Yasmin Ratansi

[Environmental Enforcement Act, March 25th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, we need to understand that the key message here is that we are trying to strengthen and standardize the penalties that polluters will have to pay. It is not only fines; it is sentencing. What is important when we talk about sentencing is that the criminals need to know that all offenders who pollute or aggravate the environment will have to pay.

[Environmental Enforcement Act, March 25th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the environmental enforcement bill, as I mentioned, has a lot of penalties. It brings together all the bills so that we have one bill that would make it easier for people to understand. We need to have boots on the ground.

With regard to the clean air act which the government had proposed but which evaporated, the committee, which is what a democracy requires, decided that the clean air act needed to be strengthened. Once it was strengthened it was the responsibility of the government to enforce it, but it did not.

If one does not believe in the science of climate change and if one brings about enforcement in an environmental act, it is critical, in order to be taken seriously that one has to take climate change seriously. It is important to understand the science of climate change.

[Environmental Enforcement Act, March 25th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I will respond very quickly.

It is all very well to have fines and penalties, but the hon. member is right in that we have to have enforcement. Enforcement is very critical. Boots on the ground are what is required. That is why it is important to send the bill to committee for further study and further tightening.

[Environmental Enforcement Act, March 25th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to stand in the House to speak to Bill C-16, an act to amend the Environmental Enforcement Act.

This bill, as has been stated previously, would amend environment bills and create one new act. The purpose of the bill is to stiffen penalties for environmental offences. This is the first step in the right direction.

In the past, the effectiveness of Canada's environmental legislation and regulations has been hampered by the lack of an adequate enforcement regime.

Mr. Speaker, before I go forward, I will be sharing my time with the member for Scarborough—Rouge River.

Bill C-16 attempts to address the shortcomings of the current laws and puts in a stronger enforcement regime. It introduces stiffer fines, penalties and new sentencing powers, and strengthens the government's ability to investigate and prosecute infractions. Canadians do need to know that there is an effective environmental enforcement regime. They need to know that polluters, poachers and wild life smugglers will be punished or will be fined and will pay for it.

Bill C-16 would not only introduce enforcement tools like fines but also sentencing. The drafting and architecture of the environmental enforcement was accomplished in many stages during three successive Liberal governments, and I am glad to see that this has been carried forward.

Climate change and its impact on the population is a well-known fact. Climate change is a global phenomena and is affecting every country.

Today I was at a breakfast meeting with the deputy minister of Jamaica. He stated that the Caribbean Islands are facing the wrath of climate change. He stated that, as a young man, hurricanes were very rare, once in 10 years, and that now hurricanes hit the islands and surrounding area on a regular basis. This has had a devastating impact on their economy.

Countries that rely on agriculture have seen their crops fail badly or totally destroyed. We have seen devastating results in our own country. In Canada, we have had droughts on the prairies and rivers dry up or overflow. Our rivers are being polluted making the water undrinkable, unsuitable for swimming or anything else and for sea life as well. We have seen the impact of climate change on the northern communities. Their way of life is threatened. The snow is melting and the polar bears are in danger.

The elephant in the room, as we discuss environmental enforcement legislation, has to do with what the government is doing to address the issue of climate change. The government has no regulatory framework for climate change.

The government has made claims that its plan would reduce GHGs by 20% by 2020 but the C.D. Howe Institute, the RBC Dominion Securities and 11 independent groups stated that the government's plan will not work. In fact, at the public accounts meeting, the Commissioner of the Environment stated that the government had achieved nothing with some of its tax credits, for example, the TTC tax credit, which was a waste of $635 million with zero reduction in GHGs, or the Eco-Fund, which is a $1.5 billion boondoggle. There is no accountability, no help in reducing GHGs and nobody knows whether any of the provinces or territories have drawn down the money or have done anything to assist with the greenhouse gas reductions.

The government still does not have a plan. Its Clean Air Act, which was introduced in the last Parliament, was a disaster. The U.S., on the other hand, under President Obama, is moving forward with an aggressive climate change policy because they realize that the science of climate change is real.

We should just look at the desertification in the Sub-Sahara. In many parts of the world, the impact of climate change has led to a lack of water and lack of arable land which has led to conflict and human tragedies.

Therefore, my question is, where is the government's plan on climate change?

With the evaporation of the clean air act from the last Parliament and its being rewritten and greatly strengthened, the government did not like it and therefore, it censored debate. Now the government is waiting for the U.S., but Canada is a sovereign state. Is there an envoy or timeline?

If we are desperately in need of environmental enforcement, we are desperately in need of a climate change plan. What will we do when the temperature increases? What are the crises that will occur?

The line of questioning that I hope will be pursued when the bill is sent to committee is: what about climate change? Where is the government's plan? What has motivated the government to move in the direction of environmental enforcement without moving to put in a proper climate change plan?

The government has put in an aggressive agenda. We would like to ensure that all parties send the bill to committee for better study.

There are 38,000 to 40,000 contaminated sites at the moment. How will environmental enforcement deal with the pre-existing liabilities for the municipalities, cities, towns and regions across the country that have these toxic sites? Who will clean up those toxic sites? How will they clean up brownfields, blackfields, et cetera? It is a troubling issue and therefore it is important that the government work with the provinces, territories and municipalities to come up with a strategy on how to compensate and restore these sites. Those questions have to be answered.

The registry of environmental offenders, which was referred to previously, is a good idea, but how will the government move forward with it? I hope the government takes its time to do a deeper study.

This bill, which relates to environmental enforcement, will bring in specific improvements to the previous legislation. A new structure of fines will be added, and nine acts will be brought under one act. The bill will bring in minimum sentences. Those are some of the positive things about the bill.

It will consolidate nine acts, bring in new enforcement regimes, new sentencing regimes. We need those regimes, but the root question which still remains is, what are we going to do about the climate change crisis? How is the government going to address these issues in the environmental enforcement bill? How will it ensure that we have in place the proper regimes, compensation and methods to clean up our contaminated sites?

With that, I would suggest that the bill be sent to committee for review and sober second thought so that people can have a proper look at it.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2009, March 4th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I finally get a chance to ask my hon. colleague, the member for Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, a question.

My colleague has been a passionate proponent of social justice. As we heard from his speech, he talked about the early learning and childhood strategies. I have heard him speak about student loans, helping the poor and helping communities in distress.

I know the budget is difficult for a lot of us because it is such a mixture of good and bad. Could the member give some indication on what he thinks of some of the other measures the Prime Minister or the Minister of Finance put in, the hodge-podge things like the Competition Act, pay equity, Navigable Waters Protection Act and probably EFTA? Is the Conservative government really serious about a stimulus package or is it really playing games on the backs of ordinary Canadians?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2009, March 2nd, 2009]

And toxic too.

Madam Speaker, the solution they provided attacked the most vulnerable. It attacked pay equity, the labour unions, et cetera.

Therefore, the Liberal opposition forced the government back to the drawing board, over the holidays, to come up with a meaningful budget to help stimulate the economy and protect the vulnerable from adverse effects.

As the official critic for national revenue, I sit on the public accounts committee, and the responsibility of public accounts is oversight of government spending. We have seen a number of areas where the government has not been accountable or transparent, and it has shown total incompetence in fiscal management. This does not span only the financial area; it deals with federal-provincial transfer payments, the health and safety of Canadians, the environment, et cetera.

There are positive things in the budget that we had asked for, and there are areas of concern. For example, we are concerned about the management of the home renovation tax credit. This tax expenditure has the potential for disaster, and we will insist on proper accountability.

It is because of this kind of dismal performance, the government's dismal economic performance—getting rid of the $13-billion surplus, going into a deficit, not being able to manage the economy—that the Conservatives' allies at the National Citizens Coalition, once headed by the Prime Minister, disparaged the government for poor management. In fact, the head of NCC has called on grassroots supporters of the Conservative Party, many of whom are already tapped out, to withhold political donations until they see some form of improvement on the part of the government.

The chief economist for the Toronto-Dominion Bank and a former senior finance official, Don Drummond, specifically pointed out that the home renovation tax credit looks like one big black hole with few safeguards and little room for accountability. Therefore, I sincerely hope that the Minister of Finance will consult carefully with his officials at the Department of Finance to make sure we do not end up with a Swiss cheese stimulus package that is full of holes.

The Canadian people deserve better leadership, and as the leader of the official opposition has indicated to the government, the Liberal caucus has put the government on probation. This stimulus package will be reviewed at regular intervals to ensure it is effective and accountable and that the money does move out to projects that the budget claims to support.

There are many parts of this budget that the Liberal Party fought for and are urgently needed by Canadians—for example, the national child care tax benefit, doubling tax relief provided by the working income tax benefit to encourage low-income Canadians to find and retain jobs.

We also asked for and strongly support a provision that will reduce the minimum withdrawal rate of RRIFs by 25%. As I mentioned before, the leader of the Liberal Party has indicated that Liberal support for this budget is conditional and that we will be reviewing the government's use of taxpayers' dollars quite closely.

There are some measures we welcome. These are the $400 million for construction of social housing; $75 million for the construction of social housing for persons with disabilities; $400 million for first nation reserves; and $200 million over two years in social housing. However, we have to have transparency and accountability.

The Conservatives have a habit of announcing and not delivering, especially in the infrastructure area. They have announced it in three budgets but have never made the money available. It is important that this money be delivered.

In consulting with my constituents of Don Valley East, they made it clear that any stimulus package must contain measures to protect the most vulnerable in our society, to secure jobs that we already have and to prepare the economy for the future. Canadians demand fiscal responsibility, and that is why we are granting conditional support.

Just today, Statistics Canada released data, and now the Minister of Finance is asking Canadians to prepare for a substantive drop in GDP. Economists are predicting a 3% to 4% drop in GDP, but this should not have come as a surprise to the government or to the Prime Minister, who claims to be an economist.

The stimulus package should have been done in October 2008, right after the election, but the Prime Minister was busy telling Canadians to buy stocks. There can be only two reasons the Prime Minister did that, either he was totally misleading Canadians or he was totally incompetent and does not know the economic environment and does not have an economic vision for the country.

If the Prime Minister and the finance minister were serious about the economic situation in Canada, they would not have called an illegal election for October 2008 and broken their own election law. They should not have been so neo-conservative in their economic statement, which had nothing, no stimulus package, and they should not have prorogued Parliament.

If the finance minister wanted $3 billion without accountability, the Liberals could not give it to them. The government needs to grow up and take responsibility. Without a vision or accountability, it is rudderless. That is why I would like to ask my colleagues across the way what pay equity has to do with a stimulus package. What does attacking the most vulnerable have to do with a stimulus package? What does the Competition Act have to do with a stimulus package? What do navigable waters have to do with a stimulus package?

I would like to let the Conservatives know that we have put them on probation and that they cannot put a whole hodgepodge of items in the budget and expect it to go through.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2009, March 2nd, 2009]

Madam Speaker, on behalf of my constituents of Don Valley East, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-10, the budget implementation bill, but before I speak to Bill C-10, I would like to respond to some of the comments made by the member for Winnipeg North.

I would like to remind the member not to be so sanctimonious. She talks about principles. What principles does the NDP have? It has zero. What did it give up in 2006? It gave up Kelowna, Kyoto, the agendas of citizens and communities, and early learning and child care.

The NDP leader said “Lend me your vote.” For what? He then got into bed with the Conservatives. The NDP members talk a good talk when it comes to the vulnerable, but when it comes to the real fight, the real nuts and bolts of supporting the vulnerable, they are nowhere to be seen.

So I really do not need any lessons on principles from the member or from that party.

Going back to Bill C-10, this has been a strange week in Ottawa, with an admission from both the Prime Minister and the finance minister that Canadians should somehow expect that rushing the stimulus package out the door will result in a budgetary boondoggle by the Conservative government.

This is a remarkably frank admission by the Conservatives, considering that the money has yet to be approved by Parliament. It is defeatist language coming from the Prime Minister, who presented a self-inflicted political crisis in December when his fledgling government was forced to withdraw its November 27th economic statement that was drafted by some zealots in his office.

Last November should have been the government's first opportunity to present a stimulus package, when the whole world was aware that we were heading into tough economic times. Instead the Conservatives, who lack all impulse control when it comes to partisan games, brought in an economic statement that had more to do with political tricks than economic management.

In the fall, during the last election, the Prime Minister falsified information. He claimed that there was no economic crisis, and that if there were a recession, Canadians would already be in one. The Prime Minister even joked about the opportunity to buy stocks. This is the Prime Minister who does not have any regard for the countless Canadians who have lost their jobs.

The solution they provided in their November economic statement, which was the most absurd solution—

[Canada Revenue Agency, February 27th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, that is not a very reassuring response.

The parliamentary secretary has probably not read the Auditor General's report. Canadians want to know that their personal information is being properly protected by the government and not falling into the hands of organized crime.

When was the government aware of this very serious breach of security and what steps have been taken to protect the vital information of Canadians?

[Canada Revenue Agency, February 27th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the latest news from gang violence in Vancouver is very troubling. Police in British Columbia have indicated that an employee with the Canada Revenue Agency was leaking information on behalf of rivals of the notorious United Nations gang.

Canadians would like to know, when did the government become aware of the leak and what actions has it taken to protect the integrity of CRA?

[Status of Women, February 26th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, from her previous responses, it is obvious that it is not the minister responsible for Status of Women who takes the lead role on the issues of concern to Canadian women. We want to know very simply, what has the Minister of State for Status of Women done to ensure gender equity in the budget? What role, if any, did she actually play? Will the minister of state please table in the House any gender-based analysis that was done for the budget, whether it was from her department or any other department? Was the--