Senator Galvez: I tried to answer a similar question the other day, and I was shut down. We don’t want to hear some things. There are two issues. There is the technical issue — the content — which, of course, your bill is trying to address and is essential and important. We cannot move any further with reconciliation and call it an inclusive society if we don’t take care of this discriminated group of people. At the same time, there are these procedural things in the rules; some rules are very clear and others are less clear. There is opacity in how decisions are made. I’m sorry that this bill is taking time to be sent to committee. I have tried to seek the answers to why some decisions are made in a confidential way and not open to the public, because every decision that we take in this chamber should be public because 100% of our activity is public affairs. I hope that answers your question. Thank you.

(On motion of Senator Martin, debate adjourned.)

On the Order:

Resuming debate on the motion of the Honourable Senator Wells, seconded by the Honourable Senator Batters, for the second reading of Bill C-234, An Act to amend the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act.

Hon. Rosa Galvez: Honourable senators, I rise to speak to the message from the other place on Bill S-5, strengthening environmental protection for a healthier Canada act.

A year after our comprehensive study of the bill to reform the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, known as CEPA, we are finally close to modernizing Canada’s legislative framework on toxic substances. I need not remind you that CEPA was adopted in 1999 and had not been updated since. Twenty-four long years is an outrageous amount of time to leave untouched the most important tool for protecting the environment and our health while science has progressed at an unprecedented rate and has warned us.

As we see the omnipresence of plastic pollution, microplastics in human organs, uncontrolled toxic spills, terrifying wildfires, floods and other extreme weather events caused by polluting gases warming the atmosphere, I can’t help but wonder: If we had revised CEPA 15 years ago, would we be at this dreadful cul-de-sac?

[Translation]

Bill S-5 is coming back to the Senate with a set of amendments modifying 38 clauses. We are grateful to the House of Commons, whose amendments are generally based on the work of the Senate. The House of Commons made no changes to 21 of our amendments, which validates the good work we did in committee. I sincerely thank every member of the Standing Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources.

The other Senate amendments were for the most part clarified or reformulated, and only a few were rejected by the Commons.

In my speech, I will address a few specific amendments, which, I believe, were improved by the House, and also a few remaining gaps and weaknesses.

[English]

One of the main features of Bill S-5 is the inclusion of the concept of a right to a healthy environment. During our study, most witnesses applauded the concept but criticized the bill for simply instructing the Minister of Environment and Climate Change to develop and implement a plan rather than enshrining the actual right.

The House made a few modifications, but the intent remains the same. It added a definition of a healthy environment, describing it as “an environment that is clean, healthy and sustainable.” It restructured the Senate amendment that required the implementation framework to elaborate on the reasonable limits to which that right is subject but maintained the Senate’s intent.

It also further clarified the principle of intergenerational equity by stating that:

. . . it is important to meet the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs;

Under CEPA, the government is tasked with assessing substances and categorizing them depending on their toxicity. The government assesses approximately 600 substances new to the Canadian market each year. However, it does not give itself enough resources to assess all the substances currently in the Canadian market. For that reason, I had attempted to amend the bill by imposing a set timeline for the minister to finalize an assessment and publish its results. At the time, the committee had opted not to impose a deadline, as the timeline of an assessment would depend on the amount of government resources dedicated to that matter.

To address this issue, the House proposed what I think is a reasonable compromise. If the assessment of a substance has not been completed after two years, the minister must publish a statement indicating the reasons for the delay and an estimated time frame within which the final decision is to be published.

This is a question of ministerial responsibility. Therefore, it is incumbent on the minister to justify any delay that could harm our health.

The next point I would like to address is confidentiality. Currently, when a corporation provides information on a substance requested by the minister, they can request confidentiality by written request. Under the current CEPA regime, confidentiality appears to be granted automatically with no need for approval by the minister. This demonstrates a lack of transparency. Of course, there may be many valid reasons for the need for confidentiality, including trade secrets, integrity of contracts or protection against financial loss. However, the requester should have to demonstrate why confidentiality is needed, and the responsibility should fall on the minister to grant or deny it. This is something that both Senator Miville-Dechêne and I had argued in our committee study. Unfortunately, the committee opted to defeat our proposal.

Thankfully, the House of Commons picked up on this important issue of transparency and found a compromise. Their amendment would require the minister to review a statistically valid representative sample of confidentiality requests granted and determine whether the request is justified under a set of four possible justifications. The requests that don’t qualify are then deemed non-confidential and the minister shall report annually on these confidentiality requests.

I believe this strikes a good balance. When information does not need to be confidential, Canadians have the right to access that information, especially when it concerns their health and the protection of the environment.

Overall, I feel the other place has reinforced the Senate’s work on this bill. That is not to say, however, that there aren’t any remaining gaps or unaddressed issues with CEPA.

Environmental policy experts are not satisfied with the removal of the title of Schedule 1. This list exists because these substances have been found to be toxic in certain contexts, amounts or paths of exposure. The industry complained, saying that some of these substances can be found in everyday products. Whether or not the title of this list includes the words “toxic substances” does not change any legal requirements on these corporations — it is merely a labelling issue. Out of transparency, and for the benefit of the average Canadian, nomenclature is important. Hiding the fact that these substances were scientifically found to be toxic in certain contexts is not being transparent with Canadians.

Another major issue remains with the government’s capacity to assess substances. The government is over-reliant on industry to provide the scientific basis for assessments and often merely does a literature review rather than scientifically testing the substances themselves. This is problematic as we rely on industry for decisions that are the minister’s responsibility. For example, just last week, we learned through an article published by the CBC that industry knew for decades about the risks of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, also known as PFAS or forever chemicals, and kept it hidden. Major industry players knew these substances were toxic, yet they are present in everything from cookware to makeup. These chemicals are known to cause liver problems, pregnancy issues and cancer. Worse yet, the industry used tactics reminiscent of the tobacco and fossil-fuel industries to muddy the water around the toxicity of forever chemicals and to prevent more research to study the matter.

This is completely unacceptable, and it is our job as legislators to adopt a legislative framework that better regulates the industry. We cannot play with the health and safety of Canadians. We cannot rely on experiments that are overwhelmingly designed, performed, analyzed and disclosed by industry for the purpose of sales and profit rather than for the best interest of Canadians. We must equip our government with the adequate resources to make its own rigorous and transparent scientific assessments.

[Translation]

Colleagues, Bill S-5 makes essential updates to the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. It’s not perfect, and we still have a lot of work to do to ensure that our environmental protection act really focuses on preventing pollution, not managing and monitoring it.

The current Minister of Environment and Climate Change promised that more revisions are to come, and I eagerly await those proposals. Never again should we wait 24 years to modernize legislation that is so crucial to protecting our health and the environment.

I encourage you to support the bill while continuing to advocate for other improvements in the near future.

Thank you. Meegwetch.

(On motion of Senator Patterson (Nunavut), debate adjourned.)

Hon. Rosa Galvez: Honourable senators, I rise today to speak to Bill C-226, An Act respecting the development of a national strategy to assess, prevent and address environmental racism and to advance environmental justice, sponsored by Senator McCallum.

The objective of the bill is as follows, and I quote:

 . . . to develop a national strategy to promote efforts across Canada to address the harm caused by environmental racism.

That is a major problem affecting marginalized communities, particularly low-income, Indigenous, and Black and racialized communities. This bill is a necessary step in addressing this problem and guaranteeing all Canadians access to clean, safe environments.

[English]

Environmental racism has a long and painful history in Canada. For decades, certain communities have been disproportionately impacted by environmental hazards, such as pollution, toxic waste and other environmental hazards. These communities are often marginalized, and lack political and economic power to protect themselves from environmental harm.

I want to start by saying that my prayers and thoughts are with the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation community. This year has been particularly difficult on them. We must show solidarity and do more to stop what the evidence shows is a flagrant case of environmental racism. On June 2, Chief Allan Adam urged the evacuation of more than 1,000 people as wildfires raged in northern Alberta — just months after he received reports regarding a leak of toxic waste water at Imperial Oil’s Kearl oil sands mine affecting his community’s land and water. For the last 10 months, four tailings ponds at the facility have been leaking toxic sludge into the surrounding environment.

The Alberta Energy Regulator and Imperial Oil failed to inform Indigenous communities downstream, despite regularly discussing the disaster behind closed doors. It took another incident — which released an additional 5.3 million litres in late February — for the communities and the public to be notified.

The impacts of industrial development on Indigenous lands and waters have been devastating, causing harm to people, animals, wildlife and the environment. Another example of this is the Grassy Narrows First Nation community in Ontario, which has been dealing with the effects of mercury poisoning from industrial activity for more than 50 years. The impacts of this pollution are still being felt today — 90% of the population in Grassy Narrows has neurological problems, such as numbness in fingers and toes, or seizures and cognitive delays, caused by mercury that entered the food chain decades ago.

Environmental racism is not limited to Indigenous communities. Racialized communities in urban areas across Canada also face disproportionate exposure to pollution, hazardous waste and many other environmental hazards. Dr. Ingrid Waldron, one of Canada’s leading experts on environmental justice, has documented, at length, cases of environmental racism in Canada. Her book entitled There’s Something in the Water, which was later adapted as a documentary, exposes the dire conditions of the Black community outside of Shelburne, Nova Scotia, due to well water contamination, and illustrates how colonialism has led to systemic environmental racism.

The Black community of Africville, Nova Scotia, for example, was greatly underserved by the City of Halifax, and was a dumping ground for many undesirable and dangerous developments that threatened the health of the community. It was later demolished in the 1960s, without meaningful consultation, to make way for industrial development, expropriating all residents from their tight-knit community. This is not how we should treat our fellow Canadians, and yet this kind of problem persists today.

Indeed, scientists and Indigenous people agree and highlight the inability of typical environmental laws to protect the environment. In their view, this inability is because the line drawn by environmental law is so far removed from the line drawn by the laws of nature that the phenomena of global environmental degradation, which endanger all forms of life on Earth, have not been stopped or prevented, thus greatly penalizing already vulnerable populations.

Instead of designing, implementing and enforcing laws that protect people, we have been relying on companies that cause pollution to set their own rules for pollution prevention. This system bakes in a conflict of interest — with companies prioritizing cost minimization over pollution prevention.

Colleagues, we all know that toxic tailings ponds in Canada are a ticking time bomb. This should be more evident now, especially after we heard about the wildfires in northern Alberta closing thousands of gas wells. These ponds are massive reservoirs of toxic waste that leak into groundwater and release toxins into the air, leading to high rates of cancers and respiratory diseases among Indigenous communities who live downstream. The failure to manage these ponds has led to catastrophic environmental damage, which can take centuries to clean up.

To address this issue, we need to move away from the current approach of asking polluters to set rules for pollution prevention, and instead implement scientifically rigorous plans for the cleanup of tailings ponds. Companies must be held financially responsible for the costs of cleanup rather than passing them on to taxpayers and future generations.

In the short term, we need to work in partnership with Indigenous governments to ensure that they’re never again kept in the dark about environmental disasters that threaten their communities. Indigenous people have a deep connection to the land; their knowledge and expertise must be taken seriously in environmental decision making.

Environmental racism is the result of systemic discrimination, the lack of community representation at the decision table and the absence of meaningful community engagement in decision-making processes. These factors have contributed to a situation in which certain communities are more likely to live near pollution sources and face higher rates of exposure to environmental hazards.

To address environmental racism in a meaningful way, we need a comprehensive strategy at the national level that recognizes the unique experiences of different communities and provides a framework for action.

It is time for Canada, as well as its provinces, territories and regulators, to act by designing, implementing and enforcing laws that really protect people and the environment.

Bill C-226 proposes such a comprehensive strategy. This strategy must be developed with meaningful community consultation, and must address various aspects of environmental racism, such as identifying the link between race, socio-economic status and environmental risk; mapping areas with high levels of pollution; improving access to environmental information; and looking for feasible solutions.

One key aspect of the bill is the recognition of Indigenous people’s rights and perspectives in the development of the strategy. This recognition is critical in acknowledging and addressing the historical and ongoing impacts of environmental racism on Indigenous communities.

This bill is a necessary step toward addressing environmental racism in Canada. By establishing a comprehensive strategy and ensuring meaningful community engagement, we can work toward a more equitable and sustainable future for all Canadians.

The passage of Bill C-226 would have several important benefits for all Canadians: First and foremost, it would lead to an improvement in the health outcomes for marginalized communities that have historically been impacted by environmental racism. By identifying areas with high levels of pollution and other environmental hazards, we can take action to reduce exposure and mitigate the impacts of these hazards.

Additionally, the establishment of a national strategy would create opportunities for accountability for polluters, and ensure there is oversight of environmental policies and regulations. This will help prevent future instances of environmental racism.

The bill also aligns with Canada’s commitments to human rights, environmental sustainability and, of course, reconciliation with Indigenous people. By doing so in the development of the strategy, we can work toward a more just and equitable society.

[Translation]

In conclusion, Bill C-226 offers a simple but important opportunity to better inform our decision-making on environmental justice in Canada. By passing this bill, we will take an important step towards creating a more just and sustainable society for all Canadians, including future generations, regardless of race or socio-economic status.

Colleagues, I encourage you to support this bill and send it to committee as soon as possible.

Meegwetch. Thank you.

[English]