44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 31, 2022 11:00AM
- Oct/31/22 12:43:33 p.m.
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- Re: Bill S-5
Madam Speaker, I am certainly very concerned that this bill not be rushed through. I agree with him insofar as that comment. This is a very complex bill. The Canadian Environmental Protection Act is a very long act in six parts. The government has chosen not to review or update part 6 at all, which deals with marine dumping and genetically modified organisms. That section needs attention but will be outside the scope of the act for parliamentarians to review, unless the government steps up and says we need to modernize this section as well.
I am also concerned about protecting this bill from court challenges. We need to put back in the list of toxic substances, schedule 1.
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- Oct/31/22 1:26:39 p.m.
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- Re: Bill S-5
Madam Speaker, I think we have a problem. There is a flaw in the Environment Canada framework because the purpose of the bill is unclear. In the beginning, 30 years ago, it was important to maintain the list of toxic substances set out in the act. The Supreme Court of Canada rendered a famous ruling in that regard in R. v. Hydro-Québec.
It is clear from that Supreme Court ruling that we need to continue with the criminal jurisdiction approach. In order to do that, we need to protect the list of toxic substances and not divide it in two because that would make this legislation more vulnerable when the courts have to enforce it.
Can my colleague comment on my theory that this poses a serious risk?
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- Oct/31/22 3:30:13 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am honoured to rise on behalf of constituents from Saanich—Gulf Islands who are very concerned about the status of old-growth forests. This petition focuses on the different aspects of the importance of old growth in terms of climate, indigenous rights, biodiversity and the dwindling number of old-growth forests, particularly on Vancouver Island and along areas of Fairy Creek, which is slated for logging.
The petitioners call on the government to work with provinces and first nations to halt the logging of endangered old growth, to fund protection of old-growth ecosystems and to support value-added forestry initiatives that get Canadian wood to Canadian mills instead of being shipped overseas as raw logs. They oppose the use of whole trees for wood pellet biofuel production, yet another climate fraud.
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- Oct/31/22 4:01:31 p.m.
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- Re: Bill S-5
Madam Speaker, this gives me an opportunity to clarify some constitutional elements that have been misunderstood in the debate so far today.
I have heard a number of Conservative MPs say that somehow this involves the Criminal Code. I want to clarify this really forcefully: I have a lot of problems with this bill, but it does not involve the Criminal Code. It involves the head of powers, the criminal law powers, as defined by the Supreme Court of Canada back in the Hydro-Québec case. The government is entitled to legislate to protect Canadians from toxic substances and others that threaten our health. It does not involve criminality in the sense of the Criminal Code.
If my hon. colleague has any comments, I would welcome them.
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- Oct/31/22 4:14:58 p.m.
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- Re: Bill S-5
Madam Speaker, I happen to have worked in the administration under former prime minister Brian Mulroney. I worked on acid rain and worked on the treaty that protected the ozone layer. I can contrast, from first-hand experience, why the current Liberal government is not hitting targets and Brian Mulroney's government did. At no time did we in that government decide to fight acid rain while subsidizing acid rain. At no time did we say that we must make our other colleagues happy and build, for instance, more pollution into our system while trying to fight it. We cannot meet climate targets doing this.
I know the members opposite think it is important to build pipelines. We must cancel the Trans Mountain pipeline if we have any interest in making sure our emissions go down. We have to be consistent and fight for what our goals are, one of which is to make sure we have a livable world for our kids. That is not hyperbole. That is what the scientists are warning us about.
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- Oct/31/22 4:41:20 p.m.
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- Re: Bill S-5
Madam Speaker, number one, Bill S-5 does not deal with climate, and I recognize a big part of the debate we are having here is on sections of environmental and climate policy that are not in Bill S-5.
It is true the government has never met any target, but neither did the previous government under Stephen Harper, which picked a target in Copenhagen and said it would meet that target. It picked a target in 2006 and said it would meet that target. The Liberals claim they reduced emissions, but it was due to COVID. The Harper administration claimed it reduced emissions, but it was due to the 2008 financial collapse.
We need all the big parties to do all the things the hon. member for Calgary Midnapore has said: Have a plan, make a target and stick to it. In fact, not only have none of the governments in this country ever achieved the target, but they have not gotten the direction right. They are supposed to go down, but emissions go up. That is largely due to governments, one after the other, trying to accommodate Alberta's oil and gas industry and running into opposition.
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- Oct/31/22 5:08:14 p.m.
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- Re: Bill S-5
Madam Speaker, I am very sorry to interrupt my hon. friend from Provencher, but I am looking forward to hearing anything about Bill S-5.
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- Oct/31/22 5:31:20 p.m.
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- Re: Bill S-5
Madam Speaker, I noted that the hon. member did address an important point with which I agree, which is that the right to a healthy environment must be a real right, an enforceable right, which would mean that the government has to open up section 22 of the existing Canadian Environmental Protection Act.
However, I noted her reference to blood oil. The Green Party agrees that we should cancel all imports of oil from any foreign countries and only use Canadian oil, but there is a surprisingly small component of Saudi Arabian oil coming to Canada. All of it goes to the Irving refinery in Saint John, New Brunswick. I wonder if the hon. member might want to comment on what could be done to get the worst and most human rights violating nations out of Canada's energy streams.
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- Oct/31/22 5:57:04 p.m.
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- Re: Bill S-5
Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, and I am profoundly sorry to interrupt the hon. member for Calgary Nose Hill, because it is an important speech, but it has absolutely nothing to do with Bill S-5.
Bill S-5 deals with toxic chemicals, and with six different parts, none touch on carbon pricing; none are about Russia, Ukraine or climate. Bill S-5 is a different bill altogether. This is an important speech, but there is no relevance to Bill S-5.
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- Oct/31/22 5:58:15 p.m.
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- Re: Bill S-5
Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, I am sorry but Bill S-5 is not a sign of irrelevance for all climate policy. It happens to be the bill we are debating now.
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- Oct/31/22 6:42:53 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening to pursue a question I initially asked in the month of May relating to the upcoming June session, the first session, of the conference of the parties within the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. I asked the question as to whether Canada was going to attend. I was following up on a question from the hon. member for Edmonton Strathcona, who had just asked a similar question. The hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs in his response said that the Government of Canada was going to maintain an unwavering commitment to nuclear disarmament.
In the end, Canada did not send a delegation to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. We did not even send an unofficial delegation of observers. This was a profound disappointment to the community within Canada that is looking to the government to stand up and work against the threat of nuclear war.
We have had a nuclear non-proliferation treaty in the world since 1970. We had historic progress made. At the time the United States was under President Ronald Reagan and the then-nation of the U.S.S.R. was under Mikhail Gorbachev, they decided together to work to eliminate nuclear weapons. We have had significant backsliding since then from both the U.S. government and, of course, the U.S.S.R. is no longer. Mikhail Gorbachev, God bless and rest his soul, is no longer with us. The appallingly militaristic and brutal dictator within the alleged democracy of Russia, Vladimir Putin, is now bringing us closer to the threat of nuclear war than we have been at any time for very many decades.
I note that, as time has passed before I could pursue this question, ironically today's date places us very close to the anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis, which took place in late October of 1962. Here we are in 2022. What have we learned and what have we done? We must do more to end the threat of nuclear war. As we look at Canada's role as a member of NATO and what is happening right now with Vladimir Putin mentioning specifically the potential threat of using nuclear weapons, that must be denounced so strongly at all times.
We know one of the reasons the U.S. government put forward to oppose the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was that it could “delegitimize the concept of nuclear deterrence upon which many U.S. allies and partners depend”. That is something for us to actually focus on regarding the importance of signing on to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, that it would, in the words of the U.S., under former president Donald Trump, “delegitimize the concept of nuclear deterrence”.
That is certainly something we should support. We must delegitimize the notion of nuclear war, nuclear deterrence or nuclear strikes, if we are going to have a peaceful world. There is no question in my mind, and I will be interested in what the government representatives say to this tonight. Had we pursued aggressively the work we should do as a non-nuclear state without being so subservient to our nuclear state neighbour, as we did in the Ottawa Treaty to ban landmines, we could perhaps have kept the world much safer from Vladimir Putin.
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- Oct/31/22 6:51:08 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, who is truly an hon. colleague and parliamentary secretary, but I am very disturbed that we did not even send observers to the Vienna conference for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. I think we need to look much more closely at how much more precarious our situation is now and how much less we were able to assist Ukraine because we could not say we would have a no-fly zone over Ukraine without increasing the risk of nuclear war.
We need to recognize that perhaps NATO is, in another reference, muscle-bound. It was unable to help deal with the Ukraine situation. Yes, of course it sent weapons to assist Ukraine, but we cannot risk getting involved and subjecting the people of Ukraine to a protracted brutal war. We need to find a route to peace, and perhaps we should start talking about why we are in NATO if it requires us to support nuclear weapons.
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