44th Parl. 1st Sess.
November 9, 2023 10:00AM
- Nov/9/23 10:25:22 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am tabling e-petition 4375 today. I believe this is the first time this issue has been raised on the floor of the House of Commons in any form and the first petition.
I want to thank the person who initiated this petition, Mary Ann Sjogren-Branch, and Julian Branch who brought this to our attention, as well as Prevent Cancer Now and other networks of grassroots citizens. They are concerned about the presence of asbestos in drinking water. This is an under-studied and unregulated problem. Believe it or not, many municipalities rely on old cement water pipes to deliver water to millions of Canadians and the pipes contain asbestos fibres. When they crack, break or deteriorate slowly, asbestos fibres are getting into our drinking water. As far as we are aware and health studies show, asbestos is very dangerous to us, whether inhaled or ingested, including in our drinking water.
The petitioners are calling for the Government of Canada to take urgent steps to assess the health risk of asbestos in drinking water, to establish a federal-provincial-territorial committee to establish drinking water guidelines for asbestos, to do a complete inventory of asbestos-contaminated water pipes, release this data publicly and develop a plan to replace asbestos-cement water pipes. There are a number of other elements to this petition. The petition draws this to the attention of all members in this place because if we check our own communities, we may find that members' constituents are relying on cement pipes for drinking water that are contaminated with asbestos fibres.
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- Nov/9/23 3:16:31 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I mentioned when I got a chance to speak to the House on another occasion that I wanted to run around and hug everyone. I have not reached all of my colleagues yet, but I am very happy to be back.
My question for the hon. Minister of Environment, who may not be so happy to see me back, is based on the report from the commissioner of the environment and sustainable development. The report says clearly, “The 2030 Emissions Reduction Plan is insufficient to meet the 2030 emission reduction target”, to which I add that the 2030 emissions reduction target is too weak to meet our global share of responsibility for the Paris Agreement goals of holding to 1.5°C and as far below 2°C as possible. However, the commissioner did say there is barely enough time to do more to meet the weak target.
Will the government cancel the TMX pipeline, ban fracking and put in place an excess profits tax on the oil and gas industry?
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Mr. Speaker, it is the first chance I have had to address the hon. member for Portage—Lisgar since his win in the by-election. I would like to congratulate him. I look forward to working with him in this place, as I did with his predecessor.
In terms of the piece of legislation before us, I am very concerned that we apply a new lens to foreign investment in Canada, from a national security point of view and from a national sovereignty point of view. We have had the recent experience, which I have mentioned in this place, of something that did not ring any bells or raise any flags as it began, which is a company called Paper Excellence. It is owned by one billionaire from Indonesia who has now bought up the majority of the pulp and paper sector of our economy: Resolute Forest Products, Catalyst paper and Domtar. How do we track that? What triggers an investigation when we start seeing the Canadian economy bought up and held in countries like Indonesia where we do not at this point have a relationship that would let us track that?
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- Nov/9/23 5:36:33 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, may I just pause to say that I appreciated the words reminding us of why we wear our poppies. Let us remember to thank and honour our veterans and our current men and women in uniform.
Here in Adjournment Proceedings this evening, I am returning to a question I asked June 12. It was a question for the hon. member for Scarborough Southwest, who at the time was our minister for emergency preparedness. The emergency to which we are referring is, of course, the climate crisis, the climate emergency.
We have lived through quite a lot in my province of British Columbia. The summer of 2021 saw a heat dome, and in four days, 619 British Columbians died. We also saw forest fires throughout B.C. Then in November 2021, we had the atmospheric rivers that wiped out billions of dollars of infrastructure. The repairs are still taking place. I think it was July 1 that Lytton burned to the ground. There are still no properties built there.
Back in June of this year, I asked the former minister of emergency preparedness how we could better prepare. My assertion was that we are not prepared. I noted in my question that in California, insurance companies are now saying they are not going to insure for fires and floods because it is not an avoidable risk. The insurance industry is alarmed.
The response I had from the hon. minister was quite to point in saying the government is working to try to develop a national flood insurance plan. However, again, how do we manage these risks? There are multiple. There are the direct deaths in heat domes, the threat of fires, the threat of floods and the threat of hurricanes. We certainly experienced hurricane Fiona.
We have had the experience, which is undeniable, that burning fossil fuels has created an unstable global climate for which we are not prepared. I had hoped in raising this question tonight in Adjournment Proceedings that we could talk about how we better prepare. Obviously there is much more we could do to reduce emissions and reduce the ultimate impact that we are experiencing.
Mr. Speaker, within your home provinces of Nova Scotia, and I have the history of being from Cape Breton, we never had a hot, dry May, but several hot, dry Mays, one after another, left Nova Scotia experiencing wildfires this summer. We had a wildfire season across Canada like no other.
My position is this, and I am hoping the minister can engage with this in Adjournment Proceedings and that the government will respond. We need to create a standing emergency preparedness committee, with federal, provincial, municipal and indigenous governments. In that, we need to grapple with what to do to save lives.
Earlier this summer, I met with the mayor of the town of Ashcroft, British Columbia, who also plays a role as regional chair. She is discovering that if we want to use school buses to get people out of seniors residences, we better make sure over the course of the summer that the school district is insuring the school buses so they are available for emergencies.
There are multiple layers to this. We will do better if we create a standing committee that works collaboratively across all jurisdictions and all party lines and remembers we are in an emergency.
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- Nov/9/23 5:43:30 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am hopeful that the parliamentary secretary's answer is saying that they are looking at it. Let me just be clear that I am not talking about a standing committee of parliamentarians. I am talking about a working committee of governments: federal, provincial, territorial, indigenous and municipal.
We are at risk. People will lose their lives. The current government adaptation plan, for example, has a goal. I think they say that, by 2040, no more Canadians will die in heat domes. That is absurd. We should have the goal that, by tomorrow, no Canadians will die in heat domes. The problem is that the government's approach is that everyone needs to have air conditioning so people will not die in heat domes.
What we need to do is know how to save the lives of people who do not have air conditioning, which involves better first responders and knowing the things people can do to save lives, which include, for instance, cold showers or getting into the water. There are things we need to do so we are exchanging information with each other, and we need to do it now.
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