Hon. Julie Miville-Dechêne: Senator Gold, a year ago, during the study of Bill C-11, you said this about my age verification amendment:

. . . The Government of Canada is looking to introduce legislation to address potential online harms with the goal of keeping all Canadians safe online, including being safe from the kind of harm that this amendment would propose. In the government’s view, this would be the most appropriate forum, in the context of that legislation, to discuss this important issue. . . .

In other words, the government said, “We’ll take care of the issue in our online safety bill.”

Today, the government finally introduced its long-awaited bill, and there’s no age verification to prevent children from accessing online porn. So my question is this: What happened to that clear commitment?

Senator Miville-Dechêne: The United Kingdom, France, Germany and the European Union have adopted age verification laws to access online porn. They have safeguards to ensure privacy of data, like Bill S-210. Why not look at these examples instead of deciding to allow children to freely access the porn sites?

Hon. Julie Miville-Dechêne: Honourable senators, I rise at second reading to speak in support of Bill S-254, An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act (warning label on alcoholic beverages), which was introduced by Senator Patrick Brazeau and aims to add a cancer warning label to liquor bottles.

At times, our past calls out to us and guides our actions in this chamber. That is the case for me today.

My father was an alcoholic. He died, drunk and freezing, one bitterly cold January night in Quebec City, when I was eight years old. In my family, talking about my father and the ravages of alcohol has long been taboo.

That is why I have deep respect for Senator Brazeau’s initiative, knowing that he managed to overcome this affliction for his own good and that of the people around him, and that he was brave enough to speak about it publicly.

Senator Brazeau also decided to draw on his personal experience to contribute to the legislative process in the hope of making a difference. He conducted research, mainly with labelling experts, in order to propose legislation. I thank him for that.

I have to say that the stars seem to be aligned for my colleague.

One month after introducing his bill, the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction recommended the introduction of mandatory labelling of all alcoholic beverages with the number of standard drinks in a container and health warnings.

This same research centre advises the federal government on these matters. In its recent report, it caused shock waves by making draconian changes to the guidance on safe alcohol consumption based on new studies. The risk of negative outcomes associated with alcohol use is low for those who consume only two drinks or less per week.

The Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction reports that three to six drinks per week increases the risk of developing certain types of cancer, such as breast, colon and rectal cancer. The fact that alcohol is a carcinogen that can cause at least seven types of cancer is often unknown or overlooked by the general public. Alcohol consumption causes nearly 7,000 cancer deaths every year in Canada.

In many ways, I’m surprised that warning labels on alcoholic beverages do not already exist. Consumer products are covered in warnings, sometimes going so far as to remind us not to eat dish soap or put our children in the microwave. In this context, while we have long been aware of the link between consuming alcohol and cancer, liver problems and cardiac disease, it is hard to understand why alcohol is exempt.

What is the reason for this apparent complacency? Senator Brazeau gave us a good hint when he talked about a study that was being conducted in Yukon about putting health warnings on bottles but was stopped after just 29 days as a result of pressure from the alcohol lobby.

To date, the provincial governments have also refused to take action. That may be because they consider the sale of alcohol to be profitable to their finances. Is that really true? In Quebec, for example, the SAQ pays $1.2 billion in annual profits to the government. Conversely, however, the Institut national de santé publique estimates that the health, justice and loss of productivity costs associated with excessive alcohol consumption total $2.8 billion per year.

When preparing this speech, I took a quick look at the federal regulations on the labelling of alcoholic beverages. There are pages and pages of technical details about sulfites, the origin and percentage of alcohol, the font size and even the placement of words, but there is absolutely nothing about the health risks.

Under Quebec regulations, labels cannot contain any information that could lead consumers to believe that drinking alcoholic beverages may be good for their health. That is a good thing. The Quebec regulations also indicate that the American or European health risk warnings are acceptable as long as they are written in French. In this case, I think that the protection of our language should be accompanied by a better protection of our livers.

For example, a label on a bottle may indicate that, according to the U.S. Surgeon General, drinking alcohol impairs your ability to drive a car or operate machinery and may cause health problems. However, there is no similar warning from the Canada or Quebec public health authorities. Unfortunately, in that regard, we are in good company. Most countries exempt alcohol from the labelling standards for psychoactive substances.

I think it is time to review those unwarranted exemptions.

Will a warning on the health risks change Canadians’ drinking habits? That is the big question.

In reviewing the literature, I found that the studies were inconclusive. Still, the 2017 Yukon study showed that 20% of consumers felt better informed because of these warnings. Furthermore, participants in studies on improved labelling consistently and strongly support these measures.

Should we wait for unassailable scientific evidence of the effectiveness of these measures before changing the labels? I don’t think so. Increased cancer risks for people who drink alcohol are real, scientifically proven and mostly unknown to the general public. I myself knew nothing about it. As in other areas, I support the precautionary principle. In this case, it’s not about raising taxes or prohibiting alcohol. We’re simply proposing a way to better inform the public. I would find it difficult to oppose such a simple and justifiable transparency measure.

Honest labelling is essential. Consumers have a right to know the risks and must have the tools to make informed choices. The choice is theirs, of course.

The industry’s response so far has been predictable. The lobby claims that labels are ineffective and that it would be better to direct consumers to specialized resources, because cancer is a complex disease. However, it is well known that consumers rarely consult these external sources.

Alcohol is one of the leading causes of premature death and disability in Canada. The fact is that 81% of Canadians drink alcohol, and 31% drink too much.

It is time the public was properly informed about all the risks posed by what has become, in our society, the “social lubricant” of choice.

Labelling is one of the transparency tools available to public authorities. Let’s use it without moderation.

(On motion of Senator Martin, debate adjourned.)

[English]

Hon. Julie Miville-Dechêne: Last Saturday, in Montreal, thousands of women and men marched in solidarity with the women of Iran, who have spent 40 years under the yoke of an Islamist theocracy that violates their basic rights by forcing them to wear the hijab. I marched with them and we chanted, “Women, life, liberty.” We sang Baraye, the anthem that has become the rallying cry of these courageous Iranian women of all ages who are risking their lives by going out with their heads uncovered, hair blowing in the wind. Here is a short excerpt from Baraye:

For dancing in the streets

For our fear when kissing loved ones

For my sister, your sister, our sisters

For yearning for an ordinary life

Several thousand of us marched in Montreal, and over 50,000 people, both women and men, took to the streets in Toronto.

It is no secret that Quebec’s feminist movement is divided on the issue of the veil. Some see the hijab as a symbol of oppression and believe it should be banned in all public institutions. For others, including myself, it is impossible to compare a religious dictatorship like Iran, where women are forced to wear the veil, with western democracies. In Quebec, for example, women are often free to wear the hijab or not, although there is no denying that there are cases in which family pressures force them to cover up. Here, too, the veil is polysemous, in that it has different meanings.

Unfortunately, this division between Quebec feminists is preventing us from expressing our solidarity. One camp criticizes the other for being too silent in the face of the Iranian women’s uprising, while the other worries that Quebec women who wear the veil will be even more stigmatized.

Instead of being divided like this, I want Quebecers to rally around what unquestionably unites us, namely our support for Iranian women who want to be free. We may very well be witnessing the start of the world’s first feminist revolution. It is an inspiring time. In the demonstrations in Iran, women without veils are leading the charge alongside their veiled sisters, and many men are risking their lives to share in their struggle. Let’s put our differences aside and support them in their quest for fundamental freedom.

[English]

Hon. Julie Miville-Dechêne: Honourable senators, I rise today to speak in support of Bill S-243, as introduced by my colleague Senator Rosa Galvez. The climate-aligned finance act is a courageous and coherent bill.

I spent most of my career working as a reporter. I was a Washington correspondent. One of the most famous mantras in journalism is “follow the money.” What this means, of course, is that by following financial transactions, one can get to the source of the problem.

The phrase was coined at the time of the Watergate scandal. Of course, the bill before us seeks to address very different problems. In some ways, they are less spectacular. They get less media attention, but the problem of climate change is much more serious, and it threatens the entire planet.

Bill S-243 aims to connect our financial system and our climate commitments to get to the source of the problem and start fixing it. It will not be easy. Nobody said it would be. We should not expect to change the rules of our financial systems, as we must, while preserving the status quo of business as usual. We have to choose.

[Translation]

I am not a scientist so I will not spend a lot of time presenting climate scenarios and energy trajectories. In any event, that is not our role as legislators. Our job is to consider the science and pass laws accordingly — in this case, for the good of the planet and future generations of Canadians.

What are the scientists saying?

The latest IPCC report, published just a few weeks ago, concluded that:

The cumulative scientific evidence is unequivocal: Climate change is a threat to human well-being and planetary health. Any further delay in concerted anticipatory global action on adaptation and mitigation will miss a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all.

What are we to do? The IPCC report does not offer detailed solutions, but it clearly identifies “insufficient and misaligned finance” as a problem and highlights the need to adopt a model where “investment [is] aligned with climate resilient development.”

[English]

Others are also pointing the way. In February of last year, the U.K. government published a major study called The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review, led by Professor Dasgupta, of Cambridge University, and it does not mince words:

Collectively, however, we have failed to manage our global portfolio of assets sustainably. Estimates show that between 1992 and 2014, produced capital per person doubled, and human capital per person increased by about 13% globally; but the stock of natural capital per person declined by nearly 40%. . . . In other words, while humanity has prospered immensely in recent decades, the ways in which we have achieved such prosperity means that it has come at a devastating cost to Nature.

But this is not simply a market failure: it is a broader institutional failure too. . . . Governments almost everywhere exacerbate the problem by paying people more to exploit Nature than to protect it, and to prioritise unsustainable economic activities.

We need a financial system that channels financial investments – public and private – towards economic activities that enhance our stock of natural assets and encourage sustainable consumption and production activities. . . .

In May of last year, the International Energy Agency published a pathway to net-zero emissions by 2050 — a goal that Canada has publicly committed to achieve. The report was very direct and precise in saying that no new oil and gas fields should be approved for development beyond those already approved in 2021, and that, going forward, the only focus of oil and gas producers should be to manage and reduce emissions from existing assets.

There are many more reports and studies, of course, but at this point the message is clear: If we are to reach net zero by 2050, we need transformational change at a systemic level, quickly. But that is not what we have done in Canada. So far, we have supported a few climate policies and initiatives, as long as they do not affect our economy in any meaningful way. We vow to protect the climate in the long term, but short-term considerations of competitiveness take precedence. We advocate for bold change, but the status quo prevails most of the time.

As we pledge to reduce our national emissions, we are planning to increase our oil and gas exports. We celebrate our carbon tax, but our biggest polluters only pay a fraction of it. And the most significant measure we are contemplating for the financial industry is a disclosure scheme.

I strongly believe in transparency, of course. It is often an essential first step. In fact, we just passed Bill S-211, which is a transparency bill focused on forced labour and child labour in supply chains. But there are situations where transparency alone is not sufficient, especially when economic incentives are not aligned. In the case of the financial sector, climate disclosure schemes have not had much impact.

A recent report by NGOs shows that in 2021, the world’s top banks provided $752 billion in financing to the fossil fuel industry. One quarter of that amount went to companies that are expanding production. In Canada, financing for oil sands operations increased by 51%. Of course, this is not because we didn’t know about climate change last year or because we had insufficient disclosures to know that increasing oil and gas production contradicts our climate commitments. It’s because disclosures are basically worthless if they are not associated with cost.

In fact, a 2020 survey by HSBC found that just 10% of investors viewed the climate disclosures as a relevant source of information. When discussing that survey, the Financial Times quoted a former Bank of England economist as saying that:

Just discussing risks, and assessing risks, does not mean we are actually transitioning to net zero. Many firms may discuss risks — and do exactly nothing to advance the transition.

And why is that? Because climate disclosures provide information, but they do not align financial incentives. And that’s what matters: alignment.

[Translation]

Today, we are studying Bill S-243.

For the first time, we have a bill that is proposing to do what the IPCC and others are calling for: align finance with our climate commitments. The act would require public and private financial institutions to explain how they align their loans and investments with our climate commitments. It would require Crown corporations to integrate climate expertise at the highest level. It would support financial transactions that accelerate the transition and discourage those that slow it down. The act also addresses the conflicts of interest that have held us back for so many years.

It is a bold and necessary bill that challenges the paradigm under which we have operated until now, which holds that the financial system is untouchable.

This initiative will no doubt spark opposition, but I believe that the criticism should be met with a simple question: If you do not agree with this bill, how do you propose that Canada align its financial system with our climate commitments? If the reply is merely that we need more disclosure and carbon capture, or that we must wait for other countries to act, or that the market itself will ensure that there is a transition, we will know that there is no real will to change anything.

[English]

As I mentioned at the outset, Bill S-243 proposes to follow the money. That is certainly the right approach. But there is another thing that Bill S-243 would allow us to do, and that is putting our money where our mouth is. Senator Galvez is giving us an opportunity not only to align our financial system with our climate commitments, but to align our deeds with our words. We want to be climate leaders, but we are the only G7 country where emissions increased between 2015 and 2019. We point to other countries with bigger carbon footprints, but Canada is the worst country in the world for cumulative emissions per population. We can and should be doing much better. As senators, we often say that one of our duties is to provide representation to under-represented groups. Today, I suggest to you that one such group is made up of future generations. This bill is for them.

As appointed legislators, we are protected from electoral pressures. In politics, this is a rare and invaluable privilege. It should give us the courage and the independence to make hard decisions that are in the public interest. Today I suggest that we should take the time to understand and reflect on this bill. To quote The Dasgupta Review one more time:

. . . the same ingenuity that has led us to make demands on Nature that are so large, so damaging and over such a short period, can be redeployed to bring about transformative change, perhaps even in just as short a time. We and our descendants deserve nothing less.

In 15 or 20 years, most of us won’t be here anymore. Today, I suggest that this bill gives us a chance to do something that will matter when we are gone. So I urge you, colleagues, to send this bill to committee for an in-depth study without delay. We owe this to our children and grandchildren. Thank you.

[Translation]

Hon. Julie Miville-Dechêne: Minister, the Canada Border Services Agency is responsible for seizing goods produced by forced labour at the border.

Such seizures are very rare, partly because the standard of proof is almost impossible to meet. In addition, Canada releases hardly any information about the seized goods or the company involved, because it says this information is protected under the Privacy Act.

In the United States, however, the authorities are much more transparent. They have carried out 31 seizures in three years. They publish the date, the type of goods and the name of the supplier. Obviously, this information can then be used by American businesses to avoid sketchy suppliers.

By hiding information about seizures of goods produced by forced labour, isn’t Canada putting businesses’ commercial interests ahead of workers’ human rights?

Hon. Julie Miville-Dechêne: I too would like to pay tribute to the courageous people of Ukraine, who have been victims of a deadly invasion launched by a dangerous autocrat.

The images we see every day are chilling. A nuclear plant bombed. Cities in ruins. Crowds of people in shock huddling in subway stations, weeping silent tears.

We cling to heartwarming signs of humanity, such as Dr. Julien Auger from Quebec’s Centre hospitalier de Saint-Jérôme, a father of two who volunteered to care for the wounded in Ukraine. As he told La Presse, “Where will it stop if nobody does anything?”

Another man who goes by Wali, a former soldier with the Royal 22nd Regiment, joined the International Legion of Territorial Defence of Ukraine in response to brave President Zelenskyy’s call, leaving behind his partner and baby. He said:

When I see images of the destruction in Ukraine, what I picture is my son, suffering and in danger.

Meanwhile, Quebec welcomed one of its first Ukrainian refugees. I was stunned by Anastasia’s story. In her soft, singsong French, with surprising composure, Anastasia shared her story with Radio-Canada:

I feel safe, but I feel sad. There is a heaviness in my heart because my family is there. I worry about my family every day.

Anastasia does not believe that a truce is likely. Her cousins and her uncle are on the front lines. Her mother encouraged her to flee. Customs officers in Montreal let her through even though she had no proof of enrolment to go along with her student visa. Anastasia also told Radio-Canada, and I quote:

I could see in their eyes that they realized I came to Canada because of the war in Ukraine.

With a sense of urgency, Anastasia chose to continue her life in Montreal because she speaks French and English.

More Ukrainians will now be able to come and seek refuge in our great country as a result of the new Canada-Ukraine Authorization for Emergency Travel announced yesterday. We have all the necessary tools to welcome these refugees.

I am also heartened by the Canadian and European response to this vicious attack. However, we can’t help but note, with heavy hearts, the contrast between this response and the wait-and-see approach the West is taking to other, equally bloody, conflicts outside of Europe.

As a final point, this terrible invasion forced Quebec to do some soul-searching about the weight of words. We were still using the name “Kiev,” taken from the Russian, without really thinking about the political weight of that choice. This week, a few Quebec media outlets began using the Ukrainian spelling of the besieged capital city, Kyiv. This was long overdue. Journalistic objectivity is not in question.

Long live Kyiv, Ukraine and the Ukrainian people. I am hoping for a miracle.

Senator Miville-Dechêne: Senator Gold, I appreciate your prudence, but please note that some countries have already taken action to protect children from online pornography or will be doing so in the months to come. Germany has started blocking sites that do not have age verification, France is heading in that direction, and Great Britain will most likely be taking action soon. I introduced a bill about this in the Senate. Unfortunately, Canada has not done anything.

Here’s my question: Is the government prepared to support Bill S-210 or to introduce its own bill to ensure that online harm does not destroy children’s brains?