- Member of Parliament
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- Bloc Québécois
- Trois-Rivières
- Quebec
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Mr. Speaker, I commend and thank the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands for her hard work and her abiding passion. She is the epitome of environmental activism. We do not always agree, but I welcome her contributions.
The French Revolution introduced the concepts of liberty and equality and, in its wake, started a movement in support of those concepts. Since the liberties of some groups sometimes clashed with the liberties of others, there was inevitably a reckoning around the imbalance that was created among the various parties, an imbalance that lead to inequality.
There is no doubt that the federal government has a responsibility to the people of Canada. Some citizens experience inequalities in their relationship with the environment. While we recognize that inequalities do exist, we cannot at this point conclude that these inequalities are attributable to race alone.
The Bloc Québécois supports the intention expressed in the title and preamble of Bill C-226, a bill that seeks to advance environmental justice. If Parliament is to pass new legislation, we believe that the concept of environmental justice must be the main subject or central concept, so to speak.
The living conditions that some individuals and communities in Canada find themselves in—and I am thinking here of drinking water, for one—are unacceptable. Governments must live up to their responsibilities in that regard. That is why we think that the House is justified in expressing its desire to act against the environmental inequality and discrimination covered in Bill C‑226 and why we think that it should study these phenomena in greater depth in order to understand the mechanisms and explore possible solutions.
I would now like to talk about three assumptions.
The first is that, if Parliament is to pass a new law, we believe that the concept of environmental justice must be the main subject and central concept, the foundation on which we build, the starting point.
Second, there is no doubt that the federal government has a responsibility to certain populations in Canada who are facing inequalities in their relationship with the environment.
Third, the living conditions that some individuals and communities in Canada find themselves in, including their access to drinking water, are unacceptable, and governments need to live up to their responsibilities.
Before I talk about environmental justice, it is important to talk about justice itself. What is justice? Although everyone talks about justice, it is not an easy concept to understand or define. Is justice equality? Is it equivalency? Is it legality? Is it equity? What is justice?
To learn about and understand a concept, there is nothing like a bit of exploration to figure out what we are talking about. The concept of comprehension is interesting in and of itself. The roots of the word are cum and prehendere, which means “grasp the whole”. Comprehending means grasping the whole.
In a debate like this, we cannot have tunnel vision or a partial vision of the whole. Equality means we are all the same. Equivalence means we are all equal. Legality implies conforming to a standard. What do we do when there are no standards? The reason for our debate today is to determine whether there will be a standard.
In the absence of guidance, what we need to strive for is equity. Equity is the fair assessment of what each individual should get. I would add that it is the fair assessment of what each individual should get, but without letting ideology get in the way. Equity is a more perfect form of justice because it considers exceptions. When we introduce a rule or a law, we are essentially drawing a straight line between two points. However, by drawing a straight line, we are excluding people who are near the line, but not on the line. As a result, they are excluded often. Equity adapts in order to do justice to the greatest number of people, to do justice to everyone.
This bill strikes a good balance and includes some compensation. Our objective should be to ensure that Bill C-226 provides equity to all and does justice to all.
Before concluding, I would like to flag three major problems with Bill C‑226.
First, the bill will probably not have any significant impact on the populations affected by pollution that the bill's proponents say they want to help. We are skeptical.
Second, the proposed pan-Canadian approach is not in line with Quebec's reality and goes against the clearly expressed will of Quebec's National Assembly.
Third, Bill C‑226 focuses less on advancing real environmental justice and more on introducing the concept of environmental racism into Canadian discourse and law to secure an ideological victory in order to serve a cause.
In conclusion, I will reiterate what was said by my esteemed and irreplaceable colleague from Mirabel, whose community is going through a disastrous situation with respect to environmental injustice. His riding includes the neighbouring municipalities of Oka and Kanesatake, where the tension could be cut with a knife.
There is a recycling company that is depositing toxic and hazardous materials, or allowing them to be deposited, in a landfill located on indigenous territory, yet the federal government is not doing a thing about it. It is not lifting a finger. By failing to take action, Ottawa is allowing the residents of the nearby municipalities of Oka, Saint‑Placide and Saint‑Benoît in Mirabel to be called racist for complaining about the landfill located on indigenous territory, when they, too, are victims of this inaction. Residents are legitimately afraid to drink the water or to use it for their crops. The situation is serious.
In this case, we need to put things in perspective and not call this environmental racism when it basically boils down to inaction and deliberate indifference on the part of the federal government and the RCMP. I mention the RCMP because the media has repeatedly reported and proved that Kanesatake is controlled by criminal groups and that the band council is not taking action.
This is a clear case of environmental injustice, and the federal government already has the means to act in this matter. The people of Oka are entitled to clean drinking water too. Something needs to be done soon.
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- Dec/13/21 6:18:23 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-5
Mr. Speaker, I was listening to the member from Kingston and the Islands, who said earlier that the debate was philosophical in nature. I would say that that is absolutely the case and that I am ready to participate in it since my background is in philosophy.
Bill C-5 amends the Criminal Code and the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.
After spending 25 years as an ethicist, I simply cannot leave ethics at the door just because I have become a politician. People associate ethics with its notions of obligation and punishment, but I would to suggest that being ethically minded requires that we be flexible in our thinking so we can try to imagine a more just future. Indeed, ethics is the search for what is just.
That is really what we have to do here as legislators. We need to know that being just is an elusive target. Doing what is just is not a given. We must nonetheless attempt, with what is being proposed in Bill C-5, to find what is just knowing that it may be changed by those who come after us. Any law, any bill has an ultimate goal. Ultimately, a law or bill is the means to an end, it is a means to an ideal that transcends it.
During my career, I had the chance to see two different sides of crime. I worked with the police force, but also with correctional institutions. I will start with the latter.
I was at the Bordeaux jail as an invited guest as part of a rehabilitation program called Souverains anonymes, which gives a voice to inmates on radio shows. My last meeting was last December, for Christmas, and we celebrated the fact that we were in lockdown both inside and outside the walls.
Among the inmates I met addicts, hardened criminals, people who did not get it. I also met many unintentional criminals, people who might have gone down the wrong path because of tough life circumstances, but I cannot second-guess the judge.
I met a lot of people who were not where they should be; they knew it and they felt it. Of course, this was in the context of a rehabilitation program. I also saw how overrepresented some groups were, including racialized populations. We talked a lot about indigenous peoples today, but what I saw more was the racialized populations. It was shocking for me to see them with my own eyes. It was not a statistic, a simple number on a page. I could see that there was prejudice at play and we have to question that.
I also served as an advisor to the police chief of the Montreal police force. In that capacity, I had to advise him on the difficult choice of whether to go to court or not. Some cases were easier than others. However, when it comes to petty crime, when we want to promote neighbourhood policing and community living, it is tough to take legal action every time. During that period, I saw the best and the worst, including punishment, conciliation and community policing.
When we are talking about diversion and deregulation, we must bear in mind that these are powerful words. Ethics seeks to give meaning to conduct, and meaning is the direction we need to go in.
Decriminalization means removing a given offence from the Criminal Code, whereas diversion sets criminal justice proceedings aside in favour of a more restorative approach to justice. The reason we are talking about these terms today is that the world is changing, as is our understanding of what is just.
Scare tactics and a tough-on-drugs approach did not work. Public policy must strike a balance between three imperatives. The first imperative is moral order, because losing one's freedom is a big deal. It means losing one's dignity. The second is the public health imperative, because drug use is often a public health issue. The third is the public order imperative because, when it comes right down to it, this is about protecting the public. What are the values underpinning these imperatives?
Obviously, if we want to foster reconciliation and community living, I believe we must look beyond the offence itself. Drug use is a public health issue that must be treated as such, without ruling out criminal prosecution when it is warranted.
Diversion is one solution that Quebec has chosen to address a public health issue. I believe in rehabilitation. I have seen inmates turn over a new leaf and move forward, reducing the number of people in prison and the costs associated with their incarceration, and most of all the social costs that come with the stigma. Mandatory minimum sentences are costly and, as everyone has said today, there is no guarantee they will work.
In the Bloc Québécois, we support eliminating certain sentences. However, no one can ignore what is happening in Montreal and in a number of Canada's major urban centres, where readily available firearms have become a scourge. For this reason, we believe that this is not the time to eliminate mandatory minimum sentences related to firearms.
Rather, we believe that, in this area, the Trudeau government has failed in its duties. It should be exercising its powers rather than delegating them to the municipalities or provinces.
To sum up, Bill C‑5 has noble objectives, but I nonetheless believe that it should be sent to committee to iron out its kinks. While I do not believe that mandatory minimum sentences are a deterrent to criminals, we must move beyond partisanship and take a serious look at this bill.
In conclusion, the federal government must ensure that people feel safe or safer. Police officers often say that people do not fear being unsafe; they fear feeling unsafe. We must therefore do everything we can to ensure that people do not feel unsafe.
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