- Member of Parliament
- Liberal
- Lac-Saint-Louis
- Quebec
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $123,581.21
- Government Page
Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the fifth report of the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development in relation 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.
The committee has studied the bill and has decided to report the bill back to the House without amendment.
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- Oct/19/22 5:12:24 p.m.
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- Re: Bill S-5
Madam Speaker, I am pleased to participate in this debate. Before I get into the substance of Bill S‑5, I would like to share a brief history of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, and before I do that, I want to talk about the harmful effects of pollution on human health and emphasize how crucial it is to keep enforcing tough regulations to minimize pollution.
In 2017, The Lancet commission on pollution and health concluded that pollution is the greatest environmental risk factor for disease and premature death worldwide. An update to the original report published in 2017 was recently released. It finds that pollution is still responsible for a staggering nine million premature deaths per year, which is one in six deaths worldwide. These nine million pollution-related deaths each year are nearly 50% higher than all deaths worldwide attributable to COVID‑19 to date. They are also higher than all deaths in 2019 attributable to war, terrorism, AIDS, TB, malaria, and drug and alcohol use combined. Air pollution is the largest contributor to pollution-related deaths, accounting for 6.67 million total deaths.
I would like to go back to the Constitution of 1867 and remind everyone that there is no reference to the environment in terms of the division of powers between the federal and provincial governments. I would presume that if the fathers of Confederation were here with us and we used the term “environment”, a question mark would appear over each of their heads. Of course the Constitution talks about forests and fisheries, but purely from the perspective of resource development, not from the perspective of resource protection.
The division of powers in environmental matters is not a static thing. It is a result of court rulings or the product of case law. That case law does not grant sole responsibility to any one level of government. In other words, the environment is a shared jurisdiction.
At this point, I would like to talk about the well-known Hydro-Québec case, when the Supreme Court decided that the federal government did indeed have the right to legislate on the regulation of toxic substances under criminal law. In this case, Hydro-Québec, a Crown corporation, was charged with dumping polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, into the Saint-Maurice River in the early 1990s under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.
In its arguments, the Crown corporation stated that the regulation of toxic substances did not fall under criminal law and that the federal government was using criminal law as a pretext, or colourable device, to infringe on provincial jurisdiction. In a rather close five to four decision, Justices La Forest, L'Heureux-Dubé, Gonthier, Cory and McLachlin said, and I quote:
The protection of the environment, through prohibitions against toxic substances, constitutes a wholly legitimate public objective in the exercise of the criminal law power.... The legitimate use of the criminal law in no way constitutes an encroachment on provincial legislative power, though it may affect matters falling within the latter's ambit.... The use of the federal criminal law power in no way precludes the provinces from exercising their extensive powers under s. 92 to regulate and control the pollution of the environment either independently or in co-operation with federal action.
In other words, the Canadian Environmental Protection Act is a cornerstone that is rooted in our criminal law. It is serious business. Anyone who says that the act is not robust or strong is minimizing the powers enshrined in the act.
What does Bill S-5 do? No doubt it has been mentioned in other speeches, but it does the following: It recognizes the right to a healthy environment. This is something that many constituents have written to me about. They are asking for this bill to incorporate it. It also confirms the government's commitment to implementing the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The bill recognizes the importance of minimizing the risk to vulnerable populations, namely children and those who live in high pollution areas. Very importantly, it requires that cumulative effects, that is, how chemicals interact with each other, be considered in substance risk assessments. That is not nothing; this is something that is value-added to this legislation.
Of concern also to many of my constituents, the bill seeks to reduce the use of animals in testing the safety of products. Also, Canadians would be able to request that specific substances be assessed outside the government's particular assessment priorities. There is a role for citizens in this bill and that is in regard to the role and right to request that specific substances be assessed.
Let us go back a bit in the history of CEPA. Let us go back to 1999. The first update to CEPA was in 1999. I remember that very well because I was working on the Hill as a political staffer and the MP I worked for was the parliamentary secretary to the minister of the environment. There were lengthy consultations with stakeholders on how to amend the bill. The committee hearings were quite extensive and involved.
CEPA, 1999 incorporated for the first time the precautionary principle, which, again, is not nothing. The precautionary principles states:
Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.
I remember there was a lot of debate around that definition of the precautionary principle. No doubt many people would like to see the definition perhaps be a little stronger and maybe not mention the term “cost-effective” as in cost-effective measures. Nonetheless, it is there in the bill.
Also in CEPA, 1999, there was a focus away from managing pollution after it had been created, to preventing pollution in the first place. CEPA, 1999 also included provisions for regulating vehicle emissions which, as we know, the government uses in the battle against climate change.
Finally, CEPA, 1999 established a new, more rigorous and timely approach to assessing whether a substance is or may be considered toxic to the environment or to human health. In the act, toxic is defined as having “an immediate or long-term harmful effect on the environment or its biological diversity” constituting or possibly constituting “a danger to the environment on which life depends” or constituting or possibly constituting a danger “to human life or health”.
Bill S-5, as I understand it, would inject more rigour into the process. Here I quote:
The new regime will retain the risk-based approach in the current Act. For substances assessed as meeting the criteria to be considered toxic under CEPA, the amendments would then require that the Ministers give priority to prohibiting activities in relation to said toxic substances of the highest risk. The criteria for substances of the highest risk would be set out in regulations, and would include persistence and bioaccumulation as well as criteria for such things as carcinogenicity, mutagenicity, and reproductive toxicity. These regulations will be developed in consultation with stakeholders.
We are talking about a bill, and this is a complex area. Clearly, regulations will be required. One cannot put everything in the bill. Much of the detail will have to be contained in regulations.
Another interesting fact about Bill S-5 is that the bill, if it is passed and I assume it will be, would require the Minister of Environment and Climate Change to publish and maintain a watch-list. This is something new. By watch-list, we mean a list of substances that have been determined to be capable of becoming toxic under CEPA. We are not just talking about substances that are determined to be toxic, but those that could be determined, after study, to become toxic, if, for example, exposure is increased. The watch-list would help importers, manufacturers and Canadian consumers to select safer alternatives and avoid regrettable substitutions.
Another interesting fact about CEPA, which I do not think has really been talked about too much is that CEPA is relevant in the context of the fight against climate change. When we talk about the measures to battle greenhouse gas emissions, we refer a lot to the price on carbon, the price on pollution, but we do not really focus on CEPA.
I was elected and already sitting in the House in 2005, and I remember that the government of Paul Martin added greenhouse gas emissions to CEPA, 1999, namely those emissions from large industrial emitters, citing the “worldwide scientific consensus that there is sufficient and compelling evidence to conclude that greenhouse gases constitute or may constitute a danger to the environment on which life depends.”
This was almost 20 years ago. Even back then the Liberal government had the foresight to understand that climate change was a real and growing problem and made amendments to CEPA, 1999 to give itself the leverage, the power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. I do not recall the Conservatives being thrilled with this change at the time, although today they happily preach the regulatory route to supporting clean technologies as the preferred alternative to putting a price on carbon.
It has been mentioned and talked about even today in this debate that one of the major steps forward through Bill S-5 is the introduction of the right to a healthy environment. I will read the new section 5.1(1) of Bill S-5, which says:
For the purposes of paragraph 2(1)(a.2), the Ministers shall, within two years after the day on which this section comes into force, develop an implementation framework to set out how the right to a healthy environment will be considered in the administration of this Act.
I will come back to this in a moment.
There is another very important aspect of Bill S-5 which should not be minimized. It has been mentioned; the member for Victoria touched on it. The bill seeks to minimize risks to the health of vulnerable populations. By vulnerable population, we mean “a group of individuals within the Canadian population who, due to greater susceptibility or greater exposure, may be at an increased risk of experiencing adverse health effects from exposure to substances.”
Those with greater susceptibility may include, for example, children and those in poor health. Those with greater exposure may include workers and those living in areas where levels of pollution are particularly high.
In addition, the new law would require that the government conduct research and studies, including biomonitoring surveys specifically in relation to the role of substances in illnesses or in health problems which may relate to vulnerable populations.
This is where Bill S-5 intersects with Bill C-226, which in this Parliament is being sponsored by the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands, but was first introduced by the member for Cumberland—Colchester in the last Parliament. It has been referred to as the bill on environmental racism.
Bill C-226 is identical, except for a couple of grammatical changes and some wording, to the bill that came out of the environment committee before the last election. This bill goes a bit further than Bill S-5 in being very proactive and prescriptive in engaging with vulnerable populations on the risks they face.
For example, Bill C-226 requires the minister to develop a national strategy to promote efforts across Canada to advance environmental justice, and to assess, prevent and address environmental racism.
The bill requires that this strategy include a study that includes an examination of the link between race, socio-economic status and environmental risk, information and statistics relating to the location of environmental hazards. It must include measures that can be taken to advance environmental justice and assess, prevent and address environmental racism and that may include possible amendments to federal laws, policies and programs, the involvement of community groups in environmental decision-making, and lastly, the collection of information and statistics relating to health outcomes in communities located in proximity to environmental hazards.
In an effort to leverage the new right to a healthy environment and the protection of vulnerable populations, it has been suggested that Bill S-5 be amended to require that the minister specify what actions the government will take when ever a substance for which an ambient air quality standard has been established, when the average ambient concentration of such a substance in a geographic area exceeds the standard.
I think this is very important. I think it was alluded to by the member for Victoria. Going back to the beginning of my speech, this is where pollution really impacts human health. It is often through air pollution. Many are calling for an amendment to the bill that would require the government to develop actions whenever it is determined that the ambient air quality in a particular area is above standard.
I understand there are some federal and provincial jurisdictional issues around doing this, but I hope it is something that the committee will explore with expert witnesses and perhaps an amendment will be introduced to this effect.
This connects to another issue that I received a lot of mail about in the last few years. The bill seeks to reduce reliance on animal testing. I have many constituents who have written to me in relation to animal testing for cosmetic product development. They have written to me saying that we have to stop this. In fact, the bill opens the door to minimizing the use of animal testing. The Senate made some amendments to make that part of the bill even stronger.
I have met with stakeholders, particularly animal rights groups like the Animal Justice Canada, Humane Canada and the Humane Society International/Canada. They have recommended strengthening this part of the bill even more. The Senate amendment talks about refining the use of animal testing, but that leaves the door open a little too wide according to those I have met with.
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- Jun/14/22 4:11:37 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-5
Mr. Speaker, I understand that stakeholders often make requests that are quite broad and far-reaching. The role of the government is to consult, yes, but also to use the best judgment possible with access to the best experts possible, legal and otherwise. These are the crimes with minimum sentences that have come up in the bill, and I trust the Minister of Justice and others in the government on this. I believe they are doing the best they can at the moment.
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- Jun/14/22 3:54:02 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-5
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to stand and speak to this bill.
As I was preparing my speech, I was thinking back to the 1990s, when I came to Ottawa as a legislative assistant. It was after the 1993 election. The winds of change had swept through this place. The Bloc Québécois was the official opposition and the Reform Party had a big presence, with around 50 members. I remember following question period, which was part of my job. I do not mean to be partisan, and this is not a partisan tone, but I remember that in question period member after member of the Reform Party would get up and ask questions about criminal justice. They would talk about specific cases and describe these cases in great detail. The message in every question was that one could not trust the courts. The questions were intended to impugn the courts and to make people believe that judges were not approaching issues with an objective framework but just injecting their own personal biases into the decisions they made. I think that is very dangerous.
I think we are heading in this direction more and more in our political culture. That is very unhealthy for our democracy. I am looking more toward the United States right now, where I think people are starting to view the courts as an extension of the political system. When people start doing that, they just lose faith in the constitutional democracy.
I read something in the paper the other day and I was just flabbergasted. The state legislature of Ohio passed a motion. It came down to party lines. It is a Republican-dominated state legislature. The Republicans voted for it and the Democrats voted against it. The motion was that Canada should be put on the watch-list of states that suppress religious freedom, ignoring the fact that we have a constitutional democracy and that we have courts that defend charter rights and so on. I think this is a very dangerous thing. It is a kind of new populist relativism and it is not healthy for democracy.
Let me get more specifically down to the bill.
There is unconscious bias in sentencing, for sure. This bias is embedded in the long-standing practices of sentencing. It is embedded in the system. For example, according to Canada's prison ombudsman, Ivan Zinger, whom I had the opportunity to meet when I was the public safety critic in opposition, indigenous women now account for half of the female population in federal penitentiaries, whereas only one out of every 20 women in Canada is indigenous. Similarly, recently the Auditor General found that Black and indigenous prisoners are more frequently placed in higher-security institutions at admission, compared to their white peers, and that they are not paroled as often as others when they first become eligible.
Personally, and this is not a partisan statement, I believe the Harper government's approach to sentencing reinforced and aggravated this bias. At the time when the Harper government was introducing tough-on-crime legislation, one after the other, to my knowledge those bills did not have to be accompanied by a charter statement the way they have to be today. That meant that the Harper government really pushed the limits on this issue. That is why so many of the bills that have been struck down by the courts were passed between 2006 and 2015. I am referring to a document from the Library of Parliament, a multiple-page document.
That said, sentencing has been used intentionally to suppress racialized groups, not to my knowledge in this country, but it can happen. Someone said before in the House that the same sentence applies to everybody regardless of creed, colour or whatever, but sentencing has been used to suppress particular groups.
I want to read a quote. As I said, I am not attributing anything to any Canadian politician I know, but it is interesting to see that it can be used deliberately. John Ehrlichman, counsel and assistant to Richard Nixon and a Watergate co-conspirator, is quoted as saying:
The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people.... We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.
Of course, that was a particular period of American history, one that was extremely divisive.
What about Bill C-5? It is not about being soft on crime. It is about having sentences that fit the crime and the circumstances. It is about law reform, a work in progress that draws on evolving and accumulated wisdom. It is about removing an approach to sentencing that has proven not only discriminatory but also costly and, in many cases, futile and ineffective.
It is costly because minimum sentences clog up the courts. There is no incentive to plead guilty. It is ineffective because they involve a greater use of prosecutorial discretion. For example, a research paper by Doob, Webster and Gartner, from the University of Toronto and the University of Ottawa, stated:
On 1 April 1995, a sentencing referendum (Measure 11) brought in by the voters in Oregon resulted in long mandatory minimum sentences.... [I]t was found that there was a decrease in the prosecution of Measure-11-eligible cases and an increase in the prosecution of “alternate” cases (typically lesser degrees of the same offences which did not attract the mandatory penalty). Trial rates for Measure-11-eligible offences also increased in the first two years after implementation, and then reverted to their former levels. But the nature of pleas changed: there was an increase in the number of cases in which the accused decided to plead to lesser included offences, and a decrease in pleas involving the original charge.
It is futile because a slew of Harper-era minimum sentences have been struck down by the courts, and I just referenced a document from the Library of Parliament a moment ago. There is something called “deterrence through sentencing”, and this is the policy that was adopted in the Harper years. Again, Doob, Webster and Gartner state:
At this point, we think it is fair to say that we know of no reputable criminologist who has looked carefully at the overall body of research literature on “deterrence through sentencing” who believes that crime rates will be reduced, through deterrence, by raising the severity of sentences handed down in criminal courts.
We need to realize that there is nothing objectively true about minimum sentences. They are not something handed down by Moses. Those who advocate for minimum sentences do so based on an accepted but false intuition whose appeal is a simple but misleading logic: The greater the penalty, the greater the deterrent. However, intuition is often wrong. This is why we invest in research and analysis.
Even without the benefit of science, there are some who possess uncanny insights at different times. John A. Macdonald, Canada's first Prime Minister, is quoted as saying, “Certainty of punishment, and more especially certainty that the sentence imposed by the judge will be carried out, is of more consequence in the prevention of crime than the severity of the sentence.”
Doob, Webster and Gartner said:
We suspect that what Macdonald meant by “the certainty that the sentence imposed by the judge will be carried out” is simply the certainty that there will be a criminal punishment. But whatever John A. Macdonald meant by that phrase, clearly he did not think that “severity” of sentences was very important. He was almost certainly correct in this.
They also said, regarding the assumption about minimum sentences, “An additional problem is that people really don’t have much of an idea about what the sentences are likely to be for ordinary crimes.... Most offenders do not meet the relevant 'thought' requirements—that is, believing they might be caught”.
There are a lot of misconceptions and a lot of policies in the last few years that have been based on a sort of intuition. We know that intuition can sometimes be correct, but sometimes it can be extremely misleading.
Bill C-5 is about reaffirming trust in our judicial system, and this is fundamental to a healthy constitutional democracy. I know that is something that everyone in this House desires. The Conservatives used to believe that our institutions needed to be respected because they evolved organically and contained the inherited wisdom of our forebears. Those values seem to be from a bygone Conservative era, long ago, before the party veered into hard-right politics.
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Madam Speaker, I, too, would like to acknowledge that we are here today on the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin people.
I am honoured to rise this afternoon to speak to Bill C-226. The bill is being sponsored today by the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands, but it was first introduced in the 43rd Parliament by Lenore Zann, the then member for Cumberland—Colchester. It was quite a visionary bill, because the concept was not talked about at the time. I hope she will be back in the House soon.
In a way, it is indeed a new concept. The member for Saanich—Gulf Islands mentioned that environmental racism has been recognized as a problem for quite a long time in the United States, but it is still a fairly new concept.
I think Bill C-226 comes at a good time for our society, as that society is questioning the very systems it created. When we talk about discrimination and racism, whether it is environmental or otherwise, we recognize that it is not just a matter of personal prejudice, but that it exists, perhaps impersonally, in the very systems that we have built and that reflect a certain way of thinking and of ranking priorities.
This bill makes us think about that idea, which was not really well known until Lenore Zann introduced her bill. I am very grateful that she took the time back then to talk virtually about her bill to the Lac-Saint-Louis youth council, whose members were also unaware of this notion of environmental racism in the context of the concept of environmental justice.
I would like to talk a little bit about what Bill C-226 proposes.
The bill outlines the components that would be included in a national strategy, such as a study that would include an examination of the link between race, socio-economic status and environmental risk. It also sets out a non-exhaustive list of measures that may be taken to advance environmental justice. These measures would assess, prevent and address environmental racism, including possible amendments to federal laws, policies and programs; compensation for individuals or communities; and the collection of information and statistics related to health outcomes in communities located in proximity to environmental hazards.
This is what it is all about at the end of the day. We want to make sure no one's health is compromised and no one's quality of life is compromised because of who they are and which group they happen to be living in proximity to. It is about quality of life and dignity for all peoples, regardless of background.
The bill would require the minister to table a report setting out the national strategy within two years of the bill receiving royal assent, publish that report on the departmental website, and prepare and table a report on the effectiveness of the strategy every five years. The bill aligns with this government's plan to develop an environmental justice strategy and to examine the link between race, socio-economic status and exposure to environmental risk.
We look forward to working with others toward not only getting this bill passed but also supporting its quick passage through the House of Commons. Supporting quick passage through Parliament is important, as the bill comes at a time of heightened awareness of systemic racism and growing concern for environmental justice among Canadians and around the world. It has become increasingly apparent that environmental benefits and harms are not shared equally among different members of society.
Certain groups and communities, namely indigenous and racialized communities and those with lower socio-economic status, often bear a disproportionate share of environmental burdens, such as environmental pollution and degradation. I think it was mentioned by the member for Repentigny that in some cases those who are disadvantaged by a government decision, at whatever level of government, are not necessarily part of racial group per se, but are actually defined by a lower socio-economic status.
I was reading the other day about an area of Montreal called Goose Village. It no longer exists. It was basically wiped off the map around the time of Expo 67. Goose Village was close to Griffintown in Montreal. It was a poor neighbourhood, but the people had their dignity and their properties were well kept. At the time it was felt by the mayor of Montreal, Jean Drapeau, and his administration that this area, which was close to the site for Expo 67, was a bit of an eyesore for those who would be visiting the city for the world's fair. This was before environmental assessments and before the kind of activism that we see today.
It was decided that this area should be razed, and they said it was because of unhealthy conditions and because public health was not good there. What I read is that when they looked at the report from the public health department of Montreal, it said that it was a well-kept community. It was of low socio-economic status, but it was very well kept. People took pride in their homes and their surroundings. Again, this was not racially motivated. It was using the power of government to suppress the rights of a lower socio-economic group.
That led me to think of the construction of the Ville-Marie Expressway in Montreal. It was not built through the highest-income area, and in this case it did displace a racialized community. It displaced a good portion of the African-Canadian community of Little Burgundy. Today, Little Burgundy is not as whole as it used to be. There is an expressway running through it, and it is at bottom of a hill in Montreal, not at the top of a hill.
This is a very historic community. Oscar Peterson came from that community. The Union United Church is in that community. Jackie Robinson, when he played for the Montreal Royals, went to the Union Church. It has a deep history. There is film footage of housing being torn down to build the expressway. It was not an exclusively Black neighbourhood, but it was a poor neighbourhood.
This makes us think that we need an approach to looking at how we make decisions that makes sure we do not have these implicit biases in the kinds of decisions that governments make. Environmental justice is a step forward for our society. It means that we are getting better at recognizing people's interests, dignity and quality of life, regardless of their background, socio-economic status or race, and that decisions need to be proper.
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