
It is that kind of vision that can recognize that we can create economic opportunity and it is directly out of environmental responsibility. I think a lot of Canadians in the private and public sectors, and Canadian consumers want to see that kind of leadership. I would urge all members of the House to pursue vigorously and in as non-partisan a way as we can in this quite partisan place, efforts to work together to ensure that Canada fulfills its international commitments but at the same time help create economic opportunities for future generations of Canadians by being environmentally responsible and innovative at the same time.
