- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- NDP
- Port Moody—Coquitlam
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $129,260.13
- Government Page
- Oct/27/23 1:15:50 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, certainly, a noise pollution caucus is a good idea. As it relates to airlines, I think we would get a lot of community input from that.
I just want to highlight simply the amount of and increase in cargo traffic. We now live in a society where people want things delivered to them from across the world in a day. This means that more air traffic needs to be flying around. In B.C. alone, we are shipping crab and cherries overseas more and more because we can get such a great price for them. They go by air. We are just in for more and more noise pollution as it relates to air traffic.
I think we need, as the member said, to get a caucus together to advance some of these new regulations.
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- Oct/27/23 1:09:56 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the Liberal government needs to take into consideration the science. We do need to make sure that those whose health is potentially affected by noise pollution and any other kind of pollution are taken seriously. The government has a lot of work to do to protect the health of Canadians. This would be just one of the ways.
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Madam Speaker, this bill is timely as I stand today to speak on behalf of my community of Port Moody—Coquitlam, Anmore and Belcarra, as well as Port Coquitlam, which recently petitioned the government with the following ask as it relates to the Vancouver airspace modernization project.
They call upon the Minister of Transport to do the following:
...prepare an independent environmental assessment of the noise and emissions impacts of the proposed flight paths, including recommendations for minimizing such impacts, prior to the proposed changes taking place. This environmental assessment should be based on the latest global research and recommendations for noise and emissions limits, should be independent of Nav Canada, and should be made public when completed.
The minister responded to my constituents by stating:
Aircraft noise is a complicated and often difficult issue faced by airport authorities and communities around the world and it is essential that the public has the opportunity to provide their feedback on potential changes.
I agree with that.
He went on to state:
That is why the Government of Canada put forward Bill C-52, which if passed, would create a process for airports to notify and consult the public on changes to airport design that could affect aircraft noise.
The minister went on to state:
Transport Canada previously worked with Canadian airports and NAV CANADA to develop a voluntary protocol for the aviation industry entitled Airspace Change Communications and Consultation Protocol that was published in 2015. This protocol amplified the aviation industry’s commitment to include environmental considerations to communicate and consult with communities.
I am here to tell the government that the voluntary protocol did not meet the standards of consultation in my community. I was at Nav Canada's onsite community consultation in Coquitlam earlier this year with respect to the Vancouver airspace modernization project. I can tell members that the room was not set up to be disability or age friendly, it was difficult to navigate the information boards and there was not enough staff to answer important questions from residents.
In addition, even the City of Coquitlam did not know about the consultation event, the two mayors whose jurisdictions border the City of Coquitlam knew nothing about it and wrote letters to Nav Canada asking for more detail about the flight plans and more time for their residents to provide feedback.
I too wrote a letter to Nav Canada letting it know that the consultation process was inadequate and asking it to agree to an additional extended consultation process. It did not agree to this. This is an example of how the voluntary protocol is not working for people.
This bill focuses on improving accountability and transparency. That is certainly needed, based on the experience of the people in my community. That is why the NDP supports this bill moving on to committee stage. While better data collection, reporting and the committee process are a step forward in the bill, Bill C-52 does little to establish standards or enforce accountability to protect people or the environment. This can be seen in how the bill plans to address airplane noise. Canada's air traffic has increased significantly over the past decade and industry observers forecast this will only increase as passengers and cargo numbers at Canadian airports continue to increase.
The current approach of a performance-based navigation will not be sufficient and has had the effect of exposing previously unaffected residential areas to new air traffic. This led to complaints from some neighbourhoods that had not previously been under flight paths and were unaccustomed to dealing with the noise or public health impacts.
More direct-flight routes and official arrival and departure procedures are here with us now. With a goal to improving airspace efficiency and safety and reducing greenhouse gas emissions where possible, we must also reduce exposure to aircraft noise in residential areas. The government needs to get serious about regulating and enforcing these impacts based on science. That is why the government needs to expand the representation on its noise management committee to include a local public health official as noise pollution can affect and impact population health.
Canadians who live near high-traffic airports face disturbances at all hours due to flight noise. According to research compiled by the World Health Organization, excessive noise can have harmful health effects, including increased risk for IHD and hypertension, sleep disturbance, hearing impairment, tinnitus and cognitive impairment. There is also increasing evidence for other health impacts, such as adverse birth outcomes and mental health problems.
As a result, Canadians impacted by airport noise deserve to see the science of any changes made to airplane noise around them. The NDP would go further than this bill does, to initially propose and implement the World Health Organization standard on noise around large Canadian airports, make Transport Canada's existing data on airport noise public and improve data collection on ground-level airport noise. These recommendations were all made in the 2019 report of the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities, entitled “Assessing the Impact of Aircraft Noise in the Vicinity of Major Canadian Airports”.
Noise pollution must be addressed by international standards, but so too must accessibility for persons with disabilities, who continue to be impacted by barriers in transportation. There is no example of this with a higher profile than what happened last week, when the wheelchair of the chief accessibility officer did not accompany her on her flight home from Ottawa. She was left without her essential mobility device. There are so many stories of persons with disabilities being disrespected, disregarded, degraded and put in dangerous situations because there is no accountability for the failures of industry.
Too many persons have had similar experiences across Canada, showing how ill-equipped air transportation is in dealing with accessibility concerns. I hope that this high-profile incident will finally make change and that persons with disabilities who want to travel will get the respect and accommodation they deserve.
The Auditor General of Canada published a report in March 2023 entitled “Accessible Transportation for Persons with Disabilities”. It examined the accessibility of federally regulated transportation services, such as planes and trains, for people with disabilities. There were a few key findings from the report that we need to look at. Of the 2.2 million persons with disabilities who used federally regulated transportation in 2019 and 2020, 63% faced a barrier. When these barriers are not tracked, there is no accountability and no action to correct it. That is what we are seeing.
It was also found that the Canadian Transportation Agency had insufficient tools and enforcement staff to address barriers. This is seen from the statistic that 31% of CATSA managers and executives did not take the time to complete mandatory disability training. This training is essential and must be taken seriously by industry leaders. They will need legislation to do it, because they have shown that they will not do it on their own.
Right now, the Canadian Transportation Agency does not have the authority to require transportation service providers to provide complaint data on accessibility regularly. It can do so only in limited and specific circumstances. The AG report found that this limits the ability to fully understand the total number and nature of complaints and, thus, identify and address potential barriers to accessible transportation.
For example, when a wheelchair is damaged, a complaint can be lodged with the transportation service provider and, if necessary, with the agency. However, when complaints are submitted only to the transportation service provider, the agency is not made aware. There is no regulation enforcing that. Therefore, it does not know the full extent of the issues faced by persons with disabilities. In contrast, the same Canadian airlines travelling to U.S. destinations must report accessibility performance indicators, such as damages to mobility aids, to the U.S. Department of Transportation.
Complaint data is one of the key sources of information that flags discrimination and problem experiences by travellers with disabilities. Not having the authority to regularly access this information limits the agency's ability to more strategically select the provisions of the Accessible Transportation for Persons with Disabilities Regulations to inspect. This creates an additional risk that the agency is not focusing its limited resources on the areas of the highest risk and those discriminatory barriers.
Recently, the Canadian Transportation Agency ruled that the country's largest airlines need to do more to accommodate passengers with mobility devices. A consultation process with the disability community regarding the proposed accessibility regulation in this act must be the standard we have for all transportation systems. This should also include a new accountability process for accessibility complaints, including current outstanding complaints, to be heard, addressed and monitored for changes to be implemented. They must meet international standards.
The last point I want to touch on today is postpandemic air travel. The pandemic has exposed deep underlying issues in Canada's air transportation sector, which resulted in chaos during the summer 2022 and holiday 2022-23 travel seasons. Airlines have come under fire for poor planning and trying to rebound too quickly in order to maximize profits. This has resulted in Canadians sleeping on airport floors and being stranded abroad, as well as Toronto Pearson airport being ranked as one of the worst airports in the world for delays. This legislation would provide regulation-making authority requiring improved service standards.
In the briefing on this bill to the stakeholders, the government said, “Regulations developed would establish the services that require a service standard, but the intent is not for the regulations to establish specific target metrics.” Why is this not the intent? The NDP supports stronger collaboration and service standards for all aspects of air travel. However, those service standards should be developed and implemented by the government to ensure consistency across the sector and to ensure that airlines and airports are not left to regulate themselves.
We have seen that, when left in their own hands, companies will take shortcuts, do minimal work to make a change and put profits before people. New Democrats would add this: If the government truly wants to address delays and inconsistencies in the air travel sector, it should take steps to improve working conditions for airport screening officers by ending contract flipping and by supporting training programs. The NDP agrees that establishing service standards for air sector providers is important. However, the government should ensure that those standards are consistent across the sector and serve the best interests of workers and travellers.
In summary, New Democrats want changes to this bill that will positively impact those affected by airplane noise and pollution and those who use air travel, including passengers with disabilities. We also want established guidelines for how the new data-sharing provisions will be used to effect positive changes in the sector. Government must strengthen the contents of airport climate plans to ensure that emissions targets are consistent with international commitments to the Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act.
I will close by saying that the proposed act requires airport authorities to prepare climate change plans using international standards, but it has no similar requirement for noise or accessibility. This feels discriminatory, so I ask why. This needs to be corrected. Additional accountability is needed in this bill by adding that airport noise committees must evaluate noise complaints in a manner consistent with recognized international standards. Complaints relating to accessibility must also be evaluated in such a manner. We cannot leave this to be fixed in a private cabinet meeting.
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- Oct/31/22 1:28:36 p.m.
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- Re: Bill S-5
Madam Speaker, like many times in our history, we are at a crossroads in regard to choosing the well-being of people over profits.
Too many times, government legislators have turned a blind eye to doing better to protect the health of people. Too many times, they have chosen to protect the profits of polluters and toxic industries because they did not know better or could not see the results of their choices manifesting in harmful ways in their very own communities.
Today, we are once again at that crossroad of opportunity to do better, or to carry on with the status quo that is harming people in the name of corporate greed and profits.
Over the past 50 years, science has told us, and cancer has shown us, that there are toxins in our bodies that should not be there. This is the fact of the matter, and this is what needs to be corrected. It is not just pollution in our air, water and land, but pollutants in our bodies, blood and breast milk exist. Pollutants that were put there by unregulated industry.
While I was preparing for this speech, I was reminded of the choice of the 36th Parliament that made pollution prevention planning discretionary and not mandatory under CEPA in 1999. That was a mistake a past Parliament made, and after 23 years, after eight Parliaments, this is a decision that this 44th Parliament must finally correct.
In those 23 years, only 25 toxic substances listed in the initial act have been subject to pollution prevention planning requirements. That is a rate of about one toxic substance every year. It will take 150 years for the existing list of toxins in the act to get a pollution prevention plan. As the Canadian Environmental Law Association stated, “This is a leisurely pace to addressing chemicals the federal government regards as the worst of the worst substances in the Canadian environment.”
Looking at it in decade-long timelines, it makes me wonder why Canadian governments have not done more before now to protect human health from known cancer-causing toxins. Every day 641 Canadians are diagnosed with cancer, and here we are, 23 years later, looking at the inadequacy of CEPA.
Canadians deserve better than the CEPA of the past, and it is the expectation of the NDP that this window of opportunity to improve environmental protections for Canadians and to offer them a right to a healthy environment is imperative to the health of us and of our children. We want a world where toxins being introduced into our bodies and the bodies of our children is not inevitable.
The NDP will be supporting the bill at second reading with the hopes that it can be substantially strengthened to reach that goal.
Bill S-5 is largely concerned with protecting the environment and human health from toxins and maintaining air and water quality. This is good, but there is widespread agreement that CEPA is overdue for substantial improvements. For one thing, it is widely considered to be unenforceable as it now stands, as there are multiple obstacles to enforcing it and remedies cannot be used by citizens. That needs to be corrected.
There are 159 countries around the world with legal obligations to protect the human right to a healthy environment, but Canada does not have those legal obligations. There are environmental bills of rights in Ontario, Quebec, Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, but there is no federal law that explicitly recognizes the right to live in a healthy environment in Canada.
While Bill S-5 seems to be a step forward in recognizing the right to live in a healthy environment, there are serious concerns that this right will not be backed up by measures that improve the enforceability of the act. In fact, the Senate committee studying the bill reported just that.
As my colleague from South Okanagan—West Kootenay previously pointed out, Canadians deserve more power to ensure that their right to live in a healthy environment is upheld. That is one of the things that my colleague’s private member's bill, Bill C-219, would do.
Bill C-219 is titled an act to enact the Canadian environmental bill of rights, and it offers umbrella coverage to all federal legislation outside of CEPA. Specifically, it would give residents of Canada the right to, among other things, access information about environmental concerns, have standing at hearings, access tribunals and courts to uphold environmental rights and request a review of laws. It would also provide protection to whistle-blowers.
I encourage all members of the House to support Bill C-219 when it comes before the House in this session, because while it is good to see Bill S-5 here, it is important to note that adding the right to a healthy environment in a limited way under CEPA is not the same thing as ensuring, broadly, that all people have the right to live in a healthy environment, as is the goal of Bill C-219.
There remain troubling limitations in Bill S-5 on how the right to a healthy environment will be applied and how the right will be enforced. Without modernizing legislation to update chemicals management in Canada, and without the legal recognition of the right to a healthy environment, Canadians will continue to be exposed to unregulated and harmful chemicals.
Canadians are exposed to chemicals from polluting industries every day in the air, in the waters of our lakes, rivers and oceans, and even in the safety of our own homes in the products we use.
Canadians expect their government to take action to protect them and their families from toxic substances. They expect the government to ensure that all people have the right to live in a healthy environment. These are things New Democrats have been calling on the government to fix for years. While the government has chosen to do nothing, the number of chemicals that people in Canada are exposed to in their daily lives has grown exponentially.
There has been a 50-fold increase in the production of chemicals in the past 50 years, and that is expected to triple again by 2050. Personal care products are manufactured with over 10,000 unique chemical ingredients, some of which are either suspected or known to cause cancer, harm our reproductive systems or disrupt our endocrine systems. Even some disposable diapers have been shown to contain these harmful chemicals. Babies are being impacted.
Since CEPA was first enacted, Canada has also learned much more about the harmful cumulative effects of these toxic chemicals on our health. We now know that exposure to hazardous chemicals, even in small amounts, can be linked to chronic illnesses like asthma, cancer and diabetes. According to Health Canada, air pollution is a factor in over 15,000 premature deaths and millions of respiratory issues every year in Canada.
These toxins are impacting racialized communities even harder. Frontline workers, who are predominantly women or racialized, often have higher exposure to hazardous chemicals. Across Canada, indigenous, Black and racialized families are disproportionately negatively impacted by toxic dumps, polluting pipelines, tainted drinking water and other environmental hazards.
The former UN special rapporteur on human rights and hazardous substances and wastes stated, “The invisible violence inflicted by toxics is an insidious burden disproportionately borne by Indigenous peoples in Canada.” This is exactly why there must be a better enforcement mechanism in this bill so that communities, families and individuals can achieve the protection outlined in law.
One of the most disappointing and concerning gaps in this bill is that it does not touch on the citizen enforcement mechanism. As the member for Victoria has said in the House, “The citizen enforcement mechanism is, frankly, broken. It has never been successfully used. The process is so onerous that it is essentially impossible for a citizen to bring an environmental enforcement action. Without a functioning citizen enforcement mechanism, there are serious questions about how the right to a healthy environment can be truly enforced.”
There are also other critical gaps in Bill S-5. It lacks clear accountability and timelines for how toxic substances are managed. It lacks mandatory labelling so Canadians can make informed choices about the products they use. It does not fix loopholes that allow corporations to hide which toxic substances are in their products.
If we want to protect our health and the environment, we have to ensure that we are following the advice of scientists and experts, not the interests of big corporations. These big corporations, made up of some of Canada's biggest polluting industries, have been attempting to stop amendments to Bill S-5—
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Mr. Speaker, this is exactly why we are in the situation that we are in, these one-sided approaches to cutting taxes.
In B.C., the roads were washed out by floods caused by climate change. We need to have a real discussion about what is happening with climate change, and how impactful and expensive it is. I am not going to just talk about expenses. Right now in my community of Coquitlam, there is a wildfire burning, and people with asthma or any kind of breathing difficulties have to stay inside. This is what is going on.
The Conservative member asking me this question is such a magnification of why we are here. There is no reasonable way that pollution is not causing hardship to Canadians. We need to have a real discussion about that. If we do not have a discussion about climate change and pollution, we are doing a disservice to every Canadian now and in the future.
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