SoVote

Richard Cannings

Member of Parliament
Member of Parliament
NDP

South Okanagan—West Kootenay
British Columbia
Voting Attendance: 61%
Expenses Last Quarter: $128,729.57

Government Page

Context: House Hansard - 201 - May/29/23

May/29/23 1:50:05 p.m.
Watch
Re: Bill S-5

Mr. Speaker, I agree with the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands. However, I am not holding my breath. I think that if the government wanted to do this right, it would have done it right the first time. All I would say is that my private member's bill has that enforceability part baked into it and extends it to the other parts of the Canadian federal legislation on the environment. It carves out CEPA, because of issues around that legislation, but I would hope the government would use this as a model to fix CEPA once and for all.

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Context: House Hansard - 197 - May/15/23

Mr. Richard Cannings

May/15/23 6:48:22 p.m.
Watch
Re: Bill S-5

Madam Speaker, indeed, one of the major problems with Bill S-5 is that the enforceability of the right to live in a clean and healthy environment is left up to the minister. It is not up to the residents of Canada, who should be able to bring forward concerns to the minister and then follow a transparent and timely path so we can make sure this right is upheld in a proper manner. It should not be left entirely up to the minister, as it is now.

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Context: House Hansard - 197 - May/15/23

Mr. Richard Cannings (South Okanagan—West Kootenay, NDP)

May/15/23 6:21:22 p.m.
Watch
Re: Bill S-5

Madam Speaker, I just want to bring up the business of enforcement, which the member talked about at the end of her speech. The Canadian Environmental Protection Act is widely held as unenforceable. It has not ever been enforced in any reasonable way by the public. Bill S-5 would not change that. Ontario has had an environmental bill of rights for many years now, with an enforcement mechanism. Again, under that bill, it has not had anybody complaining about backyard bonfires. I am wondering if the member could comment on the fact that this is really not going to happen, but that we really need this. If we have an environmental bill of rights, we have to have some way to enforce it.

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Context: House Hansard - 197 - May/15/23

Mr. Richard Cannings (South Okanagan—West Kootenay, NDP)

May/15/23 6:03:47 p.m.
Watch
Re: Bill S-5

Madam Speaker, we just had a question about some of the amendments that were not considered. Some of the amendments that people wanted to put forward were considered out of scope. We even heard one of the Liberal speakers today say that he hoped we would go back to this bill as soon as possible, as soon as we passed it, and create another bill that would fix the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. After 24 years, the government did not include these important provisions in this new bill. They include things like the enforceability of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, something obvious that should have been done. Can the member comment on why these things were not included in Bill S-5?

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Context: House Hansard - 197 - May/15/23

Mr. Richard Cannings (South Okanagan—West Kootenay, NDP)

May/15/23 4:48:26 p.m.
Watch
Re: Bill S-5

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague mentioned at the very end the things we need to fix about this bill that were considered out of scope, and I assume that is why they were not fixed in this iteration of the bill. However, Bill S-5 was introduced as a different bill in a previous Parliament. The Canadian Environmental Protection Act has never been enforceable. People knew that. One would think this would have been the first thing to be tackled by the government when it was fixing this bill after 24 years. I am just wondering why that did not occur to the government and why we now have to have another piece of legislation. I agree with him that we need it done as quickly as possible to make this bill enforceable. What is the point of having environmental protection if it is not enforceable?

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Context: House Hansard - 121 - Oct/31/22

Mr. Richard Cannings (South Okanagan—West Kootenay, NDP)

Oct/31/22 12:27:39 p.m.
Watch
Re: Bill S-5

Madam Speaker, that was an interesting speech by the member from Calgary, as always. I will have to add the word “consultocracy” to my vocabulary. He mentioned how unenforceable the law would be. The CEPA, the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, has been on the books since 1999, and it has never been enforced in any way. Could he perhaps give us some ideas on how we should make it enforceable? Canadians deserve to live in a clean and healthy environment and we need to be able to enforce that.

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Member of Parliament

Richard Cannings