SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 197 - May/15/23

Ms. Bonita Zarrillo (Port Moody—Coquitlam, NDP)

May/15/23 12:25:41 p.m.
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Re: Bill S-5

Madam Speaker, I want to thank the minister for talking about how there really is no time to waste on this. I wanted to raise my hands to the member for Victoria for wanting to do something more around labelling. Yesterday, the news in British Columbia was talking about breast cancer. One in eight women in this country will go through breast cancer, and it is coming earlier and earlier. Now, early in their 40s, more women are getting breast cancer. For years, the government has allowed corporations to hide which toxic substances are in the products we all use. We need mandatory labelling of hazardous substances. My question to the minister this. When will the Liberals stop siding with big corporations and start protecting human health?

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All Topics

Context: House Hansard - 197 - May/15/23

Mr. Patrick Weiler (West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, Lib.)

May/15/23 4:42:24 p.m.
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Re: Bill S-5

Mr. Speaker, I left off in my speech talking about a number of areas where this legislation could have gone even further to make it better. I am talking about mandatory ambient air quality measures and making sure we are protecting the right to a healthy environment. The last area I want to mention is that, while important advances were made in this legislation to create the ability of the government to label products containing toxic substances, it falls short of the recommendation in the 2017 Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development's report that proposed providing mandatory labelling on all products containing toxic substances. I note that a consultation was launched last year to bring in new measures to have labelling. I hope this leads to more robust measures that would give individuals access to all the information they need when exposing themselves to any substance that may be toxic. While this bill is not perfect, it makes some very important advances in the field of toxic substance management and environmental protection that are long overdue. I agree with both industry and the non-profit sector that we need to pass it as quickly as possible, since it has now been over a year since the bill was originally tabled in the Senate. Although the thought of it is giving me some PTSD, having worked on the bill for so long at committee, we should swiftly pass this legislation so we can get to the new round of amendments that our government has promised on CEPA that are long overdue for reform. This includes the issue of ocean dumping and the rest of part 7. When the Conservatives shut down the Kitsilano Coast Guard base, it put the waters around the busiest port in the city of Vancouver at risk. That vulnerability led to a major oil spill in English Bay not getting noticed for almost 24 hours, back in 2015. While the Liberal government reopened the Kitsilano Coast Guard base to protect the waters and prevent this type of event from happening again, because of the wording of CEPA right now, the shipowner who spilled all of the bunker oil was not held liable for the damage caused. This is a clear violation of the polluter pays principle that needs to be fixed. Most importantly, I note the environmental protection actions. Under section 22, there is the possibility of bringing in environmental protection actions to allow the public to hold the government to account for not properly investigating or responding to an alleged offence under the act. However, because of how this provision is currently written, it is not practical. This needs to be changed in future iterations of the bill. With that, as I see my time is running out, I look forward to questions from my colleagues.

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Context: House Hansard - 197 - May/15/23

Mr. Mike Morrice (Kitchener Centre, GP)

May/15/23 5:15:59 p.m.
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Re: Bill S-5

Mr. Speaker, we heard from our colleague from Timmins—James Bay about the implications of not doing more to get toxic substances out of our environment. These are substances such as asbestos, mercury and lead. It continues to be the case through the bill that pollution prevention plans would be optional. Our colleague from Saanich—Gulf Islands had put forward amendments that would have required pollution prevention plans. At the current pace of voluntary pollution prevention plans, we will not have the toxic substances in schedule 1 all covered for another 100 years or so. How can the member support the bill as it stands with this voluntary approach?

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Context: House Hansard - 197 - May/15/23

Mr. Taylor Bachrach (Skeena—Bulkley Valley, NDP)

May/15/23 5:36:05 p.m.
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Re: Bill S-5

Madam Speaker, it sounds as though the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan is supporting the bill, which is good, because I know in 2017, the Conservatives wrote a dissenting report in which they expressed opposition to this idea of the right to a healthy environment. My question is around labelling. It seems like a big missed opportunities in this bill would be to have clauses requiring the labelling of products that contain toxic substances, including personal care products that contain substances with a risk of causing cancer, reproductive harm and other such harms. Does he agree that this is a missed opportunity in the bill we are debating?

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